EP21 | Beyond The Brink | Pacific Bitcoin, Debt Clock, XRP & X Spaces | 10/15/23

The speaker discusses their experience at the Pacific Bitcoin Festival and highlights some key takeaways. They mention that the event focused on topics such as macro and microeconomics, advancements in mining, and the energy efficiency of Bitcoin. They also mention various vendors and new players in the cryptocurrency space. The speaker recommends attending the event and mentions the partnership between SWAN Bitcoin and Bakkt for custody services. They discuss the importance of trustworthy custodians and the evolving nature of custody solutions. The speaker suggests educating oneself on the options available and mentions the possibility of shared key situations for custody. 🎵 Welcome to Beyond the Brink, the show that explores global events that are pushing people to their limits and driving them to the brink of change. I'm your host Christy and I'm here with Melissa. Hey there, how are you? Yeah, doing great. It's great to be back on a regular basis. It is. I'm happy. Yes. So today we thought we'd chat about some things that are going on in the Bitcoin market as far as the Bitcoin ETF. And what does it mean? And what is it? What's it mean for the crypto space in general? And before we kick things off, let's hear from all of you awesome viewers out there. If you're tuning in on YouTube or Rumble, show us some love with a thumbs up or a rumble. We'd greatly appreciate that. And you can catch up on all of our previous episodes by visiting our website at VidaBroadcastNetwork.com or on your favorite podcast platform. Just search for us at the handle at Vida Broadcast. Well, my friend, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today, huh? Yes, we do. I would love to hear. I know you, I wasn't able to go and I'm kicking myself for not being there. But I was living with you or through you with the Pacific Bitcoin that you and Christine and Linda and your other friends went to. And I'd love just to hear a little bit about that if you wouldn't mind catching me up on that fun stuff. Oh, I'd love to. It was the second event put on by Pacific Bitcoin Festival, which was primarily sponsored by Swan Bitcoin. They're the promoters of it. They did a fabulous job. It was at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. It's a quaint location. It's an airplane hangar in a small little airport municipality of Santa Monica. So it's pretty cool. The weather was awesome. This time around. Last year, it was pretty cold. Great speakers. One of my biggest takeaways from this event is the subject matter. Last year, it was a lot of fanfare and excitement. And we had just came off of the FTX implosion. So the attitude then was it's Bitcoin, not crypto. And we were way beyond that this year. It was just like, okay, we're beyond all of that noise. Let's talk about macro, microeconomics. Let's talk about where Bitcoin is at this point in time. Mining, a lot on mining and the advancements in mining, how that has evolved over the last year. It's quite a bit, actually. And how Bitcoin is definitely not an energy waster. It's an energy provider. It is a green energy source. And it doesn't have to – we don't have to fight anymore to convince people of that statement. It's absolutely true. Quite a few vendors that were there. One of my favorites is a company called – it's by Fountain. It's a hardware wallet, air-gapped multi-sig wallet by Fountain called Passport. Fabulous piece of equipment. I was excited about it last year when I saw it. And the adoption of use of that wallet is right up there with the others. And I would say if you're a Trezor user, you might want to switch over to one of these other options like Fountain or even Jade wallet. There's some new players coming out. Like, let me look here. Theia is a new Bitcoin multi-sig wallet. That's pretty cool. There is STEM academies based on Bitcoin. Trying to find the document here. Because what's happening in science, technology, engineering, and math courses, what was considered, you know, the advanced courses for young children and even those going into high school, the STEM classes, they're not learning about blockchain. So this STEM – it's called BSTEM. And it is a franchise opportunity to start bringing Bitcoin blockchain education into the STEM program. So if you have one of those children or perhaps you were interested in starting your own franchise, this would be focused on Bitcoin blockchain as well as all of the other courses that are required in a STEM program, which was pretty cool. What else can I say? Everybody's very approachable. The information was solid. You know, normally there's a small stage and then there's the main stage. There was some dynamite conversations going on both sides of the stage, if you will. One's called the Swan Dome and one's the Main Dome. The Swan Dome is a much more quaint location, maybe 75 seats or so, whereas in the Main Auditorium there's probably over 1,000 seats in there. But in that small Swan Dome, there was some major information being dropped there. It was very useful, somewhat technical, economic. Peter St. Onge was there. It was great to have a conversation with him. Just outside of the Swan Dome was myself, Christine, Cynthia, and Linda. We all just stood there chit-chatting, and here come to find out Peter is a fellow, I believe, at the Heritage Foundation. What is the organization? It just slipped my mind, but he's doing quite a bit with Unchained Capital. Oh, I knew I knew who that was. He's an expert in Austrian economics, so he did his very best to explain what Austrian economics is compared to Keynesian economics, which is generally what we're experiencing in this country, which is a debt-based system. Austrian economics doesn't get the accolades that it's due because it's not sexy. It's not one that can make a lot of money because it's basic. It's like, Melissa, if you want to sell something to me, you probably work to make the product, and your value of your time and materials that went into it is going to be reflected in what I want to pay for it. So it's a true exchange of proof of work for a value proposition. And that doesn't typically work in our current economy, as you well know. So what can I say? If anybody is thinking about going to this event, it's already scheduled for next year. The date isn't set yet, but they're already selling tickets to next year's event. Lots of good speakers. You know, I was surprised, as a quick digression here, I was surprised that Michael Saylor wasn't there, nor Robert Breedlove. But you had Nick Boccia. You had Stephen Levera. You had Foss there. You had, oh, gosh, Preston Peash, if I'm saying that correctly. I know. I got his book. When I went to Texas Blockchain Council, I bought his book, and I talked to him, and I got his signature. So I was like a fangirl. He's a very smart young man and one of my first ones that I listened to. They're all very approachable. Mark Moss was there. BTC Sessions was there. So it was fun. And I just felt like going there my second time around. Lynn Alden was there. She had just released her new book. And so there was many authors that were there that were doing book signings as well. So pretty cool. I would highly recommend it. It's a West Coast event. There's not much happening on the West Coast. So this is probably your premier Bitcoin event that's on the West Coast. And, of course, SWAN is a class act. One thing that you need to know about SWAN is that, you know, that they've had some press about their custodian company first starting with Prime Trust. And we all know that Prime Trust is no longer Prime Trust. Yeah, and so SWAN, I believe, saw that coming and they pivoted over to Fortress Trust. And then Ripple was going to buy Fortress Trust and then just backed out of that. So while all of this is happening, SWAN Bitcoin, they like Fortress. But what they're doing on top of that is that they have partnered with Bakkt. And so I think that, you know, Bakkt is the number one custody company in the world, I believe. And so they're working with SWAN exclusively on the custody side of things. And then there's still some work that Fortress is going to be doing. So the long-term custody aspect of this, from what I understand, is going to be for those customers. You know, we're at the point right now where investors don't want to be storing their own Bitcoin, even if you're a Bitcoiner. You know, not your keys, not your coin type of thing. And you want to self-custody. But we're evolving in this space. And it's overwhelming for people. It is overwhelming for some folks. And that's where I always say, and I've said it from the beginning of getting into the whole Bitcoin cryptocurrency space, so many people are there, I want to say like freedom fighters. You know, they want to get as far away from the banking system as possible. And that's great. But it's like anything else. You've got to walk the walk, talk the talk, walk the walk, live the life, understand what you're doing. Unfortunately, the majority of folks are not willing to do that. And so there is a definite need for trustworthy custodians. And so, you know, my thing is, you know, let's really understand what we're doing in terms of, you know, what does it mean to have your own keys? What does it mean to have a custodian hold your crypto for you? What are the possibilities that that crypto could be, you know, could go away tomorrow? I mean, there's so many things. And I think as long as we educate ourselves and we ask questions, we can make educated decision on what the best custodian or who the best custodian is. But ultimately, if you can learn how to hold your own crypto in a cold wallet, cold storage wallet, I mean, that's the best thing you can do. That's what they're saying right now. But I think the evolution is going to the point to where, you know, let's face it, people are used to banking. They're used to having a place like a bank where you can have a safe deposit box, that type of thing. So what I see is happening with custodial services is a shared key situation, multi-signature. So you can still, you still have complete control over your coins, your assets, because you have the majority of the seed phrase. However, the custodian may have two seed phrases. And that is enough to allow them to be able to manage your digital assets in a way to where the custodian can make sure that the wallet wasn't tampered with in any type of way. If they can tell if there's been any movement in or out of the wallet, but they don't have access to the contents of the wallet unless you match up with your keys. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of cool how that's working. It's also for tax purposes because there are many people that are putting their monies into an IRA. And how are you going to self-custody in an IRA? Well, some companies are already doing that and letting you self-custody by having this multi-sig situation. And so it's just like, but on a reverse situation where the company can tell if you've had movement in or out, but they don't know what has moved in or out or the amount thereof. It's just enough to be able to draw attention to it and say, hey, customer, you know, can you tell us what you moved in or out of that account? It's an IRA account. We have to report on that kind of stuff. So that type of thing. I think it's really cool what's coming. Not financial advice. No, never. Do your own research. But if I had a 401k, like a Roth 401 or a Roth IRA, man, transferring that into a Bitcoin or, you know, hopefully some other, you know, when XRP and those assets become available, moving that money into a Roth IRA would be just amazing, especially if you're a young person and, you know, you just put it in there and forget about it. That's going to grow tax-free, baby. And right now people can do it. And I'm sure they're going to want to close that up, you know, sooner than later. But, man, the opportunity. I see, you know, I do payroll and whatnot. And some of the employees that are leaving, they leave their 401ks with our plan. And I'm always reaching out to them because a lot of times people have 401ks from all over the place, and they forget they even have them. They might only have worked there a couple of years, and they might only have, you know, $3,000 or $5,000. And I'm thinking, man, if you rolled that over right now into a Bitcoin IRA, Roth IRA or 401k, and invested in that and just forgot about it like you're forgetting about this one, you'd be one happy camper when you're about ready to retire, you know. Oh, to that point. You know, Michael Saylor put out a – he was interviewed not too long ago, and I was trying to find the cuts for it today, and I just wasn't fast enough to get it done for a previous show that I was on. But what he said in essence, out of 50 minutes, there's like a little six-minute segment. He says, listen, we're at a point in time right now that we have institutional adoption. Once the big institutional players jump in, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about the Bitcoin ETFs here shortly. Once all of that is approved and institutional money starts coming into Bitcoin, it would behoove you, even if you were working at McDonald's, that you should be investing some of your income into Bitcoin. It would behoove you to do that because once institutional money comes into Bitcoin, Bitcoin is not going to be – everybody's going to go, well, it's $27,000 today. How can I afford that? Well, you could buy as little as $10 if you want to. I mean, you could buy less than that if you want to. But once the players come into it, it's going to become that much more scarce. I mean, it's a finite currency, whereas over 19 million of the 21 million coins have already been minted. There's not much left. And so when the institutional players come in to grab what they can at this point in time, what is going to happen to the price? And if you were working at McDonald's and you start it now and you are doing this investment, do you know that your growth, your return on your investment can be like 8,000 times what it is right now? You would be giving yourself one hell of a pay raise if you continue to stay working at McDonald's. It would be crazy. Yes. That's how important it is, especially in the times that we're in. I tell my kids, too, like, you know, hey, I know you might not have much money to invest, but even if you were putting $25 a week away in Bitcoin or XRP, any of these assets that are up and coming, that have a good track record, you know, and you're doing your research on them, tucking that money away, it's going to make such a difference in the future. I really, with my entire being, I believe that those of us that have been paying attention are going to be nicely rewarded in the future. I just want to shout out to my friends, Leslie and Julia, for joining us in this space. Ladies, thank you for coming. If you have any questions, if you raise your hand and I can bring you up, I'd love to hear any thoughts that you guys have to say. But thank you so much for joining us. Now, are they able to hear all of this conversation? Yeah. You know, all right. Hart, that's what I was going to say. If you guys could let us know if you can hear. Thank you. We were having a little bit of a train wreck in the beginning of this because we couldn't get our mics to work. I'm still trying to get myself to be a co-host up there, but it doesn't send me the invite. So we're just winging it. Yes. Christy is flying. I'm in the dark. So that's okay. But, you know, getting back to this conversation, and thank you for joining us. It's wonderful to have you here. What's really important is that we have to look at inflation. So we're being told inflation is kind of getting out of hand again. But, you know, real inflation is 10%. Okay, let's be fair about it. Yeah, let's be real. So if you put your money into a money market and you're getting maybe 4%, 5%, you're still losing 5% of your income. And so what investment vehicle out there can you find that has the potential of a gain of greater than 10% just to break even? Because if you had, just keep the math simple, $10,000 and 10% interest, inflation rate, let's say it just stays the same and it looks like it's going to go up higher, you would have zero after 10 years. No, it would still show $10,000 in your bank account. But how much would you have to pay for a gallon of milk, a gallon of gas, clothing, a haircut? I mean, you're going to be looking at having to pay so much more. And even if you were fortunate to have a high paying job, that may not be sufficient to be able to survive on what you're currently surviving on because of the rate of inflation. So where do you put your money? You put your money into an asset that has a greater potential of meeting the inflationary rate and beyond that. I don't know of anything else out there but Bitcoin. Well, possibly gold, but gold hasn't performed that way yet. Silver, I was listening to Andy Sheckman. He, Bersan and his brother interviewed Andy Sheckman. If you get a chance to listen to that show, it just came out. And he was saying that gold and silver are wealth. They have stood the test of time and that they look at it differently. The richies have the gold and silver. They're storing it. It's not like you can, I mean, you can, but people that buy gold and silver don't usually buy it to spend it, so to speak. It's a hedge against inflation. You know, I have something I wanted to bring up. A friend of mine that I follow on Twitter, he posted about, I'm going to try to find it. He was talking about Bitcoin and he doesn't really, he's not a fan of Bitcoin, okay? Which I've noticed this, that there's a lot of people, and Alan of the Staple Crew, he goes through this too, where there's either people that are devout Bitcoiners or XRP people. But they're not both. They're not both, except for people like us. Except for us, yes. We see the value in both of those assets and realize that they're not the same thing. And I think that's where a lot of the confusion comes in. But anyway, he was saying, and this is a guy named Mr. Man, who I just love on Twitter. He had posted, and I wonder if I can find where I responded to him. He was saying that he doesn't think that Bitcoin is a store of value. And that he didn't think it had very much utility. Which I thought, I just think that people that say things like that don't really know what Bitcoin is. Or they haven't studied it enough to understand. But I think, let's see, let me try to find my question here. Because when I hear about the Bitcoin mining and the electricity, and I do realize it costs a lot of electricity. But that they're also putting that back into creating electricity or heat and, you know, the trap net. They repurpose it, yeah. Right. So I can kind of see a future in the long run where, what if all of these Bitcoin mining operations, where they really get things heating up, where it turns out that it does create free energy. Like free energy to you and I, right? Because it could be self-sustaining. And it could also be used, you know, like people can heat their homes with heat that's coming off of these things. So I don't want to discount it for that reason. I do also think, you know, because of the triple ledger accounting, part of it is a super important thing. The transparency of it, you know, we've been led to believe that it is, you know, it's for criminals and it's anonymous. But that can be further from the truth because these people are all being taken down and being caught because it is transparent. You can do that with almost any cryptocurrency too and make that argument for that. Right? I mean. XRP too. Yes, indeedy. Yeah. So where's the darn post? Dang it. Yeah, I can't get it up here. So he says, okay. So what he put was, people are fearful of a CBDC because they think it will replicate that of a Chinese-style model. Direct from the central bank to the end user, that's a false narrative for the rest of the world. People are also fearful that it causes them to run to Bitcoin, believing that it's a store of value or a medium of exchange. But it is neither. It exchanges no value beyond the intrinsic belief and it stores no value in monetary sense. Bitcoin creates energy. That's what it does. It's a means for generating value and energy. Green, good, bad, or indifferent. My statements about Bitcoin are neither good or negative. They're based on my info. And then he says, for the American people to trust the CBDC, a sense of trust must be established and it will be or else people will not use it. But believe this, US will get its CBD also and fear it or learn about it. Educate yourself. Education is the key to power. The more you know, the more you grow and understand. And I put that, I just asked him, would you agree the store of value is energy? And if so, what energy? Was my question to him. Because I thought to myself, you know. First of all, I love Mr. Man. I'm respectfully disagreeing with him. I mean, he doesn't know I'm disagreeing with him. I guess that's not really fair, but I do love the guy. I think he provides excellent information. He's a deep diver. But when he says that it has no store of value and that it's not a medium of exchange and it has no value beyond the intrinsic value. But here's my thing. If you and I agree on a price on Bitcoin and we say it's valuable and we want to exchange that, it's valuable, right? No different than with gold. I mean, if gold wasn't accepted as a store of value, it would not be. Tulips was once considered a store of value until it was no longer accepted as a store of value. Well, and the other thing is, and then, you know, he clearly says Bitcoin creates energy. That's what it does. Is energy not valuable? And what energy is it storing? Because, see, this is the thing when you think about money. What do we give for, quote unquote, the fiat money? We give our energy, our energy, our time, our effort is taken for their facade, their pretend money, right? So when I read what he wrote, I thought, I think that people aren't thinking about it in the same way that I am, perhaps. And now he definitely is. He studies a lot on XRP and he's dead on in that respect. But I also think that in terms of Bitcoin, I mean, you've got the spot ETF. You've got the thing where the SEC is not going to appeal against the grayscale. So that's probably going to be the first one. It's not going to be BlackRock. It's going to be grayscale that's going to be allowed. Right. And I just, my common sense tells me that the big money and all of these corporations, these big bankers that have been ruling the roost for so long, they're not going to put money into something that's going to go away and that has no store of value. They're going to use it as a store of value and they're going to use it to shore up this disaster is what I think. And then, of course, the XRP thing is, I mean, XRP is just different than what Bitcoin is, in my opinion. So with all due respect to Mr. Mann, I do not follow him. I'm going to find him. I was just trying to follow. He's a spider man. And I love him. Well, I will make sure I follow him. But. He's not Michael Saylor. Yeah. No. OK. And that's with all due respect. But I've listened so much to Michael Saylor and I think that he has sacrificed so much of his own personal fortune. Taking a company that was pre dotcom through the dotcom period of time and come to the conclusion of being an anti-Bitcoiner to being a class of 2020 Bitcoiner number one cheerleader for Bitcoin since he had the grand awakening of what it really is. Having done the the deep diving and the critical thinking that he does. And to invest his company's treasury with all of its reserves into Bitcoin. And that is really wild. That's pretty ballsy. Yes. And so and he has shareholders he has to be responsible to. This is the kind of stuff where you can go to jail for if he if he made a mistake in this regard. And he he took a lot of flack that first year that he did this. But he has been proven right. And now you see other companies that have have moved they're moving a sizable amount of their treasury into Bitcoin. So it's not to poo poo what Mr. Mann says. I just think that there's probably something there that he's not fully aware of. Evidently these people like Michael Saylor see it as a store of value and a medium of exchange for sure. And yeah I mean as far as energy we're all energy. Every one of us human beings I mean the thing we need energy we are energy. Money is energy. Well and that's why I said that you know with the intrinsic value comment and the energy and you know the storage the store of value. I guess I thought and Mr. Mann you probably won't even watch this but if you do I love you. I'm not I I just I I you got my wheels turning Mr. Mann when when you said that because I I do I think about all these things. You know and I I see the value in Bitcoin and I see the value in the XRP. I see a value in you know Hedera and all of these other technologies that that are that are up and coming that are trying to make a difference. And and the goal is interoperability. And I think where people get get off track with it is that when they think that Bitcoin is going to be you know go away and XRP is going to be the one that's going to win or vice versa. Where a Bitcoin maximalist person is just you know that's the banker's coin whatever. The long and short of it in my opinion and this is just my opinion Bitcoin most likely was created by some of those higher up technologists that worked for the government of sorts. The group of them who who you know they say there's there's four who knows how many if there's one there's four it doesn't really matter. They used old technology that the government has been using for a long time with your SHA-256 and and the the other stuff to create the the blockchain the algorithms right. So I don't think it's just this guy who came out of nowhere one lone Japanese fella that created you know Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto. There's definitely more to the story but even that the fact is is that because it's open source it's decentralized and people are you know building on it working on it improving upon it you know. In fact the people at Ripple that that developed the XRP they worked on Bitcoin and you know they they tried to think of you know different real world issues of problems that they could solve. And so it's been hugely inspirational to the population for people like me to really start looking into what is money. I never really looked into this as deeply until I came across Bitcoin. So Bitcoin was my entry into this whole world and yes it's the old guy in the room but it's not going anywhere in my opinion. And and the fact that it does take so much energy it's pushing people to create ways that they can that they can use you know wasted energy. How can we how can we make things more efficient. And so I think that's a good thing. And I think in the long run we're going to see some pretty extraordinary things when it comes to electricity you know. I think so too. If you don't mind I'd like to add color in the lines a little bit about the history of Bitcoin. Oh I think we got Simon in here. Hey Mr. Simon. Hey. It is. Is that Simon Says Crypto? It is Mr. Simon Says Crypto. Hey Mr. Simon Says Crypto. Good to see you here. So raise your hand buddy if you want to talk. So we on Tokens Radio Show we had did some research a few weeks ago. And what we have added to our conversation about the origins of Bitcoin that basically it started well back into the 70s. And it started through the discovery of cryptography. And then it had evolved into the the advent of the Internet. And there were many technologists cryptographers if I'm saying that cryptography. Cryptographers. Yes. Yes. Who technologists let's call it this way specializing in cryptography. They have tried to make a digital coin for years. And you know why they failed? Because they were all centralized. Each and every one of them was centralized. And you're right that it's it was a culmination of technologies that were available maybe no longer used by the military. Some all still use like SHA-256 is still a military grade application. GPS TCP IP all of those applications those technologies are all wrapped into Bitcoin. And even if that was centralized it probably would have failed. Yeah. The reason why it was it was the only thing that was different is that it was decentralized and it was able to run on its own. It was never no ICO an initial coin offering or anything like that. Every one of the previous tries failed because they were had a centralized component. Isn't that cool? I love that story. Hey Simon I sent you an invite to speak. Did you get it? You got to you got to accept it. I found Mr. Man. You did find Mr. Man? Yeah I can't get it on my tablet but on my phone. Yeah I really I really he's he's a super nice guy. I really like him. There you are. Greetings. Hey Simon. Hello ladies. How are you? I'm doing well. I saw both of you on Spaces here and I was like oh I haven't seen those ladies in a while. I wonder what they're listening to. Yeah. Well they're talking. I love it. This is our this is our first time trying to do our show live while while hosting a space. So. Perfect. OK. Sounds wonderful. You guys are doing an awesome job. Well done. We're trying to see how the recording does and this is all over. Yeah. Do you have any two cents to the to add to the party? Well you know I I I was listening to Christy there share the origins of Bitcoin and how far it goes back and I think that's amazing. And I say amazing because earlier today I had forgotten this but the coin XRP did not start in 2008. It was more like 2004. 2004. Yeah baby. Yeah. 2004. And I had forgotten about that. So you know when when I think back to my earliest exposure to the crypto space which was Bitcoin and it was back in 2009. It's I forget that these things started way before they came to the to the public. And I think instead the time as Christy was pointing out just moments ago they're all centralized. It's like yep that's that's how they feel when there's only one or two captains driving the boat. Yeah. Doesn't work for the rest of the world. That's right. I don't know how to flip through that but yes it's not appreciated the next time around. They want to keep the they want to keep control of the of the ship too don't they. They do. They do. They want to keep their their view. I'll leave it nicely like that their view and direction where they want want to go and what they want to see take place locally nationally globally. And I would I would say right now in this time there's always been that public. We've had enough. We've had enough. We've had enough of this. We've had enough of that. But I think technology has really helped us connect globally via Internet. And now we all our voices are not only heard but our our actions can be taken simultaneously to to not really mutiny. But we're doing that in a different way. We're like you know what we're going to build our own ship on this ship and then we're just going to go somewhere else. Yep. Whether you like it or not you know. And that's what takes that's what's taking place and I think it's wonderful. Yeah. It's pretty incredible that we're living during this time. Like I'm I'm super excited that that I even started paying attention to this several years ago. And I mean I've come a long way for sure. I know by no means an expert but I definitely have many more hours than than a lot of folks that I know. And so you know I know better than to put all my eggs in one basket and that sort of thing. But I'm super excited for the future. And like you said Simon the fact that we're able to communicate so freely and to move money around like we do information like we do an email. Right. You can send an email to somebody and boom they've got it. You can send somebody XRP, Bitcoin, many other tokens or coins instantaneously. And that is just amazing without a middleman. Now I've been paying attention to the regulation. I listen to the hearings and in the big push. And Christy and I were talking about this that we were going to kind of touch on this subject with what's kind of going on in the world. And you know the history of money and how you know with every fall of one form of money there always seems to be a war that happens like devastation that comes along just like we're seeing now. And and damn it does that make me mad. You know they build off. It's also part of the fourth turning. It says right in there it ends in crisis and crises are usually war. You know but I just think about it all and I'm just like damn you people. That's right. That sacrifice like you're willing to sacrifice human life to play your little game that you've played with all of us. We've been lied to so much. I'm sorry but I've just I've been I've been looking into so many things and the more that I look into the more I realize that I've been lied to. And I'm like really man. Like I've been on this kick of watching some shows where the guy is going over our history and buildings. And he went to Kansas City. He went to Detroit. He went to all these different places. I'll have to I'll have to send it to you. But it's like your reasonable mind when you look at these buildings can does your reasonable mind really tell you that what what they told you your history is is true. Like what are the possibilities that this was built in 1871 or 1815 or what like during the the greatest depression that we had. They were able to build these magnificent buildings with you know just like ridiculousness of I just I don't know. I don't know. And we bought it. We buy it. We were just like you tell me another lie. I'll listen to you. So yeah I think it has to do with with news sources. I mean the Walter Cronkite of the world right. They were trustworthy people or were they. But that was our only source of really having that kind of of information besides word of mouth. I mean when that when broadcast television became available I mean that changed everything in many ways. We received communication and we took it wholeheartedly as if well why would they lie to us. These people are out on the front lines or are they really you know. But they're they're sending the story back to us whereas you know on on the nefarious side of things the nefarious planners are saying look at this technology that we have. Look how we can control the masses. We can control the narrative. We can control the people by what we say. And it has evolved into this point right now. It's like it's crazy. And if you can't if you haven't come to terms with this I really don't know how to help you otherwise than to just say. Get to know your neighbors really well because when things go bad you might need your neighbors who are awake. I'm sorry I was trying to be nice about this Simon. But I heard I heard a meme that I read a few weeks ago and I'm not really into memes but I haven't been going through a feed. And it was on X actually and it went something like this. If you don't already have one you're going to need a conspiracy theorist friend real soon. True. I laughed at that because it's true. You're going to need someone that that that goes. I didn't think that was possible. But that was me limiting myself and my my my gaze right. I had a very focused gaze instead of a broad gaze of really taking everything in trying to remove my emotion which by the way that's a really hard part. And and see things for what they truly are and then make a decision of how to move forward from that. But yeah you're you're definitely going to need someone who is aware of the things that are that have happened say the past three to five years. Yeah. On a on even at a local level just kind of you could one person could go out and and just on the money side of life. Inflation we all agree prices on everything have skyrocketed and and and most of us that were around for 2008 2009 2010 that were blessed enough to have a job or lost their job. We've already been down this road in some manner of speaking. And here it is again. So if you weren't awake then then you should find someone that went through that and listen and talk to each other. Or yes definitely find someone that is aware of these things that are going on and actually probably have some good practices in place that you can see the person that's doing things different than everybody else. That's probably who you should probably at least talk to. You know Simon you mentioned something really important there is that back in 2008 2009 there were many people that were having mental crises because of what happened. And I think what's going to be happening when our awakening comes the grand awakening may not be this year but I think it's going to be next. For sure. I mean we're right on the cusp of it. There are going to be people that the decisions they've made are going to be so unbearable for them once they realize what it has cost them. It might actually cost them a family member's life because of their decisions. And this has a lot to do with medications we've been forced to take and that type of thing. And yeah it's going to be devastating. And I just have to be there and love thy neighbor but you know not in that way. Love them and support them and feed them if you have to. I think that there's going to be a lot of folks that are going to be very upset. Well they already are. You know some of them already are. I'm starting to see more and more where people they're they're regretting their decisions. Yes. And and and that is you know I am I made my own decision for my own personal reasons and I will just love up on them. You know what I mean. The people that that are you know that do regret their their decisions that they made. But I mean there's a lot of people I think you're right Christy that are going to be emotionally scarred because of their stance on it. And encouraging particularly encouraging children and pregnant women to take something that wasn't fully tested. That's going to be that there's going to be a psychological issue with more and more people coming. It could be from a vaccine. It could be from affirming your child's dysphoria rather than treating it for what it really is is that they need some mental health help and not some some mutilator that's going to give them these these alternate you know drugs that are going to alter them and maybe harm them for the rest of their life rather than giving them the mental health help that they need. And it's just it's it's the times we're in it's incredible. But I think we're going to have that awakening at some point in time. There are already countries that have already gotten there. We just haven't gotten there yet. You know I'd like to I'd like to turn turn that around though a little bit on the on what you know what you just talked about Christy and Melissa about the choices that people have made. And as opposed to going to the same old route we have been guided to do to now go with the real health way and technology though is here to help us this time if we choose it. And what I mean by that is connection connection like right here right now. Your guys' radio show it's on AM and only broadcast so far. If it wasn't for the Internet and platforms we couldn't reach even farther all the way around the world right now. And so those that as you stated Christy those countries that have already kind of hit that wall and that are turning the corner now as a community yet here I would I'm just going to stay in my area which is the great northwest. We haven't hit the wall yet as a community. But we have the we have the Internet to connect with those that have and listen to those that made the turn before. Even though they're screaming right now turn now turn now turn now. So you don't have to go through what we went through. You know that's the marvel of our time we're in right now. It's just like that. It's it's amazing times. It's the technology that I think is going to bring us through this. The technology can harm us. It can also bring us through it. Yep. Knowledge is power though. The more that we educate ourselves and try to help others understand the better that we can protect to protect ourselves from allowing things to go too far. You know I mean we're we're trying to understand the best that we can with realizing that you know the powers that be want that power right. They want to keep that power going. But the decentralized nature of all of this and you know getting more and more people up to speed. I think that is for the first time in forever. We have a fighting chance to. To stop the ultimate control you know. Yes definitely. We can. We have to learn how I mean that. That control mechanism is going to continue there. They're going to get as far as many people will allow. But there are many people who will work parallel to that. And that's the beauty about having shows like this and having people jump on the show like Simon who's who's doing his own education and awareness of people. That's what we all do right. We're all talking and to each other and it's spreading the word and we're waking people up. And that's that's a wonderful thing. And we'll be able to work parallel to what's going on. And so we can jump in and out of the matrix when we need to. The problem is is when you're stuck in the matrix and you want to get out of it and you can't. And that's what a CBD will bring. That's that's what control mechanisms will be. That's when you have to rely on on the government for all of your all of your ability to sustain yourself. So buy some Bitcoin. Have some XRP. Yes. You've got to have that, you know, and when you have to get your CBDC wallet because you're going to get your tax refund or something that way. That's when you step into the matrix. Well, and, you know, I've been thinking a lot about that. There's there's a big debate over over the CBDCs and people being, you know, super scared about them. And, you know. We already kind of control the money when the aid, so to speak. So if somebody is on welfare or or they need governmental assistance, they already use the money. They already use, you know, coupons, so to speak. Right. Where they can, you know, get WIC. You can get this and that with those types of things. The CBDC thing takes it to a whole nother level. If you are you're getting a refund or you're paying, you know, getting money back from the IRS or something like that. I could see that being sent as a CBDC. But if you're putting your money in the bank right now anyway. Like, why do you do that? You don't really have jack shit if they want to turn your money off. You know, like you put your money in there. And if something happens with that bank or something happens with your account and they decide that they want to shut your account down, they very well can. And I don't know if it's happened to any of you, but it's happened to me before. And it's happened to people that I know where, you know, one of their account, their account is based off their savings account and they have to have five dollars. This is mostly like credit unions, I think, that do this. You have like five dollars at least in your savings account. And if you go below that, then they actually shut your other account off. So you could be out and about and your card's not working. Well, sorry, your card's not working. Or if there is an issue with the bank and they decide to do a bail in, the money that's in there might not be in there. What about the 3000 banks that have already closed? Right. But talking about the parallel side, you can go to an old glory bank who is on the other side of all of this, who says, we welcome you. We're not going to cancel you. This is a non-cancel culture bank. Well, I need to learn about the old glory bank. Old glory bank. John Rich owns that bank. And there are others going out that are creating these parallel solutions. Are they allowing you to take out your money? That's the other thing I was going to say. When you have a debit card, you can't just take out your money. You can't take out as much money as you want. They limit you to how much money you can take out a day. Well, what if you want to take out more than 400 or 500 dollars in a day? What if you're on a trip or whatever? Or if you go into a bank and you want to take out $10,000 cash, you better call ahead because they're probably not going to have it. That's true. Banks like you're talking about, I'm not familiar with that bank. As far as those logistics are concerned, I'm not sure. But as far as whether you eat cashews or not, and the bank, any other bank doesn't like that, old glory doesn't really care. It's like, eat your cashews. It's okay. And you can bank with us. Not a problem. We're not going to cancel you because you're conservative leaning. We're not going to cancel you because you believe there was election interference or anything like that. We welcome you. I think a lot of people don't realize, and that's where I get back to my original statement when I was talking about the CBDCs and how they're pushing so much fear towards these CBDCs. And I'm like, what do you actually think you have now? Well, but here's the deal. It's a lot more transparent with this digital solutions that they have now. If you are giving money to, say, there's a lot of people that claim benefits, okay, that they sell them. Or there's people that were collecting Social Security checks that were dead. There's all kinds of money just bleeding out of the system now. As it is right now, there's thousands, millions of dollars that are bleeding out. There's millions of dollars that are donated, so to speak, that we're just supposed to believe that it's going a certain place. And we don't know where it went, right? Melissa, that's a good point, though. But that's the people's money. So the government has a duty to protect the taxpayers' money and make sure it's going where it's supposed to go. So you want to have the most locked down system you can have. That's a benefit of the CBDC. Yeah. Because they can track everything. So why not put the election system on a CBDC and then lock that down, too? But if we want to have full freedom and control over our investments and we do not need to be receiving government assistance, then hell no for CBDC. Well, exactly. And that's what my point is. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, I'm not saying like, oh, yeah, I want to I want to be on a CBDC. But when I think that things logically and the way that they are now, I think that it could actually be a benefit in the future for those reasons. Right. Well, yes. And for all of the money, all these appropriations and all of this money that they're spending on our behalf without our freaking blessing. Right. We don't ever know. There's never any accounting for that money ever. Having a CBDC where we're funding shit like war. Well, as long as they send that money to Ukraine in a CBDC. Right. Okay. Well, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. But the thing of it is, our central planners are not the most benevolent people. You know, they they like control and they like to control everything. So they're not going to probably want to. They'll come up with some reason as to why they just can't transport or transmit the money to Ukraine on a CBDC because I don't know. Come up with some story that a lot of people will understand. Well, we'll believe that we won't believe it. Yeah, I think that that more and more people are going to be understanding this stuff as things go along. And the biggest pushback of all will come if that if that does happen where, you know, like you say, they're like, oh, whoopsie daisies. We can't we can't do this with the CBDC because because they damn well can. And that is the that is the main thing they should be using a CBDC for is for ultimate transparency in where you are spending and not just the United States. All countries that are spending money on whatever the health services, wars, whatever donations to this and that, all of that would be transparent. And that's what I do like about this whole digital currency. That's what I do like about Bitcoin. You know, not saying that they would use Bitcoin because they'd be using they'd be using a different form of of it. But Bitcoin is a store of value and gold and all of that kind of stuff when it comes down to it. It's going to play into it because it's what is going to give it value. Right. It's what's going to give that value to be able to transfer it to whatever program that they say they're going to transfer to. Well, you make a good argument. I still think that because your argument is solid for being able to manage taxpayer dollars. Yeah. So if it's so transparent that way, then then doggone it. Let's put our election system on there and give everybody a token for every vote. OK, so however, they're going to set that up. You have a your one token, one vote. That's it. And we know where it went, which token voted for what. And it. Yep. Let's do it. You know, do you know down that way? Several years ago, I can't remember what year it was, but the the United States Post Office has a patent that they had for blockchain. It has to do with voting. And so I have a question for you guys. And Simon, you might be familiar with this because of the of your study up on the sovereignty side of things. And I want to know anyone listening. Have you looked at your post office, your mailman's mail truck lately? Does it or does it not have a license plate? And the reason I'm asking this and this is my crazy theory, and it could just be a Michigan thing and it could just be where I'm at thing. But. Right around when COVID started. I noticed that there were a lot of cars that were driving around without license plates on them. Okay. And that was right around the time when I started learning about the sovereignty thing. And, you know, you saw the videos of people going around where, you know, if you're sovereign, you don't have to have, you know, you don't buy into that system. You don't have to register your car. You don't have a license plate and all that kind of stuff. All right. But you got to walk the walk, live the, you know, learn this talk the talk and learn to walk the walk and all that kind of stuff. So. Then I saw I saw the mail trucks with no license plate. And I also realized that, you know, DMV was slow and closed down and stuff. And so I thought, well, that might be the problem with it or whatever. So one day I asked the mailman, I said, hey, pal, what's up with your license plate? Why don't you have a license plate on there? And he said, he goes, ah, people keep stealing them. So they just told us to don't worry about putting them on. And I was like, OK. Wink, wink. You get, bro. Like, come on. There's a reason why he doesn't have the license plate on the car. And you know what? That was over a couple of years ago. Still no license plate on any of these postal trucks. Now, hear me out. I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about how they said, you know, Donald Trump took the Fed like under the, you know, the United States Treasury and we're in devolution and yada, yada, yada, all these things. And I thought, is it? And then knowing that the post office had the patent for the blockchain voting, you know, type system. And I'm like, is it possible that that is them detaching themselves from the corporation? I mean, like I could be way the hell off base here. OK, but I think they're listening now. But what do you have to that when you're done? Yes, I'm done. What do you think, Simon? Am I nuts? Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, OK. So if you know a little bit more about the post office, touching on the sovereign topic a little bit, I got this information through kind of those groups. And then I confirmed it with a close, with a family member, significant other who is a, who works in post office. And I had come to my knowledge that the post office is the first global banking system. Yes, sir. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. OK, so yeah, yeah. So now let's roll with it. So they technically aren't in commerce at that point. OK, so with a license plate, you're signing up to be, when you register your car, you get your driver's license, you get your permission slip, right? You have your license plate. Those are for all things in commerce. So when you talk about the people that were driving around with the license plate saying, no, I don't have to do this, I don't want to be a part of the system anymore, at that point what they're really trying to say is, no, I'm in the private. Right. I am not hauling any goods. I'm not doing any services. I am doing my personal private business, actually just private business in which you have no part of. So in a roundabout way, if you take that private component, they are doing private transactions on a global level, and that happens to be your post. Also, there was something else about the Postmaster General and how significant he or she is in the current voting system now. Yes. In the current voting system we have. And I can't remember the full details on that, which I'm sure you ladies know, but I found that very, very interesting. If you think about banking and remove the money factor and you just say a transaction, and a transaction, coming back to CBDCs, is just an exchange of information, hey, we're taking this. It needs to go here. Can you put your stamp on it? Literally put your stamp on it, and then it goes to where it needs to go. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's very interesting. Yes. I would say that they're in the private, and I will have to check my postman's truck when he drives by if I'm ever around. I might drive to the post office tomorrow and go look. I'm literally curious to anybody that's watching this to please post under the video. We're on Twitter spaces, and we're also going to post this on YouTube. So we would love your feedback. Look at your postman's truck or lady's truck and see if the license plate is on there. Now you just said they're acting in the private then, right? In a way, yes. Under their own jurisdiction, yes. Here's the thing. Before they always had license plates on them. So the fact that when all this shit's going down in the past couple of years, the fact that they took the license plate off and they're not putting them back on. They're legit not putting them back on. I'm like, they're not breaking the law, right? I mean, because why did they have them on to begin with if they were always working in the private? That means that they've taken themselves out of the corporation, right, or no? Am I completely off? Yes, they probably have. Let's look at this from a smart contract view, right? In a smart contract in the crypto world, when all the check boxes on both or all parties have been completed, the transaction is executed, and then the transaction or the contract is done, right? So the post office decoupled. When you say decoupled, they found a way to, one, get out of the contract that they were in and then created a whole new contract to adhere to. With me so far? Yeah. Yep. So when some natural manner person decouples himself from the corporation, example, I'll use my words, you're a U.S. citizen, and now you become a non-citizen national. But what you're doing there is saying, I'm not going to play by this contract anymore. I'm going to play by this contract anymore. So I don't get any of the benefits of the old contract or whatever, nor do I have to adhere to any of the other obligations from that contract. I'm going to adhere to this contract. Well, I bet you're spot on there, Melissa, that they've decoupled. But, moreover, I bet you they have a different contract that they are adhering to, and I doubt that we'd really be able to get a good look at that because that would probably have to happen at the level of the postmaster general and other governmental representatives that have the power and authority to enter into an agreement and or contract on that. Whew, that was a mouthful. That's my thought. That's what I was kind of thinking about because this whole world, it operates on contracts. Everything with that little license, we sign our signature on the license. We literally just signed a contract so we could drive a vehicle in commerce, and we agree to all the benefits, if there are any, and all the speeding tickets we might get, which, by the way, when you sign a speeding ticket, you're signing a contract. You're saying, yes, I agree to pay this much for this violation, blah, blah, blah. And if I feel like I want to go back on the contract, I'll go in front of the judge and complete my case of, no, the officer was not acting in honesty and trust and so on and so forth. But that's a whole other conversation for another day. Yeah, that's wild. All I know is that there are so many cool things happening at once right now that I'm just in awe of all of it and trying to figure it out and put all the little puzzle pieces together. And I'm so glad that I stopped, like, I don't know, using my time unwisely. Now I'm just, like, thirsting for knowledge and reading and going down so many rabbit holes. And it's just fun for me. You know, I mean, like I said, like, normal people probably are like, oh, it's so boring. But, you know, watching this guy go down rabbit holes and looking at the buildings and how they were built and when they were built and, you know, does that make sense to you? I mean, I've always had all these questions. I've always thought this doesn't make sense and nobody could really answer those questions for me. And finally, I'm finding, like, a group of people that are like, you know what, I'm questioning this shit, too. This stuff's not weird. And it all comes back to the keystone of money, money, money, money. Why do they lie? Cryptos now. Yeah, and cryptos now, right? Well, you know, if you get into cryptos or you've just gotten into cryptos, something got you to that point, right? Something got you to, from the old reality or illusion, some type of illusion or some type of thing that you just finally had enough of the same old rigmarole, you're going to do something else. You're going to take charge of your life in some type of aspect. And what that does, man, that really, as you both know, that lights a fire underneath your butt and it can take you down several rabbit holes. But as you just stated, man, it really comes back to the whole big money thing, doesn't it? Yeah. Follow the money. That's where the answers are. Absolutely, Kristi. Yeah, absolutely. We got about 10 minutes or so left. Are you good with that, Kristi? Yes, I am. But I just wanted to welcome, we've got a couple of listeners. This is our first time that we've ever hosted a space and we're trying to do our show at the same time. So, Just Julia, Truth Justice Health, and MV Crypto. Just wanted to say hello to you and thank you for joining us. And if you wanted to share or contribute, raise your hand and we'll bring you up. But, you know, Simon, that was a great thought that you just said. And I was like, oh, okay, we'll bring MV Crypto wants to come up. I was thinking to myself, you know, what was it that actually got me to come into the space and start questioning everything? And actually, it was right around the Las Vegas shootings is when I really started. I mean, I had always questioned things, but when that happened, I was like, this doesn't make sense to me. And then somehow I stumbled upon, the next thing you know, I stumbled upon Bitcoin Ben. So, and then the rest is history. But it's just funny. I sent you an invite, MV Crypto. Did you get it, girl? I don't know if she did or not. But what was it that got you guys into it? What was it that got you guys into it? Go ahead, Christy. Got me into Bitcoin? Yeah, I just got you. I just really got you answering. Oh, okay. Asking questions and. Yeah, it was the 2020 election where I had had enough. I was having inklings of things going all the way back to the 2008 election. But honestly, I was just too damn busy in my life to really be paying complete attention. I just was taken back by the comment that I'm going to fundamentally transform the United States. And I thought that was a very troubling statement. It was very disturbing to hear that. And I started watching things in the industry that I worked in. I saw things changing dramatically. Health care changed dramatically. We started having some pullback on our freedoms. And then the election happened. That was it for me. That was it. I just said I've had enough. That was my beyond the brink moment. And that's when everything changed. And I said, I will now get involved in civic stuff. I will raise my hand for vacant seats, the seats that people can just walk into. And, you know, you get on the water board, that type of thing. And the next thing you know, you've got these ideologies taking over your local governments. And that's where I had enough. And Bitcoin was right there along part of the education journey. It was just a gift that kept on giving. And it still does. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And then, of course, you know, COVID hit right after that. And it was like, no, this is not going to stand. It's either you sit there and you take it or you do something. And I'm kind of the mentality, the personality that says, I'll go down fighting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I wasn't, if I, the past many years now, I mean, it's like seven years of craziness. I don't know where I would be if I wasn't questioning all this stuff. If I wasn't educating myself, like I just saturated myself with so much information. And I just, the more that I learned, the more that I want to learn. What about you, Simon? So my, let's see, kind of a, I guess a double question there in regards to my, when I really started really questioning things hard, as Christy pointed out, being able to devote that time to really sitting in the seat and actually doing the research and doing some homework. One of those times that really got me thinking was when I saw a video of this gentleman that was somehow utilizing his birth certificate to pay for all his bills for the year. And he said the word bond. I didn't understand it, but I understood bond. And I'm like, okay, interesting. But at the same time I was, let's see, that was probably 2013. So 2013, I was first, I was the first exposed to crypto though, March of 2009. So two months after the first, after Genesis, the Bitcoin mined, or Genesis mined the Bitcoin. That was January of 2009, I believe. That was the first time I had heard about Bitcoin was March of that year. It was from my younger brother. He passed shortly thereafter, but Bitcoin just kind of kept coming up universally from different avenues. So I finally actually jumped into crypto, actively participating in 2016. And the reason was through my late night research of finding a way that I could get ahead financially. That was my thing was like, here's all these successful people around the world, and they are doing everything different. They see everything different. They don't tell you that, but I just knew that they did because they were obviously having different results than everybody else that I knew. And so I dove down deep on a couple of them as much as I could go. And what kind of kept coming up was money. How does it go? Money is what we agree it is. And that's actually from the richest man, or excuse me, rich dad, poor dad. When Robert Kiyosaki asked his rich dad, what is money then? And the rich dad says, we say or we agree it is what we agree it is. And it's a tool. If you think about it as a tool, then for me, in that moment, I had that clarity of it's a tool, a way to get things. And not just things that I normally need, but a way to get a thing that can get me more things that I want or need. And suddenly in that moment, the dollar became pointless to me. And then I realized that's what these people that I've been looking at or researching, just countless successful business people locally and globally, they don't look as money. It's not valuable. And they'll tell you money is nothing. I mean, it's a crucial part of the system in order to do things. But yeah, that's how I kind of went down the research rabbit hole. But 2016, I bought Litecoin. I didn't buy Bitcoin because I didn't know you could buy just a portion of a Bitcoin. So I didn't buy Bitcoin. Yeah, so I just bought Litecoin. And that was because I wanted to take control of my financial future as opposed to letting someone else do it. And they get rich off of me and everybody else I know. And I was like, well, if you can do it, I can do it. And I'm going to figure it out. Yeah. So that was. I'd say you did well with the Litecoin. I'm still deep into stuff on stuff like that. Yep. Have you been paying attention to the debt clocks, Simon? I have a couple times. I saw one time it went to zero and that was interesting. Yeah. But that was on someone's image. Yeah, there's some big crazy stuff going on with the debt clocks. They're posting little hints on there. Yeah, I'm sure they are. Today, the debt clock, they posted something from President Andrew Jackson, 1834. And it says, you are a den of vipers and thieves. And I intend to root you out by the internal God. I will root you out. So you have to look it up. They keep putting like more little messages in the debt clock. So the numbers are moving again because it stopped for a while. But then, oh, somebody requested here. Let's see. I don't know who it was. Alex. I'm not sure who Alex is, but we will approve him. Let's see. Do you know Alex? No, but let him on in. Let's try him. Be a good boy, Alex. I don't know. We only got a couple minutes left. But in any event, yeah, I started looking at the debt clock. I've been looking at it for a while. It's kind of wild that somebody is, you know, posting little clues and stuff inside. When you hover and you click on it, a little note pops up. It's pretty cool. That's neat. That's cool. I'll check that out. Let's see, Alex. You're on mute. If you want to unmute yourself. We've got a couple minutes left. I'm so glad you popped in, Simon. And my Julia. I'm so glad you guys are having me. Yeah, I miss you, Simon. We've got to do this more often. There he is. There's Alex. There's Alex. Hi, Alex. Welcome to the show. Thank you. So anybody that talks about the debt clock is fascinating to me. So you see this debt clock just, you know, always going up. Does it worry you? Is that a bad thing to you? What if it started going down? Would that, like, make you feel better? I don't think it's a good thing that it's going up. Do you think it's a good thing that it's going up? I guess when I... So I ask myself, what if it started going down as dramatically as it goes up? Would I feel better? Yeah. I wonder why it's going down so fast. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, well, you know what I think, Alex? When I think about when I'm looking at the debt clock, first of all, I never really saw it all laid out there in black and white in real time. Even though this clock has been going for many years now, I never really knew it existed. And I keep... I am very curious about this whole debt clock thing. And when you think about our fiat system is based off of debt, and so they just keep creating money and creating money and creating money, eventually that's got to stop, right? I mean, the way that our system is right now, it's about... It's already dead. Like, it's all pretend monopoly money at this point. So emotionally, to see the debt going backwards, would it make a big difference to me emotionally? Not really because none of it is real anyway. Is that what you're kind of getting at? I don't know. We're paying interest on our own money that we're borrowing from ourselves. Great. That's crazy. We're paying interest on pretend money. See, back in the day, they used to let you use one credit card to pay another credit card. And then they said, you know, that's illegal. You can't do that. But that's precisely what's happening right now. Absolutely. Honestly, if I saw the debt clock go backwards, that would be a cause of concern. It would not have been super fear, per se, a sky-falling type of feeling, if you will. But I would be more like, well, what happened? What's going on? What did I miss? This has to be big, very big, for it to go reverse. Even if it went reverse at half the speed that it was going up now, if it went half that speed down, I would actually probably be going, well, what's going on and how is that happening? Yeah, I'd want to see some sort of performance-based reduction. So if we had policies put in place to reduce the debt, then the debt should reduce accordingly. I would feel comfortable about that and feel like, gosh, we're going in the right direction. But if it went precipitously down, I would be very worried about that. And I really don't know why I would be worried. If I was worried, I would just feel like there's something really wrong here, so wrong that what's going on, it's like what you were saying, Simon. It's like you have to start questioning why is this going down so quickly. Yeah, you've got to know what's going on, what's happening. Because if it went down, again, at half the rate or half the speed that it went up, I would want to know how that is really going to probably affect me. I'm more than likely to be positive because that means, as you say to Christy, that we'd be paying everything back or the principal would be going down exponentially, right? So that would be a good thing. But I'd be wanting to know how does that affect me now, what do I need to be looking out for, and in regards to change. I know. I invited him to speak. I don't know if he'll come up. Hey, Mr. Professor, how are you doing? Yeah, this whole deck clock thing is pretty interesting. What was I looking at? The dollar supply. This is what's interesting. The dollar supply is going down. And I don't know. And it's got the yellow arrows to the, I think it's to the gold and the silver ratio. Right now those are at zero. But I don't know. I think something really big is happening. Well, the dollar supply is going down. They're removing liquidity from the market. They are doing that, yep. So where do you think it's going to go? They're burning it. I mean, it's like burnt coins. Sorry, Christy, go ahead. I apologize. Okay. I was just saying it's like burnt coins. They're spent. Yeah. So here's the thing. Okay. So you guys are smarter than me sometimes. I don't know. But I'm just thinking about this stuff. And I'm like, if they're burning it, like you're saying, like they burn the coins or whatever. If this money has been created out of thin air, right, it's based on debt, right, it's been created. And now we're burning it back. We're getting rid of it. Okay. And we see other countries, they're collecting gold. And, like, we're heading towards more like a gold standard once again, right, or commodity-based currency, right, that it's actually based on something. Do you think it's possible that we're burning, we're going to burn to the amount, it's going to stop burning to where we get to the point of the exact amount of, say, gold or whatever commodities that we decide are going to back our dollar when we switch over? Like, I don't know. I just know that whatever the hell is happening with this debt clock and, you know, all the little notes, and I don't know who's controlling it, but it's freaking fascinating to look at. I don't know what it all means. I just see a bunch of numbers moving, and I'm just like, what does it all mean, man? But I think it's super cool, and I want to know what people think. See, my conspiracy side of thinking is that it's just another psyop. It probably is. Just keep an eye on it, but don't get too wrapped up into it. Yeah. At least that one's funny. Yeah, exactly. It is. It's entertaining. I mean, it's getting more and more entertaining just because of the shit that they're putting out, like the little notes and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Now it says at the top, it's like, the secret window is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays, 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., and the secret window is when they put up little messages in the debt clock. So I don't know. There's so many Riddlers that are pinging off of each other lately, and I just think it's funny. That's great. I think some people have too much time on their hands. Me, I guess. I don't know. I will say this. I don't have any little kids no more, and I don't watch television, and I don't like to do dishes very much. So, you know, you come on X and you just jump onto space and let's speculate. I know. Speaking of speculation, Melissa, I sent you that 132-page PDF a little while ago, right? Yeah. Did you share that with Ms. Christie? I don't know if I did or not. I don't recall, no. I don't know that I got the actual, like, all of the documents. What I got was the, where you can, if you click the. . . I don't want to give you the Google. . . Did I give you, like, a Google link drive access thing? Yeah. Okay. I will tell you this. I'll have to resend it to you. I started looking through all of that because, so a lot of that, that one map, those were accounts that I was, that I do follow on Twitter, that I've been following on Twitter. Yes. And initially I was, like, looking at all of them and I was, I had, like, I was going to all the sites. I was looking up the companies. And I was creating, like, I use Edge and I was creating a collection of all of them. And I was just doing all that and I was, like, why the hell am I doing this? You know what I mean? Like, I stopped myself and then scrolled off in a different direction because it really truly is a lot of information. It is. It is. It is. I mean, have you, did you dive any, I mean, I was diving pretty deep in it. I've dove down. I actually, the double X handle on there. Yep. There's someone that, you know, Alan Staple, you know, from the crew, the Staple crew, right? Yes. So he has a contact that he put me in touch with because I shared that PDF with him as well. And that contact actually knows the double X handle. And so I was given the green light to share that with the public, which, like I said, it's a lot of information. So it's a lot of information to cover on a YouTube short. Yes. I'm still trying to put it together because some of those things have, in a roundabout way, taken place for the majority. But I bring that up because as you're talking about the money and the supplies gone down, and I just had a thought of like, well, okay, so you got these, I'm speculating here, so watch out, speculation alert. Yes. So you have the clock, you have the debt clock with notes on it. Okay. Okay. So then you have the money supplies shrinking. Well, in this PDF, there is an image of new notes and their asset-backed currency, so ABC. And they're different American notes. And I was just sitting here thinking as you're talking about that, I was like, well, what if they're getting rid of that as best as they can to interject the new ones at some time, right? So that way you don't have a situation like what is allegedly going on or has been going on over in Iraq with the Iraqi dinar where there's a black market for the Iraqi dinar, right? So if you had two separate, say, U.S. notes, you got to kind of get rid of the one to interject the other. I was like, hmm, that makes sense. And then I went a step further. Let's say this asset-backed, and Melissa, you mentioned being backed by gold. Yeah. Well, one day I was on the PDF, and there was another picture. And in this picture, it's an image that showed one XRP is going to be equal to one ounce of gold. At first I was like, that's poppycock. Interject the CBDC. If a CBDC was meant to be only used in each country differently, but it's each country's own sovereign CBDC, how could they do international business? Well, there's another PDF that shows their CBDCs, but they're all using the XRP ledger, right? And I was like, okay, so if everybody at an international level is using the XRP ledger, or not everybody, but let's just say 25% of the world's nations are using it at some level, it would be viable that they would all agree, hey, we're going to asset-back, but we still need this to travel at lightning speeds without any manipulation or interference. So I decided to go to the United States Treasury gold bullion reserves, like how much do they have, right? And compare that to how many XRP were the total supply. It was like 51 billion or something. XRP, right? Is that right? I'm terrible. Something like that. A lot. There's a lot. A lot, right? But let's go back to this. XRP is equal to one ounce of gold. Back to the Treasury. We have like 200 and I want to say either a little less or a little more than 250 million ounces of gold, according to the United States Treasury. If you believe that, you can believe that. If you don't, you don't. It doesn't matter. I was just going based off the information. Well, I was like, well, that's actually not a lot. That's only barely 25% of 1 billion. And XRP, there's 51 billion. I know that America doesn't have or the United States doesn't have a lot of gold. China does, allegedly. Russia does, allegedly. India also stacking up their gold reserves. And I was like, okay, that might play if, say, X amount of countries, let's say they were even. Let's say they all had a billion ounces of gold and there was 25 countries that were playing in this system. And I was like, hmm, maybe that could be a thing in the future. I'll still have to watch it. But it's very, very interesting that that could take place. And you're talking about tonight the liquidity, the cash supply has gone down. The real reason, we probably don't really know. We've been told one thing, but most of us at some level, when we get told something, we go, hmm, right. Trust, but verify. Yeah, we must shrink the balance sheet. There definitely could be something there with that. I was saying, yeah, the Fed is saying, well, we need to balance or reduce the balance on their balance sheet at the Fed. Because they loan so much faux dollars out, right? Fake dollars. Right. Right. They're carrying that on their balance sheet. Can I make a correction, Simon? Yeah, make it. If you go to the usdebtclock.org, you can also click on gold precious metals. And it actually has a listing of the countries and their gold holdings by ounces. So the United States has the most. Does it really? Yes. And then Germany, and then the International Monetary Fund, then Italy, then France, then Russia, then China, Switzerland, Japan, India, Netherlands, and the Euro. At least that's what this says. I don't know. Who's second? Who is second is Germany. Okay, how many ounces of gold do they have? Don't make me read it. Is that the usdebtclock you said? Yeah, usdebtclock.org is where, I'll tell you, it takes a long time for it to load, to populate. And then once it populates, because it'll come up nothing for a while, then it'll populate. And then once it populates, then you got to click at the bottom. There's a part that says gold precious metals. It's pretty damn cool. This site is pretty damn cool. But in any event, what I was going to say is, to your point, guess who joined the board of Ripple? None other than Rosie Rios, who was the person that signed all the money. And before she left, she said she was working on the next currency. So, I mean, these are all little clues that we've all picked up on over the course of several years now. And I don't think that we're wrong. I think we're right. And I think as long as we stay patient, keep our eyes forward and don't get all crazy. I don't know about you guys, but with all of this turmoil, I pray for those in harm's way. But I have to say, I feel very calm. I will say, guys, this has been a wonderful conversation. I thank everybody that has come. Christy, I know we've got to go. So I hope that next time we do this, you guys join us and raise your hand and talk. I'm sure we'll be back next week since this was a successful outing. We might just pop up just all willy-nilly and just have a conversation here and there. Well, we've been doing our shows on Sunday now, and now we've got on Twitter spaces. So this is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Very fun. Yes, it is. Well, with that, guys, you got any parting words? Thanks, Mike, for showing up. We love and miss you. Julia, love and miss you. Hey, and then MV Crypto, thank you for coming. I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you all. I don't know why I couldn't get everybody to come up. But in any event, with that, we hope you all have a good rest of your day. Christy, you got any parting words? No, this was a fabulous conversation. Thank you so much for everybody that came on and participated. I can't see you all here, but it's good to be here with you. Yes. It was a blast. Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you guys had this running. This was great. Thanks for including me. I was just going to sit on the sidelines and listen. It's so hard for me to catch the radio show live, but this was awesome for me. Yeah, we're going to do it again. Yes, indeed. All right, guys. I'm going to play the music going out, but I'm going to end it. All right. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Have fun. If I can get the music, I don't even know where it is. I can't do it. I lied. I lied. I'm a liar. Well, I guess we're just going to go out without the music. Bye, everybody. Good night. Good night.