The Bitcoin Group, the American Original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Josh Igala from thestandard.io. Good evening, folks. Dan Eave, the crypto raptor. Good evening, folks. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network, moving on to issue one. Issue one, defiant Putin goes to war in Ukraine with a warning for US and NATO. After first declaring a couple of republics in revolution and sending in so-called peacekeeping troops, Putin went the full nine this week, invading all of Ukraine from perhaps 10 or 12 different locations, including direct assaults on Kiev in the north and the port of Odessa in the south. Putin had a message for other nations saying that no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to a defeat and dire consequences for any potential aggressor. The Russian leader said trying to keep America and other countries from interfering on the side of Ukraine. Ukraine has been arming their civilians, hiding in subway terminals, and perhaps their president teaching people how to make Molotov cocktails as the crisis continues, a crisis that is stunned and stop the Western markets, reacting with Germany canceling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, other sanctions being levied as the crisis continues. Josh Tagalli, your thoughts on Putin and the war in Ukraine still muted? You know, one thing that's fascinating during this whole crisis, like the Nix crisis, all of a sudden, we're in the Nix crisis, is that first of all, it depends where you... If you didn't have an opinion on this region of the world, it's really interesting watching people, whatever they watch, if they end up watching CNN, they'll be more for the Ukrainian side if they watch Fox, so maybe for Russia, I don't know, we're Fox, it's I haven't really watched it, but... Or if they pick up a certain telegram channel, they might be for whatever channel. It's really interesting where people's mind will be molded, so people don't really have opinions on that, we'll end up having an opinion, have a really strong opinion on either side of this, but all I can say is that at the end of the day, aggression sucks, and this is why I'm a minicast or an anarchist in terms of free market anarchists, this is why there's minimal government as possible because they just end up doing this. Private murder, it pales in insignificance to the amount of bodies that governments tend to leave behind when things go weird like this, and things then scale up very, very fast. So I would just say, you know, try it, or all I can say is I just feel sorry for innocent bystanders in the middle of government aggression, or governments trying to protect their tax center, because generally a lot of wars are just about taking resources and human capital resources, one of the largest ones. So mostly, you know, when America invaded Iraq, it straight away went to the tax, you know, put a big flag of a taxation office, takes over those key infrastructure points, bombs the airports, and stuff. So yeah, I feel sorry for all those people in the middle both on the Russian side and on the Ukrainian side, it's horrible, more is never the answer, the answer is always negotiation, peace, markets, trade, taking stuff, stealing stuff is not the way to do anything. I think one of the reasons this is so jarring to everyone, Josh, is that during our lifetimes, since World War II, there's been a system in Europe where the strong countries could not simply take over the weak countries. There's been some exceptions to this, Crimea, other situations, things like that, but the rule has generally been, let's go to negotiate on a border dispute rather than starting a small war that could then become a larger war. And that's why I think a lot of people are worried when they look at this and they're like, yeah, if we are on the side of Ukraine, then we're fighting Russia and Russia is fighting us and then where it is China go and Belarus and all these other countries. So it's a major change to a European system which has granted us about 70 years, 80 years, however you want to say it, of relative peace and economic stability. And I think one of the hopes was that things like the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines to Russia would have drawn Putin in to these economic realities such as China, as much as China wants to be the big boy on the street and take over all of their old countries and so forth, they also want this economic power. They're tied in with the US. They make stuff we buy it back and forth and so on. There was hopes that Russia and certainly Ukraine, several of the other former Soviet states perhaps were drawn into this, into this Western idea of we trade together, we work together, we build together. Therefore, if we fight, it's a disaster. And that didn't seem to overcome Putin's decision making. I think that's been jarring for people. A lot of people have seen this as more individual decision. It doesn't necessarily benefit Russia. I mean, certainly, you know, they tried to put Ukraine into NATO. Russia didn't like that. It was too close to them. Right. So now by invading Ukraine, they don't really solve the problem. There's now no buffer state between the West and the East. So if there is another border dispute and they roll into Romania or Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, all of these are former Soviet states. Where does this end? The personal nature of it. It's, and once again, the United Nations, Russia's a member. Russia has a veto. They can block anything the UN wants to do. NATO has done some things, but they can't do everything without Ukraine being a member. The defense pact does not kick in. Some are saying that perhaps Sweden, Scandinavian countries need to be added to NATO. Maybe the Baltic states, which again would anger Putin. And then on top of it, there's that whole personal declaration. Maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that. Josh, what do you think? You agree it's just such a shocking state of affairs for all of Europe, 60, 80 years of peace gone. Yeah, it does seem like there's there's sort of this fantasy to put the USSR back together and this sort of strange nostalgia. Well, and for him, that was the good times, right? In case you guys haven't studied Putin just a little background. He was a KGB agent. I mean, he's a spy, like a CIA guy or whatever you want to do. And for him, that was the glory time. Russia was on the way up. He was part of a major division. He was probably doing whatever he wanted. He was being trained and taught the history of glorious Russia. And then as you saw in 1992, 1991, it just started to disintegrate and his position. And it gets into a lot of these issues in foreign policy about I want my land back, whether it's 100 years ago or a thousand years ago. Some people believe that. Some people don't believe it. Obviously, if you really look at it under any piece of land, so many people have claimed it. So many people have lived there. So many different groups. It's going to be a disaster if we have to return them all to their previous owner. And at which point does the ownership kick in? Things like that. But I do think it's a surprisingly personal war in a formerly business climate. Yeah, to bring the big coincide of the crypto side to saw Vitalik Buterin's tweet was kind of interesting where he straight out, called out Russia and said that, you know, glory be to Ukraine and said, this is aggression. This never good. And then afterwards he tweeted that Ethereum has no borders and no opinion. But he does. I think there's a lot of waking up to happen in the crypto space where they were just like, oh, we can support dictators and oh, we can support Russia. And it doesn't matter as long as they like Bitcoin. And especially for Vitalik early on there, he had a brand new currency. He needed respect of people. He got a lot of respect when he got that big meeting with Putin. But no one stopped to say, hey, maybe you shouldn't meet with a dictator or, hey, maybe this will look bad later on. And now that baggage is starting to come back as once again with reality. While the dictators are your friend, it's great. But the minute he disagrees with you and wants to do whatever he wants to do, it can get like this. We watched the interview again this weekend with Kim Jong-un. And once again, the dictators, your best friend, he's playing basketball. He has all the nice ladies and everything. And then all of a sudden, he's screaming in the alley, wants to bomb Ukraine or China or anything. Dan, Eve, your thoughts on the general situation in Ukraine like Josh said, we will go into the more Bitcoin aspects. We have some more Bitcoin focused articles. But we kind of just needed to start off at this very basic level that Russia has invaded Ukraine. And this is what's going to happen now. Yeah, I think you're right about that kind of that old school fantasy that bringing the USSR back. And it's different to, although we've had no war, our doorstep for a long while, this is kind of different to other conflicts because it's like, you know, Ukraine was a part of Russia, right? It was a part of the USSR, like a number of other states. And if I think I'm putting kind of seas, maybe they're the hot slight hypocrisy of the EU to unite everyone. But then he wants to reunite Soviet union. And so that's why I think he's so kind of bauzy about it because he's just like, right, well, you're trying to unite everyone under your thing. But we want the USSR, you know, the old glory days back in. It's just sad for us to be in this situation where, and it speaks to a lot of people like people over the last couple of days. And everyone's really depressed about it. You know, no one wants to go to go to war. And it's so, you know, it's just such an unnecessary thing to put people's lives under such, you know, such pressure. And there's, there's, you know, one of my friends has got a grandma that's in, you know, mid 90s in Ukraine. And, and you know, there's, you know, they're worried about whether the carer is going to be able to get to it. And that's scenario with people sort of hiding away. There's a lot of people impacted in the city that don't know whether to stay, don't know whether to leave. There's, you know, troops everywhere. I've seen like a video of a tank that rolled over just literally diverted. Oh dear. Yeah, my big quen's disappeared. The, I've seen a video of a tank just rolling over a civilian like Carl. Luckily, he actually survived. But it seems like, you know, yeah, there's a lot of an, an, an amiga. I think it was a make that fired a rocket at a house. So this seems like it's not just a, it's not just a grab for land. This is like personally, this is like the, you know, Russia kind of going right, you know, we've been broken apart and we're going to, we're going to make people pay essentially. It was done under the guys initially that they voted autonomy, you know, these, these regions. And therefore he's now going in to keep the peace. But by the looks of the map, he's basically just bombing everything right now, like from even to the west of the country. So yeah, it's just a really sad, safe affairs. And I think I saw an interesting tweet that earlier that mentioned that I think the Secretary of Defense's daughter from Russia had actually treated about, sorry, Instagram post about no war. So it's, you know, there's, there's, I think if anything, there's obviously a lot of protests happening. I think there are red that something like a thousand arrests had happened on the, on one particular night that, you know, people are hitting the streets in Moscow. And they, you know, not everyone wants war, right? Not everyone maybe wants the glory days. Some people do like the kind of, you know, the evil western way of doing things. Maybe, maybe, you know, one way that's going to turn things around is if the sanctions, although they don't hit Putin, specifically hard, if they hit the oligarchs, their assets frozen and, and their, their, their assets destroyed, then they may be, you know, that they may put pressure on Putin to kind of reach an agreement. But, yeah, that he's definitely not messing around. That's for sure. And, yeah, it's just sad to see in this day and age, when you kind of were hoping that things would, would lead to less war, especially with big nuclear states, with giant nukes. I mean, a lot of people have probably seen that video of that insane nukes. They've got now that like, it goes up into the atmosphere, like a, like an actual rocket, and then rains down something like nine subnukes, which can all just go and just indiscriminately take out different cities. Yeah, if anything, like that happens, there's going to be some, some serious stuff going down and, and I think it's definitely got a lot of people worried. Yeah, very sad. Even, even anonymous, like, have now declared sort of, you know, enemies of Russia. So, yeah, it's definitely getting a lot of people's backs up. Can't we just all get along? I definitely agree with the sentiment of the protests, but I just don't think it's going to be very effective. Putin is not listening to his people. He's not interested in what they're saying, whether they are a professional tennis player, I saw him right on the lens of a camera. No war, please. I've seen other people of different levels, all protesting, all upset about it. And even if you are going to, you know, not play tennis, cancel everything. I don't know what else you can do. So, very loud. I don't know. At least the computer is working again. Let's move on to the exit question. Exit question, will this be a short invasion or a long invasion? Is Putin here to stay? Joshua Shagalla? I think it'll be very short. Quick and precise. They'll be in there. But what will happen generally when you take a place before you get separatists who will constantly make anoints us with homemade bombs and explosives and keep sort of antagonizing. And yeah, I think it'll last a long time, just like Iraq. Iraq. Danny, short or long invasion? I hope it's short. I think there's, you know, they're attacking from a lot of angles. And I think there's going to have to be some negotiations going down to stop it going even, the situation getting even worse and then exponentially worse. And everyone hitting the new triggers. So I'm hoping for sure. That's for sure. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to go with long invasion. Putin wants the country. As we said earlier, as everyone said, he wants to rebuild the Soviet socialist republic of states. That means there's more countries to conquer, not less. I agree with Josh and Dan. There will be separatists inside the country asking for a restoration of Ukraine, but sadly, they won't get it. Moving on to issue two issue two Bitcoin donations to Ukrainian army surpasses four million dollars. It's deja vu all over again because they're collecting Bitcoin donations this time to support the Ukrainian army as they fight in Russia. Dan, if your thoughts about this donations, how is it similar or different to the tally coin truckers in Canada, Bitcoin? Once again, in the news. It's good that people are doing Bitcoin. I'd be interested to see at this late stage, it seems like things are advancing so fast that it will be difficult to turn that Bitcoin into something useful, like equipment that's going to be able to immediately help. I suppose that the one thing is that there would be bad is obviously if they get all this Bitcoin and somehow if Russia is successful, they may end up confiscating it anyway, or somehow getting hold of the private keys. What's sad is that some people have tried to capitalize the situation. There was an only fan, like lady who was like, I'll give a 50% discount to Ukrainians, as if they're sat there right now thinking, I could do checking about the only fans, I want a lovely gesture, 50% off fantastic. I'll see some boob whilst the bombs are raining. It's hardly a nice thing and definitely pretty savage to capitalize. As it's sandbanked and freed, actually, I don't know if this is capitalizing or not, but saying he's giving 25 bucks to Ukrainians. It's obviously a nice gesture when someone gives you Bitcoin, but at the same time, it's just a kind of publicity stunt. The guy of what's the few documents of the guy? He actually seems like one of the nicest guys ever, and he's donating a lot of money. Maybe this is just a general thing from the warmth of his heart to support the Ukrainians in such a crazy time. But yeah, we'll be very interested to see how they can be able to make that money useful at this particular time, because things are advancing so ridiculously fast right now. I agree with Dan. I think this is a similar situation to the German truckers, where the middle of Bitcoin, the part where it was, was it audio bad? Canadian truckers use a German trucker. Sorry, Canadian truckers. Sorry, Josh, my bad. The Canadian truckers mistake. But similar situation to the truckers in that the middle of Bitcoin is perfect. The computer layer, the part where it goes from address to address, can't be stopped, can't really be traced if you use it correctly. It's pseudo anonymous, can't be frozen, like government money or banks or anything like that. But the problem is on one end, all the donors, that's great. They just donate. But the problem is that last mile, the other end. I don't know what the victory conditions of donating to the Ukrainian army is, if they buy them a handful of bullets, if they get them a better gun, if they get them a hospital to go to. I think all of those are great, relatively positive outcomes. Some of them more offensive, less more defensive. But in the end, I think it's going to have the same problem as the Canadian truckers, where they have difficulty getting the Bitcoin to the people in the last mile. Right now, the Canadian truckers have been moved away from Ottawa, so they're no longer in their parking spaces. So if they didn't get that snapshot of who's in the parking lot, who deserves the money, they're going to have a hard time donating it. I'll bet they have to go with the charity option as we discussed last week. Nothing wrong with a charity option. Same thing here with the Ukraine Army donations. Four million dollars is a lot of money. But then again, maybe red cross, maybe some kind of medical assistance. That might be the best and a nice non-offensive thing. As much as it's nice to say you'll support the army. It's not so great to put your name on a bomb. And then the bomb falls on someone and kills someone, even if it is someone on the other side. Josh, what do you think about this donation idea for warfare? Yeah, Ukraine's got plenty of cash. Like they have a lot of power. They're not that poor. So it's time to go short on medical stock and go along the industrial military complex, I guess. Because that's all it does. That's all it does. This whole bullshit just fodders the industrial military complex. It just feeds the machine. It doesn't matter what, you know, if you donate it or not, it just, but it just more armants, more guns. All those people are just love and life right now because they know every single country including NATO, including the members of NATO and the surrounding European countries, other ones, all arming up right now. They're all starting to build up. Germany's like Bundeswehr has basically totally stripped. They had barely have a truck left. It's all cobbled together from old staff. They haven't spent any money for years. Well, guess what? I'm pretty much guessing Germany's going to start to really spend a lot of more money on their army after this. And so, yeah, I don't know. If I want to be cynical and head down the conspiratorial path, I mean, it's stupid to say conspiracy there because everything's a conspiracy theory really. If you take two or three more people that try to build a plan, it's a conspiracy, you know, judges deal with it day and day night. So, it's really a lot of the time war is about resources. Sometimes it's, you know, might be a mixture of things. Definitely access to the Black Sea for Russia is kind of handy because the North Sea freezes over in the winter. You can't really have naval access. You do on the east side, east coast of Russia, you could, but that's very far away from most of the established society in Russia. So, yeah, I think it's all big armoured thing and a mix of things. And these donations, I mean, it doesn't, I mean, it's like, where's it going? Who's it? You know, I don't know. Yeah, the problem here is not that the Russian or that the Ukrainian military could use an extra four million dollars. Where would you spend the four million dollars? What would you get? Couple of stinger missiles? I don't know. And then, and then what do you do next? It's this, maybe it makes people feel better. They're donating. And again, Bitcoin's perfect for that middle section. But the problem is every one of these fundraisers exposes that whole last mile where I, you know, no one likes to say this, but essentially, you need a government. If you want to donate, if you want to deliver four and aid properly, you need a big list of the people you're going to donate it to. You need a goal. You need a complaint department. If somebody doesn't get theirs or they got an incomplete payment or whatever, it's, it's government work. It's complex societal management. And nobody doing a kind of a fly-by-night protest. And I don't even know who set up the, the wallet for the Ukrainian protest. I hope it's not at a centralized exchange and so on and so forth. But, um, which again, Bitcoin, great for that middle mile, but so many mistakes you can make. If you know, if you're near anything, the wrong wallet, if you send it to the wrong person, if you trust the wrong people, it's just, it's great for this, but it's not great for this. And every time it kind of shows off both the positive and the negative aspects of Bitcoin. There are great charities like, uh, big, uh, big give and, uh, and, uh, give track. I think it's the same big give people, Connie Gallipi. They, um, uh, they, they do really, uh, good work with tracing, um, tracing what happens to the coins and they try to stay in Bitcoin. And that last mile is cut out because it's just Bitcoin for Bitcoin, Bitcoin for goods and services. So, um, you know, there, there is possibilities and, you know, most charities are non-government organizations. So, um, you don't necessarily need a government. But yeah, an organization definitely helps. Well, and it's great to be set up like that, like, BitGive where every day they're focused on this last mile problem. They've got all kinds of contacts in the field where hopefully they can get the funds to them directly, uh, less middleman, uh, whereas if you just set up a fund riser last week, you know, you have the best of intentions. And we're not doubting your intentions. You want to do good. It just might not work out because of the complexities of really giving out this money, uh, to whoever you're going to give it out to, whatever your goals are. I actually think dows are really interesting in this space because dows allow, uh, for, uh, a whole bunch of people to vote on certain spending and, and treasury management. Um, of course, it's very new, very, you know, no one knows how to do a doubt properly yet. It's still being experimental like crazy. So, uh, many dows waste a lot of money, many dows fail because we still don't know how to do them properly. Um, many people don't shop to vote and this sort of thing. But, uh, I think it's definitely got potential because if you can have a really strong multi-seq treasury management system and people, the crowd researching the right thing to do and the and the people receiving the money being transparent back to the crowd back to the dows. I think, I think there's some really interesting things there that that might be might be good. Well, according to CNBC this morning, a dow is just a bunch of people with a shared bank account. So the, uh, the distributed, the autonomous part are getting worked out of that very quickly. And it seems a lot more like a shortcut to fundraising. And then afterwards, who knows what happens? Oh, we'll see. We throw the money up in the air and see what happens. Once again, even the idea that, I mean, you also got to watch out there because, yeah, sometimes that majority is just a mob. And then the mob is just spending the money and the mob is doing research. And it's very difficult to have both the interests of a dow where you might want a board of executives, like a company versus a government situation where you do want the input of the people. But with the US government, we have a more slower system where even if the people want something really bad, the systems designed to kind of slow them down, make them think about the consequences in both sides and see if they really want this thing. And then it then it adapts. Then it does it. Yeah, but um, dows, you know, they're not just a bunch of accounts. That's nonsense. And that's typical CNBC simple, and, you know, um, and then, you know, I just, um, like all these, these idiots, like what's an ad symbol? Like it's a, these dow mechanisms have really interesting mechanisms where you could maybe not, not just have shared keys, but have locked, uh, locked treasury that, um, slowly gets released to the dow. So if, you know, there's so many mechanisms that can happen. And a company is the same thing. It's just registered at a government agency and, uh, controlled through force of the government, you know, controlling that bunch of people. Whereas a dow is just different. It's just registered to the wallet addresses across many people and on the internet. So it's still an organization of people, uh, whichever way you look at that one, it's just registered to a, to an old school government legacy system. And the dows just a different way of structuring that and it can be structured in, um, you know, a typical top-down, got, uh, top-down company mechanism or it can be structured in a cooperative mechanism. There's many ways that can work. So, um, like I said before, it's still getting worked out, but these are, these are interesting times in terms of this sort of, you know, people getting together having a cause. But the dows are really obviously useful. Their power is, is from, uh, from taking advantage of programmable money and, you know, being able to, you know, interpret it with oracles that can provide accurate data. And so, like, I think that the real, uh, the real kind of, uh, like, usefulness of a dow is going to come when it can interact in the real, in the real world in such a way that if we have, for example, uh, robotics become so embedded in our infrastructure and programmable that the, that the, um, the, whatever robots can actually be programmed to distribute stuff from the dow. Right? So, the, the dow can decide that money goes to X. There's a reliable service of autonomous robots that can be programmed, that can go and dish out and actually do the work, cutting out the mental men of the, you know, the human era, um, like, people, you know, taking money or stealing from the dow, whatever for their own gains as it interfaces with, into the, and interact with the real world. Um, so yeah, that could be quite, quite useful, right? As soon as, as what wants, yeah, wants robots become ingrained in society, then it can switch over that programmable money into programmable real world things happening, like, you know, literally like, you can apply. Yeah. That's what, even like, something that's crazy. It's like, uh, what's that fit, what's that movie? Um, battery's not included. We're like the robots rebuild the hotel. Now imagine if like, you know, you have these like swarms of robots that are for hire. So you could create a dow that goes and builds, uh, builds a school somewhere in, in, in, in, in, in a, in a, in a part of the world where they don't have many schools. Something cool, like that, you know, um, they're far fetched, but well, I, I hope those technical ideas that you guys have work out because over here, it seems a lot more like a marketing guy has created a dow to raise four billion dollars to buy the Denver Broncos. So things are going to get complicated really quick if they raise anywhere close to that. Let's move on to the next question running out of time. Issue three, financial sanctions are easier than ever for Russians to evade. Thanks, Bitcoin. Yes, the mainstream media is back again, reminding us that Bitcoin can be used to evade financial sanctions, but it can also be used to donate to green piece or any kind of left word leaning charity you want. It can also donate to right word leaning charities like the truckers or anyone else on the right or the left. It's almost like universal money that anyone can use. Josh, you go, what do you think of Sand ends points that the Russian oligarchs, the Russian power people now have a stash of crypto. So even if their bank accounts are frozen, the sanctions will be ineffective because of Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, um, look, Bitcoin, yeah, sure. Okay, you can get around sanctions like, um, but Russia's, you know, butted up against China. If they want anything like the EU's just dropped a whole bunch of sanctions, like they're not going to allow airplane repairs and motor repairs, and they're going to cut bank accounts 70% of somehow banking access. But at the end of the day, um, you have Russia, you know, between between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, basically, there's a like a little, there's a little path there. It's got direct access. You know, you've got, you've got the east southeast coast of China, sorry, of Russia also has access. Yeah, it's a long way from Moscow, but, but China is the factory of the world. If they want stuff, don't get it from there. That's China's an ally of theirs. And, and so it's, it's not a problem. Also, if you go through Kazakhstan, you go through, you know, it's, it's really the silly sort of things all it does is they, they'll just retaliate. And, um, for instance, we, we've, I told this story before the show, just quickly wrap it up. We, we, we were meant to go for the standard. We paid quite a, quite a sum of money to go to a conference to bring the whole team there, have a big booth and a couch, at the booth and the television, and really, you know, to, to explain what we're doing with the standard IO. And, um, and yet a day before, and the visas were really hard to get from different, but you know, we got team members from all around the world. And to get the visas sorted was really tricky. And of course, then I had a snap COVID lockdown, snap COVID lockdown. And, uh, basically we just couldn't go because they shifted the dates and the visas didn't match him. So we're like, ah, can we, you know, basically move the tick, move everything over to the next time you do a conference? And they're like, yeah, sure. And, uh, so we, the conference is starting in April and we're like getting already again. We're getting everything sorted. We've got all the merch printed there. We've done next minute war. So we can't, we can't go again. But this is what I'm talking about. The sanctions of like visas, uh, there'll be, there'll be, you know, countermeasures from out of Moscow, uh, where they then stop European travelers with visas as well. Um, so it's, it's basically, you know, that sort of thing is annoying, but people tend to do video conferencing if they're doing business. So that doesn't really matter. If they want anything, they'll get it from China. So that doesn't really matter. Um, yeah, the oligarchs, maybe the freezzi accounts or whatever, but the oligarchs are oligarchs. They're not dumb. They know she's going to go down. They've got stuff stashed around different accounts and different hardware and gold and property forestry farms. Um, they're not just, they're not, they're not like Scrooge McDuck with all their gold in one big, you know, thing that they go and dive in and that could be taken away. It's not how it works. Yeah, I'd agree. Some of the, the strongest sanctions they've talked about so far, but haven't done would be kicking Russia out of Swift, which is kind of like a check caching program. And if they were out of there, it'd be very difficult for them to do business. This is where Bitcoin comes in. So it is a bit of a stretch, even there. I think that the business stops are still very important to Russia. Things like the Nord Stream pipeline shutting down actual construction projects, halting, things like that. That still affects them. Uh, but Josh had a point early on there that agree with it's all about China. China is Russia's best friend China met with Russia before the Olympics probably got a back deal handshake. It's cool. Do whatever you want as just as soon as the Olympics are over. Uh, if we could get China to change their mind and say, Hey, there's this radical Russia that's attacking everyone. The entire world is united against it. And if China broke off from Russia, joined the US and the allies, uh, that could be a major thing that would move Russia. I think the Bitcoin story is kind of a distraction, but I do like the way that we're always the next, uh, the next threat, whatever it is that Bitcoin's always breaking the next thing. Dan, Eve, your thoughts on Bitcoin and sanctions? Well, it just goes back very, very quickly that the China relationship with China, I think the one thing that they have in common right now is this, this, this, this, this, reach for back for territory, right? There's China still going after Hong Kong and this, you know, Taiwan. So it would almost, you know, be hypocritical of, of, of not that not not that anyone cares about being a hypocrite in politics. Um, but to, to be, you know, against Russia because they're doing the same thing, right? They're trying to reach out to land. Um, but you're right, you know, that the, you can play Bitcoin about, um, sanction, being able to be evade sanctions, but they'll find another route. They'll find a way to, to use other, other countries to, that they can pal up with, ones that, you know, we might be surprised that, that, you know, for, for a, for a lot of extra money, and a lot of extra, um, you know, you know, uh, underhand stuff going down, um, they're, they're, you know, they could end up utilizing another country that, that's even, um, you know, an ally, like their loan sort of, you know, China, which is the most obvious route. Um, but I think it was interesting that they said they're taking action against, in the Alaskan, taking action against corrupt billionaires. Um, uh, and the, the interesting point there is that, um, if they knew these billionaires were, were corrupt, and they were sent, you know, freezing their funds, why didn't they do it before? Because they were making money, and now they're like, well, you know, we kind of have better acts on it. Um, so I think that the, the, the, the, the, the off ramps are, or, and on ramps are the things that are going to be guarded quite, quite heavily, and there's probably going to be a bit of extra meticulous checking that, that, um, that money, uh, for fear money is not being funneled out of a Russia and, and, you know, checking the, uh, checking the, uh, the off ramps, and those respects. Um, but it does highlight actually something that's, that's, this, quite, um, one of the quotes in there that said it's harder, but though not impossible to launder those, those funds because of the blockchain. So again, we're always hearing about the fact that Bitcoin can be, you know, is, is, is not completely anonymous and, and you know, they misunderstand what a blockchain is, there's a public ledger. Um, but some people do get it. Some people do get the fact that it is a, a public ledger, and that actually it's quite traceable. Uh, hence, you know, the, the, the, uh, a razzle car getting, um, getting, uh, you know, getting caught, um, using, um, you know, using the off ramps, right, using a card at Walgreens or, or whatever it is. Um, ultimately, yeah, um, it is gonna, it is a tool and tools will be used, um, by criminals or by anyone, right? Do you know, the, the whole point of building a tool is that you can use it for good and you can use it for evil. You just got to hope that it's not being used for, for evil, and there's enough people, um, uh, you know, more people using it for goods than, than evil. Exit question, they looked into the bag and sanctions were the only nonviolent tool available. Will sanctions be successful? And when they fail, is it Bitcoin's fault? Yes or no? Josh Shagalla. No. No, on both, it's not Bitcoin's fault and no, they won't be successful. Yeah. All right, Dan, do you agree? Still muted. The sanctions don't really, I don't think they'll be successful. Uh, but it will always be Bitcoin's fault because it's easy to put, to put the finger in blame on Bitcoin. Um, yeah, I agree with Dan and Josh, they don't have all their money and money bins. The, uh, oligarchs have been preparing for this. Putin's been preparing for this. Sadly, the sanctions really hurt the normal people more than anything. As we said earlier, normal people are protesting in Russia, uh, at their own personal risk, uh, taking their lives and their futures into their own hands to protest this war. Um, but still there's not much we can do for them, not much we can do against Russia. It's a tough situation. Nobody likes it. Moving on to issue for crypto currencies turned positive after Biden introduces new sanctions against Russia in a shocking turn this morning. It seemed like the stock markets had digested the, uh, Ukraine news, and now the crypto markets with Bitcoin and Ethereum rising about eight or nine percent in a single day. Perhaps because of fear over the sanctions and the success of Bitcoin for getting around them. Dan Eve is this a proper reading by the news? They've, they've drawn a line between two current events. Uh, do they match up perfectly? Well, I, I saw that and I thought it was quite funny because, because, you know, obviously, again, it's this correlation that, you know, is not necessarily causation. And actually, when you think about it, that, that, I think it's a bit silly to say that crypto, you know, Bitcoin's gone green because, uh, Russia, you know, because Biden's introduced sanctions because maybe it's because people are realizing that, you know, Russia might be scrambling to get their hands on a lot more Bitcoin because of the fact that, you know, if, if it can be used so easily to evade these sanctions, and maybe that's what's driving the price up. And people know that there's going to, it's going to put the demand up, right? Um, yeah, I don't know. I just think that the, the, the, you know, just America putting sanctions against Russia and I think it's enough for, you know, uh, uh, to, you know, for, for, for that to pump Bitcoin so much, there's, there's, I think, other, a lot of other factors. And, you know, even things like, um, the, the, the, the, the, the supply chains, right? Like at the moment, um, you've got, and even if you look at, like, how it's just disrupting, say, air travel, right? Like, you look at the Ukraine right now and, and no one wants to see the situation, like, the fight that was shot down in, in, um, in 2014, right? So like, everyone's evading, uh, if, sorry, avoiding, Ukrainian, you know, airspace, like, uh, like, nobody's business. So, you know, this is going to have a far reaching effect on, on supply chains and, um, and that's probably going to push prices up, which is going to add to inflation. And what does inflation bring? Yeah, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, are we getting a weakening, uh, or more expensive goods and therefore, how can you hedge against more expensive goods and inflation? You can use Bitcoin. So I think it's just a bit, a bit more complicated than, than, uh, just Biden putting some sanctions down and going, naughty Biden and naughty Putin. I like the way they think though. I'm, I'm imagining all these evil geniuses with their costumes and everything suddenly running to the buy window to buy Bitcoin. They're like, Bitcoin evade sanctions. Every evil genius has to get some and it all, it really seems more like to me that there are only 21 million Bitcoin and that there were something and then it went down for a couple of days and everyone was freaked out and people had to cover their stock market bets and all that kind of thing. But more likely, and again, I have no information on this, not making financial advice here, but I think some smart money, some big old smart money came along and said, Hey, Bitcoin or cheap. I'm going to buy them up. I don't think they bought them up to evade sanctions. I don't think it's a big conspiracy or they just now realized that, oh my gosh, you can use Bitcoin to invade sanctions. I never do that before yesterday. Uh, give these guys some credit. They have some, you know, departments working on this. They have some intelligence. I just think it's more likely people bought it and that the safe haven thing. Perhaps eventually came came through to us. Josh, a golly, do you think Bitcoin's up? Because it's sanctioned free, amazing currency being bought by evil warlords all over the world. No, this is, this is, yeah, typical mainstream media is sort of just to, yeah, draw that line and go, that's why, that's why. And everyone goes, oh, that's why. Yeah, it's like, like you said, there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of, a lot of reasons. One of the things that's fascinating about Bitcoin is that I've definitely noticed is just like gold actually at the same time, when, when a crisis happens, this happened at the start of COVID as well as the world started to come to realize that uh, plans are getting grounded everywhere worldwide and this is, this is a probable pandemic. Um, it was, was spreading around the mainstream news outlets. Um, everything tanked, everything tanked, gold, Bitcoin stocks, everything. And Bitcoin isn't there to protect you during these, these maniacal moments of total panic, um, maniacal. So, um, it's, it's, it's in, it's in these times for the long run. So after the panic settles, what stays down is usually fear. What goes back up is gold and rare metals, bricks and mortar, food, alcohol, um, also entertainment, those back up because people that are depressed, they want to be entertained. So during during these, these times that, that's what tends to happen. Everything collapses as everyone's trying to just get liquidity, get sell their shit, get liquidity in. And now, okay, I'm in my safe spot, I've covered some positions, bad positions. Now where do I deploy this? Oh, okay, Bitcoin, gold, okay, and then they reposition and that's when it goes up. So if you do see these big, big cascades in red, um, yeah, it's, you know, that's the old, uh, the old thing by when there's blood in the streets and that's what you're doing. But, uh, it's not financial advice, of course, just for education. And this connects well into our exit question, competing versus the predictor of all predictors, the Bitcoin ball. Dan Eave will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week? I'm going for, I'm going for higher. Yeah, higher. Josh, should I go higher or lower? Higher, baby. All right. And now the Bitcoin predictor ball, will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? It's hard to read. Ask again later. Ask again later. What a cup, uh, sometimes, you know, you just can't predict the future. The balls just not ready. But you can check out WCN clips on YouTube, just Google WCN clips and subscribe. We've got all kinds of great clips of the world crypto network right here on WCN clips. You can even send them to your friends. Go on people. Go go there right now. We put a lot of time and effort that subscribe number hasn't gone up in like a month or two even. It's been stuck at 87. Do us a favor. Go over there. Show us some love because we put a lot of work into these. And if that number just could go up a couple that would really give us some, you know, pat on the back for us here at the World Crypto Network that would really help us out. It would be nice. Moving on to issue five. Gold, not Bitcoin is the real digital safe haven asset. Gold is finally outperforming the way one would imagine. It's not always about absolute performance as it is about relative performance. Josh Legala, what do you think about the return of gold as a safe haven asset? Yeah, I mean, for me, obviously, I've run the world's longest running gold Bitcoin exchange. It was the first Bitcoin gold exchange in the world in terms of auto book exchange. It it's always been obvious to me that these two assets work perfectly together. There's there are harmony and there they've got a common enemy and that's fear. So it shouldn't be to bury silver. It shouldn't be dropped gold. It should be dropped fear. And to Peter Schiff, it shouldn't be Bitcoin. It's like Bitcoin. Awesome. Rare numbers, rare metals, sweet. Obviously, they have different use cases. The fact that we here in the technocratic class can say that Bitcoin is the future. Bitcoin is everything. Gold is totally gone. It's dead. It's finished. It's a pet rock. Guys, I don't think you understand how many people there are on earth and how deep gold runs in the veins of societal, cultural norms and understanding of wealth. And so gold is here to stay for a very, very long time. It is something that people trust and they still don't trust Bitcoin. Man, they hardly anyone trust Bitcoin compared to gold. Just the other day, I was at a restaurant and said, oh, we want to get paid in Bitcoin. And they went, I would never do that. Never, never. No, I'm not a gambler. I'm not a gambler. That's what they said. I'm pretty sure I didn't ask what I'm pretty sure if I said, you want to be paid in some gold, he wouldn't think gambling. He just think, hmm, value. So there's definitely, there's definitely where, you know, there's a reason gold still exists. And that's because it's physical. It's beautiful. It's fungible. It's divisible. It's a great conductor. And it's also malleable. It doesn't rust or disappear. You can throw it in the ocean for a thousand years and pull it out. Nothing's happened. It's, it's, it's special. It's something very special to humans all around the world. And I think it'll stay that way. See, the interesting point about the example of gold versus Bitcoin in a restaurant scenario is I think you'd be much more likely to get fake gold than you would fake Bitcoin. But the problem is, as a non-technical person, you'd be in no condition to say whether you got fake Bitcoin or not. You could have had a totally farcical wallet. And they just, you know, imagine that money got sent to. You have no technical basis to make that on. Whereas with the gold, it's also very difficult. If you're going to, you know, weigh it or put it in water or some kind of system or little chemical dots or some kind of thing. It's just a very difficult. And it's interesting how the, the things line up like Bitcoin easily confirmed, easily knowable that it is the Bitcoin gold. Even if it's shiny and stuff, hard to confirm, hard to really know it's gold. Even if it's marked and it looks really good, it comes in a plastic blister pack and everything. You cut that thing open. It's a lead bar with some shiny stuff on it. So it's very interesting that the different comparisons and how, how they compare with each other, how opposite they are. But to agree with what Josh said, how alike we are, the gold, a relatively limited number of units, Bitcoin, a very limited number of units, gold, been people been collecting for a long time, Bitcoin people been collecting for a long time. But then when it gets to the actual people, I think the gold bug people are very non technical, kind of even anti-technical. So they really don't like the Bitcoiners and like our ideas, even not even knowing them, just on a, you know, basic level. They're like, oh, I'm untrustworthy of those ideas. I'm cautious there. So it's fascinating. We haven't had that much support or overlap with the exception of maybe Andy Hoffman back in the day of these gold bugs who are just hard-core gold people becoming similarly hard-core Bitcoin people. I think they could be, but something about the tech and the newness versus the oldness. It's just for as similar as we are, there's so many different things between Bitcoin people like Max Pyser was a, was a big silver bug. I was, we had what's his name? For God's sake. He's mad. Runs to God. He's got a bad August. Yeah, and there was a few others that caught on very early and they, they, like I remember getting shit from all my gold and silver friends. They didn't want to have a bar of it. I was like, can't you not see what's happening? We have rare digital assets for the first time ever. This is unprecedented. Rare digital assets. It's not rare because someone refuses to make more. It's rare because it's mathematically refuses to make more. And this just couldn't, couldn't get in. And then, you know, of course, 2017, that's when it clicked for a lot of these people. It's also interesting to see all these articles keep coming up and saying, Oh, Bitcoin's not a safe haven because people had to sell to cover their stock market losses or their stock market margin orders or whatever it was. They just felt unsafe and this risky asset. But you have to compare the monetary basis gold. Like I said, people have been collecting for a long time. They're used to collecting it. They've got it stored and saved away. Probably not moving it. Bitcoin, they just started collecting recently. And they have those stock market losses. So the money in Bitcoin is newer and thus much more liquid when we have a crisis like the Ukraine crisis, that money drifts back into stocks, drifts back into dollars. The gold bugs, they've been there a lot longer. They're a lot harder. They don't drift over as much. So I don't think we see the same kind of new money collapse in the gold price that we see in the Bitcoin price. And again, just just give Bitcoin time. It's been 10, 15 years. Give us 30 or 50 years. I think we'll have a different kind of monetary base. Dan, if your thoughts about gold versus Bitcoin? Well, one thing I was thinking when you're talking about the similarities, like even just the term, you know, gold is mined and Bitcoin is mined. And I don't recall ever reading whether Satoshi actually coined the term, no pun intended, coined the term, that was terrible. Sorry, dad, Jake, mining for Bitcoin, rather than calculating Bitcoin or something along those lines, maybe something more computerized and technical, right? Rather than mining, which is a physical, a physical world thing that you do. But I think the thing with gold, obviously, is that, you know, it goes back to this, the fact that it can, it, whilst it is a safe haven in it, it can be confiscated. And, and I know the people can say, well, you know, obviously, okay, the, the, the, the, the Razor Khan and Co they've had their Bitcoin confiscated, but it was on an exchange with, but people may not know that you have Bitcoin, right? You know, someone could see hiding your gold. Well, they could see you, you know, walking along with your, wedge of gold, your bar of gold or whatever. But Bitcoin can be used on a laptop, a mobile phone, like an old Windows laptop, you know, it's something crazy like that. Any, any, pretty much, pretty much any piece of technology. So although people, you know, could beat the hell out of you to try and get your Bitcoin from you and probably the, your private keys from you, they need to know that you have the Bitcoin first. And it's the most, I suppose, inconspicuous way of hiding money ever. You know, you could literally hide quite literally hide billions of billions of dollars of value in 12 words. That's what's crazy about it. Whereas like to hide a big bar of gold, you know, it's a bit, a bit more difficult to find it in a place where no one's ever going to find it. That's sort of thing. But I did read once that I don't know if it's true whether it's like a, like a myth, but that, you know, I think one thing that Josh mentioned was that it's been around a wealth of, you know, for thousands of years, right? Gold is like the old school store of value, like way before, like dirty, dirty fear. And it's embedded into cultures. And one thing I read which was that like, I think it was, especially like Indian culture, for example, it was that like Indian wives hold 11% of all gold on earth, which is like, which is like more than, I don't know, I think it's like the more than the reserves of the USA, the IMF, Switzerland and Germany put together. So that's a lot of gold, but it's embedded in the culture, right? It's a, it's not just about the value of it in terms of money. It's about the value of, you know, the cultural value of the gold as well. So yeah, I think I agree with you as well, Tom, that it's, it's maybe not the value, not the Bitcoin may not be realized right now, just like the value of the internet, what, you know, wasn't immediately realized in even the 90s, even in the 2000s, right? After the big, the big crash of 2000, you know, everyone was like, oh, you know, that's it. The internet's a failed experiment, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these stocks have crashed and it was going to change the world and it didn't and then look where we are now, you know, the internet is everything including a bloody toaster. So yeah, so I think we may be seeing, you know, Bitcoin being embedded a bit more in sort of 10 years time, but it's everything every day, the infrastructure is growing, the things are being built and Bitcoin is growing as a, as a store of value and detaching itself from some of the other markets. Very good. Moving on to the exit question, and it's pretty complicated, even though Bitcoin is not performing right now as a safe haven asset, Bitcoin is still a safe haven asset. Yes or no, Josh Tagala. Sorry, yeah, it's totally a safe haven asset. Long-term, I think it's, it's ultimately safe haven. I'm a big go bug, I don't know if they have a gold, but it's, and it's very secure, but it's still in a voting facility, it's fully ensured and audited, but hey, a big army could come and take that. The good thing is with with our setup is you can trade trade it back to Bitcoin very quickly, and it's just a it's a true diversification into rare assets. So a lot of people say it talk about diversification in crypto, but they isn't that much diversification in crypto. Everything follows Bitcoin, so why is my rainbow coin down? It's like, well, because Bitcoin's down, there's no, there's like stop looking at your triangles for your crappy coin. It's all just down because Bitcoin's down or up because Bitcoin's up. There was a little bit of deviation. Sometimes it started to happen where Bitcoin would go down and Ethereum was up, and then everything on Ethereum would actually go up as well, so there was a little bit of separation there, starting to happen out, but generally it's the top top three top two cryptos, even just top one. Yeah, diversifying into cryptos like diversifying into tech stocks, they all go down at the same time. It's like, oh, pandemic over, non-duff users, it doesn't matter if you had Facebook or Zoom or Apple, they're like less people at home, less people using the internet tech stocks down, the same thing Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever you have, they all seem to be down at the same time. I do agree, though, on the question, it's still a safe haven, and it still has that collectible value being locked in at 21 million units, 21 million units, they can be sent all over the world for a small fee. Always seems like a useful thing to me, seems like a useful thing to have. I used to jokingly say, oh, why should you buy Ethereum? You don't know if you're going to need to run smart contracts in the future, but then I needed to run a bunch of smart contracts, and it would have been better if I had some Ethereum. So the same way with Bitcoin, you don't know if you're going to need to pay people over the internet instantly for almost nothing in the future, but it seems like you will. So it still makes sense for a lot of people to hold Bitcoin, even if it doesn't perform perfectly in the markets over, you know, five minute timeline. I'm watching CNBC every day, they have a close, and every day Bitcoin keeps going, and then it goes on to the weekend, and then they just go to commercial. All right, what about the markets? What about watching the markets? Dan, Eve, what do you think? Bitcoin is safe haven asset? It is. The only thing is though, if in a post-apocalyptic world, if things went really badly, then it probably loses a lot of its safe havenness, in this advanced technological world that we have, that's without crazy war going on, it definitely is safe haven. But if you think about the security of Bitcoin, it would be a risk if the warfare goes crazy, and people could just start indiscriminately like bombing Bitcoin mining funds, and then or steal the equipment and take it over, there's all sorts that can happen, right? So I think that's probably what people have initially kind of got a bit scared in why the markets dumped is because people would go for something that has, if the internet went down, you can't spend your Bitcoin unless you've got a blockchain satellite, but then if the power goes down, whereas if there's no power and no internet, then you can trade gold or don'ts or sausages or whatever that's more physical. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right, Dan, this is something that again, a lot of people, especially younger people, they can't imagine the world without the internet, can't imagine, but I don't think it's as indestructible as it was designed to be, it was designed to be basically indestructible from nuclear holocaust, where it would just route around damage points, but in a matter of fact, it's become too centralized, and most of the internet is really major servers out of Ireland, Frankfurt, and major spots, and you can take out lines, you can take out massive amounts of physical lines in the ocean, and when they come up from the ocean, they're usually in these massive junction boxes, you just drop a couple of bombs on those that they're gone, then you're out for a while, it takes a long time to reconnect those, the internet isn't as indestructible as a lot of people think, and yeah, so physical things are really good, but some of the best physical things in such harsh times, like in the fan moments, things like whiskey, because whiskey is very easily divisible, people can smell it and taste it, oh yeah, that's good whiskey, okay, cool. So there's a lot of better currencies that happen in a full sheet, it's the fan scenario, than even gold, and everyone always wants to get drunk, you know. So I like how we always get down to a whiskey and pack of cigarettes based economy at the end of the day. The interesting thing that I find about Doomsday Preppers is that none of them are worried about their own personal fitness, their own physical fitness and mental fitness, because that's all you're going to have out there, they're all excited about guns and canned food, but really if they do some jane fonda workouts, and if they would maybe learn some iKido or some karate or something, they would have those skills with them at all times, remember the best camera is the camera you have on you, and the best gun is usually at home locked in your safe, unless you're in Texas or something, and you're you're hot carrying all the time. So those kind of physical skills being physically strong, having iKido or some other kind of a, you know, Brazilian jujitsu background, being ready for things, being mentally alert, you know, having positive eyesight going to the doctor, going to the dentist, the optometrist, all these things, nobody ever talks about them on the prepper channels, and you're not going to get the iodine tablets and whatever else you might need, but again, it's your physical fitness, and also if we want to talk about being independent, if you're not physically fit, you're going to have to go to the hospital or you're going to be in need of a hospital, and if you're prepping out there in the forest somewhere, you're not going to have a hospital, so it doesn't matter how many canned foods or how many rounds of ammo you have, if you're not starting off at a good level, and again, it's the same thing, it takes lots of work, takes a lot of diligence and mental awareness to really have that fitness, and a lot of us, you know, myself, include need to work there ourselves, so I can't just, can't write myself off there, but Alex Jones could lose a couple pounds, you know, Peloton, stocks are low, so let's move on to the next issue, and stop being mean to poor Alex, ECB urges haste on crypto regulation in the wake of Russian sanctions, yes, things are getting tighter as we talked about Bitcoin perhaps could overcome sanctions, allowing the freedom of Russian oligarchs, the freedom of Putin, Bitcoin can overcome sanctions allowing us to donate directly to Ukrainian relief forces or the Ukrainian army, or even to right wing truckers in Canada, it almost seems like Bitcoin is just generic money, it doesn't care who it's going to, but never let a crisis go by that's not an opportunity. Josh, should go all the way, do you think about the ECB suddenly bringing crypto up as the boogie man in the midst of all this, Putin caused aggression? Oh yeah, like this is, this is typical, this is typical of banks, they will use any sort of major, major event to, you know, or crisis points to basically further their agenda, I don't, there's nothing surprising there at all, and you know, generally as I get older, I see the same sort of patterns happening over and over again, so well, I mean the really obvious one is like Russia invading Georgia in 2008 when the winter Olympics, the other summer Olympics, I think it was the summer Olympics in Beijing, the Kremlin again, they invaded in 2014, they invaded Ukraine actually in 2014 during the winter Olympics in Sachi, so these sort of patterns that happen happen again and during these crisis, so these are sort of big events where people are looking the other way like, ah, let's just do that now, and it's the same with with large scale crisis, then other people jump on the bandwagon and say, hey, it's that, that things fault or that fault, or for instance, for me, it's quite close to me, is the whole like digital ID cards and stuff, so as soon as this pandemic hit, all of a sudden the digital IDs and the passports and the vaccine passports and these control mechanisms come out to play, because hey, let's jump on the bandwagon, let's use these crisis points to, you know, further our agenda in XYZ, ah, evilness, and this is, again, it happens all the time, you see, it was as well with like, if there's some big internet, maybe issue, they'll say, oh, we've got a filter the entire internet now, because, you know, really that's their agendas just to have more control over what people talk about and what people discuss, and so having big crisis points also, you know, usually that gets pulled out like, oh, we've got to control the media, because a lot of, you know, fake news is spreading around and people are spreading conspiracy theories and so we've got a ban and cancel and control the message and chale anyone that says anything that's, you know, deemed by us as fake. I do think you have a good point on the internet, Josh. A lot of these articles, you could just replace crypto with internet. They're like, we're worried that internet is helping right wing groups. We're also worried that internet's helping left wing groups, you know, crypto, the same thing, it helps both people, but we worry about it and just like in the old days, they're like, no one goes on the internet, but criminals and thieves and no one goes on crypto, but criminals and thieves. So it does become tiresome seeing them attack these new technologies as they attack TV, as they attack radio, as they attack newspapers and pamphlets and flyers and every single communication revolution we've ever had, they always come down fearful and attacking it. So yeah, it was a, it was not a surprise to see this article after the Ukraine situation and for them to then be saying this, even though even cursory examination of this said that like we said that the oligarchs have already planned around this. They already have crypto, they already have whatever. If they wanted a Lamborghini, they've already bought this year's Lamborghini. They knew the war was coming. So it doesn't matter now these tools they have, they've already planned. We can't take that away from them. So I don't think it's going to be affected, but they could stop normal people from using crypto. They could scare off the normal populations and they could just like with internet make it take longer, you know, longer between that period of only criminals and thieves everyone has MP3s to MP3s are criminal to everyone has an iPod full or iPhone full of MP3s so on and so forth. Dan, Eve, what do you think about the ECB suddenly finding crypto to be the problem? ECB, it's sub-dass in short. I think the one thing that really discussed me about the ECB right now is that and the hypocrisy that it's headed by Christine Lagarde who was convicted in a French court in a case of $400 million like a paper, well, a dodgy payment and she was convicted, she received no punishment, she'd been up to a year in jail, no fight and then got promoted to the head of the ECB. Now that just shows you how corrupt the traditional banking world is, it's insanely corrupt. So to then turn around and be like pointing the finger at Bitcoin is just ludicrous, she didn't appeal it as well probably because she probably would have lost and she said, oh, I want to get on with my life, but no, instead of like being sensible and being like, hey, what would displace people's trust? Having someone who's convicted in a dodgy case, the involving money and putting them ahead of the ECB, no, that's absolutely fine. So yeah, but that just stinks like a wet fart and it disgusts me. It's about all I got to say about that. All right, I think we're running out of time for today. We're going to move on to prediction. Josh Agala, do you have a prediction? Maybe something about the Ukraine war or the economy, a lot of things to predict this week. What would you like to predict? My prediction is that everyone will forget about a certain virus and a certain way that government treated everyone for the last two years and shut down and destroyed businesses and hey, look over there and they'll quickly scuttle over there and everyone will forget and sadly because I really think a lot of politicians need to be and media who feasted on the clickbait of fear and allowed us all to. You were really not look at the pandemic in a reasoned and evidence-based mechanism but rather fear and control and everything. And that's my point of view. I know that's not the point of view of the general channel here but it's my point of view and I feel like this war is just the next step in distraction even though it's absolutely horrific what's happening. It is still a distraction. It's the next thing of like look that way and I really hope that people can take a minute of solace to try to figure out hey if this ever happens again we shouldn't need jerk into ridiculousness. It does seem like we can only concentrate on one thing at a time and after that thing goes it's gone forever. There were some great examples on a Cody show over at some more news. He's kind of a comedy newscaster but he talked about some things where it was like childcare is very expensive and most people need it and the computer answered him and it was like government should provide childcare. There's a lot of these cases where we know the answer it's difficult it's expensive and we kind of just need to do it and there's a lot of these problems that Cody went through in his show that we could solve that the solutions right there it's just expensive and difficult and we won't do it so instead we'll have another pandemic and we won't be prepared we won't have masks and goggles on the shelf or whatever it is we just can't seem to you know do more than one thing at a time at least in the current media environment even the internet with all of our possibilities for online discussion groups and chats and outlines and forums and whatever we still seem to be like Josh said we just we follow the the number one new story of the day Dan Eve do you have a prediction for us go ahead. Well is the eye this week I thought I'll look back and and see see what I predicted last week to see how because I thought oh I'm pretty sure that I said Bitcoin would go down and I did I predicted correctly however foolishly I very confidently chirped I predict that Russia I'm going to invade Ukraine so I was a bit wrong about that and so but so this and that's my story of the week as well that I was right about the Bitcoin price because I'm really right about the Bitcoin price I'm not good with contractors and and other triangular things that I saw some ease and all that that determines prices so I'm not very good at that side of things but I predicted the Bitcoin price would go down last week this week I'm going to predict that the price goes up and I'm also going to confidently say that we will negotiate a piece deal before next week's show. I'd like to predict that the major league baseball season will not start on time pictures and catchers were supposed to report last week and the owners lockout has continued it's not the players on strike but the rich owners who want a better deal they want more playoff games and let me tell you no one cares no one cares about baseball no one cares about the strike and they'd better watch out because they will be replaced I was hanging out in some public places some casinos and some bars and stuff lately a lot of the TVs had baseball on but they were just playing old games no one cares so it's a real problem for your sport if you're out on strike no one knows about it no one cares they need to get a deal and play baseball I know it's not it's not as important as Ukraine and all these other things but to the end of the show and it's a major labor situation in the United States and no one cares no one cares about baseball so they should get a fix no one cares about hey up by the way I just reading through the chat here hi everyone uh sorry I had the chat in a different window this this time around and said why is Josh depressed I'm sorry I'm not actually depressed I'm we're staying in an Airbnb beautiful artwork here and and and my kids are sleeping in the other room right there so I have to be a bit quiet I can't be the normal boy stress me he's not all fired up but Josh Shagallid you have a story of the week are you fired up about your story of the week the story of the week is uh is is I don't know I mean things are things are happening we had our first down meet up on on the discord which was really cool to have and we're getting we got a proper community manager now we're getting uh scaffolding getting getting ready for the scaffolding of of the actual down in terms of how voting works how snapshots work with fearless voting but still proving we've got keys and all this stuff and it's super interesting I just find it so fascinating I'm just loving building this thing out and yeah so that's the story that we we're starting more and more employees oh and we've got a full-time developer an extra full-time developer as well so we can move a bit quicker which is great because we just had our core personnel so it's it's nice to have an extra extra hand on deck all right you can learn more about Josh's project at the standard.io check that out Dan Eve do you have a story of the week go ahead well mine mine was lame it was just being excited about being right about the Bitcoin price but the story of the week also was that I was very wrong about the invasion and my story of the week I'm still continuing to read I don't know some kind of strange genre of post climate change literature I read Bill Gates how to avoid a climate change disaster now I then I read the every about Facebook and Amazon merging together and that also has a little bit to do with the climate change disaster a lot of their decisions a collective decisions you guys wouldn't like because they made them to avoid climate change so on so forth a lot of concern about waste in that book and reducing waste and now I'm on to Neil Stephenson's terminations shock which is kind of a post climate change book of course futurism Stephenson all the great stuff he wrote snow crash a bunch of other great books I've barely started but already just a great example this ladies trying to land an airplane in the world of climate change and it's so much hotter after you land the airplane you can't go outside it's a hundred and thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit you know it's crazy hot out there the way you land the airplane the way you produce the waste of the airplane or reduce the waste it practically sounds like they're landing a glider so there's some really great futurism out there and again it's not a directly predictive book like the Gates book was scientific but it can help you think and imagine what the world might be like if we start to have some of these effects of climate change so termination shock the every how to avoid a climate disaster check those out on a Z library or wherever you get your ebooks amazon so so forth maybe get a hard back if you want it it's always great to read no matter what it is so just check out some books and do some reading all right thanks to everybody for joining us be sure to give us a thumbs up subscribe down below check out the WCN clips channel it's really cool it has lots of clips you could subscribe share the links it's really great stuff over there not enough people looking at WCN clips so thanks so much for joining us until next time bye bye