Latest / Monero Talk / Marketing Monero to Save Souls from Technological Totalitarianism w/ Monero Master | EPI 343
Transcript
- Doug All right. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We are live. Good morning, Doug. Thanks for having me on. I'm barely alive. Thanks for doing this, man. Sorry for being a little late. Sorry to those out there. I'm a little late, running a little slow today. We got 16 live viewers. We're doing this at... I don't normally do these Marnero talks in the morning. Sometimes, actually, I end up enjoying these more than most, actually. I get to thoroughly enjoy my coffee. I kind of get a different perspective on life. Morning Doug is different than evening Doug. Sean Yeah, I'm certainly groggy first thing in the morning. It takes me a while to get into gear. Doug But in a good way, right? It's like the brain is different, and you see things from a different angle, you're functioning differently, at least I am. We got 22 live viewers, guys, like and share, let's get a bunch of people in here. We got Sean Bradford on, the Monero master, he's come out of nowhere over, I don't know, when did you come on the scene? You came on the scene, like, publicly, I don't know, I mean, we'll get into it, I don't know. Sean I think it was in November last year. I've been a lurker since 2020. Yeah, okay. So I've helped him in there for a while. Doug doing amazing work on a bunch of different fronts in Monero land, started up a podcast. Very interesting. I've been tuning into some of that. Actually, that's why I was up late last night too. I was on another podcast and then I went and watched your latest one. On 2X, I hope you don't mind, but I had to get through it. Right this day and age, you just need the AI summary at best. And doing very impressive things and then also doing a lot of work on the Monero marketing front. Obviously, Monero has always been lacking there. Sean comes with some real world skills. I guess we'll get into that as well. I believe your background is in marketing. You seem to certainly have an expertise in that. And you've been very focused on building out the Monero circular economy and very thankful to that. Obviously, that's a large passion of mine. I'm very excited about XMR Bazaar and you've been helping out in a big way with the Monero circular economy and with XMR Bazaar in particular. So greatly appreciate that. We'll get into all that. But yeah, why don't you go ahead and quickly introduce yourself. I had Sean on Monero. I think it was only a Monero topia show once we had him on stage. We never did a proper Monero talk. So here we are. So we'll start from scratch for people that don't know you yet. Go ahead and give an intro and we'll get into it as we always do here. Sean Sure. Well, yeah, once again, thanks for having me on. I appreciate being able to come on and speak. I've been a lurker and watching an era talk when I can. I sometimes hop in at the end of the shows when I get a chance, but it can be difficult when you've got lots of little kids early around, which I do. So yeah, my name is Sean Bradford. I started a project called Monero Master. It's not that I'm a Monero Master, but more so that I came to the realization that either you own your money or your money owns you. So you're either a fiat slave or you're a Monero Master. So the hope is truly how people understand these differences and to really take control of money once again. I suppose you could say have dominion over money. So money having dominion over them. So this is something I'm passionate about. It's something I want to spread and I don't want to just hold Monero. I want to actually be able to use it in a way that it was intended to be used and to get more people involved in that. So that's really what I first started off trying to reach UK businesses. But Doug, I don't know about you. I've done this where you go to your local farmer's market and you say, hey, would you be willing to accept cryptocurrency? And they look at you as if you've got five heads. That was a bit challenging. So I was like, okay, well, because I think you have to be aware that there's a difference between theory and practice. So you can say things in theory. Oh yeah, if we just keep on asking businesses to adopt Monero, eventually they'll adopt it. In theory, that seems plausible. In actual practice, it's actually far from the first thing from the facts, because again, people I think have been trained to associate cryptocurrency with scams. Unfortunately, I think this has become a, I would want to say that it's deliberate because I think there's financial powers that don't want people using a decentralized finance system that can undermine their power and authority over society. In fact, I have a book right here, which is called Mind War. And it's actually written by a magician called Michael Aquillo, who headed up the psychological warfare section of the US Army. And he's actually a Satanist, which is quite interesting. And he talks about subliminal messaging. And one part of subliminal messaging is just repetition. So when everyone searches cryptocurrency or searches on Google and all they're seeing is scams, and there's no evidence, this is just repeated. This is a form of shaping the subconscious to associate scams with cryptocurrency. I think that's certainly happened. So when you go to a farmer's market, you mentioned cryptocurrency, I think they think, oh, you're trying to scam me. So I found it very difficult. So I suppose some of the new initiatives I've done, such as the podcast you mentioned, which is actually a Monero and Christianity, I don't know if it's going to be a long term podcast, it's only going to be around 10 episodes, I'm thinking it's going to have an end. Sean And then I've also been doing things like resist surveillance, which has been another initiative of mine, which is really just a way to introduce new people into the Monero ecosystem, and I suppose private privacy check, a privacy tech in general. So a lot of it is this trial and error, some of it, I'm not exactly sure how it will work out, you just have an idea and try to go from there. The Monero cycle of comedy pledge was something I thought would be a good idea to help people who start using Monero to start thinking in terms of actually using it as a currency in an ecosystem, rather than being dependent on exchanges. And finally, I try to avoid exchanges or directing people towards exchanges, I now direct them to XMR Bazaar, say, hey, if you want to get Monero, list something on XMR Bazaar, list a product or service, buy something for someone on XMR Bazaar, there's lots of ways where you can sort of rent out your bank account and be a proxy shopper and get XMR that way. So I kind of prefer associating in people's minds the idea with value exchange with currency. If someone came to me and said, how do I get euros? I'm not going to say, oh, go to an exchange. I'm going to say, well, get some European clients. That's actually more on euros, that's how you get. So that's sort of maybe the long answer to how I got here. Doug yeah and uh all great things all great what's the name of that book Monero i mean mind war he was that the guy he was what was his role he was the Sean He headed up psychological operations in the U.S. Army, so here's a picture of him. Doug It's five years, what years was he operating? Sean Oh gosh, don't accept me, he's the Colonel. This book was written in 2013, I think it was republished in 2016. I think he's retired now, so probably the 90s. Yeah, so during 1969 and 1970 he was assigned as the Siope Battalion, fourth group in Vietnam. Doug And he was an outright Satanist and wow, and he was the guy in charge with figuring out how to run the psyops that keep the war going. Sean Well, certainly part of it, I don't know if he was the originator, but he really coined the term mind war, which is his evolution of psychological operations. And really if I could surmise the entire book, it's essentially the weaponization of collaboration. So you've seen this, where we're no longer fighting X or Y, we're fighting an abstraction. So it's the war on terror, it's the war on poverty, it's the war on ignorance. It's this abstraction where you get people on your side, and then if they're not on your side, well then you must be a terrorist. It's this way to kind of force the economy in getting polarizing people in order to bring in this sort of manufactured solution. So it's quite an interesting reason. Doug Do you think Monero is at war? Do you think, you know, a lot of people in Monero land, right, we think that we're under attack, there's, you know, state actors doing things against us, they're suppressing Monero. How real do you think that war is? Or do you think, you know, just a bunch of paranoid people thinking that we're under attack and really Monero isn't all that relevant yet in the highs of this day? What's your kind of take on all that? Sean Well, I think I've come to a great understanding that economics is warfare, and that's essentially the basis by which wars are won and lost. If you run out of resources or your economy becomes depleted, you lose the war. And I really feel like our current financial system, which is based on fiat, this kind of international banking cartels can create money from nothing, it actually perpetuates wars. Because in the Kingdom, the good old days of kings and queens, if the King's Exchequer, which is the royal treasury, ran out of money, you surrendered. That's what that happened. And well, now bankers can create money from nothing and basically push the debts onto future generations to continue their wars. So I do think that's a current system we have. And something like Monero can undermine the entire system. Also, in terms of social engineering, finances can be used to control people's behavior. We see this with banks with credit scores. They want you to have a mortgage. In order to get a mortgage, you have to basically change your lifestyle. You have to have a certain lifestyle, you have to have a two person income, which means you're not going to be homeschooling. It's a way to control people's behavior through the economy, through finances. So I do see Monero as a tool to resist the current system. And I think one reason why I created this Monero Christianity, because I suppose coming from a Christian perspective, I tried to backwards engineer reality. So if I have a different worldview, I have a worldview that assumes that God has told me what's going to happen before it happens, then I know the end game. In Revelation 13 says there's going to be a synthesis of government, religion, and economics, then it's going to be global. It's going to be all over the world. So therefore, I know that there's coming an environment by which that's going to be actualized, and what do I do to resist that future reality? Doug Yeah, pretty fascinating how the Bible seems to really predict this ultimate war of good versus evil, kind of technocratic state versus the technologies that might be able to save us like Monero. I mean, I think that's kind of where you're coming from with that thesis there and I tend to agree. Why don't you get into that a little bit more? I mean, what have you learned since doing this podcast, talking to different people? Obviously, you went in there, I think with this thesis, don't want to put words into your mouth, but curious what your overall perspective is that I had Nick Watts on the show. I don't know if you ever watched that episode. It was a great episode. You definitely should. This was years ago. I actually went back and was looking at it last night. We were talking about similar concepts. He wrote a book on it too. He studies the Bible deeply and he's kind of base cases how the Bible and Jesus Christ, if anything, they would have been like anarchists, like pro-anarchists. They would have seen that as like the righteous path and the ethical path and obviously that ties into Monero. I recommend you give that a look, but what's kind of your current hypothesis and what have you learned from doing the podcast and talking to different people and give us your whole perspective on that. Sean I haven't learned much from doing the podcast, if I'm going to be honest, because it's more of a tool I'm trying to create to educate other Christians. So it has a Christian focus, and really it's a tool. Doug So talking to some interesting people, some interesting folks, I'm curious if your ideas have evolved since speaking with different people, but go ahead. Sean Well, I think one of the most interesting people, and I'm so glad I was able to interview him recently, Patrick Wood, this is probably the last one, you saw us the latest one. And he's, I would say, the leading scholar, I don't know if he likes to be called a scholar, but he's certainly the leading researcher of technocracy, he's been studying it since the 1970s, he really popularized, he put the group known as the Trilateral Commission in the main light and was subsequently cancelled and they had quite a rough time getting their books published and getting information out there. And he worked with a gentleman called DC Sudden, he's also written a lot of works, most notably he's exposing the secret society within Yale called the Skull and Bone Society, which traces its roots back to Germany and the Bavarian Illuminati, which is quite interesting. So yeah, they've done a lot of work exposing modern globalism and that certainly has been interesting to see how it plays into an environment which the Bible says is going to be actualized. So I'm not entirely sure Jesus would be an anarchist, I think he's a monarch, he's a monarchist. Doug Well, I mean, I don't want to misinterpret Nick Watsa either, but basically my understanding from his kind of underlying thesis was that, you know, the lessons of the Bible, if anything, would show that the, you know, anarchism is the righteous path. The state, you know, tax is essentially tax is theft, you know, the state is not an ethical actor and, you know, it's a cancer on society and that the more ethical path, the one that's more aligned with, you know, Christianity is anarchism and tools like Monero that would allow people to transact to appear. Sean Yeah, I probably will have to get an ask-a-non on the podcast to talk about anarchism because I think that I think it might be a healthy or an interesting discussion because I would have some disagreements with some of the anarchist presuppositions. Doug Yeah, you should definitely get Nick on, because he's very well studied on them. Obviously, Alaska is too, but Nick wrote a book about it. Yeah, I'll send you the link after. Sean I just want to say it. I'm not paying Alaska nod. I'm not sponsoring him I know he's this very highly of what I'm doing. I think I think he sees the vision and the potential of reaching Doug Genuine genuine when he likes something. He's just a genuine promoter. He's Sean sort of a shield for me a couple of times. I'm not paying up, but he's a great guy and he's a great ally and I enjoy chatting to him. Doug So then let go deeper though into your, I want to, you know, let me fully understand then. So what is your thesis with regards to the Bible, Christianity, and how it ties into the war that we're seeing here of technocracy versus the technologies that will hopefully save us? Like, you know, on a deeper level, what do you see the connections here being? Obviously, you could do a three hour podcast on that topic alone, that's what you've been doing, but kind of give us a little bit more of a summary. Sean Yeah, maybe the first thing is, and one reason why I created this Monero and Christianity series, I think the second one we did was on crypto-maximalism. And I want to stress that I don't believe that Monero is salvation. I want to make that clear that I don't... I think Monero is a great tool. I kind of associate it like the printing press had its involvement in the Protestant Reformation. It was something, a tool that was leveraged to further righteousness and to bring change and decentralize communications within Europe at the time. So I liken it to something like that. I want to be very careful of thinking that I'm not a humanist. I don't believe... I kind of reject the Enlightenment ideals that humanity is the author and object of his own salvation. And he does this through his technology. I think the past 100 years has kind of thoroughly shown that humanism is a path that is quite destructive. And so in terms of Monero and Christianity, I see it as a useful tool to decentralize finance. When we're seeing an increasing, as you said, technocratic state, surveillance state, which is going to track and surveil everyone, Revelation 13 clearly says that it's coming a global leader and he will require everyone to receive a mark of allegiance that you cannot buy or sell without this mark, the mark of the beast. If anyone knows anything of the Bible, it's 666 and the mark of the beast. Now, what's really interesting is that one of the problems with CBDCs currently is that they can't be used offline. And I recently looked at the central bank, the European Central Bank, and they're in talks now with manufacturers to try and create hardware that integrates into phones so they can use the CBDC offline. So this is a document, it's called The Progress on the Preparation Phase of the Digital Euro. And section 4.2 says an offline digital euro. So I'm going to quote it here, so the quote is, the secure element is a specialized hardware chip that enables offline digital euro transactions to be carried out directly to users' mobile devices. So if they can somehow synthesize a CBDC with actual hardware, so that can be used offline, well, you're not too far then from having some type of implant or chip or something, some technological thing in your forehead or in your hand. I kind of see this as the next step towards this future reality. So this is the same problem with Monero, by the way. I think one of the weaknesses, and it's an objection you have to overcome if you want to see a broader adoption, is what do you do if you don't have internet? What do you do if you don't have a mobile phone? And that's a very valid objection that I think people who want to spread Monero with why the oranges need to have an answer for. My answer that I've been exploring, something I want to investigate more in, is this. This is a one ounce silver coin from the Royal Mint in the UK. So it is a legal tender. It can be used to pay fines, you can use it in court. You can't, businesses aren't obligated to accept it, but I could pay for goods and services. Sean But I find this is a good use of the same principles as Monero, but in a way that's offline. Because recently here, we had a bunch of storms and there was people who lost internet and electricity for two weeks, because the trees fell on power lines. There was a bit of chaos. If you only had a digital solution for transactions, you'd be kind of screwed. Not that entire country was knocked out, but locally it was kind of difficult. You'd have to drive somewhere or plug your phone in and charge it and try and connect to the internet. Well, if you have a solution like Monero, also with silver, I think you could have a pretty robust alternative economic system. I think the other advantage of silver is that it's shiny. It has the benefit of innately appearing valuable. And I've actually found this to be a very good conversation start. I just whip it out and show people. Because it's from the Royal Mint, it's got all the etchings of officialdom. People are very willing to have a discussion about money after the point where I want you to show them this trinket. They're like, ooh, this is cool. And then you can start talking about the value. Doug So I use goldbacks for, that's my opener a lot too, yeah. Cause that's like, what is that? Like there's gold in there? And then yeah, that's a good way to lead the conversation. But go ahead and continue. Yeah. Sean to go back, but goldbacks, I think they're more prevalent in America than they are here in Europe. And the Royal Mint is the oldest mint in the world. It's over a thousand years old, and it's legal British tender. So here in the UK, I think it's the great, great alternative to show people and discuss these things. So I don't know if you mentioned, but I had in one of the episodes with Patrick Wood, I did talk about the use of silver and gold. And according to the Bible, biblical prophecy, it still holds value until the end of the days. And in fact, it actually says this coming global leader is going to seize all the gold and silver. And then when it talks about Christ's apocalypse, his return, it says that people run into underground bunkers and will throw their gold and silver to the bath. They'll discard their gold and silver. So it implies that we might be moving towards some type of gold and silver standard again within this technological framework, which I find quite interesting. And then the other part is that it also mentions that the nations, when Christ returns and he reigns in Jerusalem, the nations will return and offer a gold and silver to him. So it's interesting, there's always like these parallels in scripture where you have evil versus good. So the man of sin really is a false Christ. He's an anti-Christ. He stands in the place of Christ and he will forcibly seize the gold and silver. And then this is contrast with Christ when he returns, the nations will willingly offer their gold and silver to him. It talks about the ships of Tarshish, which many believe is the UK, will bring their gold and silver to him. So I find that interesting that there's this sort of emphasis of gold and silver in the scriptures, at least. So it makes me keep an eye on it, if nothing else. Doug So, what is your idea with the coin? Obviously, it's a good opener, it's a good starter talking about sound money, getting people thinking about it, and then that can lead to conversations about Bitcoin and Monero. But do you have some kind of deeper marketing idea there with regards to that? Sean So this is about 30 pounds, which I suppose is about $40 in terms of value. Which is great, but what if I wanted to buy something for 10 pounds? How do we split the difference? Well, now I get to introduce them to something like this, and give them one of these cards. And this is just a card, a physical card with a QR code that takes them to a setup guide on how to set up Monero. So you can then talk about the use of silver, and then, oh yeah, we can split differences with a private cryptocurrency, which is a sense you could say digital silver, and we can split differences using Monero. So we can have this Monero silver hybrid that can be quite robust, because you have all the benefits of Monero being easy transactions, international payments, and then all the benefits of onboarding new people with silver, because it's just innately valuable to people, and it's an easier step forward. So that's something I'm thinking of and working off. One of my initiatives has been to create these little cards, and I think it's important, because you kind of need conversation starters, you just hand these out, and you can pick these up on XMOS Bazaar. In fact, I just had someone recently, because there's also a listing where you can purchase the print files. And someone just told me yesterday that they've printed a thousand of these cards that they're going to be handing out. So people are using them and taking access of them. I also have one here about crypto tips. So this is if you go to anywhere, this is really, it's about relationships for us. If you frequent a coffee shop and you can't see buying coffee, well, then you could hand them one of these. Say, hey, let me tip you in cryptocurrency, and then you could start a conversation. So that was that intention of this. And then most recently is this resource surveillance one, which I have, which we could get into in a section, but it's, again, similar idea that you can hand this to someone and have a conversation about surveillance, and then it introduces them into Monero, but privacy tech broadly. And I think that the value of printed media is that you kind of obfuscate any type of algorithmic chicanery, so to speak, it's a way to get people to directly go somewhere and taking a very valuable action. So I do see the rise of printed material once again, because the internet has become very difficult to traverse and as a means of communicating a message and idea, I think face to face physical interaction with printed media might be a great way to actually get people to start thinking about Monero. Doug Yeah, we made cards. I made cards for the same reasoning. Tipping is the best way to really onboard people to Monero because you're not asking them to take it in place of something. You're saying, I have this additional gift I want to give you. For anybody who tries to actually do it, you realize cards are quite handy because if you're at a restaurant or something and you're trying to talk to a waiter or a waitress and you only have so much time with them, they come to your table, they're taken to orders, you're trying to throw in a conversation perhaps. At the end of this, I want to tip you. Are you into crypto? I want to give you a Monero tip. It's nice to have a card they could go look at while they go in the back room, maybe scan it, download the wallet, right? Cake wallet over Naruju, whatever, and they're ready to accept their tip by the end of the meal. So is that basically what you're thinking is there with those cards? Sean Yes, exactly that. As a conversation starter, that's the way to move forward. In terms of marketing Monero, you have to think of what problem or what solution does Monero offer. And there's really two. It's inflation-resistant, or you could say it's anti-usory, so it's better money. In order to communicate that, people really have to understand the problems with the financial system. That's a real hurdle to get over, because that's just the rabbit hole to get into that. So I actually find that way very difficult to do that way. And then the second thing, which I think is far, and I've seen this in terms of people taking action, and it's far easier to get people interested in Monero through this next one, is the rise of surveillance. I think a lot of people know that we're being spied on. They have the general sense that it's getting worse. I think they're uncomfortable about it, and they don't know what to do. So tapping into people's fear of surveillance, or their displeasure of surveillance, is also a great way to introduce Monero to people. In fact, that's exactly what I've seen by running this advertising campaign, is that the messaging that people have responded most to has been that, which surrounds... Doug surveillance. We got Lucifer hanging out with us today and as we're talking about Monero Christianity, another way is to offer the business owner to pay a little bit more if you let them pay Monero. And then he says, do you actually believe this Drosda with all due respect to this Christian? I think he's talking about I guess the you know what you were talking about in Sean my job, I'm not in the business of trying to convince anyone. So the reason I created the Monero Christianity lectures was not for the Monero community, it was for Christians. And any relevance it would have to the Monero community is it provides a useful tool if they know Christians. They can pass it on to Christians and try to get them to investigate Monero. I'm not one of these Christians who believes that people find God. And you often hear this, it's like, oh, I found Jesus and Jesus finds you. I'm not in the business of trying to save souls or the business of trying to change anyone's mind. That's not what I'm trying to do here. Doug I know we're jumping all over the place here, but I do want to stay more on the Christian topic and then we can move back to the marketing stuff. Sure. I definitely do want to talk about that marketing campaign you did to try to pull people in to Monero on how you see expanding that. But further along the lines of these ideas of what the Bible might be predicting. We're seeing these predictions, right? The last thing, they'll come, they'll take away the gold, we'll have the mark of the beast. Are we starting to see anything? Has anything come to fruition in terms of predictions that are heading in this area as opposed to things that seem like they're on the precipice of coming? Sean So, one thing that I'd say is important is that Jesus clearly said that no one knows the day or the hour of his return apart from his Father in heaven, and now that he is glorified, he too knows the day and the hour. But this also applies to the adversary, which is in Christianity, it's Satan. Satan is a physical, or not physical, but he's a spiritual entity, a being who does not have all knowledge. So, this is why I believe throughout human history, you've always seen, I would call it, and many Christians would call it, the spirit of Antichrist, it's the spirit of Tolitarianism, it's this anti-Christian, anti-Christ spirit that rises up throughout centuries. So, in the times of the Reformers, it clearly was manifested in the Roman Catholic Church, and in fact, if you look at the parliamentary debates of the 1600s, they're calling continental Europe the land of the Antichrist. I mean, for they're using this very theologically accelerated language, it's because they believed that they were fighting the same spirit. I think it's the same spirit that animated Hitler, animated Stalin, it's something transcendent that is possessing the minds of these men, and shaping their characters. I think it was the same spirit behind Napoleon. I think it's interesting that Napoleon made the same, he did the same mistakes, the same moves as Hitler, and that's trying to expand this empire. And I think ultimately it's anti-human, it's anti-life, it's destructive in its nature. One thing that really struck me about looking more into Nazi Germany and their Blitzkrieg tactics, is that it wasn't their intention to dominate the world and subjugate the peoples, it was their goal to dominate the world and eliminate the peoples. So this is why their military tactics are so aggressive, like Blitzkrieg was not about assiminating nations into German culture, it was to dominate them as quickly as possible, enslave them, and then start executing and eliminating people who they believed were not genetically viable. So yeah, I think you kind of see this pervading ideology popping up, and I think it's no matter what period of history Christians find themselves to be and they must resist this. So whether it happens in our lifetime or happens later, I think eventually we'll coalesce and come to pass. One idea about biblical prophecy, it's more of an element where when it's happening you're able to see the signs, rather than it being predictive, and such a time this will happen. I think there's almost a difference in presupposition when it comes to understanding prophecy, there's a Greek understanding, which is prophecy and fulfillment, that's kind of a Greek. But a Hebrew understanding of prophecy is pattern. There's this sort of overwhelming pattern that kind of becomes clearer and clearer and clearer until it's ultimately fulfilled. And you see this throughout the Bible, if anyone who's done any type of systematic study of the scriptures, there's patterns in the scripture. Sean So an example of this would be like Joseph, for example. Joseph is a picture of Jesus Christ because he is betrayed by his brothers, Jesus was betrayed by his own, he was then enslaved in Egypt. And Jesus died, and then what happens to Joseph? He then ascends to the highest position in Egypt, and Jesus Christ is going to return as king of the world. So that's just one example out of many in the Bible, but there's this sort of overriding pattern in Christian theology that you see happen over time. So it's going to become clearer and clearer and clearer. The scriptures even say that evil men and imposters will wax worse and worse. So I think you are going to see the manifestations of the spirit become increasingly aggressive. And I think in our day and age, it's manifesting itself in the ideology of globalism and technocracy. I think that that's where we're seeing it in our day and age. So I look at the reformers and they were fighting the Roman Catholic Church, and they had the printing press. In my day, we have the globalists and we have something like Monero and these other tools we can use in encrypted communications in order to decentralize communication and to further righteousness on the earth. Doug Are there any predictions or things that were said in the Bible that talk about the solutions? Obviously, it talks about the things we have to watch out for, right? The mark of the beast, the one of it. Is there anything you're talking about? What will save us? What will be, obviously, other than devoting your life to Christianity and following the word of Jesus? Is there talk of things that are alluding to something like Monero or something that will save us, things that we need to look for? Are there any suggestions made in the Bible? Sean There's one passage in Daniel 11 that says that those who know their God will carry out great exploits. So it's not particularly specific, but it does sort of demonstrate that those who understand God's covenant, they know their God. Jesus also says that the man of sin will do great signs and lying wonders that would deceive the world, and even the elect, or even Christians, if so possible. So it does highlight this age of deception, where there'll be a lot of psyops and people have to be very discerning, and there's sort of an element where this is not going to impact Christians. Christians will be able to see through this very clearly, whilst I think largely the world—and you kind of see this with A.I., I think Christians are very skeptical of the powers of A.I. I think there's many people who kind of see A.I. as the step to the human evolution, and it's going to turn into a God, and we'd better start being prepared to worship it, which, again, harkens back to Revelation 13, because you see there's this false prophet who commands that all the nations—he animates basically this image. You can go read it, Revelation 13, sort of paraphrasing here, but essentially he animates this image of the beast, which the beast is just a code for this man of sin, and anyone who doesn't worship this image is put to death, so that's certainly interesting. One thing I'd say about the book of Revelation is that when you understand the Bible as a means of signals intelligence, in the Christian idea, it is a message by God given to humanity through men over a vast period of time. So, the Bible consists of 66 books by 40 different authors over, I think, about 3,000 years, which has been written, but there's sort of the synthesis of a message, and there's this continuity within it, which Christians would argue has been inspired by God. It's a transcendent element to this, so when you get to the book of Revelation, I think many people have mixed ideas about it, because it's actually a book written in code, and people like to think it's an allegory, and there are things which are allegorical, but it's largely written in code, and when you understand the code words, and the code words are found in all the other places of the Bible. So, for example, I think it's Revelation 10 or 11, and it talks about a beast with seven heads and ten horns. Well, that's all described in Daniel chapter 7, where Daniel sees a very similar vision, and those codes are transcribed, they're decoded. There's an angel who says, okay, well, the seven heads are seven kingdoms, and the seven horns are seven kings. So, okay, now I know whenever I see this type of language, I know that heads represent kingdoms, and that horns represent kings, so that's just one example of how understanding something in an earlier part of the Bible helps you transcode a symbol or a code in the book of Revelation. Doug And I do, and maybe I missed this in watching last night, I do feel like you brought up in your last talk, an excerpt from the Bible that maybe suggests like this idea of protecting our data encryption, like, I wish I could pull it up, you had brought up one quote to your guest, where it seemed to be suggesting that, you know, that encryption exists as a tool that will save us. I know I'm not really referencing it while you don't want to hear what I'm talking about. Sean right to do with the word crypto. And the New Testament is written in Koine Greek, which is just based in the Middle East. Doug But you there's something I was talking about like height hiding data or like hiding hiding Off to go back in there. Well, there's Sean This psalm 119 says, your word I have hidden in my heart that I'm absent against you. And the word for hid is kryptos, which is encryption. So the word kryptos is throughout the Bible. Well, I think maybe the most notable in terms of this discussion, is something I've had a chat with Alaska on about. And it's to do with Matthew 25, where Matthew 24 is Jesus talking to his disciples about what the world will look like before he returns. And in Matthew 25, he sort of summarizes all of this with parables stories. And he gives one where he talks about a king who gives talents, and talents is a huge sum of money to be the equivalent of millions in our currency. And he gives 10 talents to someone, or five talents, sorry. And that person gives five talents. He goes and makes a return to five talents. He's a well done, good and faithful servant into the joy of your master. There's one who's given, I think it's two talents, and he makes four. He makes a return as well. And then there's one person who hides it in the ground and doesn't do anything with it. And the word in Greek is kryptos. He encrypts his money, he encrypts it in the ground. He doesn't do anything with it. He just sits on it, and then he returns it to the king. And he says something to the effect of, oh, here's what is yours. I knew you to be a steer and a hard man. And the king rebukes him and says, well, if you thought I was hard enough steer, you know, reaping where others have sown, basically, if you thought I was a thief, why didn't you give my money to the bankers so that when I returned, I could get it at usury? He condemns this man or this practice. And suddenly, keep in mind, any time you see Jesus get physically violent in the New Testament, is when he's carrying out the temple and he's casting out the money changers, which were people who were conducting usury. So I find it interesting that Jesus, then, he has the same language for this particular person who's involved in usury. And in our talk with Alaskanon, we spoke about how that kind of correlates to the idea of cryptocurrency, people holding onto cryptocurrency, not actually using it, to further anything in the actual market. They just hold onto it and hope that the value goes up. And this is kind of similar to Matthew 25 with this gentleman who had encrypted currency. He didn't do anything with it. But we do a deeper dive into these topics in that podcast series. So I'm just kind of, from my own memory, trying to piece it all together. But we do cover a large range of topics in that series. Doug Yeah, I highly recommend people go go watch that series for a deeper dive into these concepts. So what, you know, obviously, I think one of the things you would receive pushback on if you were to talk to a Christian that maybe really doesn't know much about crypto, we start talking about these ideas, and they all, you know, most people know the Mark of the Beast and that concept. How do you not bundle Monero into that, right? I think anybody who's perhaps a normie in terms of crypto, but studies the Bible, you go and you pitch them Monero to be like, well, isn't that the Mark of the Beast, right? Like, I think they lump all of crypto and these concepts into that. In fact, they see this as potentially what could enslave us, this new technology, whether it's Bitcoin or something else, they just lump them all in. Like, why would Monero be any different, right? So I mean, how do you talk about those concepts to people that are concerned about perhaps Monero being the Mark of the Beast? Sean Yeah, I say it's decentralized, it's open source, and it focuses on privacy, so I think I usually get the term, well, what about it needs the internet? That's kind of more the objection I seem to get. And then I just explain, it's actually a way of resisting the surveillance state. So it's a tool that can be used to fight surveillance. And when people say, oh, you need internet, well, it's like, well, internet isn't going away. It's kind of like roads. Roads aren't going away, they're here to stay. In fact, the technocratic surveillance state needs the internet. So you're basically using the very tools that they need against them. So that's how I sort of present it to folks. But I do think that it's quite deliberate, the kind of the sentiment that there's nothing that can be done. This idea that, oh, they already have my data, privacy is important. And what I say to people in that context, when people say, they already have my data, there's nothing I can do. It's like saying, that's like, what if someone broke into your house? Do you just accept that they're in your house? You say, oh, hey, do you want a cup of tea? No, you kick them out of your house, and then you lock your door. And so that's the same approach with your data. Yes. Yeah, someone's in your house, you got to kick them out of your house and lock your door and secure your premises. And it's the same with your data. In fact, there's something I've been looking into that the British intelligence during World War Two, they had an operation called M-rooms, and M just stands up a microphone. And what they did was when they captured German prisoners of war, particularly German generals, they brought them to the German generals, they brought to a place called Trent Park. And instead of torturing them for intelligence information, they did the exact opposite, they pampered them. They brought them to a gentleman's club. They had a fake aristocrat who said that he was from a Scottish family. And they basically created this psy-op to get them very comfortable to confess things about the war that they could then record in these microphone rooms. But one thing that they did when they brought these people in is they shared with them all the information that they knew about them. And this was designed specifically to get them to think that, oh, they have all my information anyway, I have nothing to hide. And so it kind of got them into that mentality of like, oh, they really know everything about me. And when they were in that sort of environment, they were far more willing to give over their data, give over intelligence. So I find it's very interesting. You kind of see the same technique being used today with people. They're like, oh, they already have all my data and they just give more data away. So there's an interesting correlation here between the tactics used by British intelligence in World War II and what we see happening today. Doug Yeah, a lot of people think it's a war that's already been lost, right? And they don't really see the downsides because it's abstract, right? Dystopia is an abstract thing. They're like, well, isn't technology good? It's giving me all these conveniences. I just doesn't feel like slavery to me. It feels great. You know, I get my Uber Eats and a click of a button. What's the problem? Sean And going back to this idea about Christians and their idea of Monero, I think, unfortunately, there's not agreement within Christian camps, particularly around eschatology or end times, so I think I might be a little bit more zealous in finding solutions because I hold the belief that Christians will go through what's known as the 70th week of Daniel or the Great Tribulation. For those of you who are interested, it's in Daniel chapter 9 where this is discussed, and in Matthew 24 as well, Jesus speaks about it. But it's basically the last period of human history before Christ returns that is going to see an increase in Christian persecution. A lot of people believe that there's going to be a rescuing of Christians before that time, so I think a lot of people aren't really concerned about solutions because they kind of basically have, I call it Star Trek theology. They think that God's going to beam them up, Scotty, and that they're going to escape all of this, so they don't need to think of solutions. Whilst I'm of the opinion, because of my reading of Matthew 24, which clearly puts the harpazzo, what's commonly known as the rapture, just before Jesus' return near the end of the tribulation, so I'm more in the mindset of we need to create systems that resist this whilst we are in the tribulation. While I think many Christians who would hold similar ideas end times to me, I think they think that they're just going to be rescued, and I think that's quite unfortunate. Doug Yeah. And like I said, I mean, I've talked to people, right, that are pretty hardcore Christian and you talk about these things. And like I said, when I bring up crypto, they get concerned. They don't see it as a solution. They see it as potentially the problem, right? They lump it all in with CBDCs and everything else. They just see it as technology bad. So I think that's a hard thing. Any suggestions there? You touched on it a little bit, but like how to talk to somebody in that regard, right? Obviously, we already have the internet. Do you use the internet? Internet's here to stay. But separating crypto and in particular, Monero from technologies in general, right? Because if we're out here saying, all this technology is so bad, it's going to put us into a technocratic dystopia. But there's this one technology that isn't bad. It's a little bit like, hmm, okay. So it's a difficult conversation to have. It's, I don't know, what are your thoughts? Sean Well, I'd say for people who know people of that kind of ilk, then sending them that Monero Christianity series that we've done is probably one of the best things you can do. But if you're just having a conversation to them, I'll just remind them that Christianity isn't anti-technology. It's anti-tyranny, and technology is a tool. And Christians throughout history have used technology. You even think of manuscripts. The words of Christ were written down. This was the equivalent of a communications channel. The highest form of communications channel of their time in terms of technological sophistication of, you know, parchments and writing styles and documentation. And you see this in the Reformation when the printing press leveraged in order to, you know, spread the message. And even the term propaganda has its roots in the Protestant Reformation. The word propaganda and Eric Bernays highlights this in his book, Propaganda, and he links it to the the Counter-Reformation movement. So the Pope would propagate literature that would contradict the Reformers. And this is where we get the word propaganda from, because he would propagate this literature in Europe that was trying to refute what the Reformers were pointing to and trying to bring people back to the Bible as being the standard of the authority, not the opinions of men. Doug I was just looking at, uh, some of the, some of the comments here. Um, I hate to say it, but you're totally on point about XMR Bazaar. I've been looking for an hour. It's shit. Okay. I guess the guy's just trolling. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what you guys want. There's, I think, I think XMR bazaars do pretty well. Sean make his editor, you know, there's, there's, I think there's some Oliver Doug still in early days. Sean Well, there's a lot of people in the size that were criticized and it's easier to criticize than to actually, you know, do something. Well, why don't you like about it, make it better, you know, upload your own listing and you know, it's easier to criticize. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah do something do something. I think XMR is fantastic. We have a lot of improvements coming down the pipe We're getting you know The the the real value to any of these things is getting people to use it right getting the network effect That's you know, a platform is platform. You got to get people on there getting using it So yeah, we could we could we could move into that discussion a little bit in terms of things you're doing with marketing How how has the marketing campaign been going that you've been doing where you're just trying to Generally put the word out there put ads out there and bring people into the Monero sphere Sean For those of you who don't know, there's a landing page. If you go to resist.Moneromaster.com, it will direct you to this landing page where it's called resist surveillance and you submit your email. And once you submit your email, you'll be put into a seven week course. So each week you'll get an email that covers a different kind of problem and then it'll give you a solution within privacy tech. The first solution is Monero. It's talking about the dangers of debanking, of censorship and how there's now a digital way to have transactions with people without any middlemen in that. So alongside that, the whole process is automated as well. So it's kind of designed to filter people out who aren't engaging. So if someone just signs up and then forgets about it, they will get a couple of emails and then it'll kind of move them to like an active group. About people who are engaged, they will continue to go through the course and at the end they'll get to join the community space. And that's what I'm really looking forward to, seeing how many people are about to join their community space because that's going to really signal to me that these people are already dedicated. They've just gone through seven weeks of emails. And if they join that space, I know that they're going to be pretty on board with these types of things. And then alongside that, I'm running a meta ad campaign. So this would be Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. And this is designed to bring people to that page. The advantages of meta is that I can have very specific targeting. So I can target people who have interest in dystopian fiction, which we've seen a lot. Doug What is the page that you're trying to bring them to? What is the URL? Sean resist.mineramaster.com I can put it here in the chat here. Doug I'll see if I can bring it up, but go ahead, keep going. Sean So using Facebook ads, I'm really able to sort of segment and target individuals and reach a lot of people. And, um, so that that's been very interesting. So I just opened it up to the community. It's like, this is what I'm doing myself. If you want to reach more people with Monero privacy tech, uh, you know, any, any money you give in Monero to this project, um, I'll just throw into the advertising campaign here. It's all set up if you're interested. And it just helps me reach more people outside my own, um, my own means of kind of throwing money. Doug Yeah. No, I love that, right? You're not saying donate to some theoretical thing that I might try to do. You already got it up and running. And you say you just need some more funds to spread it further and any funds donated will 100% go towards ads that just pull in more people to resist surveillance, which I think is great, right? You're not pulling them into BuyMonero.com or Monero this, Monero that. You're pulling them into showing them what the problem is, right? And like you said, most people, maybe 9 out of 10 people have some kind of interest at this point in surveillance, right? Realizing that they are being surveilled, whether or not they ultimately care, right? We're saying some people don't, but a lot of people at this point do, they're waking up to it. So you're pulling them in on those grounds and then you're providing them kind of actionable lessons and things they can do to improve their privacy and resist surveillance. One of those things being obviously, I guess, learning about Monero and using Monero. Sean Yes, definitely. I think it's big here in the UK, we're starting to see facial recognition cameras be put into supermarkets and stores. So it's now happening everywhere. So I think a lot of people aren't happy with this, they're face being scanned. We've also seen groups like the Blade Runners, who've been shutting down these kind of 50 minute city cameras, which kind of automatically find people if they drive into areas in London. So there's a kind of grassroots growing sort of resistance towards surveillance tech. So tapping to that I think is also useful culturally here in the UK. And it's been useful in that regard. Doug Very cool, Matt. So what kind of numbers are you getting? So you do these ads. What kind of click rate? Sean If you'd like me to share my screen, that'd be useful. Doug Why you bring that up? I do see Flatter at the same look I'm willing to give you a shot He's referring to XMR bazaar, but I'm saying a lot of those sellers look like shady like shady backyard things I'm not saying I won't give it a shout. Okay, but yeah, I mean, you know, that's that's the nature of it, right? So it's very permissionless. So we're balancing making it as Permissionless as possible where anybody can go on and post anything. It's free to post the listing We want zero barriers to entry a true free and open market obviously for the legal goods and services but we really don't want any barriers and with that comes a bunch of a bunch of crap and having to weed out the scams and that's really where the value of XMR bazaar comes in is is Figuring out how to create a platform that effectively weeds out the scams and weeds out the shit And I think we're I think we're doing a good job with it actually flat earth. If you take a look You'll you'll you know do some searching you'll see that there are some good products and services on there to be had And we're adding features that will hopefully effectively get rid of 99% of the scams We're adding a bonding system so that sellers can essentially purchase a bond Let's say for one Monero, which then becomes insurance to the buyer So if you see a post on there somebody's selling Cheese in Italy Parmesan cheese I give this example because there's somebody out there selling Parmesan cheese for For Monero and I purchased I may or may not have purchased it off of him and I had a trust what I he didn't have Any reviews yet? I had a trust when I sent him the Monero that he would send me the Parmesan cheese But to eliminate that initial leap of faith in the future somebody like that a new vendor will be able to buy a bond And me as a buyer would see that he's bonded So I would know at the very least if he doesn't send the cheese I would get my money back right if I sent him a hundred dollars in Monero And he never sent the cheese I would get my hundred dollars in Monero back from the bond and it eliminates having to go through escrow because we have escrow Built into it, but it's a little cumbersome to do escrow in a very user friendly way And we're hoping the bonding feature will eliminate most scams So if you're on there and you're a scammer, you're probably not going to buy the bond And so if you see people that are on there and they're selling and it looks sketchy They don't have a bond. Well now you've kind of like filtered through all the scams But without going too far down that that path Sean If I could speak into that a little bit because I bought their shirt on XMR Bazaar and Doug Oh, cool. Yeah. Wait, let me see. Can you move up a little? Oh, yes. Yes. I've seen that. That's the wrestler selling that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And Sean I'm in a privileged position on the platform now because I have quite a lot of reviews. I have a lot of social proof and a lot of leverage that I can do, so I can now set my own terms. What I've been doing is I want to help new people get their first trade. I set the conditions. For example, I think I spent the majority of January and February living off Monero because 3X amount of bazaar is paying off utilities and things. Let's say I've got a bill coming on my electricity bill, I submit a job request, and then I have conditions. I say, okay, well, if I've never worked with you, if you don't have any reviews, I want payment up front, so you pay my bill and then I'll pay you the Monero, otherwise we're not doing business. Then, if you do have reviews, I'll pay 50%, or I just set the terms myself. It's a very safe way for me because I take no risk, and all they have to do is look at all my reviews. They can see that I'm faithful, now I'm able to pay, I've got all these five-star reviews saying, yep, no problem, no problem, no problem. For them trusting me, it's not really an issue, it's not really my issue trusting them. It's a great way to get the first trade for them. There are ways that you can do this, you just have to maybe take a bit more initiative because I've been able to buy clothing, I've been able to pay bills, I've been able to buy food, I've been able to buy gifts for people, so on and so forth, all through XMR Bazaar, and it's because you can use proxy shoppers. Even if you can't find gift cards, you can just say, hey, place an order on this website, here's the details, and I've developed relationships, I've not got my grocery shopping person, I've got my electricity bill shopping person, and I'm able to split these all out. It's really about building community, at the end of the day, that's all it's about. Doug Right. And once you have these relationships, they don't go away. So it's not like you're starting from scratch every time, right? Like I may or may not have a guy that buys me pizza on demand, right? When I want to order a pie for Monero, but it's not every time I want to do that, I go on XMR Bazaar and create a new listing. I already have my Monero pizza guy, right? And he's now communicating through him through Signal. We're not even on XMR Bazaar communicating, right? You might find your proxy shopper. It's not every time you want to go buy something with Monero, you got to put a new post up, you know, have the guy that you trust that can go and buy stuff for you on Amazon, right? That connection's been made. So yeah, people need to realize that that's really the magic of XMR Bazaar. It's building these connections, using the platform as a tool to find the people that you need that will provide these services up. I just lost them. He dropped off. He'll come back on. And then once you have those connections, you can continue to use them throughout. And I'll have to keep talking here because we lost them. Oh, here we go. Bring Sean back on. But yeah, we're balancing that against making it as permissionless as possible. So you're going to see some garbage on there, just like you see on Craig's list, but we really do want to make it as accessible as possible. We don't want any barriers. We don't want any friction in the economy, so to speak. It's why there's no fees. There's no fees to list. So you could essentially, you could have no money. You don't have a penny to your name, but you're somehow able to get on to XMRbazaar.com and start earning Monero. You could put up your first listing. People may not trust you right away, but you could slowly earn trust by starting small, writing comments on things, building up your profile. Offering, doing a successful trade. And you could effectively start from zero with no money in your pocket. So you didn't need money to get started, to pay for a listing. We're not, you're not losing any money on the transactions. The platform isn't taking any money and you're slowly building up your profile and earning Monero at that point. KYC free, which is, is the dream. Uh, it looks like Sean is having some technical issues. Can you hear me? Yes, I hear you. I do. Still on my. Up. Sean things kind of crashed. So. Doug Okay. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to try to give it a fix, I'll play, I'll play a little commercial in the, in the interim. Go ahead and go ahead and do that. I'm going to go and play a quick ad guys while we wait for Sean to fix this tech. Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug All right, we still don't have Sean. But yeah, guys, do check out Cretudus Coffee. Still going strong. We'll have some news on that soon. Currently get the coffee now from Colombia. I got to update that commercial. It's no longer coming from Guatemala. But the guy who's been shipping us the coffee from Colombia, we're going to make a short video about the farm itself. And we're going to show the workers on the farm getting their Monero tips. And so Cretudus Coffee is full speed ahead. If you're a coffee drinker, we're here, we're talking about opting out using Monero. If you're somebody that drinks coffee every day, what better way to start opting out than buying your coffee directly? With Monero, you can do it at Cretudus. The beans are roasted on demand. We get them shipped up from Columbia Green. And we have somebody who's been doing this for years now in the Monero community. He has his own roaster. Sometimes if he gets a larger order, he'll go to somebody who has a larger roaster and he can roast a lot at once. But he has a little mini roaster and he roasted on demand and ships out the coffee and it's fantastic. And you can send tips, Monero tips, and they go directly to the workers on the farm. And we'll be having updates on that soon. Actually, we're going to be doing a video of the farm in Columbia. So guys, check that out. Looks like Sean is back up and running here. We have 250 live viewers. Guys, like and share, retweet. We don't normally do these weekday mornings. So we have a little bit of a different audience, which is great. Maybe we get some new viewers here, find some new, some new noobs stumbling upon Monero, learning about Monero for the first time. Please help us get the word out by liking and sharing. I mean, a lot of what we're talking about here today is growing the Monero economy. And Monero is very grassroots at the end of the day, right? We're talking about marketing, but Sean doesn't work for Monero Corp. There is no Monero Corp. There is no marketing department for Monero. He's doing this zone fruition. Nobody told him to do it. He's not getting paid to do it. He's not on the payroll. He's an entrepreneur, much like myself with XMR Bazaar. And he's starting it away where he's taking risks. So do him a solid. If you want to help things out, help Sean out. He's done the hard work of putting together this marketing campaign. It looks like it's working pretty effectively. He's going to show us some of the numbers here. But he's saying if you donate to him, he'll put all the donations directly towards just increasing the marketing campaign and getting more people to his website, to his funnel, that basically funnels them into Monero. So go ahead, Sean. Are you able to pull it up? Sean I would say that if you go to ads, ads.mineramassa.com, that redirects to the listing I have on XMR Bazaar. So you can actually give to this campaign on XMR Bazaar, and it also updates to Kuno because it's all interconnected. So if you want to support this, you can do an XMR Bazaar. It's also a great way to get your first review. And if you know, you mentioned of kind of doing stuff outside of XMR Bazaar, I didn't like doing that because I like giving reviews and helping people kind of build. Yes. Doug That is ideal, that is ideal. Sean But yeah, I will share my screen, I can show folks of how this has began so far. Doug We got some more more XMR bizarre related comments here organic pasta and organic tins of diced tomatoes Yeah, you can sell anything on XMR bizarre guys. I think things like that Would be great additions Because those are things that are easily to ship and send did we lose Sean again at the east at the east froze Maybe he's having issues with bringing things up on stage I'll pay a Lucifer saying I'll pay a little extra to support XMR bizarre in the Monero economy. I think he's referring to having things shipped Yeah, I mean it, you know, if you got to pay a little bit more for for product You got to pay for shipping realize it's going into the Monero economy. So you're doing a positive there but I Think I think you you stand to get a lot of deals on XMR bizarre. Actually you end up maybe You know paying less in some instances or paying the same but getting better products Like for example, I've been getting soap off of XMR bizarre and it's it's the best soap I've ever used, you know It's not some created by some big mega Corp that adds extra chemicals to it This is tallow tallow based soap just tallow and a couple of other simple ingredients all natural stuff and Purchase with Monero, I mean What better way to get your day started than using a a Monero purchase bar of? tallow-based soap I'm trying to hold things down as you get booted off over here. I'm sorry They it's yeah, if you don't want it if you don't want to bring up the screen because you think that's what's causing issues No, no worries. No, we're not Sean I don't know about you, but I use the Adobe. There's no reason why Windows right now is because I use the Adobe suite and I had it open on the background and it was just hogging all the memory, so it kept on crashing. I've shut that down now, but yeah, it's the one software that's got worse over time. Are you able to see my screen? Doug Uh, I got it up right now. Here we go. Boom. Sean Okay, cool. So this is the sort of back end of the kind of professional area of running a meta ad campaigns. So as you can see here, the ad campaign was started on the 4th of February. And it says up to the state, which is about a month and it's spent about, this is the equivalent of about $500. So this has been the spend and we have different targeting, uh, uh, sections up here, as you can see, I have things turned off and turned on. Currently I have dystopian fiction with VPNs targeting Oceania. And this is really just the Anglo nations. So this would be Australian, New Zealand, the U S Ireland, Canada, uh, the UK. So what kind of English speaking nations and then East Asians would become more like continental Europe and then everywhere else I have this Eurasia. I kind of intentionally use the 1984 descriptions of the lands, but we've, we've tried different things here. We've done, you know, privacy in Firefox. I started off with, and you can see the kind of cost per the tier of these now lead as an email capture. So when someone signs up, that's what's, what's sort of showing this here. This is the click-through rates. Now the, all these click-through rates are very high. So our industry standard, we'd, we'd have about 2%. So when you start seeing 4%, uh, this is nearly a 5% click-through rate. And you know, 3%, it kind of signals to me that people are really interested in this, in this topic. Uh, particularly with a very low CPM. So you can see this as the cost per 1000 of pressure is basically how much meta is charging, uh, to show the ads. If the ads aren't being received, well, you'll have a higher CPM. Um, or if your audience is very narrow, but this is a very broad targeting targeting section. So seeing this low CPM with a high click-through rate, that signals to me that people are actually genuinely interested in, and then. Doug What is a decent click-through rate for people that aren't in marketing? Sean percent. Okay. So two percent would be the benchmark industry standard. So when we're seeing we're seeing basically everything above the industry benchmarks. Doug and why and such a large target you said I'm surprised you you want that route so you're basically you're not you're not zeroing in on you know just males between the age of whatever 25 and 35 or something like but what's your target Sean Yeah, it might. There's an element where meta adds is almost like a ship that you kind of just steer and they kind of the wind then takes it up. So as you can see here, it has been targeting mostly men just automatically because that is just the demographic that it's worked well on. Because it's not targeting women, I could duplicate this and then exclude men just to force it to target women. So that's actually something that might be worth considering. Doug But women don't care about Sir Val, that's part of the problem, they're the ones leading us into it guys. Sean Well, there's some useful information you can glean from this. Oh, thanks, ladies. That being one, so maybe that need to have a maybe different messaging focus towards women, and so that's something I could dig into. This is still all early days, so I'm still kind of gathering information of what is and what isn't working. And I do have the focus on English speaking areas, simply because the final life setup is all in English. All the emails are in English. They kind of are using historical examples already around the UK. So there has been someone who has offered to sponsor a campaign for Spanish speakers at, I think, £200 a month. And we were kind of discussing that. The issue is that that might be something better that the Monero community heads up. So if there's Spanish speakers listening and you think you want to kind of implement something like this for the Spanish speakers, then I'd be more than happy to help. But I don't think it's something I can lead because I'm not a Spanish speaker. And part of this system is building a community. And if I can't speak to the people, then it's not going to really work. So if there are Spanish speakers you want to target, particularly South America, I'm more than happy to help with that. But I think it needs to kind of be led by Spanish speakers, so to speak. So just letting people know that there are people willing to spend and help reach the Spanish speaking areas. But right now this is kind of just focused on English speaking countries. Doug So you're getting like, let's say 3%, sometimes even 4% of people that click through, and then out of those, what percent are entering their email into the newsletter subscription? Sean So let me get, I can take that up here. The, uh, so here's, uh, the, uh, the breakdown between inactive and active. So as you can see, it's quite half of the people kind of get moved to the inactive. Now I can still email them and I'll just email them once a month and try to get them back into the inactive section. But there's a filtering process that happens here. Um, and so. Doug that those 4% numbers, that's just your click-through rate to the west side, or those? Click-through rate, yes. Okay. Sean And in terms of the conversion rate, all of the landing page itself is about 21%. Doug Okay, that's pretty good too right? Yeah Sean 10% would be our industry. So again, it's a very, very high conversion rate with the landing page. And in terms of the automation, because this is when people get into the automation, overall, it's about 40%, 30%, which is quite low. But again, this is people who are inactive and who are not opening emails that they get filtered out. So when you actually sort of look at some of the individual emails themselves, so this is the first email, 42% is a very high open rate, but that's what you'd expect with the welcome email. Here's the first mission, it's 42%. Again, this one has reached 248 people. And then these are resends. So all these ones with lower, so it's slightly more than 42%. It might be something more like 45 or nearly 50% when you include all the resends into it. And then you have mission two, it does drop down, hit to 34. And then you have mission three, which is one of the lowest. I've been trying to play around with the subject line to increase this, but after mission three, they then get booted out if they're inactive. And so when you look at mission four, it's at 60%. So even though this is only 40% recipients, these are very, very engaged and active people. In fact, it's more than 60% because there's a recent here, which you've got a couple more. So once they get to this stage, they're pretty engaged with the whole system. And then there's this, as you can see, it's not finished yet because it hasn't gone through all the weeks, but there are other emails here. And then eventually just leads to come up among the email that I'll be adding to this. So I just want to... Doug And then from a Monero perspective, there's a whole lesson on Monero and teaching them about Monero and how to get started. Is that one? Yeah. Sean very first email, which would be this one. I try to use a historical example, so I talk about the Dutch resistance in Germany, and then I talk about the weaponization of banking. I have examples here of different kind of contemporary examples of the banking system being used against people, and they've got links at the very bottom here, references if they want to check them out. And then, again, I introduce Monero, and then there's the mission, which this takes them to a setup guide, which I've developed, which is designed to be very simple, step-by-step. Download a wallet, create your wallet, synchronize, and then you can send and receive, and then it kind of ends by sending them to places where they can use Monero. So I have an XML wizard here, and then coin cards and things. So I'd have to do kind of a deep... I think once this has been running a bit longer, I'll create a deeper report in terms of what's the percentage, like how much... when we invest so much money into the campaign, what's the actual conversion rate of people going to this page? Because I think this is kind of the key page people want to get to and see. And then, hopefully, I can also get some sponsors, because this is leading to Cake Wallet, and there are different businesses that I'm promoting to, which I just think are useful, but they might want to tap into this and promote their services. Because one of the problems is Meta has quite stringent advertising policies, but there's ways that... and because I use these systems a lot for my daily use, there are ways which you can sort of circumnavigate that, and the system I have developed here does exactly that. So if someone wants to promote their privacy tech, which they can't really do on Meta, they can kind of tap into this system. I've just had... Doug Terms of service doesn't even let you promote privacy tech out of it. Sean It doesn't allow you to promote cryptocurrency, so you have to register as a crypto financial service provider or something like that. And I'm in the process. I have a plan to talk with the developer who created XMR chat, and so I'm going to just suggest that I create a dedicated email about that, and we can highlight that. So it's a way to kind of spread the idea to streamers that they can use something like XMR chat, just plonking it into the automation system here that will eventually reach everyone who kind of signs up. Doug We've got a comment here. Guys, by the way, use xmrchat.com, guys, to send your chats. We prefer that. It allows you to send a Monero-based Super Chat. It's a way to use Monero. The chats come to us. The tips come to us directly. No fees are taken on that as well. You don't have to send a lot. It's just a way to use Monero. You can send $0.10, $0.05. Obviously, we get some generous tips as well, but it's just another use case way to use Monero. Agra says, most people that are concerned by Davos and totalitarianism don't understand the problem with the fiat system and have this belief that crypto are inherently bad. Yeah, that's what we were talking about earlier. Those that are concerned about mass surveillance and totalitarianism don't necessarily see crypto as a solution. Some of them even see it as part of the problem. They're worried. They think it's all CBDCs and cryptos, all the same thing, all crypto bad. One of the things we're trying to solve here is getting out the information. It really is an information war at the end of the day, is what a lot of this comes down to. You're skilled in marketing. It's extremely important for us to realize that at the end of the day, this is an information war and we need people like Sean, other people in the community to step up and try to figure out how we most effectively and efficiently get the word out to people that Monero is here as a solution. The tech already exists. Obviously, it's continuing to improve. We're doing things like getting full chain membership proofs. It's a never-ending battle in terms of the tech, but we're pretty damn good at this point. With full chain membership proofs, we're really solid. It works. It's super cheap to send. A fraction of a cent. Every transaction is the same as every other transaction on the blockchain. It's pretty much perfectly fungible. Now, it really becomes an issue of marketing, getting more people to use it. The way we do that is teaching them, teaching them about Monero, having them understand what the problem is and why Monero is the best tool for solving this problem. Sean, I think you're doing fantastic work, man. Can you put up something that shows people where they can donate? You said either on XMR Bizarre or on Kuno, people that do want to donate to the marketing campaign you're doing here. As Sean said, all donations made just go directly towards him boosting, putting out more ads. He drives more people into the Monero funnel. He's getting complete noobs. He's out here advertising on Meta. These aren't people that probably have not yet discovered Monero. Anybody that's into Monero probably isn't really hanging out on Meta, so he's bringing in the noobs, but he's bringing them in in a way where he's not saying, hey, come buy my Monero bags. He's saying, hey, guys, do you realize we're all being tracked and surveilled? Oh, you do? Okay. Well, here are some of the tools we have that will help you avoid that and will help society avoid technocracy. Doug So I think he's doing God's work with essentially saving people, saving people from technocracy, teaching them about the solutions and taking it to the noobs, which I think I honestly align with that in a very large way. I don't think there's some people in the Monero community that don't. I think even you perhaps, maybe even more, we had this discussion last time where I had to pose you the question of, is Monero something that we want to go mainstream? Do we want a lot of people using it? I think you were kind of more of the ilk of it's better to stay niche. We could get into that. But go ahead and show your, let me bring it up. Let's show the donation or the paid. So XMR Bazaar, and then so where would they go to send you funds essentially? Sean Well here, if you're logged in, you can just make the offer and then you can send as much as you like. I think the minimum amount to actually see any kind of results with the amount you give would be about 0.03 XMR, about $5. So you can just give as much as you like there. And then it's also connected, there's some information here, and that's really where you'd go. If you type in ads.mineramaster.com, it will direct you to this page, but you can find it on XMR Bazaar and that's probably the best place to go. You can also pick up some of the cards if you like, so I do have these printouts, the ones here. So if you are interested in handing these out, I can send those to you, you can buy them on XMR Bazaar as well. In terms of the ad reach, it's reached nearly 30,000 people at this stage. So that just kind of gives you the scope of how many people it's reached with this message. And if I could just go into the kind of messaging that's been working well. So things like talk about joining the cypherpunks here has done quite well. I do know that one of the best attacks that has been used has actually been a quote from the cypherpunk manifesto. Speaker 4 pull that up here quickly. I don't know why that is not showing me what I want to see. Doug And when you're doing these ads, I guess you're doing keywords that are catching people's attention or people that are on meta that, I don't know, may have read the book or have 1984 as their favorite book or something, right? I imagine those are the types of things that you're doing. Sean Yes, correct. It's interest-based, so if they have interest in dystopian fiction, whether it's Brave New World 1984 and VPNs. I figured if people have a VPN, then they're somewhat already in the privacy-minded space. You're trying to basically capture the lowest hanging fruit at this point. Understand the power of the internet through robust encryption, and then another one has been about privacy. I think overall, eventually, I'll be able to compile messaging. This helped me refine the messaging and what's working with normies and their perception. Definitely focusing on privacy and the fight to resist surveillance through encryption is a marketing messaging that is working quite effectively currently with this campaign that's only been running for a month. Doug So, let's zoom out, you know, and kind of get back to that question I had posted to you during Monero. So, what is your big picture thinking with Monero? How we grow Monero? What we should be focusing on? You know, like I said, it's kind of a debate that's constantly going on. Should we even be going after the normies? To what degree should we be going after the normies? Should we want to see Monero listed on centralized exchanges? I'm of the opinion that I would like to see Monero listed on centralized exchanges. I know a lot of people argue otherwise. It's great that it's no longer on a lot of centralized exchanges. It eliminates the ability for exchanges to manipulate and print paper Monero. I'm of the opinion that I want as many noobs as possible to find their way to Monero. We could save these people before they go down the wrong path in crypto. There's a lot of wrong paths in crypto. It's like almost every door is the wrong door except the Monero door and the Bitcoin door if you use it right. There's not too many right doors. Most of them are trapped. You open it up and you fall to a pit. You never get back out. But yeah, what's your overall take there? Do you agree? Let's go after the noobs. Let's try to save as many people as we can or let's keep it niche. Let's just build out the economy among those that really care about that and not worry about getting too big too fast. Sean Well, one reason why I've created these two initiatives, the podcast that focuses on Christianity and now this resists surveillance, is because I'm trying to reach broader demographics of people who have no kind of reference point for any of these topics and subjects. I do want to bring in fresh blood, so to speak, into the system. And that's why I intentionally chose platforms where I know there aren't people who maybe aren't very conscious about privacy, but they might have a sort of inkling that things are getting worse. But here's a path. Here's a way to help them out. So yes, I do agree with trying to get more people in. In terms of exchanges and things, I kind of feel like that's always just going to follow the people who are using it. So depending on how many people are using it, the needs will adapt to how many people are know about the technology and using it. I think Monero right now is pretty easy to get into. It's very accessible. It needs a little bit of technical knowledge, but no more than it, you need to start a bank account, which most people can do. So in terms of kind of getting set up and using it, it's pretty straightforward. So yes, I think my goal is to try reaching new people and try to grow the system in place. And yeah, start resisting surveillance and spraying the message, because I think whether we can stop the surveillance state, the technocratic state or not, I'm not sure. Well, ultimately, I don't think it will be stopped, but I think we all have a moral duty to resist it and do what we can. So that's kind of my position on it, where I don't think it's going to be stopped, but I think I have the position to resist it. I'm going to submit to the open up. Doug You must think it can't be stopped to sub, like, I guess you think ultimately that we could, whether, you know, even though it can't be stopped, we could, there's those that can be saved, right? We could, there'll be ways to avoid it. I have to imagine, right? Otherwise, what are you doing this for? Either you just, you know, hands up, like, all right. I surrender. I have to imagine you're an optimist to some degree, right? Sean Well, it may be helpful if I explain it in a parable. So imagine a peasant, and he's in this kingdom, and the king is very wealthy, has a very powerful army, and this king sends out his army, his very powerful army, to a far distant land to do reconnaissance and to gather resources. And whilst the army is away and the king is there with this peasant and the other people, an enemy surrounds them and is going to attack them. And in fact, they do, they preach the castle and they seize it, and the first person to die is the king himself, but before the king dies, he sends a request for the armies to come back. So what does the peasant do? Does he give up, or does he continue to fight as he waits for the reinforcements to return? And that's my thinking of all of this, is that I'm going to resist because I know reinforcements are ultimately coming. So I don't think it can be stopped, but I have a moral duty in order to resist it, very similar to the Dutch resistance and the Nazis. They resisted Nazi Germany, not because they thought they could overthrow the Germans, but they knew that the allies were going to eventually invade continental Europe and overthrow the Nazis, so they wanted to destabilize and resist and to fight against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Doug All right. Yeah, that's an intense way to leave it off. I guess maybe I'm a little bit more optimistic. I'm constantly sounding the alarms of technocracy. I think we've already arrived, and it's only going to get worst with where we see things headed with AI and Palantir sitting in the White House. All things are pointed towards increased technocracy, increased surveillance state, but I do think tools like Monero, encryption in general, have a long way to go in terms of the freedoms that they'll be able to provide people. We've only just begun to scratch the surface. The amount of people that are using Monero, for example, is very small. That are using encryption tools is very small. Once we onboard a decent percentage of the world population, I do think we will have a group of people that have effectively opted out. I think that can be achieved. I already start to feel it personally in my day-to-day life, with XMR Bazaar and Monero, so it's not just theoretical. I personally believe things are only going to get better in that regard, and I think they'll be able to get pretty good. I'm very much an optimist when it comes to Monero and these tools. I'm in it for the fight. That's what motivates me, much like yourself, but I'm hoping not to be... I'm not looking to be a to celebrate with those that have also opted out, and we could enjoy a free, liberated life using these tools and pass it on to our kids, and they could pass it on to their kids, and with each new generation, it'll just become stronger. Ultimately, good will triumph over evil is my hope. Sean I think some people just need to be burned as well, like I was talking about facial recognition cameras in stores with someone here and they said to me, oh yeah, it's going to be great because I'll be able to walk into a store and I'm going to have to bring my wallet and that's okay to this guy. There's no point of continuing this discussion with this person. They're going to have to get burned. They're going to have to have their face scanned and then, oh yeah, they think you're a criminal when you're not and oh wait, now my behaviors are being shaped because of my face being scanned. Some people are just going to have to be burned and get into the system and kind of feel the squeeze before they start looking for a solution, unfortunately. Doug I would say most people, unfortunately, the vast majority of people, we're definitely the minority, the vast majority of people, like we saw with COVID, right? And even those people that did get burnt, they need to get burnt again. They still didn't even get the lesson from that, right? They're still lined up for the next Vax. They're like, all right. That bird flu thing, is there a vaccine out for that yet? Because I want to get it. Yeah, you know, there's going to be some hard lessons that need to be learned. And ultimately, I think people will be pushed to the brink to the point where they realize like, wait a minute, this is not, I don't remember things always being this way. I used to be able to go and buy eggs and meat and not have to worry about how much carbon I'm producing by way of making these purchases. It seemed cool at first that we were saving the environment, but now I can't even eat a hamburger anymore. At that point, hopefully at that point, people, the only problem is there, it's, you know, it's the way they get us there is they start the programming with the new generations, right? So they weed us out, right? People like us, you know, we're not here forever. And then it's the next generation. Do they carry the torch of liberty? Do they even understand what true liberty is, right? The, or do they grow up in a world from, from day one, where they're on their iPad at whatever three years old, and they don't really, they don't know the world before the internet, they don't know the world of that existed that once had cash where cash, it was normal to use cash, they don't know the liberties that come with that. They don't know how good a juicy hamburger tastes compared to the cheaper bugging version that's being advertised to them on meta or in their virtual realities. Like that's the real, that's going to be the real challenge is fighting that is getting these, the younger generations to pick up the torch because they've never, a lot of them won't really have anything to compare it to. They don't even know what they're losing. Sean Thank you so much for having me on. It's been a real pleasure. I know it's a bit scatterbrained here and there everywhere, but I think we got the whole message covered. Doug Yeah, no, we got a lot of information out there that, you know, I could have been done better at organizing it, but I think this is great. And most importantly, we got the word out on the marketing campaign you're doing. Guys, please, please do consider supporting Sean. I think he's doing a great effort. As you noticed, he doesn't really even shill that much. He's not good at shilling himself, so we have to shill for him. Please give him support. He's doing a ton for building out the Monero circular economy, educating people, and adding some professionalism to Monero in terms of how we market things, because I think we're definitely lacking there. So Sean, thank you so much. You're always welcome. You're always welcome to jump on this show. If you ever want to come and give an update as you progress with things. And obviously, you're always welcome to jump on Monero topia. Maybe we get you down to Monero topia as a speaker this year. That would be fantastic. I don't know if they are not shilling all your things. Let's make sure you get the word out where people can find you, follow you once again, help you out. If they want to help you out, please put the word out in that regard. Sean Yeah, I suppose Moneroomaster.com is where you see everything. And then I'm on XMR Bazaar, I'm sure you could find me pretty easy just by searching. And yeah, everything's kind of there. The website to sign up for the resist surveillance is just resist.Moneroomaster.com. And that's really about it, those two faces. So that kind of covers all bases. Awesome. Doug Sean, thank you so much. We look forward to more of your content. I hope you keep it up with the podcast. I know it's just going to be, I think you said initially, a short series, and then maybe you'll start another series after that. What do you think? Sean Possibly I do a weekly podcast for work. So I find it quite taxing to do okay the parlots. Yeah Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a lot, um, showmen. Thank you. Cheers. You're welcome. Sean Have a great day. All right. See you, Doug. All right.