Latest / Monero Talk / Unmasking Elon Musk: Derrick Broze on Free Speech and Technocracy | EPI 336

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Unmasking Elon Musk: Derrick Broze on Free Speech and Technocracy | EPI 336 · Monero Talk

• Doug Alrighty, Derrick, how's it going, man? Happy Derrick Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, brother, and congratulations on all the changes in your life. Doug Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the newborn, I guess it's no secret. I put the word out, you know, I put a tweet out. I mean, I can't hide in this. I'm obviously going to be it's a big part of my life, you know, so I'll be talking about it a lot. That being said, you know, try to try to try to maintain as much privacy for for the kids as much as possible. And it's like, it's like we do this stuff, these things, because I know we share a lot of the same values, and we have a lot of the same goals. And what people don't realize is we sacrifice a lot personally, for doing these things, because we can't, you know, it's it's harder to live the dream of like, an individual that is disconnected from the state and as doing things as private as possible while also being a public figure. Right. It's like, there's definitely a Derrick That was for sure. Doug for sure, right? Right, so you experience that, right? Yeah. Derrick It can be a challenge being out here and trying to share information with people while also. Doug radar of certain yeah yeah exactly where where are you coming in from if you don't mind I'm in Mexico Derrick ago, where I'm usually broadcasting from so, but yeah. Doug We have 170 live viewers right now. Guys, like and share. Let's get a bunch of people in here. This is a good night for a live talk. What is it? It's a Friday? I've lost all concept of time with my newborn. I don't even know what fucking day it is. What is? What do we have? We're a Friday right now. It's amazing when these newborns, they are built to completely steal all your attention in the best way. But they really are well-designed for that purpose. All your focus goes to them. But yeah, it's Friday evening, guys. Good time to tune in, get the word out. I got Derrick Brose. I brought him on because I thought he'd be a great guy to talk to given what we're seeing with regards to Elon Musk. Derrick has been early on the scene talking about Elon and throwing some theories out there to what his true intentions may be, talking about it a long months ago, maybe years ago. I don't know how long you've been talking about Elon, but he's been throwing up the red flags or calling out the red flags for a while. And I think now finally, we're seeing that go a little bit more mainstream. Mainstream among like X, not mainstream mainstream, but mainstream among the X community. And so I thought Derrick would be a great person to bring on, give us some perspective on what's going on with Elon and tell us what he really... I think there's now more than ever people are willing to listen to this side of the story that Elon may not be this freedom fighter that he has portrayed himself as. He may not be a true free speech maximalist. He may have other intentions and he may be showing them now more than ever, but the signs may have always been there. So Derrick, yeah, we might as well get right to it. I mean... 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 chip directly to the Guatemalan farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug All right. Perfect. You let me run a gratuitous ad. I got to do that more often. I got to actually create more ads for these scenarios. Yeah, more commercial breaks. So I think we're good now. Cool. Yeah, I think that solved it. Word. What'd you do? Derrick Um, I just switched to my little laptop camera instead of trying to use my, it's funny, you know, you try to have better equipment and then it just cracks that on. Yeah. Doug It's like, I never got the AV thing working out. Whether at the conference or for the podcast, it's not my forte, man. You know, I got my, there's things I'm good at, things I'm not so good at. Derrick Well, I just, you were, you were doing an intro for me and I just, I'm going to just share my screen real quick. I just went to my website and searched Elon Musk. For those who don't know my website is theconsciousresistance.com and I think the oldest one or the first like official thing when I decided, Hey, this is worth writing besides just ranting on social media. I wrote a little essay, a blog called why are some American libertarians falling for Elon? This is December 2022 and then last January. So two or actually January 2023. So two years ago now of, as of now, I did a panel with James Corbett, Whitney Webb and a few other independent media journalists asking, should you trust Elon Musk? And then, you know, there's been a lot more since then been talking about it for a couple of years now. Doug When was that panel that was Derrick January 2023. Doug Oh, wow. And what was kind of the consensus then? Obviously, you were of the viewpoint of no, but well, so. Derrick So it was myself, Whitney Webb, James Corbett, for those who know the Corbett Report. He's been around for, he's OG and this has been around for like two, since 2006. And, you know, my perspective, I can probably- Doug you guys all shared the same perspective even at that time right you guys yeah we were all Derrick much skeptical and at that point already for a number of different reasons. What I was going to say is like, I feel like I can put on a few different hats in this conversation. One of them, obviously we can focus on like from the, like I saw what you tweeted earlier, for example, about Elon has been shilling Doge, not Monero and that that's a pretty good litmus test in terms of Liberty. I think that's a good comment there. So I could come at it from like, you know, the crypto Monero perspective. Also, I have been involved in like, you know, the libertarian movement since 2011 and 2012. So a lot of my critiques come from that of like, if you're a libertarian, how can you be so openly embracing somebody who literally has built the wealth they have off corporate welfare, off government subsidies, contracts with the military industrial complex, etc, etc. And then I could put on conspiracy hat as well and say, Okay, I think this guy's actually pushing some more nefarious agendas, like we could talk about technocracy, some of the things we've talked about in previous shows over the years, you and I, I do think Elon is pretty obviously pushing those agendas. And in the last few days, particularly on Twitter on x, there's been all this, you know, drama unfolding with a lot of the MAGA crowd as they start to realize maybe Elon doesn't have the same opinions they thought he did, or that he's not all on there on board with them. And it's amazing to watch, right? It's like, it's a trip. It's also like, I'm not gonna lie and say like, I don't have a little bit of I told you so feeling I try not to sit in that too long, because really more than anything, I want to work with people who care about liberty, you know, not just sit back and be like, you're so stupid. Yeah, but there's a really gain from that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been interesting just to watch kind of that whole space. A lot of them and not even to say that the reasons that they're being that they're upset or that they're critical are necessarily the reasons that I or you or even those in the audience might care. Maybe some people think the whole HB one, the visas and et cetera, that conversation is a, you know, something that matters to them. And not to say it doesn't either. But I do think in general, for me, it's like, okay, you guys are getting upset about that. Or because people are starting to be lose monetization on Twitter or be censored taken down. When people like myself have been saying, since the very beginning, they never claimed it was going to be this free speech platform. Maybe they said it in some ways. But then at the same time, there was always this freedom of reach, not freedom of speech. And then this lady from the world economic forum, Linda Jacarino in there. And just to me, telltale signs that if you were really paying attention, there was plenty of reasons to be suspicious ahead of time. And maybe people in the hype of the election and they're just like, you know, yes, our side quote unquote is winning. Yeah. So let's just ignore those things for now. Doug But the fact that like if you zoom out is very, the very simple fact is the PayPal mafia is now running the federal government. Absolutely. I mean, you have, yeah, you have Elon Musk and you have what the hell is his name? Derrick stacks in there. You got Peter Thiel, right? So you have, yeah, Doug Peter Thiel that's running like tied in with the VP, you have Musk that's very tied in with Trump. Derrick ties to teal, he has ties to Epstein. He's also coming from Cantor Fitzgerald. And he is, I mean, I did, so I did this other article back over the summer, whenever I went to Bitcoin Nashville, I specifically went there. Obviously, you know, I, you know, I used to support Bitcoin, but I'm more on Monero's team these days. I'm not really, as I told you before, I'm not really a maxi for anything. I just want something that's going to allow me to use a currency in a private way without government or banks involved. And Monero fits that purpose. When I first got involved back in 2012, yeah, I was obviously in the Bitcoin space, Bitcoin community. But this summer, when I went to the Bitcoin Nashville event, it was more of like, going there as a journalist, just to sort of watch how the space is transformed. And you had Rumble there, you had Robert F. Kennedy, you had Donald Trump, you had Howard Lutnick, you had a lot of the people who are now being put into cabinet positions, all they're trying to rally that what I would say is much more mainstream crypto community at Bitcoin Nashville, you got like 5000 people, the vast majority of those people didn't give a crap about privacy. They're just like, yeah, I'm getting rich, you know, I got a bag now. And so they aren't looking at these deeper levels. They're just like, oh my God, we've made it to the prime time. We've got the, you know, former president here, we've got another presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy's here, the Rumble guys are here, Russell Brand's here. And so I did an article called Bitcoin Nashville, the co-opting of Bitcoin and sort of looking at that ties and how a lot of the people who are funding Rumble, which has promoted itself also as a free speech, kind of more right wing platform, a lot of the funders, including Peter Tio, Howard Lutnick, etc. They tie back to that PayPal Mafia. And those are the same people who decided it was actually at a May or June meeting back in last year in San Francisco, where a lot of this PayPal Mafia sort of more right leaning tech bros got together and basically had a meeting where they decided they were going to go all in on Trump. And actually, there's some pretty good reporting saying that it's Elon and Peter Tio and a few of those guys who are the ones who pretty much told Trump to pick JD Vance as his VP candidate, because JD Vance has a long history with Peter Tio through some of his, his different firms and things of that sort. So I mean, there's Doug He created him as a political figure. Oh, absolutely. Funded him and like. Derrick brought him out of nowhere and pretty much made his whole, what is this thing, the hillbilly elegy or whatever his book. And they kind of, and you know, just to kind of take a step and look at that to me, I just don't think that the vast majority of broadly speaking, the freedom community, liberty community is truly kind of grasping and understanding the level at which the intelligence communities are using social media as a battlefield. They call this fifth generation warfarin. They said that our mind is the battlefield, social media is the battlefield. And that when we go on social media, they're trying to push us 10 different ways to feel this way, to think this way, to be offended by this thing, to like this person, to hate this person. And when you understand the people who are now in Trump's incoming cabinet or at least have been nominated for it and how they all go back to that PayPal mafia, they all go back to Peter Thiel and people who themselves, it was the PayPal mafia, the beginning, who originally even said that they were trying to create a new world currency. That was the goal with PayPal. So they've now got all in on Bitcoin. The PayPal was to be a currency, yeah. Exactly, so now they put their funds behind Bitcoin and obviously people who've read Roger Verr's book, Hijacking Bitcoin, know a little bit more of the details. You get some folks from Bilderberg Group and Blockstream. And that's the other thing. I mean, Peter Thiel's a steering committee member of the Bilderberg Group. And for those who are not familiar with the Bilderberg Group, long time conspiracy that has over the years become fact and they are a meeting of essentially the ultra wealthy, nothing wrong with being rich, but these are people in high positions of power from media, from academia, from government, all around the world that meet in different locations every May as they have been since the 1950s. And we know for certain that a lot of different important world decisions, geopolitical decisions were decided by this group. Henry Kissinger used to be one of the main people involved in it. And I was warning people when the election was coming up, not to be so-called black pill because that's what myself and Whitney Webb and others who bring up this are often called as like, oh, you're just being negative, you're, you know, whatever. When in fact, I'm actually very optimistic, but not about politics. It's just about things like Monero and, you know, freedom cells and building parallel systems. That's what gets me excited. But I was pointing out that, look, both sides of the 2024 election were being backed by Bilderberg members. You had former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who's also a steering committee member of the Bilderberg group backing Harris, along with Alex Karp, who's the co-founder of Palantir, who co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel, who is the other steering committee member of Bilderberg who was backing Trump. Derrick So one way or the other, whatever you think about the elections, whether you think they're real or rigged or whatever, the essentially what is at least the attempted ruling class in America and around the world was backing both sides of that election. So even without getting into deeper conspiracies, like even at that most basic level, to me, it just seemed like there wasn't really much of a choice. And then of course, Elon Musk getting behind Trump and the rest that we've seen since then, there was a lot of celebration. There was a lot of people, I guess, who were riding that high for a few weeks. And now I think some people are starting to come back to earth. Of course, they're still saying, well, he's not in office yet. Let's see what happens when Trump's get, let's see what happens with Doge or this or that. Which to me, again, like that, even the name, naming the Department of Government efficiency using that is obviously a wink at the Doge coin. And I'm sure Elon's hoping that that pumps it even more, so that he can, so it's just, it's like a massive troll in my mind. Doug Yeah. That was the biggest tell for me with Elon was when he came out of nowhere and started pumping Doge and that was like 2020. I was like, what the fuck are you doing, man? You have all this power, all this tremendous platform and influence, what he could have done with that in that moment. He could have onboarded everybody into a pure privacy tech project, crypto, right? Push the masses into it. It would have been beautiful, would have been amazing, but instead he diverted people away from that into some meme coin. It's just like, why? Why do that in that moment? Why just fuck with society at that point? When you could so easily do the right thing, right? And to say like, okay, well, maybe he didn't know. He was in the PayPal mafia. They were trying to figure this out in the 90s when nobody, they could have very well been the people that created Bitcoin, right? They very well know. Right. Elon knows when he got it to Doge in 2020, he already knew crypto very, very well, completely understood the value proposition, completely understood what it would mean to have an untraceable version of that and the power that would give people and no, he pushed people away from that and led them to Doge and like never and just like laughed about it. Like, I don't know. That's, that's a pretty big tell to me. Derrick You know, just to kind of add to that point, I believe and again, at the moment, I don't have evidence. So I want to make sure to distinguish between what I can prove and what you know, I'm speculating based on reasonable inferences, I'd say. But I've been looking back at Cambridge Analytica. For anybody who remembers that is a few years back, it's been five years plus now. This was like this big scandal at the time where we found out this company was basically scraping all of Facebook's data to learn as much as they could about voters. And it was a scandal for a few weeks or a few months. But there never was as far as I could see any sort of, for one, nobody was really held accountable. You know, there was a whistleblower that came out and stuff like that. But I don't think again, we have really grappled with what that involves, what that entails and how that's just one example of how private companies or governments can scrape massive databases like social media, where people give everything from their faces to their feelings, to their thoughts, to their preferences, etc. And you could take that information, you could feed that into a large language model and you could say, what do I need to say? What are the programs, the slogans I need to promote in order to appeal to this particular crowd, to this particular audience? Right. I mean, I think it's down to that level that these intelligence firms, intelligence agencies, and especially through X with the connections to the Israeli intelligence agencies, they have so much knowledge about us. They have so much knowledge about our habits because we have voluntarily given it up in most cases. And all it would take is just to reverse engineer that and feed us back what we want to hear and just keep confirming our own biases. And what I think is something along that lines happened and not to say that Elon Musk is a total fabrication. But I do think that and it seems pretty obvious when you look into his his tweets and stuff that he plays into this, this kind of stereotype of a crypto bro that a lot of people understand, you know, there's like just for example, like, oh, we're, we're degenerate, we're autistic, you know, some of these kind of jokey things that people say, that's basically what Elon does, right? He's going to post funny memes, he's going to make fun of the right people. He's going to talk about video games, you know, he like just kind of throws a bone to the crowd to say, look, I'm one of you, I'm on your side. And in recent days, people are now starting to question that. But I really do think that there has been a particularly crafted narrative that was by design in order to co-opt the broader freedom, truth, health freedom, crypto freedom, et cetera, movements, you know, because we're talking a lot of overlapping, intersecting movements here. But generally, people who question things and who want a better world and who haven't like didn't buy into COVID and stuff like that, I think there was a purposeful effort to co-opt that energy and then redirect it back into the two party system under Donald Trump. Derrick And then of course, using Bitcoin like, oh, we're winning, Bitcoin is going to defeat the Fed. Although that's never talked about. That's not even mentioned that right. It's it just gives people just enough to kind of feel like they're part of the rebellion or they're part of the anti-establishment movement. But in reality, it's just feeding them back into the same. Doug system. I mean, it's amazing how it played out that way. It's like, oh my, like, what the fuck are you guys doing? I mean, don't get me wrong, right? Like I think, I think the Trump direction was the right direction, even though knowing that like, this is what's really happening, I'd rather see things go in that direction than, you know, to go to the extreme left. Although the argument could be made that just, that just takes us to the end faster. I think the passive. Derrick people in some ways like people you know like this did during Kamala maybe are now like gonna make yeah yeah like Kamala Harris I feel Doug people would have really been like, all right, wait, we really do need Monero. They're going to tax unrealized capital gains. They're going to do like, the realization would be there faster. Right? And then, basically, exactly what you're saying, right? It temporarily quells those who are starting to realize what's really going on. And it creates a false pressure release, right? Um, yeah, man. I mean, but do you think it's like, it's really, it's really like that, like, does it, or just organically happen that way? Or like, there, there's really some puppet masters that are capable of like, directing society to this degree? I mean, Derrick So I am what you would call a conspiracy theorist, and I'd say that with, you know, full, full embracing of that, because I feel like I feel confident enough to speak on these particular things with facts behind me. And we may have mentioned this before, talked about this before, Doug, but for those who don't know, I am the researcher, the writer and the narrator and the director of a 17 part documentary series called the Pyramid of Power. People can find that at the pyramid of power.net. We've released the first 15 episodes, and the 16th one will be out in a week or two. And the final one, which is asking that question who or what is, you know, at the top of this pyramid. And I approach this documentary, not as a conspiracy theorist, where I'm just going to speculate and, and, you know, make a bunch of guesswork and, you know, insinuations, but completely based on facts, things that are historical document historically documented, backed up by data, and in many cases, government information. And through this series, I've been able to show that there really are various individuals, institutions, organizations, you know, in the COVID era, more people are pointing out World Economic Forum, things like that. And those are, I would say, part of the puzzle. But there are organizations and groups which have been around for much longer than that. And I, you know, I, I'm actually actively working on my research for the final episode. So even for me, at the moment, if you ask me, well, who's at the top of the pyramid, I don't know who I would pin that on just yet. But you know, I'm getting I'm going back and reading books that are from we show you one from 1830, when people are saying the Jesuits were trying to take over the US, like I'm going back and trying to find historical references to some of this information. And there are gaps in some of the research, I think some people maybe speculate, they, they, you know, they kind of put a little bit too much hyperbole in there. But I don't think there's any point at any way at this point, we can deny that there are there is an oligarchy, or a ruling class or factions of individuals, not to say there's one single person at the top, or it's one particular, I think it's, it's an interlocking group of different institutions, and people who at times, sure may disagree about certain decisions, but at the end of the day, they side with each other over the people 100% of the time. And so I do think that this is that there's a planned kind of agenda unfolding. I don't think that means that every single aspect of our world is completely fake. I think some people might go a little too far down the rabbit hole. And they eventually go into that, like, you know, every shooting is fake, every event we see is staged. I do think there are staged events, we know for sure that, you know, the for example, the intelligence agencies have, you know, have committed false flag events, and that they have, you know, we could look at Operation Northwoods, where the US government talked about painting a plane to look like a Cuban plane, Derrick and then shooting, you know, having it shoot down, shooting it down to blame it on Cubans, right, like false flag events, like, these are things that governments have discussed. And in my documentary series, I go through the education system, the media, I go through big tech, and each of these different pieces, the puzzle, the prison industrial complex, the oil industry, all the different pieces that I've seen, and naming the people in the institutions behind them who have influenced these decisions, the people who shaped our education system. So over time, they could teach people that the system we have is the best that we can do, that every good person pays taxes, and only criminals try to avoid those things, all these sort of, like, these sort of assumptions that have been built into our thinking through the education system, and just the way that we're sort of taught through the media obviously has a massive role. But social media is kind of a new battleground that I think, in the beginning, you know, most of us thought the internet is going to bring decentralization in a way that we've never seen before. That was like the big promise of the internet. Social media was supposed to be something like that. But instead, we're now down to just a handful of corporations still controlling things, whether it's through social media, okay, we got away from the record labels, now we have streaming, but who controls that just another couple more corporations, right? So maybe instead of actually getting more distributed, more decentralized, we've actually maybe gotten even less in some ways. Now, of course, there's, you know, there's ways around that. But for the most part, I do think that there is absolutely a hidden hand, a guiding force that they can't control everything, but they can absolutely make sure that they benefit from those things. And like, for example, COVID-19 would be one of those things. Doug Yeah. Do you think decentralized tech has a real shot at evading them? Or how black-pilled are you on that? I do think it's possible. Derrick I mean if I if I if I had been completely but lack filled I wouldn't come to Monero topia I wouldn't be spending my life travel around talking to people, you know, I think that this is you know I mean, we've we've hung out so, you know what my works about or what I'm dedicated to like This is the way I live my life It's not just like a hobby on the weekends of talking about decentralization, you know, nothing against anybody that that it is I'm just saying for me This is like a daily life of I use Monero to avoid certain institutions and to not contribute to violence and death and war and surveillance and You know, I fully believe in this message, you know that I've committed to it That's why in fact, I think I get so frustrated when I see people falling for false heroes like Elon and going down those roads It's not because I'm like look at me. I'm so high and mighty I got it all figured out It's just because it's frustrating to watch good people fall for these traps over and over again Now as far as your question, I don't know I don't know if we have a chance Doug, but I'm gonna keep trying I mean you just had a baby right? So there's all the there's all the there's all the reason in the world to keep fighting and to keep trying I've got six nieces and nephews. I've got friends with kids. I might have kids at some point Doug Yeah, I'm personally very hopeful that technology, because it's physics at the end of the day, right? Encryption, right? So unless these people are so powerful that they have basic math and a cryptodecil solution that like a real equalizer, no matter how powerful they may be, it empowers, I mean, that's just the way encryption works, right? And so unless they, right, we have quantum computers, but then there'll always be ways to re-encrypt and just the pure basic concept of encryption and the fact that it's a technology that's now being given to the masses does change things on a fundamental level, unless, like I said, they're so powerful that our understanding of the world isn't even, isn't even accurate. But that's the whole level, right? Derrick the space in my head for like, okay, there's the possibility that we are totally fucked. Okay, that's in there. But that doesn't mean I'm just gonna give up. I mean, sure, even if, like, even if somebody was to hand me the document and say, Derrick, here's the proof, like they they're inside every computer, every phone, like we they've already beat us 10 days till Sunday, I wouldn't just give up, I would keep trying. I would, you know, to me, it's like, like, for example, this is, you know, my grandmother used to tell me when she was alive, as long as, you know, wherever there's life, there's hope, you know, that's kind of what I've always felt like as long as we're alive, as long as we're breathing, then they haven't completely won as long as the human spirit still exists. And they're working on that, you know, they want to turn us and merging with AI and transhumanism. I know some people in the crypto community for that. Personally, I'm okay with being human and dying at some point, I think that, you know, that's a dangerous way to go. But as long as we're here, as long as we're still existing, we have the ability to continue to communicate with people. And this has been one of the things I've been trying to harp on lately, you know, as far as Musk and Twitter and x and such, is that there was this big thing the last few weeks, like, we are the media now, you know, x is the free speech place. And I get that I'm, you know, I'm grateful for whatever I can post on there at the same time, like, so for example, we're using StreamYard right now, every time I stream, I stream to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Odyssey, Rockvin, like a dozen different platforms. And other than occasionally, YouTube, taking a video down, for the most part, all of those videos and things, they still exist. So it's not like Twitter is the only place on the internet you can post, we can still post on our websites, we can still post on other platforms. And I think a lot of people forget in our very digital world, you can still talk to humans face to face free speech does still exist for the most part in the real world. Now, of course, we have examples in the UK and other places where it's getting pretty dicey, for sure. But this idea, I think was kind of a, again, part of the co-op being of convincing people that like Twitter is the only place now on the internet, it's the only free place. So everybody should rush to put everything there, start giving Elon your money to get the blue checks and to feed Grok all the data you want, so it can learn as much about us. These things are all tools, but in the hands of the wrong people, obviously, they can be used against us. So I think that that is part of the SIOP too, is just kind of convincing people that Twitter is the last bash of freedom and free speech. And so everybody should just back Elon at all costs. And I think that's where we start to get into cultish mentalities. Now, the Monero community will be familiar with this because of what we've seen in the Bitcoin community. Derrick People who at all costs will defend Bitcoin, no matter what, even when it's clearly gone off track, right? And it's the same thing we've seen in the Trump camp. And now I've seen very similar things with the Musk camp. Of course, some people are starting to be critical. But still, anytime you're in a group that feels like, no, no, no, we can't speak up because it'll upset the balance or we don't want to lose our unity or whatever. You got to be careful with that. Because if you're not able to question and say, hey guys, I think we've gone off course. I think we're going away from our values and our principles that I thought we were about. I thought America first was about America, not Israel. I thought Bitcoin was going to be some big force for freeing the people, but now it's something that Michael Saylor isn't about. Privacy isn't about actually having a currency, things like that. So when you notice any of these end groups start to say, you can't question anymore. It's a dangerous place to be. Yeah. Yeah. Doug Yeah, I was just thinking like it's leading to absurdities too, right? Like we're seeing Over this h1b visa like issue thing, right? We're seeing like Bernie Sanders Agreeing with like right-wing nationalists. I think it's like it's gotten so absurd too. It's like what what is going on? Derrick It's, it's, it's a weird time we're in right now, which again, I think, okay, so especially since we're what three days into the new year, this might be a sign of the times I'd highly encourage people to hold tight to their critical thinking, you know, hold tight to this is I mean, for my part, just me personally, my message has always had somewhat of a spiritual if you will, or such sort of self help and empowerment side of it, because I do think that's important. Because if you're not rooted in yourself, your principles, your values, if you're not in control up here in your mind or in your heart, then you are the kind of person that's going to be swayed. You're going to go this way, you're going to sway with the wind, and they're going to tell you, oh, you need to go this way and support this issue or support this person go this way, instead of being rooted in your principles and saying, okay, I can listen to that, and then reflect and say, no, that doesn't align with what I know to be true. No, thank you. Instead, you're just kind of being swept around. And I think that's going to be even more important than ever in 2025. Because whatever's coming once Trump is in place, there's going to be, you know, I'm sure chaos is on the horizon of some form. People are stressing out every week about whether it's drones in the sky, or it's, you know, alleged terrorist attacks, whatever, there's a lot going on, it's a lot to take on. And, you know, for somebody like yourself, like you've got family to think about, right? So you're kind of in that world lately, and tuning out of it, that might be a good idea. That might be a better idea. That's the best thing to do. It really is because I mean, I feel like too many of us, like all get on the various platforms and I see what's trending. And for me, like as a journalist, I do my best to not even really pay much attention to that, unless it's obviously like the big story that I need to pick apart and you know, add my voice to, but for the most part, I'm like, okay, well, here's the trending topic of the week. Here's the latest outrage of the week, here's you know, and everybody just has to say something about it. And that takes all the attention. And it's just like that. It's that easy for Twitter, whoever's behind Twitter, you know, the funders and then you know, the big old they to drive our attention to drive our focus. And that's what I mean is like, we need to be, in my view, like focusing on reclaiming that energy and that attention and that focus, what's important in your life doesn't mean totally ignore the world and tune out from it. But at the same time, focus on what you can actually control. This is why I focus so much on solutions, because when you stop and pull back from the drama and I'm speaking to myself right now and stop debating people on Twitter, you can actually put energy into focusing on your real self. It's not about ignoring the problems of the world. It's about saying, okay, those problems exist, but I can, what can I actually do for myself? What can I, how can I actually help my family? Okay, I see things are getting less and less stable. Derrick Maybe I should put some time energy into learning about this Monero thing. So I don't have to, you know, get sucked into the CBDCs or get debanked. Maybe I should learn more about growing my own food, just whatever the sort of interest that you may have, put your time energy into that as opposed to letting they, them, those drive your focus every single day. Because I mean, that's exhausting. You know, I can feel it when I'm letting myself get sucked into the internet too much. You know, I have to like, okay, I got to take a detox. And I did take about 30 days off in November for the first time in a couple of years. And it felt great. It felt great to not be worried about what people are arguing about on Twitter and what debates are happening. And then I can come back, recharge, ready, and then dive back in. And I think that those things are important. So our world is obviously very digital and we're interacting here through computers and devices. But there's a sunset right outside my window. There's a, you know, a walking trail, there's mountains, there's a, there's a whole beautiful world out there. That's what I try to put my energy into remind myself, okay, what am I actually fighting for? Because if I'm just arguing with people all the time, if I'm just mad and upset and you know, black pill, then what's the point in being aware or awake? Doug And that goes to the point I'm making earlier that we sacrifice. Because we're out here, we're in public, we're doing the show right now. We could just be spending time with our family. People definitely need to reset, take advantage. That's the best. At the end of the day, it's about opting out. That is the solution. Solution is to opt out. In my opinion, I think that's how we best thwart a dystopia is we work together. To opt out, I believe that's basically your basic opinion as well. And so all that's part of it, right? Ignore the psyops. Yeah, I mean, you have it. We got a lot of great comments coming in here. Guys, use xmarchat.com to send your super chats. You don't have to send a big tip. You could send 10 cents. It's just a way to use Monero. So you have to use Monero to send them. It's super easy to sign up. xmarchat.com slash MoneroTalk. Actually, you don't even need to sign up for sending tips. You just send a tip to an address. Derrick Can you take a minute to explain that a little, just if you don't mind, because we are streaming to my audience too. And as I've told you before, I've got some of my audience is super savvy of crypto. Some of them are still, I was telling you this yesterday, some of them are still, it's CBDCs, it's did, you know, they're just afraid of it. So how does a super chats with the men or work? How does that work? Doug Right. So it's like a super chat system, but Monero-based. So anybody can go and create their own page. So you can create an xmrchat.com slash Derrick Brose page. And then during your live streams, you could send people to that page, direct them to xmrchat.com slash Derrick Brose. And they could very easily, without even creating an account, if they have Monero, they could type in a message to you. Give themself whatever username they want. And it will ask them to send an amount of Monero to an address. That Monero goes directly to you. The super chat gets broadcast. I think you use Streamyard. So like I'm doing here, it gets broadcast to Streamyard. And then you can pull up the super chats as they come in. So it's a way to use traditional super chats, but with Monero. There's no middleman. There's no way to be debanked. So it's good for people that are streaming, perhaps saying, quote unquote, controversial things. So you can't be demonetized easily on it. All the Monero that people send goes directly from them to you. It doesn't go through xmrchat.com servers or anything. It's just a Monero transaction. So yeah, it's just a good use case for free speech money. It's like a direct way to show its power. Derrick I'll see that big booty Latina just tip some eggs and more. Oh, there you go. Big booty Latina. Doug Tina, tip two bucks. Thank you for your message. I had another comment up here. It wasn't a super chat, but I wanted to bring it up because it was a good point. This guy was saying, because we were making the point about Monero, blah, blah, blah, I could save the day. And he's like, well, they could just turn off the grid, right? And that kind of gets to what you were, have been talking about with Starlink, right? And it is obviously an important, important thing to talk about and take notice of. For us to really win, it needs to be more than crypto. We need a decentralized internet, right? On the network level. And I do think that's possible. I do think there's people have been working on concepts like mesh nets for a long time. But with the improvements in technology, I do think maybe there'll be like, essentially, a decentralized self-autonomous Starlink, right? Where it's not run by Elon Musk company, but it's run by a decentralized corporation, right? I do see that as potentially being a solution. But why do we get into that, right? You're bringing up the Starlink concerns and do you see there being any potential solutions there with things like I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Do you think we're forever fucked because we have to rely on the tubes, right? We have to rely on the internet. They're like, how could we ever get around that, right? Unless we're running a decentralized internet that's not controlled by any government or corporation. Derrick Yeah, no, I first learned about things like mesh networks, maybe back in 2010, 2012, early in my activism, and even when I didn't fully get it, or like, you know, I'd be like, okay, I don't really understand how this works, but I can see this is going in the direction that we should go. I see one of the comments mentioned the quartal project. That's another cool project that we've had speak at our event in Mexico before. I know there are people working on these kinds of things, and it's absolutely important. I do think that there is a chance to have essentially a satellite internet or some form of internet, whatever, whether it's satellite based or otherwise, that would be decentralized and would be distributed using mesh networks. I do think that's possible. And I've seen it. I mean, I've written articles about it over the years in small scales, like for example, where in Africa, or even parts of Mexico here, where maybe a community doesn't have access to strong internet, and people who have the knowledge will come in and maybe get an antenna. And in some cases, they're doing it even a little bit, quote unquote, illegally, sort of tapping into other networks and then beaming that signal to their local mesh network. And in fact, I've seen some of that happen in Mexico, where people have been able to do things like that. Now, we need it, of course, to go on a more mass scale. But the problem that I always think we run into is like, so I could create a mesh network for my little local neighborhood, I live in here, right? It's just eight homes. Let's imagine we just create our own mesh network, we're all kind of on our own separate network from the mainstream internet, maybe we're tapping into it in some way. But when we want to go bigger and like, okay, well, let's use this so that anybody in the world can use it, then you start getting into government regulation, you start getting into all the different hoops, you got to jump through. And I feel like that's kind of the way that they've rigged the system is that, and the same thing with crypto with anything growing to the big point, like people were in this like space where people want to keep spreading Monero and keep spreading the ideas. But obviously, in the last year, we saw businesses get arrested, local Monero shut down. So it's like the opportunity is there, but the state's got a gun at everybody's head saying, if you try to just go out and create your own internet service, if you try to just create your own cell phone service, you can't just go build your own towers without getting permits and all this sort of stuff from the government. So this gang of government organized crime really has a monopoly on those things. And they will come after and lock people up like Roger Vare like Ross and others who try to maybe venture too far into that new territory. But I absolutely do think that's what we need to do. It's like a, you know, it's a slow game. And that is what I talked about and how to opt out of the technocratic state. I mean, my work is inspired by Samuel Konkin. Derrick And he's he warned in his work on agorism and counter economics and building parallel systems that it needed to be kind of like a he described this like four stage process that he thought society would pass through, whether or not that's true is kind of irrelevant. What he did say is that, as we're moving through this process of getting more and more free, and people are losing faith in the system, if anybody moves too fast, and the state still has not only the military and the cops behind them, but they have the sort of moral support of the vast majority of the public, well, then they can slam you down and say, Hey, this is a criminal, we're arresting another bad guy, like we saw with Roger, like we've seen with so many other people. So it is I think this digital arms race, you were kind of alluding that this earlier with quantum computing and cracking encryption, it's like they're going to keep building their technology spyware, you know, I just wrote an article today about the NSO group Israeli spyware firm, they have the ability to hack into signal to WhatsApp to so many messaging platforms without even getting access to your devices. And we so we have that sort of thing going on that we've got people on our side, like Amir Taki, trying to come up with the anonymous, encrypted, protected messaging platforms and internet. And I think we're just in that space of a digital arms race, unfortunately. And for those of us who are like me, I'm not a coder, I'm not a developer, I'm not a technologist, I'm just one of the people who likes to use the tools and then promote them. We you know, it's a delicate game, though, because like I said, when anybody moves too fast, they slam down and they throw the book at them and they lock them up. Doug Let me just throw some of these super chats out there. But obviously, Conklin, I've learned of him a couple of years ago through being a Monero guy and bumping into people in the libertarian movement that are really agaristic. I think I'm very much aligned with agarism, for sure. Anonymous Tipped, 50 cents. Congrats on the new baby. Yes, she's crying right now. I don't know if you could hear her in the background. She's got a roar. She's a loud baby. She's a strong baby. Knock on wood. I got another one here. Derrick's mustache tipped $9.11, 9.11. A lot of the problem is hero worship and incentives. A good reason not to vote is it's like choosing a sports team. It makes you more invested in the political system. Elon is a human in response to his government leash incentives via government contracts. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole Conklin too, right? Agarism too, right? It's like, just don't even participate in politics. I've talked to other people about that on the show. That's maybe where I'm not as an extreme agarist. I'm extreme in like, let's use XMR. I want to live off Monero peer-to-peer, all my transactions. You're doing more than... Derrick most people, right? Like, I mean, that's the thing, okay, I'm not gonna hold it against you, Doug, because you may vote occasionally when you're out here promoting Monero, right? Doug I haven't got to that point where I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Derrick fine too. I mean, at the end of the day, I don't think it's a contest. I don't sort of like judge my friends and people based on that. Obviously, sometimes I'm like, okay, I totally don't understand that choice, but you do you. But in this case, it's like you're... If you're spending your time in your life promoting decentralization and anonymity and tools like Monero, or you're out there teaching people how to grow their own food or helping people opt out of the system, and then once a year you go vote, I think it's not going to lead where you want, but okay, like 99% of the rest of the time, you're doing good work, right? So it's just a matter of preferences at that point. And one thing I did want to touch on real quick, because you mentioned it, and I don't think I got to it yet, but somebody just one of the comments referenced it. The government contracts with Elon, that was, I think that may have been sort of one of the things we were talking about privately. I wrote this article a couple of weeks ago for the last American Vagabond, where I published weekly, and it was called You Can't Hide, Elon Musk is helping the military intelligence complex build the world's largest spy satellite network. And so we were, you know, we're talking about mesh networks and the internet and everything. So Elon's Starlink is the public side of a military program known as Star Shield. So Star Shield is basically the military piggybacking on Elon's satellites, which many people use for different reasons. Again, I'm not here to argue against the utility of them. I totally get it. I have friends who use it for different reasons. They're in the country, they're in the country or in the mountains, they have no other option. And all of a sudden, boom, they got internet. I get it. Doug Monero topia work for it. We had the notos Derrick That's where people use them and I get it. I run an event. We've had an issue. I totally get the utility side. For me, I guess I think that if the people who are maybe just putting all their eggs in that Elon basket, like I'm going to buy the Tesla, I'm going to be on X all day and pay for the blue check, I'm going to use Starlink. Those who are choosing to do that are tacitly endorsing and consenting to what is going on behind the scenes. While the public gets this Starlink internet that's great and everything like that, in reality, every time Elon's launching one of those SpaceX rockets, he also has classified payloads with the national reconnaissance office as well as other government agencies where they're sending out these low earth orbit satellites to help them build the world's largest spy satellite network. They envision literally the entire world surrounded by satellites. In my article, the title, You Can't Hide, isn't just me making something up. That's a quote, a direct quote from the head of the national reconnaissance office. The NRO is the US government agency that handles satellites. They didn't even acknowledge that they existed until 1992. It's been around since the 60s, but it was secret until the 90s. They're infamous for having this patch for one of their satellites that had an octopus wrapping its tentacles around the world that said, nowhere to hide. Well, now here we are in 2024 and the head of the NRO was speaking about the star shield program and said, using Elon's satellites, there will be nowhere to hide. Now, of course, he says it in reference to bad guys like terrorists and stuff like that. I think we all know that anything that is allegedly aimed at bad guys can just as easily be used against the home population and the regular folks. We talk about debanking or deplatforming and social credit scores and some of these things digital IDs, well, that technocratic state won't fully operate unless you have, for one, facial recognition everywhere and a big part of that would be satellites as well. They're saying with these satellites, according to the head of the NRO, that they have the highest definition pictures of anywhere in the earth that they've ever been able to have before. We could argue maybe that would have happened either way with or without Elon, but to me, at the point is like, but at the moment, it's happening with this guy and it's just to me, it's another reason to not get behind him and I see one of the comments is bringing up another interesting point. This is one of those things that I don't know what it means, but it's just kind of like keep this in the back of your mind. In fact, years ago, I interviewed one of my favorite journalists before he died. His name was Jim Mars. He was a really, really awesome guy and he told me that over the years, he would have different stories that would come up that he couldn't quite explain. And he was old school, so he had an actual physical file cabinet and he had a file that was called the HUH file and it was things that like, okay, that's real. Derrick I can't explain it. I don't know what the heck it means, but I'll just file that away for now. So somebody's talking about that, Werner von Braun, who is a Nazi who also helped found NASA after they brought him from Germany to the US as part of Operation Paperclip. And then he helped build the NASA rockets. He wrote a book in the fifties called The Mission to Mars. And in that book, the leader of the Mars mission was named Elon. That was a title for the person who ruled over Mars. What does that mean? I don't know, but it's weird and it just makes me uncomfortable, makes me not sure. You know, when we talk about planning long term, I'm just like, I don't know what that means, but it's something you're muted. Doug Sorry, the baby was crying in the background. What book was that from? Derrick It's called Mission to Mars by Werner von Braun. Doug I heard that I saw this on a yeah, so this going around so have you read the book? Derrick Yeah, I did. I went, once I heard about that, I went and you can find PDF versions of it. And I went through and searched Elon to find every reference to it. And it's not a person so much as a title, but still, it's just a weird thing. Like he and his book on the mission to Mars, the person who would end up being like the leader of the colony, their title was so like it would be Elon Doug or something, you know, that was like the title, but it's still just a weird coincidence or whatever. Doug A little creepy, a little creepy. Oh, maker tip, 50 cents. Congrats on the new bird dog. I see Monero as one of the few tools that allows opting out of the system, but people have to want to opt out, keep up the good work. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the tools are here, right? We can do it. We have Monero, we have XMR Bazaar, we have Monero Market, we have any other number of marketplaces and things and whatnot. We have the cryptos. We have Monero that's working as intended as cash. So we have everything we need to do it. People just need to start. It literally is as simple as that. Derrick That's my daily life, man. I think that's both of our daily lives is like, knowing that the tool, so I mean, we can bring this up for a moment. I was telling you yesterday that I've been dealing with my own kind of debanking issue in the last week. So I started using, obviously, I use Monero and other tools like that. But a couple of years ago, mainly because of our event, the greater reset, now the people's reset, which is coming up in a couple of weeks here in Mexico, for the first few years that we did the event, we basically told people we're only taking crypto payments, or you can pay cash in person, which is cool, as far as principles go. But it's very difficult to run an event that way, when you have no idea ahead of time, you know, it's like, okay, well, we don't have any money coming in till the day of the event. Kind of nervous about like, are we going to be able to pay all our bills and all that stuff? Doug I totally feel you man, I know exactly what you're saying. Derrick So we went to like, all right, I got to start accepting credit cards. So let me get a Stripe account and we still accept crypto. We still do all that, but the vast majority of the people who come and even the people who listen to me talk about these tools all the time, still use credit cards, still use those things. And that's fine. Do your thing. So I opened up a Stripe account. I opened up Wyze. Wyze is what they call a neobank. It's not a bank in the traditional sense that it has a physical location. Like I don't go anywhere. I just have an online account and it allows me to hold that money and then I can, since I do travel internationally a lot, you can easily transfer between state currencies, fiat currencies. So it had its utility for a while, but over the last year as our event has started to grow and as my work has started to grow, I've got donations coming from Substack or buy me a coffee. I get paid for my journalism. People buy tickets to the event. So somewhere some red flags got set off, right? And all of a sudden Wyze starts telling me, we need more information from you before we can give you this money. And that started happening the last six months and I basically chose to ignore it. And every time it would go away after a couple of days and I'd get my money and I'd move on. Well, in the last week it didn't go away and they put 12 different transfers on pause. Then all of a sudden, I'm getting locked out of my account completely. So I start getting on the phone with them, try to talk to them. And of course they say, okay, well, we need to see your bank account. We need to see your bank account. We need to see your bank account. We need to see your bank account. So I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. I started getting on the phone. Payment history from my accounts from Substack and from Buy Me a Coffee. That wasn't enough. Then it was 90 days. That wasn't enough. Long story short, essentially yesterday they closed down my entire account and they have about $5,000 of mine held hostage right now, including money for our event. And the only way they would let me get it back is if I give them a bank account information with my name on it. But the reason I use it wise is because I don't use a bank. So thankfully I was able to convince them to send it to a family member's account. It hasn't hit there yet. So I'm still got my fingers crossed, but I'm hoping because I have friends like Ryan who I write for. He had the same thing happen with PayPal and they stole $20,000 from them. They never gave it back. They literally just said, you're abusing our terms of service and that's it. And so he got $20,000 taken away. So to me, trying to convince those of you who are listening on my channels to learn more about Monero is a very real thing because if all of you, I appreciate all the support on buy me a coffee and sub stack. Derrick I'm grateful for it. Trust me, it helps me live my life and do the work that I do. But if each of you learned a little bit more about Monero and I'm going to start doing the XMR chat next week on my show, then I wouldn't even have to worry about any of this because nobody asked me a question when I send Monero or receive Monero. I don't have to show payslips or ask about tax history or any of that stuff. So I get that there's still a lot of people who are like, I don't know, the internet's going to shut down. It's new world order currency, whatever. But guess what? I've been using it for since 2012. So 12 years to avoid banks and avoid government. And you can keep saying, well, what about this thing? What about this thing? And in the meantime, it's working. So maybe one day it won't work, but right Doug how it is. Yeah, no, we got to get, we got the, it's unfortunate that there is this subset of people, right? That are in the freedom movement, the Liberty movement that are anti crypto. And I get why they are. And, you know, I get why they might want to be anti Bitcoin, but they're just, there's some people that are just anti crypto overall. They're just like, there's just no way you can be opting out if you're just kind of like their mindset. Derrick Well, and I've even had people on my channel when I, so I've been sharing this, hey guys, I'm dealing with wise and all this stuff. And I've had some of those comments pop up and it really sucks because I do try to educate my audience. I spent years trying to do it. I think I've kind of sort of given up in some ways and I'm just like, those who want to know will reach out to me. I got a crypto course on my website if you want to learn more about doing it privately. But I had people tell me things like, how is using crypto out of the system? You have to use a bank to buy it. And I'm just like, no, you don't. But that just shows the level of ignorance that there is. I'm not hating on anybody. But if you think you have to. You could go. Doug on XMR Bazaar right now and sell your used motorcycle for Monero. You could sell, I don't know, your old Nintendo games for Monero, KYC free. Derrick I mean, there's so many different ways. I mean, even like, so for example, when I buy flights, I usually I used to use cheap air, I've used Travala and even the ones that don't specifically allow Monero, there's ways to do it. You can use swaps if they wanted to accept the different currency, swap your Monero for the currency they'll accept and then boom, you bought a flight, you bought hotels, you know, things like that. So I just, you know, I want my audience, I know your audience is already convinced and aware of it. But for those in my audience who are tuned in, you guys have been seeing me post about the problems I'm dealing with. We know that the musks and all these people of the world are trying to create a very controlled, tight ecosystem where they can see everything we do and they can turn us off at a moment's notice. But there are ways around this and it's crypto. It's not Bitcoin. They're not all equal. They're not all good. Yes, there are scams. Yes, there is, you know, concerns, but there is an opportunity right now for people to use this. And in fact, Ryan at Last American Vagabond, him and I have been having this conversation like, how am I going to pay you going forward? And we usually do use crypto. We have in the past, but we kind of got away from that once I started using Wyze. But we basically realized, look, crypto is the obvious answer. We just got to go back to that. You need to, you know, he's going to start paying me in crypto again. But to do that, he needs to have a regular supply of crypto. So going back to those of you who support my work or Doug's or people like Whitney Webb and Ryan, when you are able to donate to us and invest, really, it's an investment in our work using things like Monero, then you're able to help us avoid the potential to being debanked and to being censored and for us losing the ability to help ourselves because what's going to happen in the long term? I mean, I've been blessed enough to do this work for 15 years and survive every time one opportunity ends. I find another one. But let's imagine that the censorship and the debanking goes on long enough. Well, Ryan's going to have to go back to being a cook, and I'm going to have to go back to finding some day job. And Doug's going to have to focus on feeding his family. Like we would have to give up doing these things just to survive. And that's what this system wants. That's what these people want. They don't want us to be able to survive outside of their hands. Doug They call me saying nobody's truly anti-crypto. They just don't understand what cryptography is and how prevalent it is. Yeah, I agree. I think it's an education problem. Some people just don't want to believe that encryption works essentially. I'm seeing some super chats here too. Stupdudes tipped $1.23. The first Americans didn't ask permission from the British to be independent. They forced their way to freedom. Yeah, nobody's going to give it to you. We have to take it and then continue to fight them. It's always going to be a constant, constant battle. Shortwave. What's up, Shortwave? Shortwave25 says, why aren't you posting their Autopia links anywhere? But I don't know, man. I don't know. But you could go ahead and post links for us. Please, anybody out there, please, in general, help us get the word out on our streams, post them in different forums. I'm only one man. I shared it on Telegram leading up to the event. And now with the newborn, you're going to be seeing me doing less guys, not more. So you guys can take it on. You can take on the task of posting the links throughout the internet to get the word out on Monero Talks. Here's another one. Is this another one from... It's the same? No, it might be a new one. Derrick's mustache, tip. 25 cents. Tech is just a tool. It can be used for freedom or oppression. Monero is one such tool. It should be part of the freedom stack. Community sites, permaculture, crop seeds, Monero, gold, silver, and open-source private tech can all be very useful to Agris. Yeah, 100%. One of the tools. Exactly. Yeah, I don't know if Derrick, if you have anything to say on that. But yeah, that's the message we're always trying to get out here. I think that's a good way of looking at crypto because then it doesn't become this religious thing either. It's important to view these things as tools and just to pick the right tool for the job. Yeah, that's definitely... Derrick I try to approach it that way, like I think in fact I touched on that at my talk at Monero Topia this year that to me it's part of a, it's one piece in a holistic toolkit, you know, of like different tools that we should use to the best of our ability. Doug We got all we got a lot of comments you want to talk you want to talk about your your conference a little bit Get the word out on that. I'd love to yeah Derrick Appreciate that, man. Yeah, so the event, it's called the People's Reset. It was originally called the Greater Reset, obviously a response to the Great Reset, which was the World Economic Forum's big announcement that they made in June 2020, when COVID-1984 was going on. And basically myself and some friends, we were looking around on the internet and the freedom space. And if you take yourself all the way back, can you believe it's been almost five years, Doug? Take yourself back five years ago to summer 2020 and how many people were freaking out? Lockdowns are happening. People knew that shots were on the way and people weren't trusting them. It's just horrible, this rise of government tyranny happening. And in that space, myself and John Bush, we originally started it. We were basically like, how can we help people maybe get a little bit of real hope? Not promoting politicians, not promoting false hopium or anything like that, but actually trying to give people practical tools like Monero and like the freedom stack that the person was just talking about there. And so we decided, you know what? When the World Economic Forum meets in January, 2021, when they announced their full great reset idea, let's meet as well. They're meeting for five days in Davos, Switzerland. Let's meet for five days. And let's talk about solutions from a bottom-up grassroots perspective. And so we've always kind of had this holistic program of five different themes. We focus on mental, physical, spiritual health. We focus on permaculture and growing your own food. We talk about building parallel systems, whether that's education systems, financial, et cetera. We talk about technologies in terms of privacy tech, obviously encryption, but also health technology, energy technology, things like that. And then we talk to people who are homesteading, people who are buying land, people who are forming communities. And every single talk that we have hosted at every single one of our events has always been solutions focused. So there's no debates about the virus or COVID this or this conspiracy. It's just for people who, because I mean, my feeling is like, there's a million podcasts. There's a million places to go learn about those things. Obviously I've got a documentary about the problems, but this event was like, let's come together. And for five days, let's gather in person for those who can come in person and talk about real solutions. And so we had the first event in January, 2021, which was obviously the height of lockdowns. And we were surprised that we got even 80 people to show up in Mexico in the middle of all that. And we had a hundred thousand people tune in online, which I think was partially due to the lockdowns because so many people were at home. But nevertheless, we saw right away like that we were onto something really good and it just, it sparked like in us, we're like, let's keep going. So we did five, we call them activations because again, it's like very much about motivating people, inspiring them, sending them home, activated to go and actually apply the solutions into their lives. Derrick And so we had five events under the name, the greater reset, our last one, the fifth one was January of 2024. And then we announced a rebrand as the people's reset to kind of move a little bit away from just being reactionary to the World Economic Forum and their plans and just focus on like, what is our 2030 gonna look like? A lot of people are concerned about agenda 2030 and great reset and technocracy. But as we were saying earlier, I like to redirect that and focus on what is, how can we put our energy into focusing on what is your 2030 look like? For me, it's about getting land, it's about living with like-minded people, using Monero, using privacy tools, avoiding big banks, avoiding government where you can, all these kinds of things. And it's just, honestly, it's a huge, I think you probably feel the same way about Monero-Topia. It's a labor of love, it's a lot of stress and work, but it's also a beautiful experience. I could see it in your eyes when we were there, I was telling you, I want you to come see me stressed out and for you to enjoy it. Because when you step back and you look around and you're like, oh my God, look at all these people connecting and different people from different worlds, it's a beautiful feeling, right? And so we, I will be- And I know that you're- Doug I know you must draw a fantastic group of people, too, because I can tell with the people that are around you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All freedom-loving doers. Derrick We got Aaron Day coming and Sterling Luhan coming this year and Sterling spoke a couple times. John Bush will be speaking again. So the website for those who are curious, you can either go to the people's reset.org or the greater reset.org. They go the same place and it's 30 speakers. As I said, all solutions focused. We also make it pretty decentralized. So if a speaker wants to host a workshop like outside of the main stage, they can do that. But also anybody who's attending can sign up to host the workshop. So in addition to the 30 main stage speakers, we've got like 20 plus workshops happening in the morning, afternoon, evening. We do two concerts. There's going to be networking sessions every single day. There's going to be a dinner thing going on. There's going to be family activities like we're really trying to make it as holistic and welcoming as possible. We typically get three to 400 people to show up another 10,000 or so to tune in online because we make the stream completely free online. We also post all the talks online for free. So we have an Odyssey channel for those who are familiar with the Odyssey blockchain. Again, another example of blockchain being used for something good. It's a tool on our Odyssey channel, the greater reset people's reset Odyssey channel. We have 200 plus talks on there from all six of our previous events. We just did our first event in the UK a couple months ago because we now it's like we're getting invited to take this, this movement, this event worldwide. And so coming up in just three weeks on January 29th to February 2nd, we're going to have our sixth event as in Mexico, but now it's called the People's Reset Mexico. Tickets are very affordable. Again, the entire thing is going to be streamed for free. All the talks will be posted for free. And you know, kind of the other thing that I really liked that you did, Doug, that we're going to work on doing more this year is just that local integration. You know, we, we have a number of different Mexican speakers who will be speaking in Spanish. And then we also obviously have English speakers and we work with the local professional interpreting team. So let's say when Mexicans show up to the event, because it's 100 percent free for the locals, so locals can come in and just tune in, they can go to the back of the room and they can check out these headsets and they can hear all the talks live in Spanish. And it's just a really cool aspect that allows us to make sure that, you know, it's not just marketed to the expats because I have been to some events, not naming any names, but where where it's obviously marketed just to people coming from other countries who can afford a big, fancy, you know, event for several days and the locals have no connection to it. That's kind of the opposite of what we want to go for. So we make it free for Mexicans. That's important. We bring in the local vendors like you were doing as well, and we're trying to get more of them accepting Monero. Derrick And yeah, I mean, so it's going to be a great time if anybody, you know, if you, if you can make it out, I encourage you to just like if you went to, as I'm listening to Doug to you. I'm like, obviously we'd love to go. And, uh, and then I also love to go and rep Monero, rep Monero topia, get the word out. Uh, you know, I could help onboard the vendors to Monero. We could have the noto running there. So I'm very enticed as you, you know, I don't need a convincing. It's just, uh, I got to deal with issues here, but maybe I could figure something out. Maybe I could, we could get somebody to go on our behalf or something that we could. Derrick Let's talk about it, man. I'm open to it. And I know you got a lot going on, but definitely once the baby is more settled, I would love for you and the fam to come check it out for sure. Because we're going to keep doing it as long as we can. And to me, back to what I was saying a moment ago, at the end of the event, when people come up, this is a comment I heard from one of our speakers who came last year. And it was his first event. And he came up to me and he said, this event has filled up my cup in a way I didn't even know I needed. And I was just like, wow, like holy, how do you, you can't replace that, right? That's like a, just a real genuine, like, he's going home feeling excited, feeling pumped up, you know, and connected with people. And I think we really have cultivated a beautiful audience. Typically there's about 15 different countries represented in the speakers and in the audience. We usually get about 20 countries tuned in from around the world. So, and I was posted about this earlier for anybody who is like, if you're listening to channels and people who are just telling you the world's screwed and they're just nihilistic, or they're just telling you to trust politicians or trust Elon, you're following the wrong people. But there are movements like Monero topia, like the people's reset that are actually giving people practical tools to help themselves. And that's what I'm focused on. That to me is what matters more than anything. So I don't care if we're, you know, we don't have the millions of subscribers or the millions of followers yet. I know that we are genuinely changing people's lives for the better. Doug Vic, tip $10, good show and good work. I don't know. I assume that's Vic. Vic are the one and only of Cake Wallet. Thank you, Vic. Very much appreciate that. Tremendous thank you to Cake Wallet always. They're a big sponsor of the first sponsor of MoneroTalk when I started this back in the day. They're a big part of MoneroTopia. They made a lot of the projects that we do possible. So tremendous thank you and Happy New Year to Vic and Cake. Thank you for the $10 as well. Thanks, Vic. Yeah, man. It all sounds beautiful and great. Come on down, Vic. Yeah. Come on, Vic. Head over. I don't know. I don't know if you have Vic to come over to Mexico again. Maybe. You never know. How many people at the conference would you say? Is everybody aware of Monero at least at this point at your conference would you say? What's kind of Derrick say so because, you know, obviously I mentioned Sterling and Aaron and some of the people who are, you know, have spoke at your event. We've been like, I know people like to say orange pill for Bitcoin, but I'm talking in terms of Monero slowly kind of getting people integrated because like with any movement that grows really rapidly, like in the beginning, all it was was people who realized, I don't want to be vaccinated. And they were kind of reacting to the, you know, the shot mandates and the lockdowns. But then over time, we've brought in speakers who talk about volunteerism, who talk about agorism, we talk about counter economics, who talk about Monero. And so yeah, there definitely still are people who are skeptical of crypto because it's not like we say you have to be pro crypto to come to the event. But I do think that there's more and more part of our audience. Like, for example, if you go to the website, anybody who checks it out, you'll see that there's speakers who are going to be talking about helping our community use crypto in a private way. There's people who are going to be doing workshops about that. So I do think that it's a prime audience for it. And especially because the more that they hear stories from people like me, saying, Hey, guys, I'm being debanked, but I can still accept Monero, they start to realize the the utility of it and the real necessity for it. Doug Vic is saying, yeah, I should. I don't know. So maybe, maybe, maybe we get Vic to come down there. That'd be fantastic. Let's talk. Derrick Shout out to me, Doug knows how to get in touch with me. I'd be happy to talk about having you out so you can come experience it and love to promote cake wallet. Doug You do the conference same time every year? Derrick It's every January. Yeah, it's always every January. Usually, it's a little earlier in the month, but this month, we're doing a bit later. But yeah, it's always January. Because that sort of started with the, okay, let's meet at the same time that the World Economic Forum is meeting. And instead of worrying about what Klaus Schwab is talking about, let's focus on our own agendas. Doug Awesome man awesome. Yeah, I mean we're probably most likely gonna do Monero topi again at the same venue At least at least one more time and maybe another time after that We want to we want to we don't want to leave that place until they're actually all using Monero Derrick So Demi, I didn't even tell you man, Paco, the founder of that is speaking at our event. Doug I saw, yes, I did see that on the website. I was like, wait, Paco, that's amazing. Derrick That's what I'm saying. Like I want to highlight people like him who are doing great stuff. And so yeah, he's speaking on our building, freeing conscious communities days on Sunday. So he's going to come speak in Spanish and the English speakers will have to check out the headsets and listen to him in the English. Fantastic. And yeah, cause we want to, I mean, I've been living in Mexico now for going on five years. I moved March, 2020, right when all the madness happened. So we've been traveling around and networking and meeting lots of great people, including at your event. There was another guy that I met there at Monero Topia, his name's David. He is a just really brilliant dude who's Mexican. He's actually originally from Morelia, where we live. And he's going to be speaking, like kind of doing a, like a basic Spanish web three intro into crypto and privacy and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, honestly, like coming to Monero Topia was another cool way to just connect with more people in Mexico and then bring them to our event. Doug Fantastic. Donald Fisher, Tip25centsmenarotalksbest. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Actually, yeah, no, because I asked when you're doing it, because I'm thinking we could talk offline, but we're probably going to delay the next one a little bit, just so we have a little time over here, a little fan time, and then maybe try to... So rather than doing it next November, maybe we'd delay it. Maybe we would do it after yours, right after something, which would be cool to, so then we could coordinate getting people to come into Mexico. I'd love to, man. Yeah, let's make it happen for sure. Yeah. Derrick Mustache, Tip25centsmenarotopia. Thanks for the last copy of your books at Manarotopia. Enjoying them so far. Keep up the good work. Also, I was the same guy every time. Awesome. Thank you for that. Thanks for reading it. Let's see. We got everybody else? No other Super Chats. Derrick, anything else you want to bring up, man? You got the stage here? Derrick Um, I think I'm pretty good, man. I appreciate it. I got to go eat dinner soon. But I mean, we mentioned, obviously we got to discuss Musk and that is a favorite topic of mine right now. I got to mention the pyramid of power.net. If anybody wants to learn more about my documentary series, my main websites, the conscious resistance.com, the people's reset.org. That's, you know, that's my next main thing. But other than that, man, I'm always looking to network with people like yourself, Doug, and those who are solutions focused. If anybody follows me on Twitter, you'll see me out there, you know, slugging it out with people, but I do try to do my best to rise above that and focus on the solutions. Obviously I'm human and sometimes I get pulled into it, but you know, I'm just doing my best as a human, as a freelance journalist, as an activist, to push as many people who care about freedom towards real solutions and try to help them avoid these same pitfalls and dead ends that I think we've been running into time and time again. So I really appreciate you having me on tonight, man. Doug The, the series that you're putting out the pyramid, um, that that's the pyramid of power. Yeah. So the. Derrick we've released the first 15 of them over the last four years. So pretty much my original idea was to do seasons. So we would do four episodes at a time, kind of within a couple of months. So we did the first 15 of them, my editors working on chapter 16 right now, which is about religion and secret societies. That's kind of one of the final pieces of the pyramid. And then the final final episode is going to be about an hour long. And it's, as I said, I'm going to be kind of letting different people who have different perspectives share who they think is at the top. So I interviewed David Ike, I interviewed G. Edward Griffin, a lot of old school researchers, and in some newer ones to kind of share their perspectives, whether they say it's this group or that group, or it's the devil, or it's this, you know, I'm just going to kind of put that all together, present the claims, and then also kind of say, maybe this isn't as strong as some people think maybe this is, and then draw my own conclusions of who or what I think is at the top of the pyramid. So we'll see how it goes. I'm excited. Doug And so did you figure out how to get Monero up and running on your website or like what is the curve? We got to get that added for you so people can at least attempt to buy their tickets and stuff with Monero. Derrick Yeah, yeah. I mean, we do have our wallets on there so people can, I pretty much do it like very manual. So if people want to buy. You use WooCommerce? You said you use WooCommerce? I use WooCommerce, but we don't do crypto through there. So I pretty much have it set up that people email me directly just so I kind of keep it a little more private. Because you could very easily add like a plugin. Doug Yeah, you can add Now Payments plugin, very easy to do if you're using WooCommerce already because you're using probably like PayPal and WooCommerce or no, you're using, right? What'd you say? PayPal, right? Or no, for like... No, I use... Derrick We use WooCommerce for people with the credit cards and stuff, and that just goes to Stripe and then into the account, or it was. Like I said at the moment, I'm not going to say out loud and case-wise is listening, but I found a temporary stop gap, but honestly, I'm just trying to get through our event, and then we need to figure out a long-term solution. Doug Okay, just get because it's not that hard if you have somebody who's running the site, it's not that hard for them to add a plugin for now payments or even just the Monero gateway. We use it's a little clunky the Monero, but it does get the job done. It's pure Monero like the transactions just going straight from the user to you. It's not going through any centralized system. It's and it's very easy to set up. Obviously BTC pay server is the ultimate way to go with that site requires a little bit more setup at the at this point. So just just let you know if you want to do the the Monero gateway, that might be easier than you think. Derrick Let's talk about that because I definitely would love to do that and just try to avoid as much hassles. And hopefully at the people's reset, I'll get to tell this story and say, guys, if you want us to continue going forward, we really need you to get on Monero and some of these other alternative ways to pay us. Doug You might get some Monero topia people that want to come check out your conference, and I'm sure they'd well we've done Derrick to have you guys. Yeah. We were definitely promoting it there. So I would love to have anybody, anybody who went to Monero topia. If you liked the vibe there, I guarantee you'll like what's going on at the people's recess. Doug All right, brother. Thank you so much. Happy New Year. Thank you for your time. Wish you all the best in the new year. Hopefully, I'm sure I'll have you on again or something. We'll cross paths again before the new year, but if not, have a good one, brother. Derrick this year and congrats on the baby, man. Speaker 2 Hi, Monero Land, thank you for joining on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to our show on YouTube, Odyssey, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go to MoneroTalk.Live for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. If you want to interact with us, guests, or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, or any of our social media platform. MoneroTalk is also made possible from contributing by viewers and listeners like you, and supporting us is easier than ever by typing in MoneroTalk.Crypto in your Monero.com or cake wallet send address to send us a tip. Once again, thanks so much for listening, and we look forward to being back next week.