Latest / Monero Talk / Stablecoins are a backdoor CBDC w/ Aaron Day | EPI 352

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Stablecoins are a backdoor CBDC w/ Aaron Day | EPI 352 · Monero Talk

• Alright, we are live. Aaron, how's it going, man? It's going well. Just sharing this out with a few people, but it's going well. Sweet, I know we caught up a little bit yesterday, but we actually, there's some things we didn't get to talk about. Obviously, we'll rehash some of the things we did talk about. We'd like to talk about it out here in the open, particularly your latest thoughts on stablecoins, the need for unity in the privacy space. I think it's an important topic. Obviously, we're talking about Porkfest as well. In fact, there'll be some high-level attendees there. Ross, potentially. Roger Ver, still potentially. That's a potential. And actually, I want to talk to you about your fasting thing. I mean, we don't have to spend too much time on that, but I don't think we've gotten to really talk about it out in the open. At least I haven't gotten to speak with you about it. I thought that was pretty amazing what you did there. So yeah, I would like to cover all those things. Is there anything that you would like to cover that I didn't mention there? No, I mean, those are the big things, and this stablecoin thing is really bad. I mean, I've written about it, I've been talking about it, but just the more I dig into it, I think the challenge with this is it's probably 100 times worse than it was a year ago, and people think that it's a non-issue because Trump said, you know, signed an executive order saying there's no CBDC. So, I mean, I don't think we're going to stop the legislation, but I think it's actually more important that we really focus on getting immediate adoption on privacy coins and privacy stablecoins. Like, this has to be a focus, otherwise people are going to be stuck. Do you think this backdoor CBDC through the stablecoin was something that's been in the works for quite some times in terms of brewing behind closed doors? Obviously, the stablecoin. We're working towards this, but I mean, were there political figures that had this up to sleeve for quite some time? There are, and it was something that, you know, I dug into this quite a bit, and it didn't realize the extent of it until recently. So, for instance, there was a guy that worked in Trump's Treasury Department. His name is Brian Brooks. He was the acting comptroller in Trump's first Treasury Department. He left there, became the chief legal officer at Coinbase, where he actually worked with Circle to develop basically USDC. So that was going on kind of behind the scenes the whole time. Then you have on the Tether front, the latest investor in Tether, who invested $600 million in Tether, and the company that manages all of the alleged Treasuries that back Tether is none other than Howard Lutnick, our US Commerce Secretary. So I actually think this is much more orchestrated than we think. I also think, though, that Trump probably, I don't think there's any grandmaster vibe here with Trump architecting this. I actually think the PayPal mafia and others have basically just infiltrated the Trump administration. And people complained that the problem with Trump in the first term was he surrounded himself with DC swamp creatures, and he listened to their advice. The problem is this time, he surrounded himself with Silicon Valley and the PayPal mafia, and that's actually worse and more dangerous. And we're seeing it now with Palantir as well. If you look at what's happened, Klaus Schwab probably retired and resigned because he couldn't do in 10 years what Trump's managed to accomplish in terms of pushing a technocratic agenda in four months, whatever, six months, however long it is. We are into the year now at this point. the technocratic experts are basically running the White House right now. we have real ID. So real ID and real ID is digital in a number of states already. We have this backdoor CBDC, which is really problematic, and I'm sure what we're going to get into it a little bit more. And then, you know, Palantir is basically the infrastructure for a social credit system. And if you look at what Palantir has already done in terms of working with the CIA, working with intelligence communities, working with local law enforcement, essentially to work on pre crime, they're trying, they're using AI and algorithms to, to try to predict crime in advance. I mean, this is, this is pretty much a nightmare scenario, like we're all of a sudden, we're going to wake up and we're living in minority report by the end of the year. So that's kind of what's going on. And, and no one's, people are actually now starting to wake up, but people have actually been sharing this on, oh, great, you know, we're going to stop illegal immigration. So, you know, the real idea is great, you know, all of a sudden. I mean, we've been sounding the alarm. You've been sounding the alarm from before Trump was elected, right? Everybody kind of saw the writing on the wall with where things were headed, with Palantir being kind of in bed with Trump. There were other clues as well. Right. But what really like dampened it was the fact that Trump pledged to free Ross on day one. And that was kind of like the bargaining trick that he used with those that are most alert to what was going on. Right. So like all even you, I'm sure, would say, like, you know, if you can turn back time, you're still voting for Trump. I mean, knowing that he would free Ross on day one. I mean, how do you how do you say no to that? Right. So yeah. I mean, so I mean, that was the trade off. I actually did an interesting interview with Dr. Irene, a libertarian party. And I said, I endorse Trump. But the way that I look at it is, this is a hostage negotiation. And then I ranted for about an hour or two, an hour and a half, and said that I don't agree with any of Trump's other policies, and he's surrounded by technocrats. And people got mad at me for that, because they're like, well, that's actually, that might hurt. Yeah, that might hurt Roger or whatever, because I'm saying all these things. But I'm like, look, I didn't endorse Trump the first time. I actually didn't vote. But that's a separate thing. That's a separate situation altogether. But he was horrible the first time. And this was a hostage negotiation. And I'm glad Ross is out. I mean, I think it probably, all things being equal, the only problem is if people actually equate Ross getting out with Trump having good policies. That's actually the only part of this that's problematic, is if there are people that are still holding on to hope or still think that somehow he's a white knight. It's very clear that Trump viewed the Ross thing as a one-off negotiation. He's not even applying it equally, right? He's not even saying, well, yeah, hey, this guy was involved in something and was the subject of lawfare. And the Fed stole his crypto and everything else. And so we should probably treat everyone equally. We still have all these privacy coins people and Roger and all the people that are really facing criminal charges are still stuck in the process. And so there was no blanket pardon, which there was with the J6ers, which is unfortunate. But I'm still hopeful that something positive happened. Are you seeing positive movement in that area or is it just out of standstill, like, you know, with Roger and some of these others? I mean, are we, are we seeing positive signs or it's, they did the Ross thing and now it's like, they feel like they, you know, they, they, they pandered enough to that group and now they're, they're moving on. I don't know what's going on with any of the details in Roger's case, but I do think it's a positive development that he hasn't been extradited, right? Because he lost his final like Supreme Court appeal or whatever, months and months ago. And so there was this period of time where people are expecting any day now, I remember he went on to Alex Jones and people and he was kind of like, hey, you know, I may get, you know, picked up during this broadcast. So something clearly happened. And so it does seem like there's some negotiation going on, but I have no idea what it is. And, you know, so I do think that there is some reason to be optimistic. But at the same time, I mean, it's kind of like the DOJ is a separate animal from say, for instance, the SEC, the SEC has been great, the SEC has been dropping cases right and left. DOJ has a little bit more on their plate. So I'm actually going to chalk some of this up to bandwidth, you know, although it's not like there's a lot going on with Epstein and everything else. But I do think that they have a lot on their plate. So I'm still optimistic that that Roger's case is going to come to a, you know, positive conclusion. But but it shouldn't be. I mean, I think I put out a post this morning or yesterday, it's been four hundred and one days that he's been stuck in Spain. It's absurd that it's going on this long. And, you know, I think that I find frustrating is and I think part of the challenge is with this is that you have a lot of people surrounding Trump that are Bitcoin Maxis. And so, you know, you always wonder what what they're hearing about this. And I, you know, I talked to some people that were at this Bitcoin conference last week or whenever it was. And I guess, you know, nobody was talking about there wasn't a lot of discussion about freedom at all. And there was, you know, and there's still a lot of the same anti Roger rhetoric. So I hope that doesn't spill into this. And, you know, and the unfortunate thing to me is that, you know, Roger got picked up like two weeks, three weeks after publishing hijacking Bitcoin. So nobody really had the benefit. So I'm sure the Trump's teams probably never heard of a red hijacking Bitcoin or even RFK or any of these other people or even Vivek who I spoke to. I bet none of them have even heard about it. So they've never heard of the alternative view. And so the problem is, we're now so deep into this Bitcoin strategic reserve strategy that, you know, it's it's a bit challenging. But I actually, you know, again, I'm still I'm still optimistic because the case is such a clear cut example of lawfare. And the parallels between what has happened to Roger are almost identical to some of the same things that have happened to Trump. So on the plus side, Trump is against lawfare. He can be, you know, very empathetic about the exact circumstances in the way Roger has been treated. And, you know, and if they do do the research, they are going to find out that, you know, all of this, this entire industry would not be where it is that, were it not for Roger being the first investor in the ecosystem and the first one to really, you know, promote its its global adoption, not just for Bitcoin, but with crypto currencies more broadly. So, again, I'm cautiously optimistic, but, you know, it's hard for me to be too optimistic about politics at this point. Yeah, it is pretty wild when you think about it. I mean, it's pretty sad that the fact that you have this huge Bitcoin conference, all these OGs that are there, they're all up Trump's ass, they're right there, the Trump administration is hanging out at the conference, and you have Free Ross, which is amazing. Was there any discussion of Free Roger? Did it come up in the conference at all? I didn't hear about it coming up in the official program at all. I do know that there were some good people there that were talking about it. So I know Mark Edge was there advocating for Ian. And there was a small group of people that were there. And they had actually flyers and pens and everything that they were handing out. And they had four different people on there that they were advocating for, Ian and Roman Storm and Roger and one other, I think one of the other tornado cash guys. I can't remember for sure. But they were out there pounding the pavement. But I am unaware of it being mentioned at all by any of the people that were actually talking about it. And so which is sad, because there were 35,000 people in attendance. And some of the stuff that Bob is doing. I mean, half the time. companies that are there where like Roger had a part in like seeding and starting right like Yeah. And you know, look, honestly, that's been a little bit frustrating. I'll give you an example. Roger was the first investor. He invested in XRP when it was one guy, literally one guy. So you could argue he was in a way like the co-founder. And the last time I checked, the see, Garling House and none of those people have actually spoken out against what's going on. And that's actually disgusting. And the other aspects of the Bitcoin conference, I don't even know how to deal with Cynthia Loomis announcing that, you know, U.S. generals overwhelmingly support the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. Or that yesterday the Bitcoin Policy Institute is hosting the active, you know, the deputy director or whatever of the CIA. I mean, it's gone so far afield of what it was supposed to be that it's both sad and actually laughable at the same time. It's almost hard to, but it's hard to watch. I mean, the conference looked pretty cringe, at least from an outsider perspective, watching some of the talks and then seeing people post about it. Yeah, it definitely was. It definitely was cringe. It didn't feel like we're winning even though it should feel that way given the price and the adoption, right? It feels like it's been co-opted. I mean, it feels like 70% of the conference was about stablecoins. I don't know if you saw that clip. They actually played a clip where they aggregated all of the times that stablecoins were mentioned. And it was like it was everywhere. I mean, JD Vance is talking about stablecoins everywhere. And I just don't think people have thought this through. I don't think it has actually been frustrating for me. I've been to different crypto conferences lately and or on various X spaces, even with some people that are supposedly OGs and they're like, oh, yes, stablecoins are great for crypto adoption. Like stablecoins are the antithesis of crypto adoption. If your whole point was to get away from fiat currency and now you're taking fiat currency and you're adding 15 layers of risk and you're adding programmability and tracking and censorship by multiple parties and also by allowing both Congress and the Federal Reserve to oversee it, that's not crypto adoption. That's CBDC adoption in a backdoor execution. And people are not even thinking about it like this. They're just like, oh, well, hey, it's a crypto. So this is great. It must be great for adoption. I mean, the fact is there is great utility in a stable coin though, right? Eventually, I think the concept of one will be obsolete, but there is obviously great utility. That's why we see so many governments pushing it aside. A lot of people just naturally organically started using stablecoins because it does provide utility to especially people that aren't in the United States, right? You know, you could pay somebody with the dollar without going through the banking system. Yes, it could still, you know, still being surveilled, whatever there is even with that more freedom than with what you can do with the traditional banking system. And we've seen them be organically adopted because there is utility in the concept of a stablecoin for sure, right? Yeah, no, there is utility. And, you know, and one of the problems with crypto adoption has been the volatility of the price. Obviously, it's weird to call something that's pegged to fiat stable, given that the dollars lost 26% of it. Excuse me. Yeah, Fiat's lost 26% of its value just since COVID. So it's it's, you know, weird calling that stable. But they should be called fiat coins, right? They could be should be called fiat coins. But but most cryptos have actually had even more volatility. And so I know this has been an issue that I've had when I'm talking to merchants about adoption is that that they're they're concerned about this volatility. And it's, you know, it's all relative to to the dollar. So so there is utility in it perceived by a lot of different players. But I will say that there's utility now. The utility becomes a lot worse once the stable and genius acts pass. So right now, the regulations that they want to impose are not currently in place. And so, yes, they can track it. And they have tracked it. And there have been all kinds of examples of USDC and Tether working with the feds. But I mean, it's going to become just like the banking system is now. And most people don't realize that the existing banking system is already heavily surveilled. I wrote an article and I identified 13 different programs from the Patriot Act to the Bank Secrecy Act to NSA bulk collection and a whole variety of AI IRS using AI to analyze transactions, the Treasury Department doing reports. Anytime you do a transaction of more than ten thousand dollars, the Treasury automatically gets a report. And we just saw like six weeks ago, the Trump administration decided, well, we want to crack down on illegal immigration. So we're going to change the ten thousand dollar threshold to two hundred dollars in 30 zip codes in California and Texas. And they literally issued that as a policy memo. So so people are not aware of exactly how trackable I mean, our existing system is digital. You don't need a token to have if you're using Oracle and Microsoft databases, you can track that. And they already are tracking that. So all of those laws and all of that tracking that applies to the existing banking system is going to apply to these stable coins. And then you're going to have monthly reporting requirements to the federal reserve to make sure that you actually have the reserves. And then on top of that, and this is the big issue for me recently, as I've been digging into it more, they're going to require that stable coins be backed one to one by either US treasuries or dollars. So you can't you can't use anything else as collateral. And the reason that they're doing this is what Elon Musk has been complaining about heavily today on X for anybody that's been looking. This big, beautiful bill or whatever is going to add 30 trillion dollars worth of debt over the next 10 years. Nobody wants to buy our debt anymore. China actually put out a thing saying ditch the dollar. They're not interested in our treasuries. Few weeks back, we did a Treasury auction and there wasn't enough demand. The Fed had to come in and buy. We already have quantitative easing starting again because people saw that our credits downgraded and that we are continuing to be fiscally irresponsible. So basically, I have quotes from David Sachs, who's our crypto AIs are quotes from the Treasury secretary, Besant and from Howard Lutnik, all saying that one of the benefits of this stable coin hype is this is how they're going to sell treasuries. They're going to use the hype of this to basically make the stable coin issuers the way that they're going to fund this debt. So if you're using a regulated stable coin under the Genius and Stable Act, when it passes, you are funding all of these wars all over the world. You are funding central bank tyranny and you're funding the surveillance on top of it. So it's actually even worse than previously expected because of this issue of it having to be backed directly by US Treasuries. Is it part of the Genius Act that a certain percentage has to be backed directly by U.S. Treasures? My understanding is that both bills say 100%. Really? Yeah. Like like like tether right now right is backed by I think they even hold like they hold like Bitcoin, right? They hold gold. We don't have tellers by anything. Tethers never passed an audit. The closest thing that they have is an added station from Howard Lutnik who said, oh yeah, trust me bro, the reserves are there. But yes, they had the CEO of Tether at this event last week and he said that they have 100,000 Bitcoin and 50 tons of gold or 50, I didn't even know, it was a large amount of gold, allegedly based on the guy's statement. But yes, that collateral will not be eligible. So based on my read of these bills, they would have to, let me take a step back. I have been saying for a long time and I hold that this is true, that the whole purpose of this legislation is to force Tether and USDC to be acquired by large existing financial institutions in the United States so that they comply with all of this stuff. I think that's actually a big part of it. But let's say that they are able to remain independent. If they are independent, then they're going to have to sell their gold or they're going to have to sell their Bitcoin and buy Treasuries. So there's $150 billion market cap worth of Tether out there right now. I don't know what percentage of it, even based on what they claim is Treasuries versus Bitcoin or whatever, but under this legislation, they would be forced to... Yeah, it is. It's kind of a genius move if you do want if your goal is to strengthen the dollar, right? Whether you know that you know whether you think you think that's a good policy for the US government to have I know you know, but I mean it is It's a pretty genius effective move for them to do like you said this it's really they're running out of options, right? We're in a position where Governments around the world are looking to get rid of the dollar dollar seems to be like it like it hit and like you know a peak right in terms of its global acceptance as the world reserve and the trend might not now be down and this stablecoin thing could temporarily Save the dollar Well, very temporarily. But then, but then what this has kicked off is, remember, there are 134 countries representing 98 percent of global GDP working on CBDC projects. So the other countries that are working on CBDCs are looking at this and saying they understand what's going on. They understand that what the Trump administration is doing is they're using stablecoins as a backdoor way to retain global reserve currency status with programmable digital money. And so as a result, they're bringing forward all of their CBDC programs to the point where the EU might launch their CBDCs as early as October of this year. So now, from the standpoint, from our perspective, as citizens or anybody, whichever country you're in, this just accelerated digital tyranny around the world. So all anybody is going to be getting anywhere are digital surveillance tokens, whether their CBDCs are issued by a central bank doesn't really matter. And so again, we're going to be funding all of these wars and all of this expanded spending. So. The end result of crypto is the most used crypto, the crypto with the largest market cap, the thing that people are actually using around the world to transact, is essentially going to be a backdoor CVDC in the form of a US dollar stablecoin. Yes. And think about this. We're here already. I mean, it's like they're already like, like it's already like, right? Stablecoins are already used more than any other crypto by far, right, in terms of transactions. And they are, in fact, last year, there was something like $27 trillion worth of transactions. And let me, I want to look at my graph because I put something out, I want to make sure, I actually was wrong on this. But it's projected that by 2030, there will be $120 trillion worth of stablecoin transactions, which by the way, is more than ACH and Visa and MasterCard combined. So why this is lethal from a backdoor CBDC perspective is, let's say Harris had won, or when Biden was in office, he signed an executive order, they were pursuing a CBDC. But when you look at CBDC adoption around the world, there have been 11 countries that have adopted CBDCs. And even in China and Nigeria and in other places, the adoption has been slow. So, I mean, if Harris rolled out a CBDC, it would probably take 10 years to get to where. it all up. Right. It'd be the Fed trying to trying to build it on their own. Right. The Fed, they're buying the transaction volume. So this is like, it's like turbo cancer for CBDC adoption. So it really is. It is a genius move, right? It's an evil genius move. When did you first see the writing on the wall with this? When did you see this coming into fruition? Well, so I mean two and a half years ago was when I first started looking at the CBDC issue and that's when I wrote my book and then and then what it was was I had followed there were two pieces of legislation drafted before this Genius Bill and it was called the Loomis Gillibrand Act. And so this was Cynthia Loomis from Wyoming and then Gillibrand from New York. And so they had tried twice. They tried in I think 23 and then 24 to pass a stablecoin bill. So I analyzed these bills and I told everybody what these bills are bad and I was actually trying to warn the privacy community. Loomis is anti privacy. Even these bills were pro KYC AML and it used a lot of the same rhetoric. So these so I was warning people about these bills for the last two years. But then when the Genius Bill came came up initially, I'm like, hey, maybe this is going to be better, right, because they were trying to push this other thing when, you know, we had a different composition in the Congress and, you know, we didn't have a even though it's a name only pro crypto administration. And then I read I actually read through these bills. I'm like, they actually took the Loomis Gillibrand bill and they made it worse. They actually explicitly put a moratorium on in the stable bill. The any new algorithmic stablecoins. So for two years, no one is allowed to create a new algorithmic stablecoin at all. And and it just ratcheted up a whole bunch of different things. And then, you know, including the one for one to one back backing by Treasuries in the dollar and more reported. So so they took a bad bill and then they actually managed to make it much worse. And then at the Bitcoin conference last year when Loomis brought it up, it was brought up in the context of this being something that Trump wanted to do in his first 100 days. So then I'm like, OK, not only has this gone from a bad bill to a worse bill, but now it's become a strategic priority. And it's really only the last couple of weeks that I've noticed the quotes from Sachs and the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce Secretary about the importance of this. I think there's a quote from we find the the exact quote from I believe it's it's Sachs. Yeah, here we go. David Sachs. Stablecoins have the potential to ensure American dollar dominance internationally to increase the usage of the U.S. dollar digitally as the world's reserve currency and in the process create potentially trillions of dollars of demand for U.S. Treasury which can lower long term interest rates. We already have over 200 billion in stable coins. It's just unregulated. I think that if we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this, we could create trillions of dollars of demand for our Treasuries practically overnight very quickly. So it's it's CBDC adoption on steroids. Like you said without having to go through the whole process Somebody saying here Roger Vera's right pick going was hijacked by Wall Street and now and now it feels like all of crypto is being Hijacked by stable coins. I mean the end result is gonna be everybody Transacting with these with these stable coins that are effectively CBDCs. And yeah, you'll have you'll have You know people storing storing their wealth in Bitcoin on a transparent ledger And then you know, you'll have people like us using Monero and other privacy coins But it's it's not gonna be easy to get the word out to Joe Schmo when it's gonna be You know, they're gonna get up people are gonna get a lot of utility out out of these things without realizing You know what they're giving up. So it's it's gonna be an up uphill battle in terms of adoption like that they are effectively co-opting things I feel like by Moving forward with this like that the technocracy is is is winning with this move I mean, this is a this is a major leap forward for technocracy Granted we have all these tools here that we can use to fight it and opt out but shit It's it's gonna be a it's it's gonna be more of a battle. I feel like then Then perhaps we we're all thinking Well, it's more of a battle. We don't have as much time. One of the things that I do like is that our project's launched on Zeno that's actually a privacy algorithmic stablecoin. Yes, we got it. We got to talk about it because I see people Excess entertainment is asking thoughts on alternative stable coins USD H BTC backed us eat back freck so yeah algorithmic Yes, let's let's get into that And then I see X entertainment has another question guys, please send your questions via XMR chat comm slash Monero talk It's a way to send Monero based super chats You don't have to send us $10 $20 while people do that. We greatly appreciate it Just for purposes of using Monero you could send you know a couple of cents But please send your questions that way if you want me to bring them up on screen obviously if I see a good question I'll probably bring it up anyway, but just for purposes of using Monero. Let's use it. Let's grow adoption Started interrupt Aaron go ahead continue So, yeah, so there's an algorithmic stablecoin, privacy algorithmic stablecoin built on Zeno. And again, I think privacy is key. I mean, this ability to freeze transactions has already been problematic. I think it was just last week, the guy that was involved in the meme coin from Malay in Argentina, I guess $56 million was frozen, I believe, of USDC. But I mean, I think everybody that's probably listening to this is already aware of the fact that USDC and Tether have been seized and frozen on numerous occasions. It's also, though, very dangerous. It's becoming very dangerous to have any kind of transparent crypto. I think I saw, was it last week or the week before, the daughter of some crypto CEO or whatever was they showed footage of her being abducted in France, or I think they stopped it in time. But there are all kinds of examples now of kidnapping going on and violence. And, you know, so you have these public legislatures, and actually, I get pissed off. I mean, I saw somebody like some Ethereum guy put $300 million or whatever on the crack. And I'm like, you know, it's kind of annoying that this stuff is is announced, even as an example, Michael Saylor shows up at this Bitcoin event and says, well, we're not going to, you know, we're not going to provide proof of reserves. And then I think Arkham actually identified all of his wallets and put all the information out there. So I'm no Michael Saylor fan. But I mean, at the same time, it's like, you know, dude, your shit's just been tracked. And so people need to be increasingly concerned about this. So so I think privacy is actually critical. And it's not even just a function of trying to escape, you know, technocracy. It's not just governments today and in the future that are going to be trying to censor your money and go after you. It's it's actually, you know, criminals today, that are increasingly sophisticated with their techniques. So I love this idea of a, not only a privacy stablecoin, but it's, it's an algorithmic coin. And it's not backed by US Treasuries, it's not backed by dollars, it's actually backed by over collateralized xeno. So you you get the benefit of having something that is pegged to the dollars, you get all of the convenience that people want and expect and need. But you get privacy, you get low fees, it's fast. And you're not funding Treasuries, you're not funding the war machine, you're not funding central bank tyranny. So I think it's actually a great idea. And and I and it's actually gotten off to a really powerful start. I think it's only been around for like a month. And it's listed on they signed up like 20 different exchanges. It's in cake wallet, it's in the bitcoin.com wallet, edge wallet, and then the xeno main wallet. So I mean, this thing is like loaded and ready for for adoption. There's a point you know, xeno and FUSD. And so I'm hoping that people recognize this and just start moving into this quickly. Because you said you're right. I mean, we're behind now, right? And the problem with this is, and this is one of the things I didn't like, in general. So I was doing these workshops. And the reason that I've been doing workshops and introducing people to cake and Monero and xeno and everything else is, I don't like to be a guy that runs around and tells people that, you know, everything's really bad, and then black pills people and then offers nothing. I mean, we seem to be completely loaded up with nothing but that. So the good news is we actually have solutions. So people can use freedom dollar, I love FUSD as being the ticker symbol for it, people can use xeno, they can use Monero, their wallets, there's, you know, the XMR bizarre marketplace, but we have to start using this stuff immediately. Like this isn't none of this is about Oh, speculation in the price, if we need for people to actually start using these alternative private currencies to do normal day to day transactions, not even just like one off, oh, hey, this is cool. This is novel. I mean, you know, like things like food and healthcare and like fundamental staples that people need, we need to get that transferred over to this alternative system. And we definitely have just the time period is now compressed by probably five years. If this stuff, if this stuff happens, and again, it's tough. So your audience and Zayna audience in the privacy community, and the people at Quarkfest, I mean, those are the main people that are even paying any attention to this, everyone else is just as oblivious to this, everybody else is like, hey, you know, let's use civil asset forfeiture and taxes to buy our digital gold and pump our bags and let's get the CIA involved. And all you know, these trends, wild man, it's white. it's fully co-opted. Danish crypto tipped 50 cents. We need to keep spreading Monero. I love the concept of Zano with smart contract with privacy. Yeah, I love those concepts. And honestly, perhaps the thing I was most excited about with regards to Zano was that they were focused on trying to launch or have... Theoretically, somebody could build a algorithmic stable coin on top of iteration of that. I know there are those, and I'm in that ballpark as well, that have concerns about the concept in general of an algorithmic stable coin where essentially you're backing it with the asset that's running the network itself that it's running on. It feels a little bit like a perpetual motion machine and hasn't really yet been proven that these things can work where they kind of back themselves. We've seen catastrophes. What was lunar? What was it? What was it? Lunar? Terra Luna. And a variety of things, but I think what's different about you. obviously was never able to make it work so yeah what is your thought on that in terms of what's the difference between what we're seeing here with FUSD on xano and what some of the other attempts have made So first of all, I mean, it's over collateralized. And I don't know exactly what the dynamics were with those other coins. But you can see, Zeno has a feature that a lot of people aren't aware of. It's privacy by default, but there is an auditable wallet feature where you can actually have a view key. So I actually have a, and anybody can get the view key from the Freedom Dollar website. And you can load it into your Zeno wallet, or your cake wallet, or whatever. And you can see in real time what's actually backing the stable coin. So that's actually a really nice feature. But I think that there's something that a lot of people are missing. So obviously, over collateralization is key. But there are some other things going on with, so I think Zeno was up to, I just saw yesterday, I think he had 16,700 transactions or something like that for the day. And really? And the way Zeno works, so Zeno's also going to be used with confidential layers. So people are going to be able to bridge their Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum into Zeno using this blockchain called Bridgeless, which is a, it uses threshold signatures. And I won't go into all the details there. But the point is, Zeno is the gas for all of this. Well, so interesting thing about Zeno is, once the Zeno network is doing more than 144,000 transactions a day, it actually becomes deflationary based on the burning of the fees. So still. At what? At $140,000? At $140,000. 144,000, I believe. And so you actually have a situation here where, and by the way, this is, none of this is even about speculation. This is the whole point of XANO is you use it. It's a blockchain that you wrap around other assets so that you can make those other assets private, but the number of use cases, I mean, for already at 16,700 transactions or whatever it is, and that's before, I mean, this is, there are a million FUSD tokens right now. So that's great for the first month, but I mean, this is no, we're not even scratching the surface of where this thing goes. So you add confidential layer, point of sale systems and everything else. I don't think it's going to be very long before this becomes a deflationary coin. So just as people are needing it and using it to make their assets private, you're actually going to see the supply decrease, which I think is going to be great news in terms of making sure that the peg is always, is always reached. I mean, Andre, the founder, my take on him is he's a very honest guy. I could be getting completely fooled. But that's why, well, like I said, I was most excited about the stablecoin thing they were doing, but in terms of why I give zano deference in the first place, obviously, anybody who knows me knows I'm a Monero, right? I'm all in on the Monero. I want to see, you know, I grow Monero adoption that I, you know, don't need to get into that. But I do think, you know, the fact that Andre was the original creator of the crypto protocol and just the way he speaks about zano and the project, because even that feature you're talking about, he was kind of upfront about it being like, yeah, you know, it's not even something necessarily that I wanted to add because, you know, it's just kind of like, you know, kind of plays into the number go up hype. But it is actually there. I don't know how significant it's going to be, but I think that might be a little bit more, you know, hype than utility. But to be determined, I mean, I guess if there's tons of transactions happening, then it is going to actually have an effect and it's going to start to, you know. Well, I mean, but I'll tell you, I mean, we just discussed, I actually think it's going to be huge, simply because, because stable coins are huge, and because people are going to find out. I mean, it's not, it's, you know, it's predominantly me going around and talking about this. But I am, this is really my first interview that I've done about this, but I am planning to hit, you know, really hard, I mean, I'm going to see if I can get back on to Alex Jones and go through the whole thing, because this people need to be aware of this. But now there's, there's, there's an actual solution that you can use immediately. And you can swap in and out of Xeino. I mean, there's, you can use the P2P exchange, there's an AM, AMM there all the time. So at any point in time, you can swap between the two. It's like I said, it's on 20 different exchanges. So this might actually turn out to be the first real killer app, and it might have real transaction value, because, you know, again, these other coins are, can be expensive to use. Here's another point. And by the way, I find this to be beyond comical, right? So, so here we are, we're sitting here, and we're in the middle of this trade war with China, again, and this is the whole thing that you know, everybody's talking about every day and it's already having a negative, you know, the expected negative impact, but it's it's all about targeting China. So, I don't know if you know this or not, but the blockchain that is most used to mint tether is actually Tron. And Tron is a project of Justin Sun, who's a Chinese national, and Tron is completely centralized. There are only like 26 nodes or something. So not only can Congress and the Federal Reserve interfere with this, in theory, the Chinese government could also add another layer of risk to a tether stable coin that's built on Tron. Now, so Trump on the one hand is sitting here saying China is bad. And then did you know that the largest single investor in the Trump mean coin is Justin Sun? And that Justin Sun invested, I think it was north of $10 million into World Financial Group, his family's DeFi project. So I mean, there's, again, I don't think anybody here is expecting logical consistency or principle related to the Trump administration and this stuff. But that's a pretty scary proposition. And by the way, I think a lot of maga, a lot of the maga people that are buying his propaganda about buy USA, and you know, you know, China's been ripping us off, a lot of those people might be interested to understand that a Chinese national has, you know, kind of control over the blockchain, on which most of the stable coins are actually issued. I think that, you know, I think people, some people are going to find that arc to be it be of interest. But, but again, I actually think this is going to be huge. And it's just come out of nowhere. I mean, again, all of this is in a month. And the good news is that every time one of these exchanges is added for freedom dollar, you know, Zeno obviously goes along for the ride as well. So this is helping to open up the entire ecosystem. But then you add on to that, again, confidential layer. So now the $2 trillion worth of market cap of Bitcoin plus the 300 billion or whatever of Ethereum, once those folks start realizing, and it's amazing to me that actually people still don't even understand that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not anonymous. There are still some people that actually don't get that I was in a political chat room, there was some political exchange, and it was actually complete. There's stuff going on right now in New Hampshire, where they're trying to basically pass a law at the state level that gets rid of local zoning laws. And so then there's like, there's a mega group that's like, well, no, we want local control. This is the state taking control of our property, which is not exactly how that works. It's kind of like, what do you think we should have local, you know, your town council should determine whether you have a Second Amendment right or not. But anyway, it's turned into this whole thing. And so part of what people are saying is you have these Bitcoin people using their anonymous Bitcoin. And you know, I'm kind of like, hey, listen, you know, I can tell you from the three experiences that I've had in the last six months, of people that are dealing with business partners, or marital disputes, or whatever, where there's now like a whole industry of private investigators that are trained in chain analysis. And they've been now tracking everybody's transaction. So I don't so there are a lot of people that will say, Oh, I've got Bitcoin, but I've never touched an exchange. It doesn't matter. If you did a peer to peer transaction with somebody, but that person was rated, and they were able to connect your account, even from that peer to peer transaction, all of that stuff is getting logged into a common database that now private investigators can access. So they'll throw in a public key, and then boom, all of this stuff is mapped out. And all they're doing is building this database and adding to it every single day. So I think that the application of of xeno through confidential layer, that's also going to bring a huge amount of demand, we still have to build the point of sale systems and everything else. I don't know if I told you, I mean, I wrote a plugin for WooCommerce. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to update that to include FUSD. Honestly, I did it during the fast part part of that we didn't talk much about the fast, but yeah, That's okay, that's okay, we're getting important information out there. Well, I went through this period of from day 14 to 21 during the fast, where I had so much energy where I'm like, I'm coding. So I like I created a working point of sale system, I developed this thing. And now that I'm, now that I'm done with the fast, I'm trying to go back and figure out what the hell I did. I'm not even kidding about this. So I'm like, I've actually spent a week trying to like, like, how did I actually even do this? And so that's, that's a bit embarrassing. But it speaks a lot to what, what fasting is like, but also I'm kind of in this, in this thing. But, but now anybody using WooCommerce, I think there are 8 million storefronts that use WooCommerce with, with WordPress. Now you can take XANO and then I'll add on Freedom Dollar and everything else. But we, we, we do have to get people, I mean, I mean, even Monero's lagging there, right? Like we use Monero gateway, which is really not up. You know, the development on that isn't really kept up well at all. The guy who created it, he's fantastic, but he doesn't really put too many resources into it. Nobody's really picked up the ball. And then there's BTC pay server, Monero. You could use Monero through that, but it's a little bit cumbersome to set it up. Like for somebody who's simple, who's using WooCommerce, WooCommerce is very user-friendly, WordPress is very user-friendly. You just add a plug-in. BTC pay server isn't quite there yet for like the total new e-commerce person. That's just like, how do I add Monero to my website? I want to accept it. How do I do it? So even Monero, as long as it's been around, it's all about adoption. Like it's still lagging there. And I've been putting the, I've been sounding an alarm on that for quite some time, but we are seeing developments with BTC pay server. I think that problem will soon be fixed, but yeah, I totally see where you're, I know you've been sounding an alarm a lot too, right? Because if the goal here is for people to be able to use it, like we get these people, we convince them, and then they're like, all right, well, now how do I do it? Like, I have a site, I'm selling stuff there, I'm selling whatever. I would love to accept Monero. Oh, well, you may not be, it's not as easy as, like we need to be able to be like, you just click this button here and you're accepting Monero as easy as you're accepting PayPal. Yeah. And by the way, I plan on adding Monero as well. I'm starting with these projects in the XANO ecosystem, but I believe in, I'm not a maximalist, I mean, other than being kind of a privacy maximalist, so I use Monero. I still predominantly use Monero day-to-day, so I'm going to add Monero. It's probably going to be tricky for me to figure out how the hardest part for me in getting this to work was getting the XANO node to work and to be able to actually confirm the payments. And obviously, as you know, you have to wait for all the confirmations, and so then there's all this, how are you going to handle this? And that's going to be the tricky part, but I plan on adding Monero, and then I plan on adding these bridged assets. So imagine now you've got your bridged Bitcoin, your bridged Ethereum, and that's been tokenized on XANO, and now you can spend those on any of these WooCommerce sites. And so the potential is there, and now marketplaces and all these other tools. So I'm actually, I'm very excited and optimistic that we actually finally have stuff that's working, but now we just have to hit the pavement. And I don't know about you, but my experience has been when I get outside of the Liberty space and outside of the crypto space, most people have never even heard of the use case for crypto as being a currency. Like it's actually mostly known, the whole space is known as a speculative investment. People don't even realize that people used to use Bitcoin. And it's like, so I mean, trying to educate people through all the layers of stuff, but I do think we've got an opportunity. And I think people are starting to get upset about Palantir and about digital IDs and about all of this stuff. People are starting to wake up to this. And so I don't think there's going to be necessarily a pushback from Congress, but there's going to be backlash from the people and maybe their eyes are open. It's kind of even like this health freedom thing. Last year I gave a talk to a group of people and I said, listen, America 1.0 is over. This voting doesn't matter. And I made my whole case and everybody's like, no, Trump can solve this. And if RFK gets in and everything else, it's like, look at this. One day they're like, well, we're going to say that the COVID shots only now apply to the elderly and people with one or more risk factors. And then the next day they approve a Moderna shot. And people are like, all right, I'm out. People are now beyond done with this stuff. And that's good for us. That's good for anybody that's exiting and building and creating alternative solutions. So there are some positive trends. We got some Monero based super chats. I want to bring up DP tipped $2. Thanks for all you both do. Can you guys talk a bit about Zano versus Tari from a technical perspective? Why use one over the other? Yeah, I feel like I don't really want to get into the weeds on that. We did. If you want to hear the most critical take of Zano, because that's what we do here on Monero Talk and Monero Topia, we keep it real. Like I said, there's a lot. Me personally, I'm interested in Zano for the reasons I was talking about earlier. And because of the contributions they've made to Monero Topia and helping the conference, they've just been really honest, good, open actors in the space. Whether you like their tech or not, in my opinion is they've been acting as honest actors. They've been coming to the conferences, answering the difficult questions. So if you want to learn really the good and bad, we did an episode on Zano, I guess a couple of months back. We had somebody on, on Traceable, and he really was asking them the tough questions. We had Zano on as well. So you could watch that if you want to get the most critical side of things. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of good. Comparing it to Tari, I don't know. I mean, they're kind of, I guess they're both trying to, in ways, be the private Ethereum, right? One of the positive things that is often noted about Tari is its merge mind with Monero. I've tried getting the Zano guys to consider doing that. But I mean, long term, they want to move to purely proof of stake. And that's another reason why you might be interested in Zano. Because like ultimate hedge, right? So it's not, ultimately it doesn't even want to be proof of work. It wants to move to proof of stake. And they've done some really innovative things in that area, actually working with Monero devs. They work with co to develop their first private proof of stake system. And so yeah, they likely probably won't ever be merged mind with Monero. I don't know, maybe it's possible. But even then, it's my understanding, ultimately it'll be temporary. Because I think they want to move totally to proof of stake. I mean, Andre thinks one day Monero will move to proof of stake. If I heard that just from some jackass with an altcoin, I'd probably be like, you don't know what you're talking about. But once again, Andre created the first implementation of CryptoNote. He's not just a, he's super OG, you can consider him like a Satoshi of Monero. He was in that crew that created what became Monero. So I listen to the guy when he speaks, whether or not he's right, he should certainly be considered. I don't know if you have things to say on Tari. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to even get in. I don't want to get it. I haven't really tracked it that much. I mean, I know it's great that it just launched after seven years or whatever. And I haven't spent a lot of time on that. And again, I want to say, you know, there's room for multiple players. So I don't even want it to turn and evolve into this. But I will say that I'll back up your point. I mean, I've gotten to actually spend a lot of time in person now with Andre. And he is not only is he an OG, but he truly is. He's honest. He's also incredibly humble. And he's always searching for the truth. So for instance, one of the things that I noted was at Monerotopia, I mean, he was sitting in on the other talks. And so, you know, I mean, he talks to Luke Parker, he talks to, they share information, and he goes out, and they research and they talk to other people and other blockchains and constantly are looking for the thing that works. And they test things and he takes what he does very seriously. And, you know, obviously, he certainly doesn't want to screw something up. But I mean, Zano has been around for a long time, five years as Zano, but even kind of has a precursor to that. So to me, the reason I like Zano, because I like the team, these projects are about about teams. And these guys have been committed to decentralization, censorship resistance and privacy. And those are truly core values. And Pavel is the other, the great product guy and co-founder. I mean, I've just been really impressed with the team. So I don't want to say anything negative about Tari. And also, there's certainly room for multiple players and multiple implementations, but I'm very excited about it. People could go watch our Tari episode as well. We had Fluffy Pony on and Naveen. And we really got in the weeds on Tari. So I don't think I ever did. What is your take? Because the biggest criticism that is thrown at Zano, and really Tari as well. Honestly, I think more is thrown at Zano than Tari, which I don't understand why. The criticism should be the same for both, which is this concept of a pre-mine, and in terms of the distribution of the coin, whether or not ultimately it's going to be fairly distributed, given that there was such a large pre-mine. And Tari has this same issue as well. I mean, they had investors that are getting a chunk of the Tari that's getting issued. This is often something that Zcash is criticized by Monero people, me included, that we always list that as one of the negatives, that they had this central corp where there were investors involved and people that were promised parts, essentially, of the coin, the amount of coin that's out there. What is your take on that? And how do you justify that to people that have concerns over it? I mean, if people are concerned, like, first of all, I don't know what kind of it's it perplexes me that people think that people earlier into a project shouldn't own more of it. I don't even know where we got off on a tangent thinking that and we use and what it is is we use Bitcoin as the model. Like, yeah, Bitcoin as like, or, but even Bitcoin, right? Like the OG, the people that started Bitcoin, yeah. Theoretically, anybody could have mined it, but who was mining it? It was like, you know, it was five guys, right? And so there's this idea, and by the way, outside of crypto, people think this is a retarded argument. So this idea that it's a fair launch because people who were able to have access to a cryptography bulletin board in 2009 or whatever, when you actually go back, because I did this at one point, I'm like, what percentage of people were actually actually had access of exposure to this? That's not a fair launch. If you want fair launch, go with world coin, you know, put your retina into the orb and and join Sam Altman's thing if that element of it is that important. But so and by the way, one of the it was one of the things that I looked at the Zeno thing, the website first off, and I saw it was hybrid. And I had that was a negative reaction that I had. And then I realized that I was coming off of getting out of this, which, you know, flavor of Bitcoin is going to be the best. And then I started really thinking critically about, well, why do we why do we have this cult like belief in proof of work or that or that no pre-mine is is the way to go? Because Bitcoin was completely hijacked. The lack of funding for Bitcoin as a project is why it ended up being funded by MIT, who developed all three CBDC pilots. It's why it ended up then getting funding from Blockstream with ties to the Castries and the Bilderberg Group and ties to MasterCard and everything else. So the lack of the project having its own funding, I would argue, is why it's now slow, expensive, non-fungible surveillance digital gold instead of peer to peer digital cash for the world. So I actually but then beyond that Zeno has been around for five years. Well, so the pre-mine that everybody talks about is in an auditable wallet. You can see they still have, I think, over half of it left. They've been incredibly judicious with how they've allocated the money. And it's not like Zeno has been like this, you know, you know, when I got involved last year, it was like a 30 million dollar market cap. So it's not like like these guys have been grinding. I mean, Andre and Pavel, these guys have not exactly been living like this, you know, in a golden palace lifestyle. This has been a real grind, even though they had a pre-mine to work out, they've had to work with, they've actually had to be very careful with the expenditures. But the proof of stake actually provides ongoing development support. So they've got this, they have got the pre-mine and then it's staked. And so that provides ongoing funding for the project. I think ongoing funding for a project is a great idea. And I don't know why people think the absence of it is a positive thing. But if you don't like it, if somehow you have some ideological view that if you didn't get access to a proof of work, you know, link announcing the project at some point five years ago, that you can't possibly participate in the blockchain project because that's your thing, then don't use it. I mean, it's pretty much, I think it's that simple. I find it to be an odd thing to obsess over. And I certainly don't feel, I've only been involved with this project for a year. But I don't in any way feel like slighted because there's a pre-mine, nor do I feel bad that people were involved in the project earlier than I was, and that they may own more coins than I do. It doesn't seem to me to be something that would make sense to be perturbed about. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean my opinion on it has evolved a little bit just in terms of because if you know Obviously no crypto is is Distributed perfectly right even even Bitcoin even Monero You know Monero a lot of it was mined, you know I had a very fast emission schedule a lot of it was mined early Is that you know now obviously I wouldn't compare that to the xan or tari, right? It's still anybody who was able to mine it went up, but you know, the fact is It was that does that make it perfectly fair? No, I mean it's impossible, right? Bitcoin may have been the closest thing but even that like I said, I mean it was years before the mass You know anybody you've like was really accessing Bitcoin to mine it It was a small group of cypherpunks that really got to take advantage of and they they deserve that advantage, right? They're like that, you know, that's that's that's how that's capitalism That all makes sense So yeah that that criticism doesn't really concern me that much I mean, there's people that are concerned that it ultimately came from bullberry. I think right bullberry is called right? I was a little very yeah Yeah, which was really like the one of the first was the first crypto note coin And you know there eventually Monero was like forked away from that And so they're also I think is just this rivalry to between factions of the early crypto note people The early Monero crypto no people in the early bullberry crypto no people so they've kind of put Andre and xano in this like category of evil like they're on like they were the bad guys in the early days of crypto no, which You know, I was I fell for I was falling for that foot before I kind of got to know xano and meet Andre and realize You know, that's not really the case. Like yeah, he was he was working with these guys that eventually Monero forked off from But he wasn't necessarily the bad player there. He was just the guy who was building And so I don't know it's Well, I want to add one other thing. Zeno does not present itself as the global UBI fair currency for the world. It's a protocol to make assets private. So I don't even think that the argument even stands up based on what the intent of it is. Zeno is just claiming that it's a privacy protocol that allows you to tokenize assets. There's nothing about it that inherently. So I mean, look, the big use case for this, more people will use, in my opinion, FUSD, Freedom Dollar, then we'll use Zeno for day-to-day transactions. I believe that will be the case 12 months from now, right? So does it matter if what the early distribution is, because it's not even about what the fairness was, people want it because it's a technology that makes it so that you can have a stable coin that's private. Well, it doesn't matter how equal or fair the perception of the distribution was five or more years ago. It's actually irrelevant. crypto-tipped. I don't know if I said this one or is anyone got me hyped for sure. It's the first time we got a privacy-focused blockchain by default. And for privacy maxi, this could be a great, great tool. Monero's king, but all real privacy-focused projects gets my love. And especially the fact that it's so closely related to Monero in terms of both crypto-note and the founder is the guy who essentially started Monero in one way or the other. Monero grew from his work. And Edward is bringing up good points. Tari and Zen are taking different technical approach. Each takes different trade-offs for scalability and privacy. Yeah, like I said, you get into the weeds, you can watch the show I did with Tari. And we talk about they use MimbleWimble. It's a whole thing, right? There's the layer 1 and then there's a layer 2 that's going to be built on top of it. That's where all the smart contract stuff is going to take place and all the NFT stuff is going to take place. Even Tari as it exists now today is not fully formed. It doesn't have its second layer yet where most of the promise magic is going to happen. Big difference between Zcash and Tari and Zeno is that Zcash had a dev tag, Zeno and Tari took a different approach and they don't have the dev tag. Yeah, I didn't want to make this the whole thing about Tari and Zeno and all that. I think we said enough on that. Well, I the one thing I would add to this was I really hope we can actually have some unity around the fact that the actual threat here is Yes, that's a good segue to the unity topic. for sure. Yeah, because I mean, you know, again, I use all of these things. I enjoy working with you. I enjoy using xeno, like xeno and Monero and everything. And we need all of these things. And by the way, the other thing is, I think it's great that there are competing technologies, because who knows what's going to happen. I mean, I was at this conference in Amsterdam. And I haven't thought about quantum computing for a while. And I sat down with this guy. And he created this quantum doomsday clock. And he's like, you know, so he predicts based on what's going on with qubits, and then error correcting and everything else, the date by which basically everybody's Bitcoin is going to be able to be hacked. And it's like, it's like two years away, it's like two years and three months away. Now, I don't know if that thing is actually true. But now I've actually started to investigate this. But I think that it's good that we have different projects, implementing and innovating. And actually, that's one of the things I love about the privacy space in general, because think about what Bitcoin is doing. Bitcoin is deciding, are we going to strip away functionality? Are we going to make the blocks smaller? Are we going to strip out your ability to attach data to the to the blocks or not, there's no actual real innovation there. And whether it's in Monero and xeno and tarry and zcash, all of these projects are innovating. And who knows? I mean, there might be something might happen that impacts one project, and then we have to switch back and forth. And there's going to be a continual stream of development. I think that's a good thing. I think that that that market dynamic, and the fact that people are innovating is why the privacy coin space is going to succeed. And, you know, collectively, this is our way out of this centralized tyranny. So I hope I hope it doesn't devolve. And but I just did an interesting interview yesterday with Steve Patterson, who's the co author of hijacking Bitcoin. Yes, I was supposed to have him on, but I spoke to him months ago, but he's, yeah, I think we'll get him on as well at some point. Well, so so the topic was supposed to be, you know, the topic that we're having today. And and then we had a little bit of a it ended up being a two hour conversation about religion. We didn't even talk about Bitcoin. We didn't talk about any of this stuff other than to say this. And by the way, this is going to be one of our talks at Porkfest, which is Bitcoin was hijacked. So what what do we do next? And the point of this is that Bitcoin was hijacked. And, you know, whatever people may want to argue about that. It was pretty clear that was hijacked. But how do we make sure that Monero and the whole privacy coin space and doesn't get hijacked as well? How do we make sure that bad actors don't get involved? Because you know what? Divide and conquer works, whether it's just rogue actors or the state. Propaganda works. Censorship works. So the thing is, we know why and how Bitcoin was hijacked. But have we learned enough to prevent it from happening again within this privacy space, which is so critical at this point to human freedom? And I don't think we do have an answer. But a starting point would be to get a group of us together to have a conversation about it and maybe figure out a way to thwart attacks that will absolutely be coming. We absolutely know they're going to be coming. There's there's no doubt about it. Yeah. And you know, whether or not it's an actual real attack or it's just the community among themselves losing unity, right? And this is part of Ross's speech, right? He was talking about the kind of the three important things, decentralization, freedom, decentralization and unity is the way he was phrasing it. And unity is essential, right? So we're all very different people. The beauty of something like Monero is you can be from any walk of life, any color, any religion, any political persuasion. You could, yes, you could be a Nazi and use Monero, right? You could be anything. But we need unity in terms of fighting the fight that we're up against here, which is the people that ultimately want to try to stop us from growing adoption. And part of that unity and messaging requires us to maybe put some of our political ideologies or whatever may be a side for the greater cause because we don't want to push out people from the tent that want to come in for the right reasons, right? So it's a little abstract and a little hard for people to understand that, right? Like, yes, Monero is free speech money, but that doesn't mean that all of us need to be so open and accepting of all the speech that its users are portraying, right? Just because Monero is free speech money doesn't mean I support all the transactions that are being made on Monero. There's probably a whole bunch of them that ethically I would disagree with. But we need unity around the fact that this is just a tool and we can't be fighting each other with politics and who should be using Monero, what Monero should really represent. We need to be unified, that it's just a tool that anybody can use to transact privately peer to peer. And if we're out there and we're representing Monero, and that's really what we're supposedly trying to do, that maybe we should be cognizant of the fact that we don't want to be divisive, right? Which people, but free speech, yes, I get it. But we're also trying to build a system here that requires adoption, mass adoption for it to win. So especially in these early days, we need to make sure we're not turning in against each other. We need to be unified in the fact that we're all using this permissionless tech and maybe not pointing at each other or, well, your political frustration is that, my political frustration is this, as tempting it as it is to talk about those things. I think the smart thing to do, especially in what I still consider early days, is to put those differences aside and really focus on the tech, the tool, and the concept of opting out and using it and beating the state surveillance system. That is the enemy. I don't think we need to... That's the problem. People want to make the enemy a group of people, right? They want to make it people of a certain religion or whatever it may be. People that aren't white. I don't know who they want to make the enemy. The enemy should be technocracy, right? That's the enemy, right? The enemy is wanting to stop the creation of a technocracy. And we have this tool that will allow us all to do that together in a permissionless way, right? The enemy is not some group. Sure, you could say the central bank. You can say the technocratic state, but I think we should stay away from labeling it as certain groups. And the reason I'm talking so specifically about this is because this is what we're seeing in Monero, right? And this is what I've been dealing with and people... And it could be very well, could be an attack. It could be... Who knows who's behind it? I don't know. The feds are behind it. Or it could just be a natural uprising. And given Monero's nature that it is permissionless, and anybody could use it, the early adopters are going to be those most in need. And that could be some fringe political group. We've always said that, and that makes sense, right? Yes, free speech money. If you're out doing something that's considered controversial, that's political, you're probably going to want to use Monero to raise your funds and to spend. And I get that. So maybe that is... Maybe it is a natural uprising, but the message to all that I've been trying to give is, number one, I don't agree with those politics. I want to make that clear. And it should be clear that just because you use Monero doesn't mean you're of that political ilk. And number two, to those communities, if they are actually genuinely here to help Monero, because that's what I'm hearing from them, like, no, we're not the feds. We're not this. We are just people that need Monero, and we need it because of our politics, actually. Well, okay, if that's the case, try to keep your politics separate from the promotion of Monero itself, is what I would like to say. But it's going to play out the way it's going to play. We can't control the people, but I do think it's important to get our side out there and try to constantly fight more for unity than division. Well, it's well said. And I do think that the technocrats, when you look at who the technocrats are, it is not one race or one group. And actually, there also aren't very many of them. So the problem is that they know that divide and conquer works. So there's a whole big issue. I mean, I look at social media feeds now, and it's like there's there's trying to stoke black versus white. I mean, there's just like, and so here's why they do that. Every time they can create these big divisions, then there's some violent act, whether it's real or a false flag, and then they put in more surveillance. I mean, it works every time. Right. And so we've got to stop that from happening. From my perspective, I you know, I agree that it'd be good to put our best foot forward. Because we need to get new people involved. I think part of the problem with privacy spaces is it is always like, you know, it can't all just be a Guy Fox mask. And this is going to be about underground stuff. It's actually more the fact I might the way I look at it is everything's going to be black market food is going to be black market, you're building to use, you know, buy alternative medicine. I mean, what we're looking at with technocracy is things that are legal today, to buy are going to become illegal. And so we want to cast a bigger tent. It's kind of like to me, I've gotten involved with libertarian stuff before. And it's like, you know, you have this great opportunity to promote freedom. And then what do you pick, you want to jump in on like, you know, age of consent as being your top issue, it's like, you're not going to grow movement by by taking the most divisive thing, when you actually have a technology that actually can apply broadly to everyone, everyone deserves private money. There's there's no one that this shouldn't be applicable to it shouldn't be a niche. It's actually something that's vital for everyone anywhere in the world. And I think it's great. I love seeing some of the stuff that's going on with they know there was a meet up in, in Africa, like last week, 200 people showed up. And, you know, so people all over the world are actually starting to, to understand the importance of these technologies. So we want to cast a bigger net. I mean, obviously, people are going to say whatever they're going to say, we should look out for intentional, you know, feds and state actors that are that are going to try to create all kinds of havoc. I mean, I am And the attack is, they basically make the brand of Monero something that state actors have an excuse to try to attack and eliminate. It's like a false flag. So obviously, if we saw tomorrow that Monero was used in some big hack, that could potentially be a problem. Monero is unstoppable, but I don't want to see the US government ban Monero, and I don't want to give them an easy excuse to do it. I'm not trying to help that cause. Yeah, bad actors are using Monero, and I point it out because it shows that Monero works. Monero is the most used coin on dark marketplaces because it works. I'm not out there saying, I support the people that are doing it. I'm just pointing it out as, yeah, that shows that it works. The fact that Nazi groups want to use Monero, it shows that it works. But all that being said, if these people are actually now that are on Twitter that are claiming to be out there for the best interest of Monero and grow Monero, they should be playing a little bit smarter and not make Monero a target for those reasons, unless they are just attackers and they're literally, they're Feds and they're trying to make the main brand of Monero this fringe thing that can then be attacked and there's an excuse for governments to turn on it and say, you know, Monero bad, Monero bad. So yeah, guys, be wary of that. I'm seeing somebody's commenting, is this a lot, yeah, Lucifer, you're always complaining here that we don't pull, you know, send a Monero XMR chat. And I'll pull up your comments. How about that? He's always like, you know, this is not recorded. We're pulling up the chats live. Sorry if I missed something that you said. If you really want me to pull it up, go to xmrchat.com slash Monero talk and send it as a Monero based super chat. Send five cents and I will bring it up. So yeah, we should at least, let's, let's shill pork fest for a second. Let's shill the event directly. So Aaron and I are going to be doing this. We're going to be basically, we're going to have like the main tent, right? There's like two main tents at pork fest will be one of the two. Yep. But both will be privacy coin focus. I'm learning, which I think is. Which is which is absolutely perfect given that Ross is Ross Ulrich is showing up. Yes I'm happy about that. Again. I don't view it as competitive. I you know, I think that you know in some ways Based on the number of people that are likely to show up for this thing. It's probably good to have Yes, it's gonna be fantastic. So I mean just so people don't know what we're talking about. I think the other tent is like pirate chain and anarcho-poco people. By the way, if they're listening, we would have been happy to have them collaborate with us and been a part of it. I guess we never effectively reached out to them, which is fine. It's a fantastic sign that these are the two main tents at Porkfest. People that are looking to get the word out on privacy coins and like we were just saying, unity. Here's an example of it. We're applauding the fact that we're seeing more people that are interested in these topics. I think perhaps the most exciting thing is the fact that Ross will be there with his mother. In years past, obviously, it's only been his mother that's Lynn that's been there. A lot of people late at Tent Porkfest have had opportunities to speak to her. I've gotten to know her a little bit. I don't think nearly as well as Aaron. My daughter has spent some good time with her last year. She was hanging out at the Monero tent and playing with one of Lynn's relatives. She's become a mainstay at Porkfest, but now she's achieved her mission, and she's freed her son, and now he is attending Porkfest. This is a crowning moment. He went to the big coin conference, which is super cool. I think a lot of the people that were really helping Ross came out of Porkfest. Aaron, you could speak to that. I'm not sure you would say I'm one of those people. Yes, I was always free Ross, but Aaron took steps to actually try to get these things done, work with the libertarian party. That's really where the magic happened. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't as instrumental with with Ross. So I don't want to take I first met Lynn in 2014. And actually, I mean, I did try to help. So my stepmother was the co chair of the RNC. And so I actually tried to go to her to get her to help. And she's a drug warrior. And so she actually refused to help. And I haven't talked to her for like, not because of that, but like, I haven't talked to her for in part because of that been rolling into some other things. I haven't talked to her for eight years. So I so I do not claim any any credit other than just being, you know, generally supportive. And you know, when I ran for president, and so on and so forth, but there are other people at pork fest that have been just hugely advocate, huge advocates that attended the trials and, and pork fest gave Lynn a platform every every single year. And, you know, and again, it did filter into the libertarian party. So I don't want to take any credit for it. But I do think the pork fest movement and community does deserve a huge amount of credit and and he's gonna have a huge welcoming at pork fest, unlike at the Bitcoin conference where Michael Saylor spoke for Ross, and I guess a whole bunch of people left after sailors talk and did not attend Ross's talk. I assure you that Ross's talk will be sold out. I will say an exciting thing about our tent is we're going to have Lynn Albrecht there. Lynn has launched a new initiative called Mothers Against Cruel Sentencing. And they have identified seven other, you know, victims of law fair and government overreach that they're already helping right out of the gate. So she's gonna have, you know, a table or share a table at our tent, and she's going to speak and I think be on some panels too. And I'm going to spend some time with her at freedom fest next week before this. So I'm really excited about this. I mean, I think actually having Lynn as part of what we're doing and some of the other speakers who are also that, Doug, you brought in that are lawyers that are advocating on behalf of some of these people. We have Tor and Michael. They've been at two of the past Manero's Hopias. So yeah, they'll be a great contribution. We got to add a bunch of speakers to, we'll add it to the site. So it doesn't fully reflect what's going on right now. So we'll start to add the different speakers that will be there. So yeah, if anybody's considering going, definitely, is Porkfest sold out at this point? I don't even know. I don't know if it's sold. I haven't heard that it's sold out. I think I would have heard, because we've got a promo code of free Roger. So if you want to go, you can get 10% off your ticket by using the code free Roger. So I do think that there are still some tickets left, but my guess is it's going to be a pretty crowded event. And I think it's just the fact that Ross is there, Lynn is there, the two main sponsors. So last year, the two main sponsors were the Brownstone Institute, and then the Goldback guys, Alpine Gold. So basically, this is like a crypto takeover. And Yeah, we're one of the main sponsors by way of our tent. I mean, that's super awesome. Yeah, we were the first. first, we were the first and the biggest kind of diamond sponsor. And the original idea behind this, so many people were introduced to cryptocurrency at Porkfest in like 2012, 2013. Like Roger was there, I found a video clip that I played, where he was selling physical Bitcoin for like, he was even talking about how there's different pricing based on some of the, like between seven and $11 each. But he onboarded so many people at Porkfest. And then Eric Voorhees was there and Charlie Schramm was there. I think I met Vitalik in 2014. But the thing about Porkfest that's different than all of these other events, except for Monerotopia, by the way, is that people use alternative currencies the entire event. So it's like a week long event. There's this thing called the Gora Valley. And last year, I think Doug, Doug pushed it big time. I think last year, privacy coins in Monero, Monero was probably the number one crypto last year. And so we've already got a good foothold in this. So I think this is going to be just like that. So just like I would argue that the libertarian crypto revolution started in 2012 at Porkfest, I think the privacy revolution starts at this event. I think we're going to be looking back at this five years ago and saying, Oh, man, can you you know, do you remember that we had all these people there and people just started using this and now, you know, this this be where Ross really starts to embrace Monero more, right? Like, who knows what's happening behind the scenes, but, you know, he hasn't exactly been sitting on his phone on X for the last, you know, eight years, right? So he's catching up. Like you were saying, he's got to get up to speed. So this could be where he really does get up to speed a little bit, right? He was at the Bitcoin conference. I don't think you really learn much new there other than the fact that stablecoins have taken over. But now at pork fest, he's going to be bumping into me and Aaron. Hopefully we'll get him to come maybe even talk in our tent. He's going to be giving a talk on the main stage of pork fest. I'll be giving a talk there as well. Aaron as well. Actually, let me thank the sponsors too, right? Like we said, like we are the biggest, it's because of the sponsors, right? So cake wallet, tremendous thank you, Zano, confidential layer. And then we also just put our own to shill our own since Aaron and I are running this XMR bazaar and Karma. So yeah, so big tremendous thank you to cake wallet and Zano. That's what I was talking about earlier. Like they're contributing too, right? Like they're helping making events like this possible. They help Monero topia in a big way. Cake obviously, you know, Monero topia wouldn't be possible without cake to date. So tremendous. Thank you to the sponsors. And yeah, this isn't like a full blown Monero topia conference. This is a tent that we have at pork fest, but the pork fest conference itself is already like, there's so much going on there. Like Aaron saying, like it's already got prebuilt into it, a crypto conference because everybody there is using crypto. This is what we tried to emulate a Monero topia. I think we've done a very good job doing it, but pork fest is the original, uh, you know, people are, you know, accepting all types of cryptos, but pretty much anybody there that accepts crypto also accepts goldbacks and Monero. Like almost everybody there is like, like, I don't think anybody at this point would be unwilling if they're not already accepting Monero. I don't think anybody would say no to it. Like it's, it's already bled into kind of the, you know, all of pork fest at this point. So, uh, I think, I think we should mention too, just like what it's like for anybody who hasn't gone, that's considering going, it's a week long pork fest is a week long festival. It's a bunch of people camping out, bunch of families hanging out. Everybody's there selling whatever it is they want to sell for basically for crypto and goldbacks and just living off of each other peer to peer. It's like, it's like what I imagine XMR Bazaar is, but in the real world, right? Like just hanging out. It's like, it's an open Bazaar for a week among Liberty loving people. It's beautiful, uh, in its own right. And then in terms of what we're providing, we're going to have this main tent and like our activities probably aren't going to really kick off until let's say Wednesday. And then really, they're not going to really start to like really peak until Friday and Saturday, right? So that's when we'll have most of the talks and most of the action. But if you want to come to pork fest, you come all week, you bring your family. Uh, and yeah, the, the Monero topia can't tent will really start to peak on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and pork fest in general. That's what it peaks. So, I mean, if you can come and you only have a certain amount of time, you can devote towards it. I would say try to come obviously the weekend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or just Friday, Saturday. And that's when you'll see the most action. Yep, I agree with that. And I mean, it's fun the entire week. But, and there are talks everywhere. I mean, there are all these different hubs. I mean, I don't even know how many total speakers there are on a whole variety of, of topics. And then, and then, you know, our tent is right near this, this campfire, which is in the main, there's a main pavilion where the main talks go, and then our tent is near that. And then there's a big bonfire every night. So so people just hang out and have, you know, conversations until three o'clock in the morning on, on everything. And all of this is it's it's pork fest is some people don't like, why is it called pork fest? It's the porcupine freedom festival. And it's one of two of the main events of the Free State Project. And if you're not familiar with the Free State Project, the whole idea of the Free State Project is to get 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire and make New Hampshire the Liberty Beacon of the world. And I will say I just saw I think Coindesk today, put out an article and New Hampshire is ranked the number one state in the United States for cryptocurrency. And so you're going to meet a lot of people that live in New Hampshire, I've been part of the Free State Project since 2009, I was actually the chair of the organization for a while. And, and so you're going to meet so it's an interesting combination of people that already live here, and that are kind of OGs, and then you've got a family component to it. And then you've got new people that are just exploring it. There's a big explosion of people that wanted to come and check it out, actually, because of COVID. And so it's a really cool blend of people. And I'll tell you, it's nothing like it was, excuse me, the first time that I went, I mean, it's just grown and the comp, it used to be just, you know, single people and, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of guys that the male-female balance was was a little bit now like kids everywhere. So it's cool. Yeah. It's like walking around the internet. It's very open, too. Any idea conversation you want to have, you could find that group of people at Porkfest. We'll have the privacy coin tent, but you could go hang out with any persuasion. They're there. They're talking about something. Very free-flowing in ideas. No such thing as censorship at Porkfest. Because anybody, even if they're not on the main stage of Porkfest, they could throw their own little mini event there. It's freedom to assemble and people get together and talk about whatever they want to talk about. It's very cool. If you're going to come out, you come enjoy the privacy tent, but there's just so much more that you'll be doing there. You'll get lost in the world. Anything else we should bring? I think we covered a lot here. I don't want to take up too much of your time. We didn't talk about we didn't talk much about the fast Yeah, I mean long and short of it, what's what's your take on fasting now that you've done? I know you've done them in the past, you've done extreme ones, but now you've done this most recent one, what kind of what did you learn from it? And how will you be implementing fasting moving forward if you still will So I started out fasting just to lose weight and to try to improve my health. So I started out with intermittent fasting and I ran into a guy, Dr. Eric Berg. And so began the kind of the research process. And so I started intermittent fasting where I'd have an eight hour eating window and then not eat for 16 hours. And then once your body becomes fat adapted, you can fast for longer. And then I started really researching the topic more heavily and found some people that had been doing much longer fast and then studied the history of fasting. I mean, everything from, you know, Jesus did a 40 day fast and Moses did two 40 day fasts. Pythagoras did a 40 day fast. And in fact, in order to gain interest to ancient Greek and Egyptian mystery schools, you actually, this was kind of a ritual that you would have to go through. So there is a spiritual component to it and there are some profound health elements. You literally do detach in a lot of ways. I didn't go nearly as long as you. I mean, I've been doing intermittent fasting for quite some time. I really love it, kind of got addicted to it. It actually led to some health issues for me because I wasn't doing correctly. I ended up getting gout. Not that, it was because of the way I was fasting and then refueling like a maniac and basically gorging myself with food. And at that time, tequila, I would be coming off of, I wouldn't eat the entire day. I'd go 16 hours and then break the fast with tequila on the rocks before eating a steak and oysters and everything I love to eat. I since don't drink anymore, actually. But yeah, I was doing fasting the wrong way, but still loving and feeling the benefits. I mean, it's kind of addictive, especially the intermittent fasting because you're high energy all day. You got those ketones going. And I did for the first time, did a longer one because of you. You inspired me when you were doing it. I was like, all right, let me start because the thinking was that I was going to try to talk to you. I think a couple of days into it, we'd both be in the fasted state you had proposed. So I was like, all right, I guess I got to go. And I did it for 48, two full days. And it was good. It was easy. It was fun. And it felt great. It really did feel great by the second morning when I woke up, wasn't hungry at all, high energy. And I'm personally thinking of trying to incorporate that more into maybe once a month, do something like that. But yeah, even with the 48 hours, you do start to feel the detachment because food is no longer a thing. You've completely eliminated food from your life. And we're so used to being tethered to food and having to eat. This is a big part of our lives. So when you completely just tether something that feels like it's so essential and now you've eliminated it, it's like, well, what else can you eliminate? It starts to feel like you're opting out of the matrix in a real way. You become detethered from the system when you fast long enough. So I can only imagine, like I said, I only did 48 hours. It must have been spiritual. I mean, I truly believe you when you say that. Well, yeah, the first time I did a 37 day one, you just walk out of it with life changing, you know, experiences and worldviews, I kind of got rid of political labels and people are like, you know, are you this or you that? I'm like, well, no, I'm for, you know, love versus, you know, fear and, you know, decentralization versus centralization. I mean, that's just that kind of stuff comes to you. It's just like, all right, I've let go of all the rest of the stuff. But then you start questioning everything you are obviously thinking about food, you're interestingly not hungry, but you're able to somehow to think about food, like in a way of why does food work like this? And so for me, who's struggled with weight on and off for forever? There's a lot of, you know, kind of anger, because I researched and I will rant about public health quite a bit. But, you know, you find out that almost everything that we're told is not only wrong with respect to nutritious nutrition advice, but then when you do a deeper dive, you find out that it's maliciously wrong. It's not just, we thought this was good. And we did these studies, it's, you know, no, this guy profits off of the fact that this is the case. And so they basically, you know, bribe the public health officials to make this the new standard, or you know, three meals a day that that this goes back to Henry Ford and the desire to have, you know, shifts for workers and you know, breakfast being the most important meal of the day, and you should eat cereal, there's never there's never been a scientific report that justifies this. And so, but that then thinking about the world carries over to everything. And so then you start thinking about why does this work like this? Why does this? And then you realize that almost everything is bullshit. And, you know, exactly, you do start to unplug. This last time, it was, now I'm all interested in quantum biology, and, you know, Dr. Jack Cruz's stuff, and, and just even kind of, you know, modern medicine is based on Newtonian physics, it's not even up to date physics, it's like hundreds of years old, we have better science, but people are tied to, they think what is science is something that hasn't even been state of the art science for hundreds of years. And so it so there's kind of, you know, so now I'm kind of walking out of this, I'm like, Oh, man, now I've got to be lined up with circadian rhythms. And so I'm like, try I'm like, we're I don't have them yet. They're supposed to be here today. But I've got, you know, I've got to block out the blue light. And I wake up every morning at 445. And I'm walking and, you know, getting sun and I grew trying to recalibrate a whole bunch of other things. So all kinds of other things. And then there's you Do you do the red light and the, um... I have a red light for the winter. I struggle with winter, like in a profound way. Like it's, you know, seasonal, whatever you want to call it. And I suspect it's just because my mitochondria is all screwed up. Because in addition to having weight issues, you know, I'm a computer guy who started using computers when I'm five. So I've been exposed to all this blue light. And then, and then if you're a computer guy, you kind of part of the thing, at least when I was growing up is, you know, that's something you do at night. Like, usually, if you're a computer guy, and you're like in the 80s and the 90s, you're, you're like, you're, you're hanging out with, you know, with your friends at midnight, two o'clock in the morning, pizza, and you know, whatever. And it turns out, none of that is all that great for your health. And none of it is aligned with circadian rhythms. And so now I'm like, Oh, okay, I probably have a whole bunch of, you know, accumulated stuff. But in addition to that, I went through, as I mentioned at the beginning of this period of time, brain fog is list lifted, you have so much energy. But you're also completely present in the moment. So I got to the point where I'm like, coding and then using AI to help me code while starting two books at the same time. And I'm like, just like never had the amount of productivity that I had from day 14 to day 21. But that I mean, this is the good news. And what I would 14 to 21 was when you peaked in terms of being alone. Absolutely peak then it was downhill. So I mean, I will say this and I wouldn't advise anybody like you got to ease into it No, you would never jump into a even a 10 or a 7-day fast Like I I got I fasted for 200 days plus or whatever over a two-year period of time So I like I didn't walk into this Like oh, hey, gee, I'm gonna just from jump do a 40-day fast that that can be pretty dangerous But it was bad. So after day 21 21 to day 30 was kind of it wasn't bad But like the the like superhuman abilities Went away and started gradually and days 30 to 40 were really rough. The last three days Were were really bad and I so of course I'm like, all right Well, you know, I'm doing this to raise awareness for Rogers situations of course I'm going to Amsterdam and I went to Amsterdam and I was supposed to give a talk and then somehow I ended up giving Four talks which which by the end I couldn't even prepare for the talks. I couldn't sit at my computer for five days So not only did I have to travel to Amsterdam at the end of this fast I then had to break the fast and hope that I was recovered well enough to actually create my presentation so this was not a great situation and then I actually Couldn't sleep. So I pulled two-nighter two all-nighters after I broke my fast I did an episode of it. It's on The Aaron Day Show. I think it's episode 13 or 14 I did see some of that. Yeah, well I actually broke the fast live and then talked for three and a half hours and then and then did these talks But then I couldn't sleep for two days because I had a whole bunch of energy But then I actually had some health consequences related to that which is it took a while for my body to adjust I so I it was a water only fast with the exception of taking electrolytes. So I would that's not gonna ask So it's water and electrolytes. The big electrolytes are salt, magnesium, and potassium. But I got those ratios off, and it turns out you then start really learning that you can feel in your body when those ratios are off. And so I was like, you know, so then after I broke the fast, I'm like, oh, I've got like mini cramps all over my body. So it took me a while to, I'm still not fully recovered, but I'm mostly recovered. I mean, I'm lifting weights now, and I'm lifting weights now, and I'm, you know, getting like 20,000 steps a day, I'm getting back into it. But I mean, there was like a, seriously, like a seven or eight days. So I would not recommend, I would not do a 40 day fast again, I would do a 21 day fast again, and I will incorporate, but now what I'm doing is, I like this idea, and we didn't talk about this, but when you're three days into a fast, you actually reboot your entire immune system. By day seven, you actually start creating stem cells, when you research Is that, is that, is that really, that's, that's the science by day seven. You start generating STEM cells. And then, and then by day 10, your human growth hormone levels like 5x. So what you will find. reset on your body and your body starts to thrive instead of die. Yeah, so I just I actually just joined this thing called Agra cipher, so it's me and Sal the agarist and John Bush and others. It's like this subscription based Newsletter that comes out every month and and you know, I write a thousand word thing and my the thing that I wrote about was how basically fasting is a jumpstart to to agarism and and I like I When you go through a seven to ten day fast if you have type 2 diabetes if you have insulin resistance If you have high blood pressure that stuff is gonna get wiped out now what you do when you come out of it That that's the whole the you know, you should spend probably twice as long as you spent in the fast Making adjustments and being really conscious of what happens when you come out of it There's this guy. Dr. Alan Goldhammer who you can find him on YouTube He's been running water only fasting clinics for you know, more than a decade and You know, it's a super medically supervised setting where you know It's IV for the electrolytes, which by the way I would I would do probably IV if I were gonna ever do which I'm not but but for the last 10 days Everything tasted bad like electrolytes taste bad You get to the point where I think it's day 10 or maybe it's day 7 your taste buds also reset so When I used to drink a lot of Soda diet soda and I remember the first time I did a seven-day fast I'm how I can't wait to have a diet coke and and I went to have it and it just it tasted like just Like I was in a chemistry lab and just started like putting beakers in my mouth. It was horrible So you have a chance to be in touch with your body Your body will tell you what it wants if you get your brain out of the way and and and so you won't want sugar Like you like there's no need for sugar and so you can actually completely adjust your whole diet But I think this is the gateway to getting off of big food and getting off of big medicine And yeah, and by the way, it's almost impossible to find information about this. So I found gold hammer. There's another guy Jason fun. There's another guy of long go there. There's also a water only clinic But when you even search so I got to the point where I'm like grok or chat GPT I'm on day 32 of a fast and it's telling me or you shouldn't do a fast for 32 days And it would give me this disclaimer language. And so that and then I'd say to him like, okay Well, what is your evidence for this? Oh, well, I'm sorry. We don't actually have any evidence. Well, why don't you have any evidence? Well, the independent review board probably wouldn't suggest that a fast this long is even healthy for people and it's like this is People have been doing this for thousands of years and there's absolutely no money in fasting. There isn't there. There's no drugs There isn't even food right? So so this is a big like kick in the nuts doesn't exactly aligned with capitalism. It doesn't align with it at all, but I like the the 40-day clinic guys like we've cured ms Very stage four cancers just think about it. So your body Cancer feeds on sugar your body is in this state kind of of survival. It's pumping up stem cells like all Inflammation in your body goes away your skin clears up and like it's like this just amazing process that happens that does peak on day 21 but but I actually wrote this article. I said look anybody if you're interested in algorithm What is one of the most difficult things from unplugging from the matrix where they have a hook on you is what they have? A hook on you with the money They have a hook with your perceived need to use the healthcare system and they have a hook with with big food And so that's what makes it hard to truly exit the system. Well, I mean fasting will help kick-start a lot of this stuff So I I recommend it. Like I said, I talked about it a lot more. I may write a book about it I don't know. But it's it is a life-changing. It's a life-changing thing and I'm It is it is one of these things they don't they don't want to catch on for sure. I mean, like you said, just just the materialism at you by nature become less materialistic, like we're saying, right, you just begin to treat material items like they don't matter. Like if you could if you could look at food and not care about food. I mean, that means like, why are you going to care about, you know, anything that you were told to care about, right? If food is so you go to that thing, food is so essential. And then you're looking at, like, for me, like, you know, there's points in it where I'm looking at food. And it's like, I don't need it's not even like appetite, like, I don't even want to go through the process of eating that right now. Like, I was like, it's you become completely disconnected. Lucifer is asking, can you can you work out while fasting? When I used to intermittent fast quite a bit, I would work out I'd like, you know, I do like 16 hours of fasting or even more sometimes, I basically wouldn't eat like, you know, I go to bed, I wake up, you know, I go to whatever I go to about 10 o'clock, I wake up, I wouldn't eat. I would just drink water, coffee all day. And I would actually work out at the end of the day, like around five o'clock, after fasting the entire day. And it was, it was great. It was great. It would be, you know, I was high energy in the gym. And then like I said, I have a after I break my fast, but in a very dramatic way, I'd be like, all right, now it's time to, you know, eat, you know, a pound of steak. And so yes, I say yes, you can work out. Now, I don't know if you're doing extended fast. So you can't be working out. I mean, even if you're doing a couple of days, it's at some point, it's going to probably be have a negative impact on you, I would think so. This is wild, and this is one of the things that I researched that I couldn't get a good answer for. The only person that actually had an AI that could give me any information was Mike Adams, who's releasing his own Enoch AI based on his own data set that he's trained. But I would walk, so I would still walk 10, 15, 20,000 steps a day. So I'm not lifting weights. I have a theory that in the early phases of fasting, you actually can lift weights because your body goes through this process of autophagy where it eats up the material in your cells. And I actually think amino acids are part of what's in there or may be part of what's in there. And so in theory, your body goes into a protective state where it's burning fat, and it protects to a certain extent the muscle and everything else. And you may even be able to recycle some amino acids. But I did walk, but I will tell you, this was weird. I walk all the time. So if it's a normal day, like today, today, I didn't do so well today, 10,000 steps, but I'll usually walk 15,000, 20,000 steps. And I walk this typical pattern. And I usually don't get zone minutes or it's hard for me to get zone minutes. But I got to the point where like day 10 into this, all of a sudden, I'm just doing my normal walk, but at like half pace, and all of a sudden, my heart rate's going up to 138. I'm like, what the hell is this? So that was really weird to have happen. So definitely no lifting, but it's actually recommended. That probably was, you're probably dehydrated probably, no? I've I would heart rate. I was doing my best to make sure so you want to make sure that you have You don't want to have too much liquid because right you want to flush out the electrolytes well, but on top of that your your kidneys and Liver are really the star of the show here because you so think about this is kind of a gross thing to talk about But after a while, I mean you're not your body is Using ketones, but what what what is the waste product? Where does the waste product go? You're not actually pooping It comes out of your breath and it comes out in the urine So you're the kidneys are working overtime. I mean and that's the one I mean and I could feel right That's why I got the gas That's why I got the gout too, right? Because that's all a kidney issue. But go ahead. That's all a kidney issue. And so that that was just fast. And so but again, you are so present in your own body that like you can feel everything But by the end i'm like, I actually don't even want to drink water But I know if I don't drink water i'm going to have issues And so it's like so the last yeah, the last three days were actually were were hell I mean it's just another gross story But I get off the at the airport in amsterdam and it's like this really long terminal So like i'm at the very end So I felt like it was like a mile and a half and I actually I puked up a bunch of bile waiting for the uh Uber that was the only actual bad thing. I will say when i've done Fast in the past if you don't take salt and this is a weird thing Because of what's going on with the ketones your mouth feels like salt it tastes like salt and so you're like Well, I don't need salt but you actually do need salt So one time when I did a long fast like an idiot I went to the coffee shop with my kids and I got an espresso and I was in My wife's office and I stood up and I just passed out. I was completely, you know, I woke up on the like on the floor That was the that was a lesson that I learned that I did not repeat this time around but it really was an electrolyte Balancing game for the last three days and i'm like, I can't wait for this to be over 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. So if I wanted to get the benefits of stem cell regeneration, would you say like a seven, or you have like an eight-day fast? I think you actually maybe even start before that. I think three days will reboot the immune system, seven days will kick in stem cells, and then that whole process peaks by day 21. So I've done I've done like a 48 hour that feels good. I'm thinking of doing that maybe like, you know Like once a month whatever but if I were to try something more extreme What would you recommend like what would be the next level after 48 where you think where you'd experience? Different things happen to you physiologically in a positive way. So I think the way I think the way I'm going to incorporate this is do a three-day fast every quarter as the seasons change. Because if you're rebooting your immune system, it just occurs to me that, hey, maybe this is a good time with things. I didn't research that. That's just has just occurred to me. And then maybe once a year, do a seven-day fast. And actually, I believe that if you do that, you probably won't get cancer. Because cancer takes a while to develop. And if you're actually, your body's wiping out all of these cells, and you don't have any sugar and everything, I suspect. But so much of even coming out of this last fast, and now that I'm looking at circadian stuff and the Jack Cruz stuff, which is on top of a whole bunch of other stuff I've researched, I'm like, god, how much brain power do we have to put into realizing how badly we've screwed up and built our lives around things that are completely unnatural? It's actually kind of embarrassing. It's like, oh, good, I've got to read a report now to realize that I should go out in the morning and literally touch grass with my feet and get out in the sun for 15 minutes to kick start. The fact that we have to research this for this left brain thing to even get back to, even remote touch with nature. But I'm adding kind of that level to it. And the circadian stuff, there's actually overlap with what Cruz says with intermittent fasting. But what he's adding to it is the timing of meals and the timing of even exercise. He mentioned lifting weights at 5 p.m. And his claim is, and I don't know if this is actually true or not, but if you lift weights after five, you get a 2x boost for protein synthesis and a 4x boost for fat burning. I'd never heard that before. I found that to be interesting. Or that the first meal that you should eat in a day, so wake up in the morning, get some sun for 15, 30 minutes, and then your first meal should be just all protein. And so again, I'll report back. I don't know if any of this is, I find it intriguing, but it is adding another layer in this journey of, okay, I've been thinking about this wrong. So now I've got the fasting part of it right, but now let's kind of align the timing with the earth and the circadian rhythms. And so I'm excited about it. We'll see what happens. Next time I'll have my true blue blocker glasses. I've got shoes with leather soles coming so that I can connect to the earth. So we'll see what happens. I just take the shoes off and actually touch the grass once a day, I try to do that. Whether or not the grounding thing is as effective as people say, I think it's just good to be in nature. Yeah, I think we can leave it here. Actually, I did want to... The one thing with the freedom dollar, so what is the easy... For those that actually want to try it out, use it. I haven't tried it yet. I mean, I haven't gone through the process of moving XANO into... What is the process like? Is it just kind of like a click of a button in the app? How do you move in and out of... I mean, if you have... If you have Zeno, if you're using the Zeno browser, they actually launched something really cool where you can actually log in. There's a browser built into the mobile app now where you can actually log into different DeFi apps using your mobile wallet. When you do that, you can actually log into either the trade.Zeno.org, which is the P2P marketplace where there's an AMM there where you can swap directly your Zeno for FUSD. Then they're also adding, I don't know if it's live yet, but you can also connect using your wallet to FreedomDollar.com website, and there's an even easier way to immediately swap your Zeno for- I imagine eventually it'd be right. It'll be right in like the wall itself natively, without even using one of these swapping beat, right? Because can't you just do it kind of on chain, right? Well, it is. And it's using the P2P exchange, the Zeno P2P exchange. It's not like using Exelix or anything. It's actually using that. And so, yes, I would expect that at some point we'll be integrated directly into K. doing an atomic swap, and then there's these, OK. I think they call them ionic swaps. I think Zeno called them ionic swap. And by the way, it's a really cool feature of Zeno. So I remember I did this with Dan O'Neill. This is just a test transaction. And I was sold. So I created these tokens, a free Assange token and a free Ross token. And I was able to swap my free Ross for his free Assange just using the wallet with no third parties because they're using ionic swaps. And it's like, that may not sound like a lot, but the ability to do that kind of a transaction without a third party is kind of game-changing when you think about what you can do with that. So anyway, that's how you can do it. Also, it's available on all of these exchanges now. So if, and I believe there's even a, one of these exchanges, I think there's an FUSD XMR pair. I'm going to have to look through and see which one it is. I've got to like kind of work through this, but there are a ton of exchanges where you can swap as well. And if you're really interested, I mean, you know, send me your Zeno address and I'll send you a dollars worth of FUSD. Just anybody who's watching this within limits, like the first 25 or so. If it proves to be a robust technology and actually is working as an algorithmic stablecoin, it would be amazing one day to see it added to something like Sarai DEX, right? You could anonymously go from your Venero into your anonymous private stablecoin. That would be beautiful. Yeah, no, look, I'm really bullish on it. I do think I used to be kind of on algorithmic stable coins now that I see how this thing has been put together. And in fact, I was working on a gold back token, but I now I'm thinking I might talk to these guys about instead just creating a, you know, P2P marketplace of decentralized, you know, gold suppliers all over the world who are willing to accept this anonymous stable coin at using the escrow feature of of xeno. So this way, I don't have to worry about it. So you know, from your perspective, if you have even though the FUSD isn't backed by gold, you could swap, you can always swap it for gold, if that's actually what you're interested in. But it's all now decentralized. And I don't have to manage anything. There's no like third party, I'm not even working with with any vaults or anything like that. But I haven't talked to anybody about that yet. But but it does occur. I am so impressed with the way that this works. And that it truly is decentralized that I think I might pursue that for for karma. And yeah, right now, obviously, XMR Bazaar is Monero only, but we are thinking of integrating something like a Trokador so people could pay effectively in any crypto, but then the seller would always receive Monero. But I don't know, maybe eventually we natively add something like a private algorithmic stablecoin as an option to natively receive. Well, by the way, that's what I'm thinking of that same thing with this plug-in. So the plug-in is I could introduce Trokador or Exelix and do exactly what you described, or maybe I'll just make certain coins native so that there is not even the swapping, the fee. And this is the kind of stuff, if we work together on this. First of all, there can't be just one privacy coin. They're building CBDCs to do 1.8 million transactions per second. So as optimistic as we may or may not be, we're not going to be able to have, like we're not actually fighting, we're fighting people that are building that. We don't have a single chain that has the capacity. So we actually do need to work together. And we actually need, like this is why I like the cake so much, is the fact that cake works with multiple privacy coins, whether it's, I mean, even Litecoin with nimble-wimble and everything else, because that's what the users want. So if we have point of sale systems like this, and we actually are working together, focusing on the user, acknowledging that we need combined capacity to be able to onboard a bunch of people, then we'll all be much better off. Like, this is why I hope we don't get into any kind of, we're not at the point where we should be cannibalizing each other by any stretch of the nation. We should be fighting the technocrats. Yeah. Although Monero could scale pretty well. We shall see. I mean, Arctic Mine has Monero going up to Visa-like transactions in tandem with Moore's law and proven and bandwidth. He doesn't really see a limit there. With dynamic blocks, theoretically, we should be in quite a few. And Zeno as well as moving to actually even shorter block times and there's a lot of stuff going on. has advantages with the proof of stake eventually too in terms of faster transactions and not having to worry about that lock time that Monero has. But anyway, we but we need we need all of it. We should use we should use all of it and and support each other 100% Until we get these these technocrats out of the way, which yeah I mean the community of people that actually cares about this stuff is so small like the people that actually aren't just trying to like You know turn one dollar into a million dollars by buying some coin but people that are actually interested in opting out they get excited about being able to Transact outside of the state's event surveillance system. They just want to like feel that feel what it's you know that one experience It's a small group of people. So if that if some of those people are using pirate chain You know be welcoming to them because this is the small group of people that are yeah Maybe they're not using Monero, and I hope they find their way to it But they're of the same type of person that we are there. They're looking to opt out, right? They want to live off of each other with the crypto currency So it's really really silly to let them divide and conquer. So yeah Totally agree agree with you there. We're gonna continue to drive that home Iron man, it's been fantastic as always It's been a pleasure to get to know you now I think you know, I don't know how long it's been now We've been getting to know each other now for a year like I guess maybe two years now I've really Realizing how much of a talent you are especially your ability to Kind of really get at the root cause or kind of the behind the scenes of what's going on politically as well I don't know how you do it, but you have really good good research skills Everything like with this, you know with the stable coins and the CBDC's you're kind of see two of these guys It's that's first out there noticing what the what the what what what they're really up to so Kudos to you man a lot of respect to you for that I appreciate it and I and I've really enjoyed working with you and appreciate everything that you've you've put together here And you know actually you have been the dominant force putting privacy Monero on the map and and pushing the adoption And I actually I'm excited about I think this conference is gonna be great Like I said, I think we're gonna look back at this five years from now and say wow I'm really glad we collaborated on this because I think it's gonna be a game changer Awesome, brother. I obviously will be in touch with regards to the conference and look forward to seeing you in person. All right, thanks. Talk to you soon. Bye. Hi, Monero Land. Thank you for joining us 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 platforms. MoneroTalk is also made possible from contributions 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 field to send us a tip. Once again, thanks so much for listening, and we look forward to being back next week.