Latest / Monero Talk / Mexico City Protests - Derrick Broze Explains What's Happening and Where Monero(Topia) May Fit In 📱| EPI 369

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Mexico City Protests - Derrick Broze Explains What's Happening and Where Monero(Topia) May Fit In 📱| EPI 369 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, we are live. Derrick, what's going on, man? Hey, brother, thanks for having me back. Yeah, any time, man. Any time. You're one of my more well-liked people in this space and on X. You're just kind of a level-headed voice of reason. You're not one of these people that's, oh, sorry about this. Hold on one sec. We got to remove a baby over here. We got a live audience over here in Monero Talk Studios today. But yeah, man, any time there's things going on, I always look to your opinion and appreciate your opinion on things in terms of global events and stuff. I think your heart is in the right place. And then you also have the ability and the skills to kind of investigate things and get to the bottom of things. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. So you're doing a great job. And I wanted to bring you on today because obviously we talk about Monero Topia is coming up and your conference is coming up as well so we could get the word out on those things. But actually, just recently, we saw in Mexico City, there's some protests that broke out. Some people are describing it as a revolution. I was just in Mexico City literally, I guess, essentially days before this happened. I didn't notice anything on the ground, unusual. But yeah, Monero Topia is going to be in Mexico City, relatively close to where the action was happening. So I do want to get the word out too to people that are coming down because in general, there's just a lot of propaganda and misinformation about Mexico. I talk to people in the Monero community that are in Europe and they're like, oh, I don't want to go to Mexico. I'm like, dude, I'm like, you're like a Monero, bro. I see you as somebody who can usually see through the bullshit and doesn't fall for the propaganda, but they're like, oh, no, Mexico is like the killing tourists down there and all this stuff. There is a lot of propaganda. Derrick propaganda. I mean, like you said, it's just in general, but over the last week, there's been a flood of bad information. Unfortunately, a lot of it coming from so-called alternative media. Doug Yes. So let's get into that a little bit. So what is really going on down there? Well, you know, obviously I know you're not like a complete professional in this area. Derrick politics. But I have started, you know, I've been studying the last five years I've been living here. And then I do have other Mexican journalists, born and raised Mexican journalists to our friends that, you know, I keep up with. And what I just want to say real quick, before we get into it, it's interesting, because there was violence in Mexico last Saturday, Mexico City. And then the week before that, there was incidents of violence in Morelia, where I live, where the people's recess is going to happen. So they both kind of each had their little things. But in both cases, as I'm going to explain, it was isolated. And it was, you know, for maybe an hour or a couple of hours of people being upset, which is kind of part of Mexican culture. There's a lot of protests that happen, like big and small, it is a part of Mexico's. Yeah, Mexico's Mexican people's way of being whether that's small local farmers who will sometimes you'll see marching in the streets or doing strikes and things like that. It is pretty common since I've been here to see protests. So so I guess we could start where not the complete beginning, but the most recent beginning, which would be on the Day of the Dead on November 1, in a little town called Urapán, which is, I think, the second largest city in Michoacan, where Morelia is the capital where I live. And it's about two hours away from where I live on Day of the Dead, the mayor of Urapán, his name is Carlos Manzo, he was assassinated. And this was a big thing, obviously, any time the politicians assassinated, it makes news, but particularly because this guy, he ran last year in the elections as an independent candidate, not part of the majority of the marina party or really any of the other parties. And he ran openly talking about wanting to address cartel violence and that he was going to, you know, kind of be a hardliner against this. In some places, he'd been given the name, the Mexican Bukele, and, you know, was sort of for his approach of like, we're going to not go easy on on narco criminals. And even him sometimes calling for Mexican people to be legally armed and to be able to have access to guns to protect themselves. And so after he was elected in this landslide over the last year, he started to really crack down in Urapán. And actually, you can find documentaries in Spanish on YouTube about him and him going wrong along with the national the state cops and doing and the local cops doing ride alongs to capture cartel members. And so he was being very open about it. He was, you know, well known for his hat and kind of started this what's just called the hat movement, sombrero movement. And so he really had a lot of support. And he was also openly criticizing the president, Claudia Scheinbaum, and saying that that the federal government wasn't sending any help. And they kept asking for help and saying, we need more help out here. Derrick I'm trying to do what I can, but we need National Guard out here. And so he's garnering up a lot of support and a lot of, you know, pushback from the ruling party and the president. And then eventually, as I said, he's assassinated on day of the dead two weeks ago. And so the next day on that Sunday, and what was his position? His position, like he was the mayor of Urapán of that time. Okay, okay. The president is kind of what they call it. But essentially, and so the next day on Sunday, November 2, there were huge protests here in this state, and it's two hours away from Urapán. But a lot of the residents came from Urapán, came to Michela and locals as well. People were pissed off. They were upset. You know, they like really believed in this guy. And also, of course, anger is directed at the president and saying there's accusations that she's, you know, connected to the cartels or that she's turning a blind eye or she's just being inactive and doing nothing. So anyways, there was a big protest on that Sunday. And for the vast majority of it was peaceful and calm and everything's fine. And then towards the end, some people who were, you know, wearing fully black mask, kind of keeping their identity from being seen, they started breaking down the governor's palace, central area, and they broke in and they smashed, they set some of the building on fire. And, you know, so those scenes made the rounds. And so because of that, now this has been kind of building, like I said, obviously, the cartels have been a problem long time in Mexico, but there's definitely a younger generation that's growing up on TikTok and social media that's kind of seems to be sick of it and really wants something to happen. And so after that assassination, after those protests, you know, what really is in the news, like Mexico City was in the news this week, and people are like, Oh, what's happening? Is Morelia safe? What's happening there? You know, life is going about as normal. And then after that, though, there were calls for a nationwide protest. It was actually one on November 8 that I went to and I did some interviews and managed here in Morelia and asked people like, Why are you here? What is this about? It was called the March Against Violence. And some of it was, you know, we're sick of the cartel violence, Carlos Manzo was assassinated, we need to do something. But it was also kind of against Israel and Palestinian people. So it was a mix of issues, but generally against violence. That was the eighth. And I went to that. And then there was planned for a nationwide protest on the 15th. And that's what happened this last Saturday. And it was, you know, there was different parts of Mexico that participated. Mexico City is obviously the capital of the country. It's 21 million people live there. And so the protests there made made the international news in the, you know, the centro, the Zocalo there, there was thousands of people, you know, it was a relatively large protest in terms of the population, pretty small, but in terms of just generally protests, Derrick there was a good amount of people there. And a lot of people were battling the cops, you know, up in the front line, there was plenty of people there who were just peaceful holding signs and going about business. But there was definitely, again, people who were battling the cops, some people were grabbing the cops and beating them up with whatever they could grab. They were throwing things. It was, it was a battle, you know, for a couple of hours at least. But what people didn't see or on social media on Sunday and Monday and this week is that that lasted for two hours. And then life kind of went back to normal. The next day in the centro in Mexico City, there was a massive kind of dance with people dancing together. There was a concert there, each of which had more people than the protests, by the way. And life went back to normal. You know, on Sunday, I'm at the store here in Morelia, four hours away from Mexico City. Right now, it's Ben Fiend, which is kind of like a Black Friday for the whole month of November. So there's like people shopping everywhere. And I did a little video just saying like, Hey, guys, I'm shopping for a couch at the mall, just in case you're wondering if Mexico's on fire burning, because those clips of violence both in Morelia and in Mexico City, that's what, you know, went viral. And that's what everybody sees. And then people like Alex Jones, and a lot of these accounts with millions of followers are like, Mexico's breaking out into revolution, civil war is happening. And just giving this really false premise. And it's annoying. I mean, I take it personally, as living here, it's just annoying to see that. But also, as you said earlier, Derrick, starting the conversation, there's already so much bad information about Mexico in general, and then people just throw more crap on top of that, with no understanding of Mexican politics. And there's more, you know, we could get into in terms of the president, she's accusing this movement of being organized by her political opponents and by right, right wing interests that are being funded by the Atlas network. And she says international foreign interest, and they're funding this billionaire. And there's a little bit of truth there, right? And then there's conspiracy theorists online saying this is a CI engineered coup. And you know, I think there maybe is a reason to ask those questions, because Trump keeps saying he's going to potentially try to, you know, take action in Mexico, or at least he keeps teasing that idea. So there's those other threads. But in general, though, there was a protest that happened for a couple of hours, some people got violent, clips went viral, and then by the end of the night, life was back to normal. Doug So I mean just the internet does with. Derrick the internet does and, you know, obviously. Doug more. Yeah, exactly. Obviously, things can change. But just to kind of get this out of the way for people that are listening that are considering coming to Monero topia Mexico City. I mean, how would you like what advice would you give them? Derrick Um, I would, I would tell them, so I'm going to send you the link and maybe you can show it, uh, Derrick, go search Zocalo webcam live feed and you can see what's going on in the city 24 hours a day. Cause they keep a running camera there just in case you're actually interested to see what the city looks like. Cause again, there's just so much false information out there and false impressions that people who make money off clicks, you know, let's be real. People make money off clicks. They make money on, um, you know, fear and whatever else. And yeah, just, you know, don't actually look up the news. And I hate to say it because I'm not a big proponent of corporate mainstream media for all of its laws, but in this case and in other cases, but especially in this case, the corporate media was doing better reporting that a lot of so-called and then alternative media, you know, you can just look up and it just protest in Mexico against the president relating to cartel violence, like that's the general headline. I know there's other, like I said, other layers we could dig into if we want to. And there's other components here. Um, but generally speaking, that's what was going on, but it was just frustrating to see these big accounts. I mentioned Alex Jones, but there's many others that are anonymous and they're mostly on Twitter and they're getting 22 million views, 10 million views with these headlines of civil war breaks out in Mexico and everybody's got their spin. I think Jones said, uh, the people of the Patriots of Mexico are rebelling against the Chinese communist backed president of Mexico, you know, and then somebody else has another spin on it. It's, I have kind of like a bigger gripe of just the failures of independent media there, but yeah, that was just sad to see about it. And it's annoying because I'm living here and I, I see how much garbage people already believe about the country and it's frustrating. Yeah. Doug Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. How would you, it's probably hard to do it, like, how would you describe the people that are protesting? Like, what is their ideology? Mostly, are they all ranges of political persuasion? Are they just one party, one archetype, one group, is like young males, right? Derrick Because, again, the protest that was on the 15th was sort of in the media promoted as a Gen Z movement, which there's a lot of Gen Z protests happening in countries around the world. And so some people are trying to kind of tie it to that broader global awakening, if you will. So there's definitely young people, like the one I went to here in Morelia on the 8th, I interviewed two or three people, and one of them was a young man, I'd say 25 or younger, and another was a woman, same age, 25 or younger, and then a guy maybe in his 40s or 50s. And so there was a rage of ages there. There was people with anti-Israel signs, there was people waving communist flags, there was people waving anarchist flags, things like that. There was people with signs about not voting. So it definitely seemed to be more of kind of a radical, left-leaning crowd, which isn't that surprising in Mexico and parts of Latin America for all of that. That's a whole other conversation. But generally speaking, that's kind of where they were. And honestly, it's got me on a whole other project that I'm foreseeing of how can I be a part of working with other Mexicans, for sure, to bring more libertarianism and volunteerism to Mexico. And in general, there's parts of Latin America, obviously, who have embraced it. But I think what I realize is, OK, let's say you're young, you're 18, 19, you're waking up a social media, you're getting sick of cartel violence, and you decide, I want to do something. I want to go be an activist. Well, since there aren't any libertarian groups or voluntarist groups or anything really even close to it, the only thing they're going to find are these kind of left-wing socialist communist groups, which have a history in Mexico. And that's just what they're going to gravitate towards, just out of that's what's available. And so I just started thinking, again, we need more ideas in the marketplace. And I'm probably going to start some more Spanish content. That video I did, that interview was one of the first videos I've done that was kind of in Spanglish, had some Spanish subtitles, some Spanish speakers. Doug Yeah, yeah, I mean that that's exactly what I'm getting at. Is there a way for us to tap into this movement, right? Especially I definitely Yeah, you're there So you're there much more than I am and you do your conference there But we do our conference in Monero topia My hope is to always I was talked about kind of like leave a mark there in Mexico City To the point where it's not just Monero people coming in, you know in from all over to talk about Monero But that the locals start to grasp it and understand it Yeah value in it and so you got to really tap into a reason for them to to want it, right? So, you know Argentina Argentina, you know people people get it Fiat is so it is so out of control there They know that you know, Fiat's bad. They need an alternative in Mexico. It's not it's not that bad, right? They you know, obviously it's inflationary, but it's not nowhere like what we see in Venezuela and Argentina So people you teach them about crypto. They're like, why do I really need it? But you know, maybe there's other things that they could start to understand right like if they're becoming anti-state Yeah, and then they become that's only there right that the way if you if you're anti-state the best way to you know Take power away from the state is to use these tools is to use Monero is to use crypto, right? Derrick I think you guys do a good job of having it where you do the garden there, because it's just a hub for people in Mexico City. So even if, well, because like I'll notice during Monero topia, the talks are going on and everybody's hanging out, the market's happening. And obviously if you're just local, you're noticing like, oh my God, there's a bunch of foreigners here and they're kind of maybe checking it out or coming to participate or listen to the talks, or at least just getting exposed to some of the things people are offering there. And I think that's one thing of value. And I mean, I definitely try to work on this with our event, with the People's Reset here in Morelia. That's why we make our event free for Mexicans and we do live translation of all the talks so people can check out headsets. And if a person's in English, they can hear it in Spanish and vice versa. And yeah, when I was going to that protest, I was telling my partner, Amirium, I was telling her, I was like, we need to come with flyers in Spanish about volunteerism, or I want to create like a specific Twitter account or an Instagram account because a lot of locals are on Instagram, I noticed, especially the younger generation, they mainly organize on Instagram. And just start, it doesn't have to be about me, it would be kind of anonymous, just with different memes and different graphics, but in Spanish about volunteerism and these principles, and just kind of start trying to get it out there. And then also, even though I wouldn't agree with some of the solutions that the protesters I met were proposing and their communist flag waving and all that, again, I still think they're ripe for potentially bringing into this broader movement. So we're gonna do our best to, we do this every year, but we're gonna do it even more this year to be promoting our event locally here in Morelia, in the coming months that we're leading up to the event, including to these activist groups that we're meeting, because to me, it's like, all right, they might not totally be on the same page at the moment, but they're young, they give a shit, and they're looking for answers. And so, maybe by introducing them to other ideas that are more kind of freedom-minded, libertarian-based, and getting them exposed to solutions, whether it's Monero and things like that, Arvin also talks about permaculture and some of these other ideas, whichever thing that might get them interested, try to start influencing, because not to say, hey, me, this American from Texas, coming to Mexico, I have it all figured out or anything like that, because I wanna work with the locals, but obviously I don't think communism is the answer. Doug Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah, we're thinking the same. I would love to get you into our Monero Mexico group. There's only 20 people in there. It's just a group chat we have going, basically people that, Monero people that have attended the conference, whatever, that live in Mexico. Because I was throwing out to them when this happened, I was like, hey, guys, maybe we could go hand out flyers at this protest. So we are working on putting something together. Are these things continuing to happen, you think? You think they'll continue to converge and assemble? I think so. Derrick I haven't I've been keeping up and trying to see if there's a another date that's been set, but I haven't seen anything yet. But today is the one hundred and fifteenth anniversary of beginning of the Mexican Revolution, actually. So I heard that there might be some protest at some point. We'll see if anything happens this weekend. There's a few accounts I follow on Instagram where they usually post, you know, this kind of stuff. So I'll definitely keep an eye on it. And if it happens here locally, I'm going to go there to interview people. I wanted to add this to what I was sharing earlier about all those violent scenes. Everybody was saying a scene everywhere. So the protest didn't just happen in Mexico City. It was a nationwide movement. And it wasn't nearly as big in most cities as it was in Mexico City. But there was I would say three, three to maybe 500 people here in Morelia that marched and most of them were white. Most of them were just waiting Mexican flags. This was also last Saturday on the same day as the violence in Mexico City. And, you know, there's some good video you can find online. People got good drone shots of people walking down the aqueducts, walking through the central and they kind of took over the streets. But it was a couple of hours of peaceful marching and no violence and, you know, nothing happening. People coming out to say, hey, we're sick of the cartel violence. We're sick of nothing happening. No, you know, no repercussions to the cartel. We're sick of, you know, a lot of them are calling a narco estado, like directly accusing the government of being connected to the cartel. So people are being pretty bold, but there was no violence and everything went peacefully. But that's not what went viral, what went viral was all the violence in Mexico City, of course, of course, of course. Doug It could be a number of things going on, but obviously part of that could be the US trying to hurt Mexico by keeping tourists from visiting Mexico, putting pressure on them in that way. It could be all sorts of things going on. You probably know Roy. He's in that group too, and so he actually went. He said he went to the protests to get a grasp of precisely what was going on over there with the people. He's like, older people were more right-wing and pro-free markets in entrepreneurship. He's like, younger ones were more Marxist socialists, like you were saying, leaning, but definitely anti-government. He said both sides love the idea of separating money and state to force politicians to be competent, otherwise no money for them to issue debt. That's interesting. This is based on the people that he spoke to, but that's encouraging. Derrick Yeah. And so this is what's kind of makes it interesting, right, is without falling to the left-right paradigm so much, because obviously you can't perfectly translate from American politics to Mexican politics, but there is a left and a right. The majority of the politicians tend to be left, variations of left-wing politics. The current ruling party, I think we would consider them to be a socialist party. But there are people like this billionaire Salinas, who Claudia Sheinbaum accused of, he owns TV Azteca and some other stations, and he's a billionaire. And only days before this protest, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled against him and basically said, he's going to be forced to pay something like billions of dollars in taxes that they claim he owes. So in the eyes of, let's say, if your politics are left-wing and you think taxation is a great thing, this guy is a rich, selfish, greedy billionaire who is trying to evade taxes, and he's just trying to overthrow or at least negatively influence the view of the populist president, Claudia Sheinbaum. That's one kind of maybe left-wing progressive view of it. Others, let's say, if you do believe more in a free market idea, and I'm not saying this guy is some kind of libertarian or anything, but he definitely espouses those ideas. He went to El Salvador right before the protest. He was actually there, I think, when the protests were happening. And there's pictures of him and Bukele together, and basically, he's like, I want to do more like him. If I was president, we would take the cartels out. We would bring more business. So he does seem to represent the kind of big business side of politics, whether that's good, bad, whether that's truly something free market or crony capitalism or whatever, I guess that remains to be seen. But there is that kind of dynamic going on as well. Doug Mm-hmm. Derrick And so I wouldn't be surprised to see some people who are older who are maybe followers of him or at least more sympathetic to him than the current president. Doug So I mean, yeah, you're in Mexico, you're based out of Mexico for now. What is kind of your overall plan thinking, right? I mean, you're one of these guys, like myself, trying to lead the opt out revolution, right? Ignore the system, build our own parallel economy type thing. That's the way we win. Where do you see, how do you see things in terms of where we can make the most inroads with that? I mean, like we're talking about Mexico, perhaps potentially being a place, but in general, when you think about, obviously, I'm sure you're thinking in your mind, like how can you make the biggest and greatest impact, right? How can we really propel this opt out movement? Where do you see that really happening around the globe? Or how do you see that happening? We have our little networks, right? I have Monero Topia, you have your conference, we're doing it in that respect, but kind of give me your bigger vision thinking on that. Derrick I mean, obviously my hope is that Mexico is one of those places and that remains free in these ways for, you know, people like myself to continue to build these counter economies and parallel economies. I mean, I'm fully invested here. I mean, I go back to visit family in Texas, but this is where I live. I have land out here that we've bought and paid for. You know, we're building on it in the next month. We're starting building. We'll be building in 2026. I just harvest it. Like, I got to show you in a moment, Derrick, I just harvested like $100, $200, $300, $400 of avocados from one tree on my property. So I'm here. Like, I'm fully invested. Like, that this is where I want to plant my roots. And obviously I care about the future of the United States. I think it matters for both sides of the border. But I really am staking a claim that I, not to say this, Mexico's perfect for everybody or that everybody should move to Mexico or anything like that, but it's the right move for me. And particularly being in Morelia, I think we've talked about this on past shows. I mean, this state is known for the cities like Chetán, where they've taken back their own cities and they've kicked out the cartels and they kicked out the government and they, you know, kicked out the cops and started their own, what do they call auto defenses like community defense forces and things like that. I take a lot of inspiration from, you know, these aren't radical free market anarchists or anything like that. But they're people who, when push came to shove, stood up and claimed their territories and they've been able to hold them and live freely. And I take a lot of inspiration from that. I've also, the more time I spent here, I'm a huge fan of and nerd for the Mexican history and Mexican revolution and I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned in there. And overall, I do think Mexico will, despite efforts to roll out the same agendas we're seeing around the world, digital IDs and all that stuff, which is absolutely, Mexico will be one of those places eventually. I still feel strongly that this place has a certain rebellious spirit within the people, not every single person, of course, but within the people that is alive. And so I am living here full time. As I said, I'm hosting the event. We go to local markets to try to talk to people about Monero and about like what we're building and trying to, we're really trying to build a counter economy. That was what my whole talk was about this year at Monero topia in February was how we're working on that out here. So I mean, I'm really trying to do what I can to create that in my own community where I live. And then also, of course, use that as an example to try to inspire the people to do that wherever they, you know, they're based. And like I said, I don't think we all need to move here necessarily. In fact, probably it's better that we each stake some claim wherever we're at, whatever home counts for you as and try to build there as much as possible. Derrick And whether that's bringing more people to the counter economy through promoting Monero and things like that or, you know, growing your own food or just trying to, you know, there's a lot of different areas I think people can work on that. And that's sort of what I try to do with my work. And what we do with the event is to try to include the crypto element and the privacy element and the Web 3, the tech side, but also kind of take a holistic approach of looking at different areas that we can focus on building parallel systems. Doug Yeah, let's get into the conference more. Like, yeah, shill it some more. I mean, I wish I could go. I know we've been talking about this for a while. I purposely put Monero-Topia next to your conference with the hope that I'd be able to get to yours and then go to mine. And then hopefully that some of your people will come over to ours. I'm really hoping that's the case. Yeah. We could announce here. I'll give you a special code, a discount code that you could send out to anybody that bought a ticket for yours. And we'll give them 50% off our tickets. And then also, like you, I mean, it's free for locals anyway. So if people want to just come in that are local, you could come into the marketplace for free. And then in the marketplace, you could participate. You go to the Monero 101 area. You can go to the workshops. You can watch the talks, but you just can't go into the dome. But yeah, tell us more about what's going to be happening there. Get people excited about your conference. Derrick Yeah. Let me bring it up. Cool. Yeah. I was just going to share the website. So yeah, our event is called the people's reset and it's the websites, the people's reset dot org, uh, January 28th to February 1st. So like you said about just two weeks, right before Monero topia. So for people who are already here or want to spend a month in Mexico, you could come to Morelia, check out the city and you can check out our event. It's five days. It starts on Wednesday and it runs through Sunday. We have about, I think 35, 38 speakers. And again, as I was mentioned, we kind of have different themes. We have five different themes. The first day is just health, but we call it liberate your mind, body and soul. So that's people could be talking about physical health stuff, mental health, spiritual. It's really a broad mix. And that's kind of with all of our themes. Like we have a general theme and then, you know, each person might interpret it in 10 different ways. So the second day is permaculture and food independence. So that's people giving practical tools and tips about growing your own food or homesteading different things related to that. And we always ask all of our speakers to try to make it as practical as possible. You know, sometimes things are a little theoretical or esoteric and that's OK. And there will be some of that, I'm sure. But we definitely try to emphasize and bring speakers who are going to give people tips and tricks and things they can literally take home with them, because that's our whole purpose. And then day three is agriism and parallel networks. So obviously a lot of things fit under there. It could be alternative schooling. It could be alternative economics. And a lot of people like, for example, my talk is always on that day. And this year I'm going to be talking about my own addiction recovery journey because it's been 20 years since I got arrested actually this last week. And so I'm going to talk about how we can build parallel systems for helping people in our broader freedom movement who might be dealing with addiction that doesn't have to involve government programs or sort of models that reinforce the addiction model disease model that I don't think is very helpful. So, yeah, everybody interprets this parallel network idea in their own ways. And then Saturday will be empowering technology. And so, again, that's crypto, that's Web 3, that's all that's different types of health tech, different types of technology that are empowering to people. And then the fifth day is just called building free and conscious communities. And sometimes that's people who are already, you know, maybe living in eco villages or intentional communities or homesteading, people sharing, organizing strategies like a wide range of topics and ideas. And we have people coming from all over the world, Canada, U.S., Mexico. Of course, we definitely are trying to have more Mexican speakers every day and more Spanish speakers. And so we have like 35 speakers. Derrick And then the cool thing that I like the most about our event that I think is different than some other events is that we we try to keep it decentralized as well. So we we pick the speakers for the main stage, but anybody who's attending can apply to host a workshop. And so in the mornings and the lunch break and in the evening, there's all kinds of different workshops going on. And some of those are hosted by our speakers. And some of them are just people who showed up and have something cool to teach and share. And so that kind of lets people not just be a attendee, but also participate as well. And then we've got two different concerts we do. We have international touring artists, Dub FX and Natalie Ryze coming out. We have Mexican performers. So it's it's music, it's talks, it's workshops. There's I think a cacao ceremony and maybe sometimes there's ayahuasca. There's different things going on. So it is not exclusive to crypto or Monero in the way that obviously Monero topias. But I definitely think everybody who is at Monero topia, who loves freedom and who maybe is strong on the crypto side and not so strong in some of these other areas could really benefit from, yeah, from attending and just experiencing it. And honestly, man, I'll just say just the last little shill thing here is that as an event organizer, I've been hosting events for 20 years, going back to Houston, big and small events, activist events, festivals, protests, hosting an event on an international level like this, as you know, Derrick, it's a lot of work, a lot of money, time, energy goes into it. And it goes by so quick. But I've never heard so many real genuine testimonies as we get from this event, like people coming up in tears and saying this changed their life or they're, you know, they come in and they go home and they start implementing the ideas, whether that's adopting Monero or some other some other tool that they learned, and they start changing their lives. I mean, that to me is that's why we call it an activation, because like, you know, it's not just a festival, not just a conference, it's a mix of all those things. But really, the goal is for people like, hey, come have fun, get connected, and then go home and actually implement these ideas in your life. Doug Well, listen, I've never been there. So I can't say from first-hand experience, but I know you I know the quality of work you put out I watched some of the last one you did when you were streaming it So yeah, I highly recommend Anybody that's attending Monero topia if you can come out early and go to your conference first highly recommend it And I will we Derrick We are going to be giving a discount on tickets too for Monero, as you mentioned earlier, that you're going to do for our audience. I'm going to give Derrick a code. He'll send it out to everybody in the Monero-Topi audience and you guys can get a discount. I think it would be great to connect with people who come to our event and then see you guys in Mexico City because I'll be speaking and I'll be attending and yeah. Doug Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I wish I would be, I was able to fit in going to yours, but it's going to be, I think a little too much time for me in Mexico, unfortunately. Cause I still, I still do balance the nine to five life as, as you know, as to why you got a baby late for the show today. I got a baby. I got, I got, I got two kids and I got a lot going on. We all have a lot going on. No excuses, but well, it'll happen, man. The time's right. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And at least I get to see you at our conference and yeah, anything you could do to push your people to come on over. Like I said, uh, Derrick and we'll let him know about menarotopia for sure. Doug I think it will be great because obviously your conference is kind of more the bigger picture I think. And then for those who are interested in the crypto aspects of it, the actual how do we use this stuff, I know you're going to have some of that going on there as well. Derrick I'll tell you like our audience is definitely multi-generational like last time we had some people in their mid 80s and we had a baby that was a couple of months old and everything in between and some of them are very you know sometimes we have a crypto meetup at the event and it's packed with people and everybody's trading exchanges are just talking and whatever but there's definitely a portion of the audience who's interested in and knows of Monero and has heard us talk about because John Bush is always there so John's talking about Monero and myself and other friends. We're going to have some one of the representatives of Zano there we're going to have you know some other people talking about DeFi so it's definitely going to be that represented but I do think from our audience the people who want to go deeper they would benefit from going to Monero. Doug Yeah, we'll have the Monero devs there, we'll have the Zano devs, we'll have Pyrochain there, Firo, BasicSwap, you know. And we are, I mean, that is a good topic to talk about too, right? I mean, we are seemingly having a privacy coin moment here, right? It's privacy coin season, kind of for like the first time ever in crypto. It's like the skeleton, like waiting for privacy season since I got into crypto. And it's finally here. Some of the Monero people feel a little butt hurt because Zcash is kind of stealing the spotlight for it. But I think, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships here. And I do think it's something to celebrate and embrace. And kind of perfect timing for us. Hopefully, we're still in privacy season by the time our conferences kick off. I think so. Yeah. How are you feeling about that? I mean, are you keeping a close eye on the crypto? I mean, it's hard to ignore, right? You're on Twitter, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, I was actually going to add. Derrick ask you a question, man, because I've, I've followed, like a couple of months ago with, you know, the drama and the concern around Monero and this AI, you know, kind of attack, or, you know, I'd be curious to hear your, your views on that whole thing, because obviously, there's, when that started happening, people started emailing me like, Hey, you've recommended Monero before, now I'm seeing this stuff that Monero is not safe anymore, that transactions are going through. And then, and then yeah, I'm not caught up on the Z cast drama show, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And maybe you can fill me in about what's going on with Z cash. Doug Yeah, so Zcash is being pumped is what's going on with Zcash. There's a lot of wealthy people that were involved with Zcash from the early days. Zcash has a founder's fund. It has a dev tax. It also has really good tech and definitely don't deny that. Trying to get some of the Zcash people to come to Monerotopia, but I don't know. I think they may not want to dip their toe into that for whatever reason. But yeah, Zcash is having its moment. It does feel like it's kind of being foisted out there a little bit more than just kind of an organic thing, which is what we're seeing in Monero. But in terms of this FUD that we're hearing that, I guess you're referring to the AI thing, right? Like in a world of AI that now- Derrick What was that project? I can't remember the name. There was a project... Oh, Cubic. Cubic. Cubic. Yeah, exactly. That whole thing. And how they messed with some of the transactions, or at least it appeared to. Again, I'm not an expert, so I'd love your... Doug So what happened there? That was an attempt to basically do a 51% attack on Monero, Monero's proof of work. If you could get 51% of the mining network to collaborate, they could do a 51% attack in any proof of work coin, whether it's Monero or Bitcoin or Zcash. But we saw this coin cubic basically attack Monero, which is interesting that they chose Monero to do it. And what they really did was the attack really was just they incentivized miners to join their mining pool. So I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of mining pools, right? So it makes sense in proof of work coins for people to come together in a pool and mine together so they get more rewards. And cubic basically made a mining pool where they were able to pull in a lot of people because they said, all right, in addition to mining Monero, you're also going to get an extra extra because you're going to get cubic coin, right? And so they use that incentive to kind of pull more people into their pool. But the FUD that's out there is that they were able to successfully 51% attack, and they did it. Monero thwarted the attack. At the end of the day, not enough miners went over because there's a large... There's a majority of miners that care more about the Monero network than moving over to this pool. And it was revealed that, hey, listen, if you move over to this pool and you start mining there, you're going to get paid out in this thing called cubic coin. It may seem like it has more value because they're going to value it as what you would normally mine plus a little extra. But now you're stuck with cubic coin and the price might be high right now, but it might not be tomorrow. And that's exactly what happened. Cubic dumped. They dumped on all these people. The scam was revealed. They didn't successfully 51% attack. They were able to disrupt the network because they were able to get enough of the mining power to do what's called selfish mining. But it's not like anybody's transactions ultimately didn't go through. There were just delays in the network and no double spends ever happened. That's the big no-no, right? Derrick like in terms of showing maybe devs where they should focus on or something. Doug 100%. So like I said, so this attack could have happened to Bitcoin. It could have happened to Zcash. Any proof of work coin that has mining pools would be susceptible to this attack. They chose Monero. And yeah, I think it's helpful in that it forced Monero's hand to think about how can we prevent this in the future. And that's exactly what they've been working on. And they came up with a bunch of ideas and solutions. And now they're upgrading and adding that to its proof of work so that Monero in the future won't have to deal with this. So it just kind of puts Monero a little bit ahead of the pack in that regard and that it's forcing them to deal with this inevitable attack that could have happened to any proof of work coin. So there was that FUD. And then with the Zcash thing, like I said, you cannot deny their attack. You cannot deny the things they've done. But the fact is Monero is used much more. It has other advantages. Both coins have their advantages and disadvantages. Both coins have attack vectors. Zcash is kind of selling itself as it's perfected everything and there's no attack vectors. That's absolutely not the case. There are attack vectors against Zcash, malicious nodes. There's timing attacks. There's lots of things that can be done. But in Zcash, while doing their pump, they've also been kind of throwing mud at Monero because that's part of how they can pump. If they can pull in these people that care about privacy coins, pull them into their side. So some of the FUD they've been putting out is that Monero's encryption essentially is broken that it's traceable, which is not the case. I follow this day-to-day. So we've always known that Monero has had weaknesses. And the Monero community has always been very open about that and working towards solving its weaknesses. The primary one being the ring signature aspect of Monero, which only obfuscates the sender. It has nothing to do with the receiver or the amounts. Those use true encryption. There's no debate over that. Nobody thinks that that could possibly be broken. But the ring signatures have always known to be the weaker part of Monero in that there could potentially be a way if you gain enough data from the people that are using it, if you get insights from the exchanges, that you could probabilistically guess who the true sender of a transaction may be. And so Monero is now solving that. It's upgrading to full chain membership proofs. Derrick cash is pointing to like they're saying that is what Doug Yeah, but Zcash is pointing to it in a way and saying that Monero encryption is broken. Monero doesn't use zero knowledge. Monero does use zero knowledge proofs. It uses it in different aspects of its encryption. It uses it in the bullet proofs. But Zcash is basically taking this one attack vector that can be used against Monero, which Monero is fixing and upgrading and using that to say Monero is ultimately broken and traceable. And it's not. There's just theoretically things that you can potentially do under certain circumstances if you have enough data and enough insight and you're trying to pinpoint attack a single person. And it hasn't even been proven that that's ever been done successfully. That's kind of the big picture of what's going on. What's exciting about it is that Monero's full chain membership proof upgrade is on the horizon. I'm hoping by Monero Topia, we'll have some really good news about that. And then basically that entire FUD against Monero completely goes away because at that point it's equivalent in tech with regard to that aspect of its privacy to Zcash. That's the high level thing and all the stuff about Zcash is not private by default, which leads to weaknesses, that leads to attack vectors. Derrick Well, I have another question about that, because, you know, I so I have to think I've shared with you before I started getting into crypto through Bitcoin, of course, in 2012, got my first transaction in 2013 and toured the country twice with funding from Bitcoin.com from Roger Baer back in the day to travel the country to promote adoption. And I never got into debates about Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin. I'm not a maxi for really any of the projects. I'm a maxi for freedom. Right. It's kind of the way I always say it. And I want what works, you know, what's going to provide privacy, what's going to be easy to transact and no fees and all this sort of thing. And that was at one point Bitcoin. It's no longer that. And so, you know, my concern with privacy and surveillance has brought me to Monero and, of course, learning about things like Xeino and others. And I just I hope that in the bigger picture, besides people's egos, that we can not necessarily come on one team, but, you know, it would be nice if there was some sort of more collaborative spirit instead of like, you know, people's ego being invested in a particular project and feeling like they can't collaborate or work with or support other projects, like in the interest of privacy, in the interest of actually being able to protect people. But I know that other things get involved, especially when money is involved in people's, you know, that that's the key, right? Doug That's the real key. People are holding bags. They're holding bags. They have their value in that. At the end of the day, that's what's dictating what they do. I agree with you and I try to be as open as possible. Obviously, I think Monero is doing a better job than pretty much all of them in terms of being untraceable digital cash that's actually used, but I'm very open to hearing from these other projects. That's what Monero Topia is all about, mostly because I think that's how Monero can continue to win. That's really what hurt Bitcoin was the maximalism, keeping everybody out and saying, no, we're perfect. We figured it out. Everybody else is wrong. This is the only way. But for the project to maintain its lead, I believe that the healthiest way for it to do that is to be open to the competition, see what's going on, learning from them, competing with them in a healthy way. The free market is going to determine and let the best protocol win. That is my approach. Like I said, Zcash, I don't deny what they've done. I think if you made a checklist, there's pros and cons to both, but I think the biggest difference between these two projects and the clear advantage that Monero still has, and I'm not saying it's given that it will always have this advantage. Especially people in Monero that are listening need to be aware of that. If you want to maintain this advantage, you're going to have to take action to help maintain it, but that advantage is the fact that it's used. It's used way more than Zcash for peer-to-peer transactions, people that are actually buying stuff, people that are going on XMR Bazaar, people that are going wherever. There's a culture of using it in Monero, opting out, transacting with it. Derrick I've heard about Zcash for years, but other than kind of seeing it back on my feed here and there recently, which is you've explained why, I didn't really know it was even still a project. I'm not fully in the space all the time, but just as somebody who is aware and who uses privacy coins, I don't hear a lot of people talking about Zcash. I definitely see more of a culture community around Monero. Doug Then it came out of nowhere. It's like, no, we were here all along. They were working on the tech, but what they weren't working on was growing usage. It was never really their priority. Even now, if you see the memes that they're putting out, it's like they're trying to be another Bitcoin. They're trying to sell it as a store of value, not so much of a, let's use it. If we use it, we win. Let's transact with it. Yeah, I want something I can use and actually spend. Those are the primary differences in it. I agree with you. I don't think being maxi in any of this stuff is helpful for the movement, ultimately. I definitely agree with you there, man. It is fun that we're having privacy season. I think that's overall a good thing, for sure. Derrick I'm glad more people are talking about privacy coins and thinking about it because that's where things need to go. So yeah, I mean, I'm excited to let our people know, the people's reset know that they can come to Monero topia and get half off their tickets. And hopefully through that, some of our audience will become more familiar. Like I said, we have some people who are super savvy and they already go to Monero topia. And then there's others who are just ready and willing to learn, but need to be kind of maybe fully immersed to get a better idea, especially because, you know, with your marketplace and people being able to spend Monero there, that's a good use case for them to see it. Doug Yeah, please do spread the word on XMR Bazaar. Maybe we could run an ad or something at your conference or something like that. That would be great. We're seeing good traction there. To that end, like we're saying, let's focus on the parallel economy. That's what I'm trying to do with XMR Bazaar. And so I'm even thinking of, well, actually in the works with launching a sister site, it's going to run off the same database and everything, but it will allow people to additionally add other privacy coins that they want to accept in addition to Monero. So to live up to this, let's not be maximalism about it. May the best crypto win. I think Monero does win. It will always be XMRbazaar.com, where it will be Monero only. But then we'll have a sister website that's going to query the same database. But the users there, if they so choose, can add other top privacy coins as they may want to accept. And let's see what people want to accept. And let's see what people use. Anywhere where Monero is accepted among other cryptos, it really does kind of end up stealing the show and become the most accepted. And I just hope that continues to be the case. Derrick Absolutely, and by the way, I should mention just in case people don't, you know, it's listed on our website for the Monero topi audience. You can pay Monero for the people's reset. Doug Oh, sweet. How do they do that? Is it in its part? It's worked into your Derrick I don't have it automated at the moment, maybe you could help me with that. So if people just go to the ticket page though, they'll see the details and they can contact us through there and then we do them in our exchange. But I'd love to work with you to get more automated set up for sure. Doug You use WordPress? Yeah, it's a WordPress site. So WooCommerce? Yeah, probably the easiest thing for you to do would just be to add like now payments. The best thing would be is if you use BTC Pay Server, which isn't that hard either, and we can help you set that up. That would be the most hardcore way in terms of like... But the easiest is if you just implement now payments and then you can... Yeah, I'm familiar... Derrick with both. I just haven't done it yet. So maybe you could help me out with that. That'd be great. Yeah, for sure, for sure, man. Cool. Doug All right, man. Yeah, we're almost at rounding out an hour. Is there anything you want to bring up, put out there that you want to? Derrick I just mentioned again, I mean, if anybody wants to come to the People's Reset, we'd love to have you. I'm getting close to reaching the conclusion of my 17-part documentary series, The Pyramid of Power. We talked about it in the past. We just launched a new website. People can find the entire series. If you want to learn more about kind of my journalistic investigations, it's at thepyramidofpower.net. My main website is theconsciousresistance.com. And the event is thepeoplesreset.org, man. I appreciate you having me on. Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug Yeah, it was fun man, right? It was fun. The last two that you you definitely Yeah, you definitely helped You know make this make the scene a good vibe down of an aerotopia any any chance we get you to perform this year I was Derrick I would love to perform, man. I'll have some new music on work. Doug Not right now. Awesome. Fantastic. And so when I went down to the venue last week, just to get everybody on board again, I was talking to people, I was pleased when I went on a weekend because they always have marketplaces there, obviously not just during Monero topia. And some of the same vendors were there and they were accepting Monero. So yeah, and I used the Monero, it wasn't like they had completely, they were actively accepting Monero, their wallets were already synced. There was like four hardcore people, like four hardcore vendors that are there that are like totally sold on the Monero. I think part of it has to do with the fact that since accepting it, it's got up a little bit of value and they've been holding it. So they're excited. I don't know how exciting to say. All right, brother, we'll leave it at that and we'll be in touch and I'll see you. I'll see you in Monero topia, man. Derrick See you soon, brother, and we'll be letting our people know to go to Monerotopia, and I hope to see everybody at the People's Reset in January. Doug for sure. Adios, man. Speaker 2 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. 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