 One visual asset news, my name is Rob, and there's some good news to talk about. And that is that January is the second best month we have ever had for Bitcoin's history post the halving. What I'm talking about is there's some data points. This is from Ben's website in the cryptiverse. And we just see very clearly that in 2023, today's January 27. And January so far has given us yield or given us returns of 40% so far. If we take a look here, the next best month or the next best year was all the way back in 2013, which was 57%. So from here, we're doing pretty darn good. And now, of course, people will say, well, Rob, we're about 2011, that's 67%, it's a little bit higher than the other two, which is true. But we're talking about past the actual Bitcoin halving. And just as a refresher, I know in most people know this, but I'll do this real quick. Everything goes in with the four-year cycles. These cycles, these graphs, they are still intact. There's no reason to go against them so far because they played out beautifully to this point. And what I'm talking about is, of course, Bitcoin was created in 2009. It's Toshi Nakamoto, the white paper, everything else. So we had 2009, 10, 11, and the first halving, which was in 2012. Again, the miners that are mining Bitcoin, their rewards get cut in half. So same amount of work, half the pay, that's a bummer, but that is supply. And we take a look here. Every time we've had a halving, the year after, it's an all-time high. So in 2012, Bitcoin halving, 2013, all-time high. Then we have a dip, which is usually a brutal, brutal year. And then we have a reset after that for two years after the all-time high. Same thing happened in 2016. We had a halving, then we had an all-time high, then a dip, then a reset. And we just went through it again. Still intact. We had a halving in 2020. In 2021, we had an all-time high. Then, of course, 2022, which was brutal. We had a dip. Now we're in the reset year. So if we take a look at, I mean, January is doing so well, what does that mean for us? Well, if we take a look back at the last reset year, which is 2019, it's actually pretty good. I mean, if we take, go all the way back here, first of January, Bitcoin was $3,872, $3,800. And of course, it just kind of slowly went up after that. And we're going to see that in 2019, $10,000 was that peak point. And then we come down here, and it's looking pretty good. I mean, let's be honest. Now, as we finish up for the year, we can see that it has actually did decrease $6,900. So it's going to be a turbulent year. But if we just zoom out, take a look here at 2021, not too shabby. And if we take a look at the total over this way, still looking pretty good. Now, if we look at it logarithmically, we can see that, yes, it's not as fantastic as we might see it with the linear, but you can still see the overall trajectory is, if my eyes don't mistake me, up. So that's all we have. I will say, lastly, that this is just like we've seen some other years, I think it's going to be a very turbulent year. We're going to have some pretty good gains going to go down. And you can see because of maybe potentially the macro factors, I think we're headed towards a recession. And then we've never gone through rate hikes as precipitously high as we're going through right now. And then, of course, we're not going to go through all the quantitative easing or going through quantitative tightening. So there's those parts and people get a little bit concerned about it. But just remember this, Bitcoin never went through a pandemic, worked out okay in 2020. And then people will say, well, Bitcoin's ever been through a war because of the Ukraine war. That's not true. I mean, US was in Afghanistan for two decades, seemed to work out just fine. And now we're going through these other different factors. Will it go through? I think it will. But I could be wrong. That's why dollar cost average. But let me know which thing about that in the comments section. So there's all these things we've talked about over here. There's some other concerns that people have. And one of those is unfortunately regulation. And there's a couple of stories. And I call this the tale of two senators. One is on Elizabeth Warren. Next one on is Senator Cruz from the great state of Texas. Before I get into Warren and regulation, I got to tip my hat to Ted here. And what he wants to do is he put a bill and says, hey, I want to have Bitcoin accepted here in the capital for all the vendors. And I thought it was a brilliant move because as Ted has pointed out, he said, look, he goes, I can, he goes three, maybe three or four of all the senators here can tell you what a Bitcoin is and what it does. He says, so they don't understand it. So if he can bring that to the capital and actually introduce them slowly not pounding their head, I think it could actually do pretty well. So let's hopefully that goes through. And maybe they can understand like, Hey, this doesn't, this isn't like the biggest awful thing that is being used for drug dealers and for the cartels and for terrorism. I use it right now. And I bought a Kit Kat or whatever. I don't know. So that is one side. The other side is Elizabeth Warren. And now some people hate her. Some people love her. Some do in between. I have no real big opinion on her. I think she's just like everybody else. She's fallible and tries to do her best. And sometimes she gets things wrong. And on this one, I hate to say this, but she's actually right on a couple of things. So first things first, Elizabeth Warren said this, the SEC has worked to protect investors from crypto products and prevented Bitcoin exchange traded funds from hitting the market. She's right. They've done a great job of that. Matter of fact, they just shot down ARCS bid with 21 shares for another spot Bitcoin ETF. So that was just happened yesterday. So on this one, Elizabeth Warren is right. They're doing a great job of shooting them all down. Also, she said she praised the commission's enforcement actions against celebrity crypto promoters such as Kim Kardashian and crypto exchanges like Coinbase for alleged insider trading. That is also true. She's doing a pretty good job. So with Kim Kardashian, I have to tell you, like some people say, you know, oh, that's just frivolous and they're making an example. It's true. But in all honesty, they really should have done that. That's just my personal opinion because here on YouTube channel, like everybody knows I'm biased, even in the links in the description, I say very clearly, this is a channel promoter or this is an affiliate link, you don't have to use the affiliate links. But if you do, I get paid a commission and you get some kind of discount or something like that for whatever it is. So we're very transparent. So with Kim Kardashian comes along and says, hey, you should get this Ethereum max, whatever it was called. And it's really awesome. And that's it. People who aren't investors who aren't privy to this crypto market or any market, maybe, but it's like, that sounds good. Maybe she's being altruistic and she's doing the goodness of the heart because she really loves it. People don't get it. So I think, yes, they should really say, hey, you need to have some rules if you're going to talk about this. I got to do them. I shouldn't you. And then for the insider trading thing, I got to agree there too. So they shut down. There was a couple of brothers, they did some NFT trades on Coinbase and they were manipulating prices. So I get that. However, I will just say this. Don't throw stones in glass houses. If you're going to talk about insider trading and manipulation, you have to look at your own house quickly. And this was a story that just came out yesterday or a couple of days ago, Paul Pelosi, husband of, well, I guess maybe former house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, done 30,000 shares of Google stock one month before the DOGA anti-trust lawsuit, which was filed this week against Google and all the different things that are going on. So like here, I'm not saying that this happened, but I will just say that we all know this. Congressmen and women and senators, they are privy to information and different groups that they interact with that they have information we will never know. And there is no problems with them dumping, selling, buying stock and getting away with it. That to me is insider trading. Let me know what you think about that, but that's just how I see things. So to finish up, she says, most importantly, it appears that the commission is still ramping up. That's why the industry is scared of a strong SEC. That's why it's spending millions of dollars each year lobbying to escape the SEC oversight. See, that's true, but not true because I think what people do, and this is what Ted's trying to do is he's trying to bring Bitcoin to the masses. People are associating Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano and Avalanche and anything else with this, let's just call them fraud, with the FTX and the Celsius and the Voyager and the things that are just collapsing and things like that. They are totally different things and everybody gets it mixed up because they just see, okay, that's bad. I saw that and now it's going down. So everything's bad. That's not how it is. So on this one, if they could separate a little bit, I think it'll be a little better. And what we're trying to talk about is the story that came out because she talks about the SEC. And the CFTC, there's a little bit of a power struggle going on because they're all trying to figure out what it actually is that they're trying to regulate. CFTC is all about commodities. SEC is about securities. The OCC is about currencies. I think they should start a fourth one, but they just don't. And it's not like the crypto projects are trying to escape it. The people who are trying to escape it are the centralized exchanges that are like, no, no, no, we're just going to lobby and we're going to be okay. That's what Sam Bankman Fried did. And unfortunately, as Warren talks about here, well, it would be nice if they cracked down on him. He should be held in the fullest extent of law. And I'm really raw wrong for Gary Gensler, who's the head of the SEC. But just remember, Gary had multiple sit-down meetings with Sam Bankman Fried and did absolutely nothing. Me personally, I believe it was his fault. And he is supposed to be the top cop. And he didn't do his job. And a lot of people lost a lot of money because they invest in FTX when Gary had insider access. Let me know where I'm wrong on that one. And I will just finish up with this. I try to be a little balanced. So I will give the SEC a little bit of a hurrah. This is a story SEC is probing investment advisors over crypto custody. The US regulator wants to know whether firms that have custody of client funds meet the criteria of being a qualified custodian. I applaud this. This is great. If we're going to talk about co-mingling of funds, this is why the fraud that went on with Sam Bankman Fried and FTX, they took your money and their money, they mingled them together and they made these incredible, ridiculous trades. They bought property for their family members and themselves and they just spread money all the way around. That was your money that they used. If they can stop that, the co-mingling of funds go, this is our stuff of what we have as far as our revenue for the company. This is what you guys gave us. And we're going to hold this right here for custodial so much the better. I think that there is a pretty narrow lane of where the regulators can get what they want and we can get what we want. Me personally, I don't even deal with exchanges as far as custodian ship because I use this thing called an analyzer device and I just store it right there. And that is the beauty of crypto needle assets. Anyhow, let me mention a thing about that in the comments section. This will lead me to my last point of people getting things confused between the exchanges themselves and what a crypto product actually is and does and how it can actually benefit. So this was a nice little tweet that was put up by late night with Seth Meyers. And this is Balmani Jones. And he's a sportscaster. He's the host of Game Theory on HBO Max. And I'm just going to have you listen to this. It's about 30 seconds or so and I get where he's coming from. I understand but there's just some nuances and we'll go over that in a second. Let's take a listen to this about this Bitcoin. And then I raised the question. Why would I trade my money for money that's not money? Right? Like when I go out of the country, I take my money and I trade it for other money. You're telling me that I got this money that works perfectly well and I'm going to trade this for some other money because this other money might be worth more. Well, what's going to make the value of that other money go up? I'm going to tweet about it. Right? And we're just going to make the value of this other money come up. And that was just I hear about the digital dollar and everything. And I've studied economics pretty decently. And I was like, my dollar looked pretty damn digital right now. The money in my pocket is not all the money I have. The rest of it is ones and zeros. And I just couldn't see how other people didn't understand the idea of turning your real money into funny money doesn't add up. I got to be honest with you, I can see where he's coming from and I can tell you why. It's because I see and I used to see things to that narrow lens as an American citizen who has had access to banks for his entire life and who has only pretty much lived here and not done much else as far as like traveling. Now, maybe when money Jones here, he has done a ton of traveling and has been, you know, throughout the whole world and has seen some people who are downtrodden who are unbanked or underbanked. But I just want to remind you of a couple of things. The reason why I brought this up is because you're going to give this question to like, why is this, why are you using this? Why do you believe in this? Why are you using funny money? It makes no sense. First of all, there's this thing called inflation. And inflation is pretty much what is devaluing the dollar. So when he talks about it, he's like, look, my money's been fine. Depends on how long you've had it. $20, $9.80 could buy you a grocery cart of food. $2,000, a lot less. In 2022, maybe you get a cart of eggs. I don't know. And then in 2011, Bitcoin was worth like $20, matter of fact. In 2021, it could have bought you a nice Tesla car at $69,000. In 2030, who knows what it's going to be? So if we just take a look at that part, that's just one aspect of it. But if you really break it down, because again, if you're looking through the lens of a first world country, and you've only known these things, and you've kind of not really gotten out too much, it's kind of a warped view. I mean, because you just think everything's like you. It's not the case. So if we take a look at unbanked or underbanked, even in the United States, first world country, one of the most powerful, the most powerful in the world, sorry. It is true. You can see that as far as unbanked, I mean, just take a look at Michigan, and it's not that much. 5%, 4%, 3%, 3%, 6% in Colorado, 7%, 5.6%. Roughly, I mean on average, 6% of people don't have banks. Why don't they have banks? Well, they just can't get into there. It's not within their community. They just can't afford it. They can't put the money into it. They can't afford the overdraft fees, whatever it is. And if you take a look even further and say, what is that like globally? Well, in America, it's 6%, but Middle East, North Africa is 45%. Latin America is 43%. Sub-Saharan Africa is 63%. Asia 35%. East Asia and Pacific is 60%. And on down the road. So like if you're going to say like, well, how do I bring these people to where we're at? Well, it's kind of hard to do those things if you don't have a bank. And what can you do with bank? Well, you got to carry all the cash on you. So that's just right to get ripped off. You don't have any access to loans. You can't always start up a business because you can't do the loan. So DeFi would be one of those things. On top of that, you have to ask yourself, well, how would a person who is under-banked and unbanked who is in a third-world country, how the heck are they going to have Bitcoin? Because it's a digital product, right? Well, wait, did you know that as far as smartphones go? Well, first of all, there's about 8 billion people in the world. Let's just start with there, right? Smartphones in the entire world, as far as 2023, you've got 6.8 billion people who have smartphones. Pretty crazy, right? Not everybody's got a top-line Android or an iPhone, but they do have smartphones. And it's 6.8 billion have them. Then you have to think about this. Well, if they have a smartphone, well, how many people actually have the internet service? Because if they have the internet service, then they can use Bitcoin. They can download a hotwall like Exodus. They can download Bitcoin into there. They can do the things they want to do, but they need internet access. Well, how does that work? Well, here's the thing. Only about 66% of the global population are 5 billion people using internet worldwide. So you still got like 3 billion people left. So what does that mean? That means that people can still use Bitcoin, they can still have it, but there's a big gap. You know how you fix that gap? There's a project. It's called World Mobile. We just had, and I just did this video with Mickey Watkins a couple of days ago. And what they're trying to do, and I'm not going to go over it. I'm going to have you watch it. I'll link in the description. You can check it out. This is how they put in the infrastructure, put in these air nodes. They put it all into your laps, so on and so forth, and how the blockchain works. This is, of course, built on Cardano. Here's the video itself. So if we're going to talk about, again, going back to Bimani Jones, why is it that we can use Bitcoin? Or why is it funny money? It's not funny money. There's a lot of different aspects to it, a lot of things that you can do with it. And again, if you're looking at it through the lens of a first world country, I think you're looking at things just the wrong way. And then also, if you want to further go down that rabbit hole, there's a couple of videos that I did. This is Milton Freeman, Nobel Prize winner for economics, and he talks about how, essentially, inflation robs us of wealth. And then there's a really good explanation. This is from Coin Center. And I'll link those in the description. Or you can just go to the Dantages Crypto and all those videos that I just talked about are all right here. And again, my website is 100% free just to help you out. And that's it for today. So look, I know that went a little bit long, but you're going to get these questions and these questions that you're going to have to answer and just the things that are going on. So hopefully that helped out. If you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing. Everything we talk about is time sensitive. That's it for today. So thanks so much for stopping by. I do appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one.