 Welcome to the last set of news that could top stories in crypto and right around a bite-sized piece is today. Just as the thumbnail suggests, Airbnb and other companies are going to start accepting crypto payments. I'm going to tell you exactly why. So, we're going to take a look at Airbnb plus Amazon payments. We're also going to take a look at a nice little article which talks about what is the cause of inflation as determined by the U.S. government. And then also we'll talk about a play to earn game on Algorand coming out very soon, hopefully. And then we're going to take a look at why Algorand. So, we'll take a look at all those things. At first, take a look at what's going on into the market. So, today it is Wednesday, January 5th, beautiful day here in San Juan or, excuse me, Guainabo, Puerto Rico. And we've got market cap going down. 2.13 trillion. We're down almost 5%, 4.5%. Bitcoin price, 44,000. Quite the slide. Before I go on, you're probably asking yourself, boy, did I make a mistake getting into crypto? Did I miss the opportunity when there was all these different things going on? No. There's always opportunity. Everywhere that I look around, there's opportunity. And I think it's really summed up pretty well by Peter Lynch. And he said this. He says, everyone has the brain power to make money in stocks. Just replace stocks with investing. Everybody has the brain power to make money in investing in crypto, stocks, equities, whatever you want to call it. But not everyone has the stomach. So, you really have to ask yourself right now, do I believe that crypto will be a mainstay in the mass population in the next two, three, four, five years? Or will everything go to zero? And that's what you really have to ask yourself. And we actually, we take a look at the coins themselves, the tokens, everything else that's going on in our market. When we see Bitcoin down, we see Ethereum, wow, $3,600. Finance client, 47. Tether, wow, tether, tether. Solana, 158, down from 250. Wow, USDC. Okay, so I gotta make mention of this. Once you see USDC and tether start to gain on the ranks, that means people are selling off and they're sticking their gains or their losses, whatever they want to do, into a stablecoin known as tether or USDC. So when you see those guys really creeping up there, there's a reason why. It's because people are selling off and that's fine. This is, we are all adults and if they want to take profits, let them take profits. Cardano is down, $1.26. I mean, everything essentially is down except for Chainlink. And it's, I think it's one of those things that you just can't do, you can't do much without. And I will say this though, the last time Chainlink pumped was during a pretty bearish markets. And I would just leave it at that. It's not for me to say, oh, this is definitely a bear or a bull market, whatever else. Leave that to the people who really tight to, to really specify and look down in the day to day operations and the TA experts. That's not my play. My play is to look out very, very long term. And that's pretty much what's going on. So the next thing is, again, you have to ask yourself, is this one of those things that's going to go to zero? Or is there a future into it? And that's why we talk about these stories. And the stories that we're going to talk about today is Airbnb and Amazon payments. And actually, I suppose a little snippet of an information and states Airbnb explores crypto payments. And this was a tweet from the CEO, because he says there's a revolution happening. CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky asked on Twitter earlier this week, if Airbnb could launch anything in 2022, what would it be? So I just asked people on Twitter, hey, what do you think? What do you think we could do here to make things better? And I got to tell you, me as a super host, I have me and my wife, we have a bunch of different properties around the US, mostly, well, in Texas here and here in Puerto Rico, I'd like to see some better customer service. That'd be fantastic, although it's pretty good. And then one of the things I'd like to see is the number one that they got here, which was crypto payments out of 4,000 suggestions. Here's a top six crypto payments, top suggestion. And as I understand, it wasn't too close. And crypto payments, one of the big things, price and display is loyalty programs and so on and so forth. And he just talks about we're already working on most, we'll look into others now, I will let you dissolve that into your consciousness as you see fit to see what he means by that and which one it could potentially be. So the question has to be asked then. If it's on the radar of Airbnb, wouldn't it be on the radar of other companies? And that leads me to my second point. This was a podcast with Shamath Palihapataya. He was one of the big Facebook execs, angel investor, billionaire, blah, blah, blah. But he's called a lot of things right. One of those was Bitcoin. And he is calling this to happen. He says that Visa and Mastercard will be the biggest business failures in 2022, losing out to altcoin linked projects. He cited Amazon's decision to ban Visa credit cards in the UK due to high transaction fees as one reason for his view. And I actually listened to this discussion. I think they banned it for a finite amount of time, not forever, to correct me in the comment section, but I think it was for just a test run to see what they could do. And then down here it just states, he also predicted that the first movers for the adoption of this emerging technology will be in the developing world. So he doesn't think that crypto, that the different things that are happening in crypto is going to be in the US, the Canada, parts of EU, Australia. He says it's in the developing world. He goes, this is why I think focusing in markets like Nigeria to me are way more exciting than talking about these fading Western European countries. This is where this stuff will happen. And you can't put too much faith into any one person. Not too long ago, Shamath had no idea what DeFi was. So take that as you will. And then I will just say this. Now, for crypto payments, if you're a company, and I've been doing online businesses since 2007, 2008, and I can just tell you PayPal and Visa, MasterCars, they take a pretty big chunk. It's like 2.99% plus 30 cents per transaction on PayPal or 1.99%. If you're a bigger player, I think it even gets down to like 0.99%. But imagine if you're just paying 1% to 2%, 1% to 3%. On every single transaction, you're a multi-billion dollar company. How much are you paying in your transaction fees? Now, take a step back and go, well, you know what? How could we do this? How could we? Because your whole job as a corporation, especially if you have stockholders to say, we're going to make a profit. If you can cut 2%, 3% of your operating expenses out, why wouldn't you do that? And if you just say, well, we're going to allow for payments to happen via cryptocurrency and digital assets, then the next question is, which crypto and digital asset do you think they're going to pick to actually do it? And I do not think that they're going to build everything from scratch. You'll see places like, let's take Facebook, they will just absorb places like Instagram and WhatsApp. And they'll do because they don't want to build it from the ground up. It's just easier to acquire a business, just like what WonderFi did with the centralized exchange over there in Canada. They go, we don't want to build the exchange. What does Bayou? And they're doing 4.4 billion in revenue. So I think there's a lot to be said out there. Just a question remains, which one it couldn't be? Let me know what you think about that in the comment section. Let's move on to our next piece. This is actually kind of funny, inflation. So America, I'm an American, as you may have told, been able to tell by my lame accent. We believe that everything revolves around us. I'm sorry to say, but that's exactly what it is. And they think that it's really because of this one issue. Let me just read this. And they do have a point actually. As US inflation skyrockets, White House blames monopolies, not for poor financial policies, not for severe lockdowns and the reduction of the GDP, not for supply chain issues. It's monopolies. That's the problem right there. That's what it is. And then end discussion. And I think what you're going to see is a blame shift coming on here sooner than later because the government doesn't want to take the blame because remember, you have to vote in people into the government. They don't want to blame for that. But if you can make another bad guy out of it and go, you know what it is? It's Amazon. Or it's this other corporation. Or it's the fang stocks. It's these people that have like just a monopoly. And if we can just bust them up and then they get, they rally everybody up and like, yeah, that's what it is. That's potentially. Anyhow, congressional leaders want to stifle online e-commerce giants like Amazon with proposals like Senator Amy Klobuchar's American Innovation Online Competition Act. Senator Tom Cotton's platform Competition Opportunity Act is also aimed at reforming antitrust monopoly laws. Last month, the White House shared data that claimed four corporate entities in the meat processing industry has been fueling inflation. And they state their goal is to control the market so that they control the price. Here's my question. I'm pretty sure that those four meat packing processing different organizations were around years ago before inflation went above what they can say, what they say is transitory inflation. Some people say it's 5%. Some people say it's 8%. My friend James over at Investance just thinks it's 15%. What do you want to call it? I'm pretty sure those companies existed before that. So I don't really not really sure that that is the root cause. And then also to finish this up, this is where it's going to get crazy. And this is why you have to be aware of what's going on in the global macro sense. So you can make sense of all the different markets. Economist believes it's time to consider price controls. Check this out. Finance author Isabella Weber states this, we have a powerful weapon to fight inflation. It's called price controls. It's time we consider it. Weber's editorial says that during World War II, US economists recommended strategic price controls. Price controls restrict free market activity as mandated prices and restrictions are set in place and enforced by governments. That's scary. And that's a real idea. So as we move forward and you take a look at what is going on in the global sense, take a look at crypto and what's going on behind the scenes because inflation, what's a great hedge to inflation? Well, if you're a gold lug, it's gold. I mean, even though it hasn't done anything in 10 years, it's actually gone down quite precipitously. This is this entire year. And then, I mean, bonds, bonds could have been pretty good maybe 30 years ago. And now we have this other one where we can actually control and fight inflation through cryptocurrency and digital assets. The answer is right there, but they want to do price controls. Again, making enemies or there's not really enemies for these massive corporations. And I'm not here to debate, you know, the different price setting, but it is quite scary. And if you want to talk about just inflation in general, take a look at this. This was the 1970 cost of living. And I tried to laugh, but a new house was 23,000 bucks 1970. Did the dollar, what happened to the dollar? Well, all of a sudden everything raised up because inflation is that insidious tax. The average income was 9,400 bucks. A new car was 3,000, almost 4,000. Minimum wage was $2.10 an hour. Here in the U.S., it's still 7,25. It's 7,25 throughout the entire, or most states. I think there may be a couple of states that actually raise it, correct me the comment section, but 2, 10 to 7 bucks. Movie taken was a buck, buck and a half. Gas was 36 cents, post a chance, six cents, sugar, milk. Actually, it's not that much more. It's like a buck 50. I just got, picked up some eggs yesterday. Bread, 25 cents. You get it for a buck now. But you see what I mean here? When we're talking about monopolies and things like that, not for sure that's what it is. And there's already a different way that we can fight against inflation, crypto and digital assets. What also leads me to my next point, it's about wealth preservation. And look, if you're trying to save some of the wealth that you've already gotten into as far as with crypto and digital assets, there's three things I recommend. First of all, a Roth IRA with iTrust Capital. That means that it's post tax. So whatever you get as far as your funds, let's say you have a job, pay your taxes, you put it in here. If Bitcoin goes from $40,000 to a million, guess how much you pay in taxes on that for capital gains? Zero. And that's why you want a Roth IRA. Peter Thiel did it to a beautiful tune and he made billions off it. Also, if you're taking a look as trying to fight your way against inflation, I also use Masterworks. This is my second one that I use because what I do is I get, I invest into fractionalized shares of fine art like this Banksy. It's an uncorrelated market because this was only open to the super rich and now it's open to all of us, even me, as I got a nice little Banksy and a couple other ones. Then lastly, I also have a playlist which goes over just some different strategies I use for real estate. And I'll be adding this one in very soon, which is how I actually bought this house that you're seeing me right now. And that's actually real in the back, cool figure. And I'll be releasing that in the next couple of weeks or so. So take those out. There's a link in the description. It looks just like this. And you can sign up for those things and find out everything. I've even done deep dives on iTrust and Masterworks. You can check that all out. And then, of course, the playlist. All right. So that's it. Let me just think about that in the comments section. And then quickly we'll go over play to earn game on Algorand. First of all, I had no idea. Algorand I knew was in the top 20. I think it's like number 20 right now. I knew of it, didn't really think too much of it until Anthony Scaramucci was on Real Vision. And he had talked about how he and his team had done a deep dive with the Algorand team for like six months. And now they have a fun with Algorand. They think it's going to change the world. So I go, you know what? Maybe I should take a look at that. And of course, it, I forgot about it because I'm too busy. And then this little thing popped up. Drone Racing League zooms drone racing is a thing. Zooms in a metaverse bringing play to earn to Algorand. The league's partnership with Playground Labs will be the first play to earn competition on the Algorand blockchain. So Drone Racing League, DRL, and Web3 game developer Playground Labs have tapped Algorand's blockchain to create the first play to earn drone game in the metaverse announced today. The league has also introduced sports betting to the platform in an effort to stay ahead of the times being the first sport in the air that fans can bet on according to press release. So if you're looking for utility, people love to bet apparently. We're building a roadmap of so many different things in the next several years. Drone Racing League president Rachel Jacobson said, we have to know blockchain because we always want to be 10 steps ahead and first to market. We're going to be Playground Labs crown jewel. So again, just like I talked about in the beginning, do you think crypto is going to zero? What do you think it has a future? What's going on today is a representative of what could potentially happen in the years to come. Let me just think about that in the comments section. And then lastly, we'll just finish this up with why Algorand? First of all, I need to do a deep dive. I just really do. And I always talk about three things. Utility team and tokenomics, the UTT. And from this one, Silvio McKelly. I don't know if I had never heard of this guy because I am not a computer science guy, but apparently he's like a rock star. He's been at the faculty at MIT, electrical engineering, computer science department since 83. His research interests are crypto, zero knowledge, generation secure protocols and mechanism design on blockchain. He's the co-inventor of probabilistic encryption, zero knowledge proofs, verifiable random functions and many other protocols that are in foundations of modern cryptography. So I think this guy knows what he does. And then of course, we got this Steve Cognos and what I'm going to do, they've got a pretty stacked team of some pretty big players who have been around in different industries. It doesn't matter. It's good to know where people have come from to see where they can actually take things. And that's why I like to talk about the team. But then on top of that, because I think because these guys started out so big and heavy, because of the excitement of the team that they had, if you take a look at their the price action of the all-time price action, this is where it started all the way over here. When it got released, it was over $3. This was in 2019. And it just dropped like a stone because I think people just thought, oh, this is a great team. These are really smart people. They've really been into it. So it should just keep going up. It doesn't work like that. They actually have to build something and have a real product with real utility to actually make it work. And I think that's what people are missing. Of course, it was at $0.25 forever. And then I went up to $0.60. And now here we are and just took a big dip at $0.35. Now it's back at $0.83. So I since I had Algorand for a while back for something that I had, I didn't really get too many, but now I'm starting to dollar-cost average. And I think it could be very big. Also, if you take a look at Algorand Foundation, this is what I thought was interesting. Super fast. Every transaction is complete in less than four seconds or about four seconds. It's scalable. Whether you're the first transaction, the 10 millionth, your Algorand transaction will take place in less than four seconds or around four seconds. It's secure. Algorand and Algorand transactions are secured by the unique pure proof of state consensus. We'll see. And it's almost free to use. So like many blockchains where every transaction is hugely expensive. Every Algorand transaction today, no matter the size, costs a fraction of a penny. So speed, you can spend money to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and transaction finality in under 4.5 seconds. I know there's different blockchains that talk about how their transactions per second are so high. That's great, but it's the finality. It's the final transaction. It's when it actually gets recorded and everything is set in stone. That's what really makes a big difference. And I think that's what we have here. And then the big thing that I call my attention, scale is built for billions of users. And I thought to myself, well, if that's true for billions of users, what's the tokenomics just real quick just to see of it? So the max supply is 10 billion, which is a lot if you think about it. Cardano is like 45 billion. And let's take a look at the other stuff. Bitcoin is only 21 million. So 10 billion seems like quite a bit, but it makes a lot of sense if you're trying to use it for billions and billions of users. So these guys are going for the top price. And also, I always like to see if it's a staking protocol, how does it rank up as far as the top 10? And if you take a look at Algorand right here, right now it's a buck 75. It's almost 50% totally staked. So there's some pretty good things in here, but the thing that it's not concerns me, but the reward's 2.5%. So if you're into like fast gains and you want to get like 300% yesterday, I don't think Algorand is your play. I think it's a play for me because I'm like, if they can pull that off and they got a pretty good team, and tokenomics is trying to push forward to billions of people throughout the world. And we only got like seven, depending on who you ask. Maybe it could be a big play. Anyhow, that's it for today. So look, I know it's a little bit longer, but a lot of things are going on. I think I know the price action doesn't reflect it, but I think things are going on behind the scenes that actually give us rollable utility. So if you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing. I think we talk about our time sensitive. That's it for today. So thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it. I'll see you on the next one.