 Mark man. Cool. Welcome to show man. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. So we've been having a pretty crazy weekend Oh my gosh, the craziest. There's prices man. They're just they're all over the place So what happened like what what what caused the prices to? What I think happened is China decided to come out and say no more ICOs pretty much They they won't allow Exchanges to host ICO tokens anymore essentially blocking out all investors from China. So what do you think they did that? Why did they do that? Yeah, I think because they wanted to buy more Bitcoin obviously funny bring it up I was just having a conversation with that some with somebody and they were First like oh my god, the Chinese government is against blockchain technology. So I'm like I Believe in the manifesto of human beings are greedy. Yeah, definitely. That's my manifest China's definitely the epitome Right. I'm like I'm firm believer in that. That's one rule Right regardless of who you are and what nation you are. So I'm like they just did a classical test Yeah, and they've done it before they've done it before I think once every year pretty much they Bitcoin or blockchain or some other buzzword of the year. So but the ban wasn't necessarily a ban on ICOs It was a ban on exchanges, right that can yeah Well, they're they're they're enacting the ban through controlling the exchanges Yes, because the exchanges are obviously the weakest point in the whole ecosystem of Cryptocurrency, I think what they said it was the exchanges aren't allowed to host ICOs Yeah, and the exchanges that raised money from Chinese investors had to give the money back Yeah, do you think they'll give the money back? Yeah, that's interesting and because of that we've had a 20% decline in prices in like two days or something It's funny watching on social media whether it's Twitter Facebook or Reddit all the newcomers. You're the paranoia Like literally everyone's like I told you so everyone everyone thinks this is the end of Bitcoin Obviously, this is it. I should cash out because it's dead Mm-hmm. I haven't seen anyone no suicide hotline numbers up yet. So that's always good I was I was dancing when Christmas came early. You bought obviously then yeah It's definitely definitely a good sale if you believe in it that is well for me It was a great sign of how fast it rebounded Yeah, I feel now that the now that there's so much more infrastructure Back in 2013. There was one exchange that went down that one exchange held 90% of all the volume Yeah, and then it took a year to recover that I feel like that's completely gone now And now that there's so many more entry points that uh, it recovers so much faster like you and I were talking before this I was surprised for two things. I'll surprise a how fast Ethereum rebounded mm-hmm held the price and be a surprise How much Bitcoin cash held? Yeah, I'm surprised Bitcoin cash is holding. Well, even with very little wallet support still I'm pretty sure there's wallets coming but people still seem to believe in it What's going on with the miners in Bitcoin cash? Well, that's that's the funny Honestly funny of an interesting part because if you look at it majority of the miners in China, okay for for everything for Bitcoin cash Oh, okay much. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, okay. So this happened with the Chinese news The miners are in China with Bitcoin cash. So there's obviously a Play a strategical play for profiteering. Yeah. Yeah, definitely And that's why I always to tell people is one thing you can always count on is greed of a human being So, you know talking about the rebound and talking about cryptocurrency It was a great also sign to show people that majority of the tokens of this ICO hype they're in is first of all hype Yeah, it's a complete hype on something that doesn't have sustenance yet. I'm not I'm not against ICO No, no, I think they're revolutionary I think we're gonna have many different variations of it. Mm-hmm. Whether it's an ICO for rev share ICO for equity ICO for Let's say loyalty points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, systems But what people forget right now and obviously people get caught up in things, you know We'll full-blind it one of the 25 cognitive biases is the fact that we're still in the early ages where the technology itself Bitcoin itself Ethereum itself we can't handle the necessary transaction volumes the necessary scaling Mechanisms, yeah, like for example right now. What is it 15 transactions for a theory for a theory? Yeah, and then that cuts in half when you have a token Seven transactions and you have to think all these ICOs are basically trying to build YouTube on the internet in the early 90s Yes, and they it's just their their promises may be great and they may sound great And in theory they may be great, but the way the technology works right now is none of them are feasible Well, I tell people, you know three things you got to look for number one You got to look for the token utility. Mm-hmm. What does that token do? Yeah, and I like to break it up down into this aspect if I take that token out from the business model Does your business model fall apart now fall apart like let me do a Jenga where I choose or does the token no longer do anything? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I'm a firm believer like if I take ether out of a theorem it falls apart Yeah, if I take Bitcoin out of Bitcoin if obviously falls apart obviously, right? But literally all these ICOs you take out the token so it still can function without the token mm-hmm There's no utility of the token. Yeah, there's no added value There's an investor too is like People confuse this when I'm investing in decentralized technology like Bitcoin. That's not a token. No, that's a decentralized asset. Yes Yeah, all these ICOs. They're all centralized They're all controlled by some entity that can print more out whenever they want basically no different than fiat at that Exactly and then number two we look at the actual crypto economics Yeah, like 99.99% of them don't actually spend time to do their due diligence because it's difficult Well, there's zero system in place in most these ICOs to actually keep the system running by itself like if the devs were to Just drop the drop the project or or were to pass away the project would die Yep with Bitcoin if the devs were to drop the project Bitcoin would continue to move on It wouldn't care at all. It would basically just honey badger and keep going. Yes, and that's a beautiful thing about it Well, that's another you You just touched on it the fact of devs like majority of these ICOs I'm just talking about funny ICO service before this right is like press a button It's like an I see it's just a stamp. It's a factory. Yeah, it's just a stamping machine Limited tokens people complain about the central fucking banking system. Yeah. Well, we got unlimited tokens I know they do it. I see your market is way worse than central banking right now. Fuck me, man. It's insane So you got you got no devs. No devs. They really know this Yeah, and most people what they're doing they're literally copying patient going open source code with us Ethereum or there's bit shares Yep, what are may be and literally copying pacing finding some like Mickey Mouse people over and like overseas and like hey guys Here's our new ICO. Yeah, here's an idea. I have I haven't made it yet, but let's put out a token anyways And we'll try and make it later. Yeah, and then you get the third problem is security. Mm-hmm I Can't tell you how many phishing scams are happening right now. Oh my gosh wallets are being hacked or Even fake wallets that are being put out on app stores. Yeah, stuff like that that are branded as something else You know it's happening even right now. It's just crazy the hackers Because it's just bad security protocol. The hackers aren't even hacking anything They're just hacking the main website that has the addresses for you to see and then they're just changing the one address They're like yeah, just send it to me instead. So now they're not even hacking the wallet It's like yeah, it's not impressive at hacking at all. They're just going into the website. They're changing one address Like there's one one ICO a couple of weeks ago They built it on like a like a wicks page or something And I don't know what password they use they got into the wicks page and just change the fucking address That's so crazy and they're hacking Slack channels. They're hacking telegram channels because they have all the Yeah, yeah, I've gotten I've gotten a couple slack channel messages and stuff like that from fish So what's your take right now? Like you think We're gonna be in this for a little bit longer period. It's like hi. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think I think it'll take a few big projects to burn To crash and burn before people realize they're not buying anything with ICOs. They're not buying equity They're not buying a product that does something They're literally just buying nothing. So I think once we see the first couple investors get burned from that Which I don't think it's really happened yet. Yeah, people will continue to throw money in yeah Because they think it's just an endless way to get how do you think that burns gonna look like it's gonna be just one ICOs like hey, we dried up. We have no more money or that might be I well I was thinking that this crash might cause something or at least I was hoping this crash would cause something because there's I know there's some ICOs that took the theory that was given to them Yeah, and they like diversified diversified it across the crypto market for like two years. It's locked in the crypto market Yeah, what happens if the market goes down during those two years Like their whole business is screwed the main target of actually these days is hackers going after individual people. Yeah, so social engineering there's Cell carrier. Mm-hmm. What's the one in the United States? As a Verizon or something. Oh really because again I know someone here whose phone number was taken and then spoofed and then because of that the person who took their phone number Was able to two-factor into their Gmail account their Facebook account and they actually held it hostage for Bitcoin. Yeah I'm dead serious. Do you have to pay? I think my buddy just did no screw off because his accounts just weren't worth it to him But it's something that does happen. So I'm sure there's lots of individual stories We just don't hear about did you see all these little interesting acts reddit thread where The dude was like on a jack's wallet or something. Oh, yeah, the theory. Um, yeah Yeah, like a 900 theorem or something. Well first. I don't know why the fuck see keeping 900 on a mobile. I know mobile wall I know um Yeah, I've seen people with a lot on their mobile wallets and like a good person who has really good talks about this Is John McAfee? Yes, because he is like yo they can easily screenshot your page and they know how much your balance is They can get a a key logger on your phone. They know the password the spending password and then you're gone Yeah, your stuff's gone then. What's your security opinion on say like offy or like Google authenticator? I've never used offy, but Google authenticator. I think is way better than using your phone number per se I just if you lose it, it's a hassle. Yeah, but that's good. I don't mind Quadriga's security system So they have both they have you need to get the code for email verification. Okay, and you need to Google off Really? I feel like with Google off. There's no point to do email But maybe that's just me personally. Maybe if they have your phone. Oh, that's true. That's a good point The issue of Google authentication though a lot of people don't like to look into if you lose your phone If you haven't backed up your code exactly. Yeah, it's a hassle You have to you have to I know it with Bitfinex because that's the exchange I have experience with if you lose your two-factor you have to send them ID and then your account's frozen for like five days And you have to just jump through hoops to get one of my recommendations for people who constantly use Let's say an exchange for various reasons Have one phone at your house that just has that Google off. Oh, that's a good idea burner phone But yeah, yeah, I don't actually carry even like no SIM card only connected to Wi-Fi Wi-Fi just for those two-step Verification and then if you want to get a step further save the backups for the two-factor on a USB stick That's right. That takes it this step further. That's a really good idea Yeah, as opposed like this one phone is a life or anyone who really wants to keep Crypto on their phone a good thing to do is install the wallet save the seed send the coins delete the wallet It's essentially cold stores at that point. I don't even you want to spend the coins you re-download the wallet Who doesn't it's safer than a bank I love it I love having a piece of paper on my wall and I'm like this paper is worth X amount of dollars today It's worth X amount of tomorrow when I tell people that you can literally print a million dollars On an 8 by 11 piece of paper their mind is fucking yeah, it's crazy And then I love the idea too of like brain wallets And just remembering the 12 words and their 12 words could be linked to millions and millions of dollars Yeah, and you can walk across borders and no one has a clue. So, you know, we're talking about ICOs We're talking about how you know, they do have a future They're gonna represent amazing opportunities for people in the future for sure, but the technology is not there yet Yeah, we need years like for example Bitcoin needs to get lightning network Figure out how to scale it for millions of users a theory me to go through their proof of stake through plasma through Yeah, I'm an arrow needs to scale All these other platforms and EOS promises All these all these magical solutions to all these problems and at the most people a couple of transactions Yeah for a second So we're we're a while away before we actually start seeing Apple level or for sure where there's literally millions of users per second using a specific platform Andreas on an office has a really good point where he says it took 20 years from email being invented Yeah, to where your grandmother needed Wi-Fi and an iPad so she could send an iPad an email like that 20 years 20 years So it's been around for like seven eight now. Yeah, so we'll see where it gets to you have any exciting projects You're looking at No developments in this I'm just trying to build businesses around Monero right now trying to extract as much Monero from people Yeah, I love me some Monero. So why what's so special about Monero? Monero, I feel is the most cash-like digital currency in the sense that I give you a Monero You have no idea where that Monero's come from and you have no idea I have no idea where that man is going to difference between and we don't have to go super in depth But what's the major difference between Monero and Bitcoin Bitcoin if you sent me Bitcoin I could look back at that history of that Bitcoin and I could see where you got it from where that person got it from I could see your entire net worth in theory because it's all connected and all open in with Monero I send you Monero you don't even see the address that sent you that Monero It's completely private ring signature rings There's a couple different things the way the senders hidden the way the transaction values hidden the way the receivers They're all three different things the way the values hidden is the ring signature where it pulls five different random ones or six or whatever Number you specify And then it just jumbles along all together Yeah, which just obfuscates at all and the main major use cases right now are people like Venezuela using it Yeah, I read a really good post of someone who was starting to mind Monero in Venezuela And because the government can't track them down because the anonymity the anonymity of it It's improved their life drastically Yeah, they are literally going into zoos right now To find food to find food. I heard that they were hunting squirrels and stuff a while back. It's crazy I know Yeah, it's it's crazy But I'm hoping that so I think Monero could definitely Become what Bitcoin wanted to be I think Bitcoin has gone a little off track now with all the infighting Monero schedules hard forks, so there's less infighting. What I like about Monero, too Is you know when you go on stock exchange or the github, there's an active robust community Yeah, and they're very helpful. Yeah, and I like to have they have like their PhD programs. Yeah, we're In the Monero community, you can actually sponsor and help somebody that wants to spend a year doing research on a protocol Yeah, so they have a they have a forum funding system Yeah, where people can put up proposals and people can donate to them. Yeah, and we have a they have we they have a couple PhD students I think one of them is actually based in Toronto one or two of them and yeah They get paid like 60 grand a year in Monero to just research math and find holes in Monero if they can because they're actually you know Give them credit with the one credit is due there. They are They're one of the few communities out there who are actually spending time and not getting caught up in the hype Yeah, actually looking at how do we actually build a legitimate mathematical model? Mm-hmm scalable to make sense, but from the root of it We're not adding security on top of it Securities built in it. Yeah, we're yeah, it's from the very beginning I'm gonna begin it that the history of Monero is really cool the history Monero started I think it was in 2013 this coin called bite coin was announced and it was just announced anonymously No one knows who made it. Yeah, but it was mine for two years before was announced So I wouldn't thought there was a little sketchy So then a small group of people decided to fork that and make bit Monero And then they took bit Monero and the lead dev on bit Monero is apparently a huge douche bag And so the other literally the other devs and the community are all like screw you They forked the project away from him and now we have Monero Yeah Ricardo yeah, Ricardo Spinyani or fluffy pony is his name Yeah, and he's a cool guy because he tells he's been telling people for years Don't buy Monero. I know don't buy Monero and he jokes that he's gonna exit scam in 2022 or something Yeah, like they don't take it seriously. They don't it's not a business. It's not a corporation So for mining what do you do for Monero? GPUs yeah, just GPUs although Monero's a Emission curve is really interesting because bitcoins is like steps every four years it cuts in half Moneros I don't know how to describe it But it basically goes up like this and then one year like curtail is off Okay, and it stays 0.3 forever forever forever. Yeah, it's got a forever inflation rate But it's very small and they actually use that point three to punish Miners if they make a block that's too big or too small because they have a dynamic It's around 20 million, but then again at that point three goes on forever Yeah, the biggest issue right now for Monero for me. I love it. I started buying it where it was much cheaper I've been quite bullish for a while The issue for me right now for new people coming in is a for some people find it difficult to purchase Yes, definitely and be a storage. Yeah, it's a Monero is where Bitcoin was back in like 2012 2013 In the sense it's only used on dark nets in the sense that there's no good wallets for it. Not yet Not yet. Hopefully hopefully they're coming out in the next couple months. Hopefully But they're gonna be worked on but that's because Monero is a whole new code base And I'm assuming because I don't have enough experience that the anonymity factors And not and having to work from a remote node make it very difficult to program on top of But I don't know a lot about that side of it. Cool. Any last thoughts? No, just don't sell your coins on dips. Don't panic. Buy on the dips. Yeah, buy on the dips. That's the advice Thanks a lot. Thank you