 Great. Welcome to Digital Asset News. Take the top stories in crypto and break them down into bite-sized pieces. So today, just as the thumbnail and the title suggests, it's really all about Russia. And Russia is making some pretty big strides in what they're doing as far as regulation. And we're going to take a look at the tensions that is going on because you can't ignore this potential conflict. So as I call it, it's all about Russia today, rush, rush, Russia. And they do make sense in the bill that they're about to pass. Also, we'll take a look at the U.S.'s failing. And we'll take a look at examples from Nexo and Algorand. And then lastly, we'll take a look at the Bright Side and the things that are going on in the ecosphere. There's an NFL Dow coming through and also we'll do a little quick update about the open sea fishing attack. And then at the very last part, we'll do a Q&A, so hold your questions until the end. We'll do five questions for five minutes and we'll get this going. And also, just so you know, if you're here live, hey, thanks for coming by on a Monday, nice and early for most of us or some of us. But just remember that if you're watching the replay, there will be timestamps below so you can fast forward and go to everywhere where you want to go. But in actuality, everything kind of goes in a sequential manner. News takes about 15 minutes, give or take, and then we go for the Q&A, hopefully five minutes, but sometimes it goes longer. And that's what's up. So let's take a look at what is going on with the market, which is our favorite part here. Well, not always the favorite part because I'll be honest with you, market today is sucking. And there's no two ways around that. And it's just a bad day. And that's really what it comes down to. It's a bad day. The market is down. We are in a bear market. I mean, some people will say, well, it's bearish. Yeah, sure. It's pretty bear. And that's what's going on. But the reason you have to understand is there's so much uncertainty. I mean, there's been some things that have been built in. I mean, the Fed had their emergency meeting. Looks like they're going to raise it by 0.5 basis points or whatever they said. So they're going to be a little bit of an influx in points. They're going to raise some rates. Sure. I think we knew that. I think the market knew that. That's not the big thing. I think what the big thing is right now is there's so much uncertainty about war. And people get freaked out and with good reason. But we'll take a look at what's going on. So that affects not only us, but affects the S&P-5. It affects the traditional finance. Take a look at the NASDAQ. I mean, they closed pretty low on Friday. Who knows? Actually, they're not even going to open today because it's President's Day. So there's not going to be an opening. So we'll see. And I just expect this to fall even farther. That's just the truth. Bitcoin's down. Ethereum's down. Tether. Well, some people care because it's up 0.1%. It's a stable coin. So whatever. Everything's down. Terra's up almost a point. So, hey, watch out. Good for you, Terra holders. That's me too. And Leo Token, 1.2. Decentral Anne, some metaverse plays looking pretty decent. Stance, USDC, 16% for BitTorrent. Congratulations, BitTorrent holder. I'm sure Mike is pretty happy about that. Good for him. All right. So that's what's going on. And again, this is the time when you really have to ask yourself, what am I in this for? Am I in this here for the long haul or was I here to get rich? If you're here to get rich, this is not unfortunately the place. And then we talk about this at length. So it really comes down to, and even Peter Lynch says, we just got the stomach for markets, but are everybody has the brain power for markets? Excuse me, but do they have the stomach for it? And that's what it comes down to. So let's just take a look at what's going on in the macro sense. And then maybe this kind of makes sense for what's going on with our little neck of the wood. So here's what we got. So this conflict is eating up everything. And I think there is so much uncertainty. That's the problem. Positive news on the horizon. Kind of Biden agrees in principle. Ukraine sent with Putin. I'm just going to talk, and I am not the guy to come here for, you know, the political, the geopolitical environment, but there are some things, some clues about what's going on. So financial markets edged higher on the glimmer of hope for a diplomatic solution, even as satellite imagery appeared to show Russian deployments close to Ukraine's border while sounds of fighting were heard on Monday in the east. That's what's going on. The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement he had pitched to both leaders a summit on security and strategic stability in Europe. White House said Biden had accepted the meeting, but only if an invasion has not happened. So, hey, at least the channels are open. We'll see how it all goes. Some people are like dead set, like the war is going to happen. I'm not so sure. I just, when I look at these things and I step back and I'm like, what's the big player? What's the bigger play? Is it all about, that's what wants to happen? Or that's what Russia wants to do? I'm not the guy to make those decisions, obviously, but I just don't see this big huge war that everybody's talking about. But I will ask you the question, which is this. What if, what do you think will happen with the markets when they come out and go, okay, we agreed Russia and Ukraine and Europe and Germany and everybody else. We just agreed on this one resolution. We're not going to do sanctions. There's going to be some give and take. War is avoided. What do you think the markets are going to do to that when that actually comes out? If it does come out. Let me just think about that in the comment section. I think it could be pretty good. But this is the good news right here. And this was just from, I think this was today. What's the date today? Yeah, today. Russia inches closer to crypto regulation as ministry hands governments draft bill. This is on first look. This isn't a big deal because we're like, okay, we knew about this, but the devil is in the details. And we take a look at the actual bill itself and what they want to Russia makes a lot of sense. What they're trying to do here. And I think there are some, some knowledge points to what I think every different country can take from this. All right. So Russia's ministry of finance says it has formally submitted its draft bill on crypto regulation to the government. The ministry said the government had also received proposals from Russia's central bank, which they want to ban it. They noted that the latter's wish is to impose a ban on the organization of the issuance and circulation of digital currencies, as well as the introduction of liability for relevant offenses. So they're the central bank, India, Russia. I mean, you name it. Most of the central banks want to ban crypto, except the United States. Jerome Powell did come out what four or five months ago and said they had no plans on banning the crypto digital assets. So I think that's a, that's a win for us. But the ministry, the finance and ministry has noted this, the central banks proposals here in Russia will be taken into account in further work on the draft law in so far as I do not contradict the approach of the ministry of the finance, which the ministry of finance is like, we want to legalize it. We want to tax it and we want to move forward. So if you think we're going to ban it, you're out of your minds because Russia knows, and there was a report we talked about three, no, last week. And it said that they know that Russian citizens have between $21 billion and $215 billion worth of crypto digital assets. So if they have that in their possession and they're just trading it amongst themselves peer to peer or using whatever they use VPN to trade it around the world, do you not think they want a piece of that? Do you not think they want to tax it? Of course they do. And that's what it's all about. So of course they're not going to let the central banks. I don't personally think you're welcome to disagree with me in the comments, but I don't think they're going to let that kind of money slip away. All right. It's the ministry added that it's proposed changes were aimed at creating a legal market for digital currencies with the establishment of rules for their circulation and participants. Now this is where it gets a little crazy or not crazy, but smart actually. The new bill, if adopted by parliament would oblige the judiciary to consider crypto solely as a tool of investment. So they cannot use it for payments. That is the big thing. So at first people are like, well, that kind of sucks, but wait, the bill will require domestic exchanges in Russia to abide by corporate governance, reporting, information storage, internal control and audit, risk management system, and fund management protocols while foreign crypto exchange will have to register in Russia to obtain a license. So here's the thing, when people hear all that jargon, it's like, oh, that sucks because that's awful because now they're going to be able to regulate just the exchanges. There's nothing in here that says anything about the private wallets, cold storage, whatever you want to do with it. And I'm not here to advocate for Russian doing everything, but I think there's some things here. At least they're moving it along the lines and actually taking steps in the right direction. So I got to applaud them for that. Good for you. Let's get some more people in there. And then this part, the bill also proposed that citizens take online tests before purchasing cryptocurrency, which will determine their level of knowledge about investing in said digital currencies and awareness of their possible risk. Let me just read this one part. The bill proposed that citizens must take online tests before purchasing crypto. A high score on this online quiz will allow citizens to invest $1,700 per year in crypto, while a low score will see them limited at just $650. The ministry added that qualifying investors and legal entities will still be allowed to make transactions without any restrictions. So here's the thing. Some people look at that and they're like, that's so awful. How dare they? But here in the United States, in a lot of different investments, if you're not an accredited investor, then you've already made some good money, you can't get into these other types of plays. You can't invest because they want to let you. So it's really like the US puts the shackles on the people. Like if you have made a lot of money, we're not going to let you make even more money. Or we're going to let you make even more money, but the people that haven't, sorry, you're stuck. You can't do anything. So all those like some different types of projects you could never get into. At least rushes like, look, if you're smart enough to pass this, this silly test will allow you to put in at least 7,800 bucks. But if you're not so smart and you're very not so savvy, we're not going to allow it to you. And I know when people, this is going to be a very unpopular opinion. And I'm just going to say it, but it's like voting. In all honesty, this is not going to go over well. I probably shouldn't say this. In all honesty, when people vote, like there was this commercial from FTX that just came out, Larry David, and he's citing the constitution. And they're like, he's like, you're going to let everybody vote? He's like, yeah, even stupid people? Yeah, well, let's do the people vote. In all honesty, I think it's somewhere down the line. There are people who have no idea what the issues are, no idea what's going on, and they still vote. At least here you could say, hey, maybe you should take a test. This is not going to come out right. I'm just going to skip that part. Let's just go over this and just say, I think it's a pretty good idea that they actually allow people to invest, but they have to just say, like, are you competent enough just to pass the very basics of these things? We'll let you do it and off you go. I mean, it's barely with the United States offers. Let me just think about that in the comment section. And then let's move on to our next piece. US fails Nexo and Algorand. So real quick, this is not surprising, but it's bad news, but it's good. I'll get to it. So crypto lender Nexo stops interest on new deposits. I want to make mention it's new deposits. That's very important here. So Nexo in a statement posted to its official subreddit on Friday said it will voluntarily be making the changes of such. In light of BlockFi's agreement to pay 100 million to federal and state securities regulators to settle allegations that it illegally offered a product that pays customers high rates to lend out their digital tokens. We're going to stop that. BlockFi will be reportedly registering its offerings with the regulator. Nexo will follow the same path talking about securities. Nexo's current US customers, current, the ones right now, will be unable to earn interest on new deposits, though they'll be able to keep earning on existing balances for digital assets. So that's a fail in all honesty. So Nexo is like, look, because BlockFi kind of got screwed and they're paying 100 million. We don't want to pay 100 million. So we're stopping all this stuff. We don't want to deal with the government. We thought we did, but now we don't. So let's just stop all this stuff. If you have something before you can, but anybody knew, sorry, you're not going to earn anything. And I think this is going to be a domino effect down the line. I don't know how Celsius and Voyager are getting away with this so far. But I mean, they've talked about how it's totally different, how they do it. That's great if they want to do it. I'm not saying that they should. I'm not legal department, but there is some similarities. So we'll see how this all works out. But here's the good part. According to Firm, it will make a new offering available. That's compliant with securities laws, and they'll move forward. And at some point offer a reoffer the earn interest product again, just not right now. So in my opinion, just my humble opinion, I think that's a fail for the United States because they're like, again, look what Russia did. Take this test. Do you know a little bit? We'll let you invest. That sounds good. As opposed to America, do you know how to invest? We don't care. Have you made a lot of money? OK, now you can make more money. You're a credit investor. It's like it's not that. This isn't the country I remember growing up in. It's just insane. So there is that part. There's good news on the horizon. And that leads me to my next point, which is Algorand. There is a nice conference going on in Denver right now. I think it might be over. But this was an interview between CoindeskTV and the CEO of the Algorand Foundation. Not that she's the CEO of the blockchain, just the foundation, Stacey Warden. A smart lady has come through traditional finance and she's made her way into Algorand. But there's this part right here. And it's going to really cement what I'm talking about as far as the failures of the United States dragging its feet as far as regulation. She's going to talk about that. And she's also going to talk about the direction that Algorand is going. And it's why that I personally, dollar cost average into four things every day. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Chainlink, and Algorand. Why? Just take a listen. First of all, let me stop the screen. Let me share the right tab so you can hear this or also be worthless. I'm going to mute myself. This is one minute. That's all it takes. Concerns about regulations say, especially with the SEC, it's unclear whether they may consider Algorand a security or not. Yeah, the Algorand Foundation is based out of Singapore. We don't issue Algos in the United States. We don't operate in the United States. We are a Singapore-based entity, so... I'm hoping to avoid the US altogether. Yeah, I mean, look, we are waiting to see what regulatory clarity comes out in many jurisdictions around the world, and that's kind of our position. You know, we're, I think, like many, just hoping for and expecting regulatory clarity at some point. What kind of use cases are you hoping to hone in on for Algorand? Is it NFTs? Is it more foundational? Yeah. So in 2022, we're super focused in building up the DeFi ecosystem. And when I say that, I mean, you know, Web3 gaming, NFTs, all of the DeFi, making sure that the Algo, you know, you can get the Algo from all kinds of access points across the broader crypto ecosystem. Yeah, so there you go. Look, if you're going to have so much strict regulations and they're not going to be able to really advance, why would they be here? It makes no sense to me. So Algorand are the right thing. They're like, we're going to be in Singapore and we're not going to do much emails, and that's how it goes. Let me just think about that in the comments section. I think Algorand could be a big play, but again, time will tell. And that's it. So also, I actually reached out to Stacey to get her on the show. So I'm going to ask her some questions. If you have questions for Stacey, apparently, this is her, I think, CEO of Algorand Foundation, and she just says, what's up? So if you've got questions for her, please leave that in the comments section, and I'll ask her when she gets on to the show. All right. So that's it for that. And let's finish up with the bright side, shall we? Because some good news, some bad news. But I found this pretty fascinating, actually. Because remember, right now, the market, we know it sucks, right? I mean, 1.8 trillion? Jeez, that's awful. I mean, after it fell below 2 trillion, some people are very happy. Some people want to go down below 1 trillion. Go down to 1 trillion, hit Bitcoin at 20,000, hit Ethereum at 500 bucks. They don't care because they just want to buy it up like crazy. And some people are like, no, I just got in. I don't want that to happen. This is my first time. I understand both sides. Trust me. But you have to take a look at where the industry is going and how, just remember that things aren't going to zero. There's so much use case. I think we're going to be OK. So here's an example of that. Crypto enthusiasts forming a DAO, a centralized autonomous organization to buy the Denver Broncos NFL team. And I remind you, they did this DAO also to buy the Constitution, and they almost won. But that was a different DAO. So ESPN estimates that the team, which would be the Denver Broncos, will sell for $4 billion. That's what the DAO is aiming to raise. The effort is being led by Sean O'Brien. Don't know who that is, but apparently he is a 10-year veteran of Cisco Systems Legal Department. And he said the DAO will go live this week. I'm going to figure out how to get into that. I might actually do that. According to O'Brien, because wouldn't that be cool to say, hey, I'm part owner of the Broncos? That'd be great. According to, where's that about? Sorry. According to O'Brien, the DAO would also incorporate as a cooperative, and participants in the DAO would have a parallel ownership share of the cooperative. So I don't know how they're doing this and not having it as a security. I'm not sure how that works. That'd be interesting. Wisconsin Green Bay Packers team is owned by a community cooperative incorporated in 1923 in a structure similar to what the DAO would use to purchase the Broncos. Not sure if that's true, but okay. In 1980, the NFL put in new rules that banned. This is a, I thought this was weird. In 1980, the NFL put in a new rule that banned a decentralized community-driven ownership that the Green Bay Packers use. But the team has an exception via a grandfathering clause. So even in 1980, they said, you can't ban together a bunch of people and have them buy this. Kind of like, I guess it'd be like an REIT, like a real estate investment trust, but you can have it like for NFL investment trust, I guess, I don't know. But I guess they say, no, you can't do that. So I don't know how they're going to get away with this. Rules state that ownership must be led by a single person that has at least 30% equity in the team. So if anybody knows what's going on with this DAO and how this works, they'll have them on the show to figure out exactly how they're going to make this, get around that law, and also the problem with the securities, because if there's the appearance of some type of revenue generation from the products of others, that's kind of like one of the three prongs that how we test. So that's interesting. Let me just think about that in the comment section. And then also just a quick update, OpenSea had a phishing attack. We talked to this yesterday. Just watch yesterday's video. I'll link at the very end. And it wasn't by OpenSea. It was just by, it was an email phishing attack. And initially they thought it was like over, you know, 50 people. Now they're saying it's never done the list of impacted individuals from 32 to only 17. So it hasn't been that much. It still hasn't determined the exact source of the issue. The company said on Monday, the attack does not appear to be active at this time. And there has been no activity. No malicious contract in 15 hours. So again, there is a link in the description. And it talks about if you get an email, there's a way to run it through this Google app, which is online, run by Google, safe enough. And you can figure out if this is actually a scam or not. Very simple. Did an eight minute video also in the description. It's like the first, like the first third, one of the top two links I have. So just check that out the way you don't get screwed over. And that's what's going on. And let's see what else. Oh, and lastly, I will say this. I know everybody's makes fun of people who gets, some people make fun of people get hacked. And I don't understand why they would do that. I've, I've, you know, I have my, my, my fair share of mess ups, but even super smart people like Lex Friedman, who's, if you don't know him, he's pretty smart guy, AI guy, got his own podcast. And even he was hacked recently. And I just, if you want to follow that, just follow me at news asset for Twitter. And you can watch the video. It's very short, but he's talks about what, and he's, he was smart enough to say, you know what? I think this is on me. I think that I could have done something more. So accountability. All right. So that's it. So look, that's it for today's news. That's true. That's it for today's news. If you got to take off. Hey, thanks for sticking around. I appreciate it. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up. If you didn't give it a thumbs down, but tell me why in the comment section, maybe I can fix it and also consider subscribing. If you're here already might as well subscribe, right? But that's it. If you got to go, go do your thing. Thanks for stopping. I appreciate it. Now we'll get into the, the five and five, five questions in five minutes. And we'll get the heck out of here. So here's what we got. Where am I? Oh man. There's a question about politics. I'm going to totally avoid that. Sorry. I'm not, I don't get into politics, especially on this one. I don't get into politics or the jab or the mask is, I mean, why don't you just start talking about religion? I mean, why don't you just alienate everybody? No. I'm good. Oh, here's a great question. So Bob Bar says, Hey Dan, I opened a trust Roth. I trust Roth IRA. Any tips? How's the work for you? I plan on putting the limit on this year for me, 7,000. Great. So I've had it for two years. If you don't know, there's this thing up here. There we go. Open a crypto IRA. There's a link in the description. And I show you why I opened up a Roth IRA to protect crypto. If you don't know, once you put it in there and once it, once it appreciates and you take it out, your capital gains tax are 0.0%. So this is the same thing that Peter Thiel did. He put in all this stock or a stock from PayPal and it blew it up to 5 billion and he's paying 0.0% on the capital gains. So watch that video. So how's it work for me? Pretty good so far. Also, there was this thing that I always forget to talk about and that is that, you know, you traders out there, when you start to like sell your crypto and then buy it back and do all these things and you're making these capital gains and all the different recording, which really sucks. You know, you can do that within the Roth IRA account and you pay 0% capital gains tax. So for that, it's working out pretty well. So if you think that Bitcoin was going to crash and you would have sold it, you could have kept it in cash and that I trust Roth IRA and you could have buy back everything. And they've got like over, I know it's over 30 cryptos. They also offer gold and silver, which is where I bought my gold and silver. So if you want to do that, it's working out pretty well. Just remember though that the final time to buy crypto in your Roth IRA is April 15th for last year, because you only can buy so much per year. Some people at 6,000, some people at $7,000 worth. But I think in 10 years, that's going to be worth a lot of money. Not financial advice, just an opinion. Okay. Okay. So coins will be issued in portion of Dow ownership and wouldn't be able to shut down as is Dow. So SEC can't do nothing. If there's a centralized person just like that, I got to think about that. Because if the SEC can, well, we know they're going to shut down exchanges because they're a centralized part. But the Dow itself, if we're offering shares, you know, it might be something to it. And then if the company is overseas, just like what Algorand does, I mean, that's the foundation. And then you issue these things over here. Where can they go to? But it is when you do payouts for the Dow. Ah. I'm going to talk to somebody about that one. Good question. Good point. Number three. Oh, that's the same one. Thank you. Thank you. Thumbs down is irrelevant. No, some people, they got, they got good points. So I always listen. Ah, this is a great question. So much noise going on. This is one big investors buy, small investors sell. What do you think, Rob? So it depends on what you want to do. Like right now, like this could be like the time that you want to actually, if you need something like, let's say you medical, right? You can't help it. You got to take money out. This is the time that you probably want to take things out. It would be the greatest time. But if you need it, you need it, right? Or if you want to buy some super great property that's, you know, you have to have. Sure. So right now, I think everybody talked about the same thing. And you'll hear this a lot. And I say this a lot too, which is buy the dips. However, I've since learned that it's great to buy the dips, but you know, it's even greater to take profits along the way. That way you have this extra cash on the side. That when these, these dips happen, like who knows tomorrow, we could all go to war. And what do you think would happen to the market? It would junk. It would be dumped. And at that point, it would be great if you wouldn't have taken profits before. So you had fresh power on the side. And I'm not saying like to crash at everything. I'm just saying if you're going to dollar cost average in, dollar cost average out a little bit and keep some money on the side for days like this. But these are the days. I set it up in Voyager. It buys those four cryptos. And I don't even think about it. And I don't care because in five, 10 years, I know it's going to pay off. Great. Thanks for stopping by. Why is crypto tied to stocks? Question number four. This is a great question. The reason is because I think we know a lot of these institutions are actually, well, hedge funds and things like that are here. And unfortunately, you've got a lot of people who know that this is an asymmetrical return. And they want to make a lot of money fast. And that's what the hedge funds and the traders and leverage people do. That's fine. It is what it is. But when you have a lot of people who need to, or they think they know that things are going to crash, there's one of two places that's open 24, 7, 365. And that's crypto and digital assets. Someone also said that 4x is open all the time. Sure. But if they're going to sell, they're going to sell on our market, they're going to grab those gains and stick on the sidelines. And remember, there's a lot of people that have a lot of money and they can manipulate the market at any time they want to. That's why I always look at some of these trading advice and I'm like, that's cute. That's adorable. I mean, how are you going to take into account a big whale that comes out and just sells and dumps? You can't. But you know what you can do? Every single day, set it up, dollar-cost average, buy a little bit here and there. Five years, everybody's happy. All right. And oh, okay. I'm going to cheat. So real quick, do you have another meet-up planned? Yes. It'll be this Wednesday here in Puerto Rico. And it'll be, I think we're going to go back to Smokehouse. Pretty good wings. And they have vegan options. So if you're vegan, which I think is pretty cool. I mean, really, because some people don't. They're like, well, I can't have that. Well, I like ribs, but you can have the vegan stuff. And then this is from WaveLogic. I try to not skip over the super chats because first of all, if you paid money to ask me a question, I will definitely try to look at this because no one likes to get those avoided. But if I miss you, sorry. Could Russia be rushing with crypto to avoid economic sanctions after invading? Yes, obviously. And we talked about that at length before. Look, if the US put sanctions on Russia, they're like, well, you know, they got this new law coming forth and might even do a CBDC. And we're also going to allow for crypto, which I thought was odd, though, that they're going to allow crypto, but they're not going to allow for payments. I thought that they would do that, but they haven't. So to avoid sanctions, sure. And it's just to look, everybody wants options. That's what we got. OK, so that's the five questions, the five we went over. I apologize. 30 minutes. That's way too long. So I tried to rush. I tried to condense and be concise. Sorry, I went so long, but that's it. So look, like this video, thumbs up, thumbs down. It's fine. Just tell me why and consider subscribing. And I've got to get out of here and do an interview. So thanks so much, everybody. I appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one. Adios.