Calgary Audio, Ladies and Gentlemen, June third, two thousand and twenty two. I am at Bolinsky and this is your weekly does subsanity the prevailing narrative? So Johnny Depp amber Heard, the saga that has captivated America for weeks, if not months, now finally have a result. The jury is in finding a resounding victory for Johnny Depp, the jury finding in his favor in his defamation claim against his ex wife Amber Heard. She also had counterclaims, one of which she won, but short shrift in offsetting the fifteen million dollar award that the jury awarded Johnny Depp, which is reduced a little bit to just over ten million dollars because there's a cap in the state of Virginia on punitive damages. But offsetting those two awards, Amber Heard is out about eight million dollars owing to her ex husband. Potentially she can appeal this result, but one way or another, this was a resounding victory for Johnny Depp, and I admit even somewhat of a surprising one um in my eyes, because defamation has such a high bar. Uh, there's such a high Bard approved defamation, particularly if you're a public figure such as Johnny Depp, and even beyond that, if you're looking at all the evidence. And I've commented on this on this podcast previously a few weeks ago, I had on Johnny's confident and friend Greg Ellis, who was front and center for quite a bit of the relationship that was the subject of this dispute. And it's pretty much impossible if anyone, regardless of whether or not you think Johnny Depp is any angel or if he may have contributed to the volatility of this relationship Amber in the way that she portrayed herself, clearly it was a false portrayal. Okay, she was abusive, toxic, aggressive, uh and and just exhibited any no shortage of erratic behavior that cannot be squared with how she tried to present herself as a sweet, innocent victim of domestic abuse and just along another in a long history of victims of high powered men who were beyond reproach, and that simply did not square with the facts here whatsoever. However, Um, Johnny, you know, the the trial did show and and and Johnny's own admission that he was a substance abuser, he exhibited aggressive behavior as well, and while I think is with the jury found Amber did not prove that he uh that he physically attacked her and was thus an abuser. I mean it was you could have implied that from some of the evidence that was set forth. Nevertheless, the jury found heavily in his favor. And so of course now we're looking for the larger implications. And is this the retrospective? Is this the proxy battle um for the remembrance of me too? Or how me too is going to I guess while we're no longer in the heyday of me too, um, the principles behind it that we have to be more strict with and more exacting and more more deferential to women in their claims of sexual assault and abuse from men. Um, that this is still an ongoing thing. And how is me too going to be viewed? Or at what's impact going to be on our society going forward? And yeah, this is gonna have an impact on all of it. I mean this, this jury verdict is going to scare a lot of people, and hopefully it's going to scare just people who are looking to make false or frivolous accusations and not those who truly have legitimate claims. Of domestic abuse or sexual violence. Um, but this is one that you cannot ignore in a case with such a high evidentiary bar for this type of award, in this type of situation. Yes, this one's gonna be felt and there's gonna be reverberations throughout society, both in media and interpersonal relationships. And so I want to talk about interpersonal relationships here for a second, because this is not the first volatile, angry, hostile, chaotic interpersonal relationship marriage between you know, movie stars, right, this thing has been going These things have been going on since the beginning of time. So why did this one spiral out of control and reach this level with you know that, Why did this become the proxy battleground when it did? And I think that is very telling about me too and me too his place and where it went off the rails um over the last few years. Because once again, we everybody's focused on the drama. You know, this can be viewed as kind of a tabloid battle, right was who's the bad guy, who's the good guy? But in a court of law, we've got a zero down on what specifically was the subject, What was the basis of the legal claims and why did the jury find as it did? And this goes back specifically to this Washington Post op ed that Amber Heard well. As it turns out, it was written by the A. C. L U. And Amber Heard decided to put her name, So it serves us to ponder why was this written. So let's say she still had the facts on her side. In a lot of cases, historically this would have been handled interpersonally, would have been handled privately through divorce proceedings. But no, during the me too era, you could gain victimhood. Currency is this topic that I've mentioned on this podcast before victimhood inflation. We've inflated the amount of currency and the applause that you get in society from being a victim um The cause celebs the social causes of our recent era, where they whether they be gender or racial as in the case of Justse Smolette, If you are actually a victim, legitimate victim, you do get quite a few accolades. And we can pretend that victimhood is completely new to this era, but it's not. People have always been the subject. There's always been victims of domestic violence, of racism, and things of that nature, and contrary to popularly if some people have always come forward and made these claims and sometimes proven them, but recently, the currency you get from being a victim and proving your claims, or even if you're not proven that, even if you simply win in the court of public opinion, um, the rewards to that have gone up. And that's what's being exhibited here right now. Because nobody forced Amber Heard to release that op ed. Nobody forced Amber Heard to kind of in conjunction to work with the a C l U in order to kind of make herself one of the queens, one of the princesses of me too, and portray herself as a leader of the victim movement. Right, Because that's what's happened here. Let's look at the history of the the A C l USE involvement with Amber Heard on this topic. Okay, So in two thousand seventeen, after Amber Heard had already filed uh divorce, had already filed for divorce against Johnny Depp, and seemed to be trying, you know, making public pronouncements against him and in favor of you know, her her portrayal that she was a victim of domestic abuse and was divorcing this over the hill substance abusing crazy, want to be rock star, movie star, right, that's that was her or So she got in contact with the a c l U and she wanted to be in support of their victim relief fund and things of that nature. Um and you know, started to portray herself in the media and started to get vocal, started to get vocal in media and wanting to get she wanted to be celebrated. Okay, the whole idea that these that Amber heard speaking out in this case was somehow going to be a net positive for society in terms of empowering victims um or or you know, helping overturn the patriarchy or breaking the societal cycle of rich, powerful men able to get away with domestic abuse. And well you know that's those are all pretty flimsy objectives and claims here. Okay, Amber heard did this and became more vocal because she wanted the accolades, She wanted the cloud, the victimhood cloud. She wanted to be one of the queens of me too. And looking at the a c l USE involvement here, perhaps with their urging this organization that has essentially disregarded its previous principles about you know, civil rights and the burden of proof and do process and free speech and now just be kind of become kind of a liberal advocacy advocacy group. No, the a c l U, which had never had a party, had never participated in issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and all of a sudden they got involved because this was a liberal cause celeb and they encouraged Amber to speak out. They wrote this op ed for her, and she put her name on it. Nobody, nobody obligated her to do so. She could have handled this interpersonally, but she decided not to. Okay, there's a rolling Stone story kind of outlining some of this. By two thousand eighteen, the a c l U became even more in meshed with her, who had accused dep of domestic violence. The group approached the actress to write an opet about gender based violence and suggested that quote she can interweave a personal story saying how painful it is as a domestic abuse survivor. And a c l U executive wrote in an email that was read in court, so why do this? Once again? Was there a genuine belief that this op ed was going to help anybody beyond Amber heard? Or could you become could you increase your celebrity? Could you get more cloud in society from being a victim over recent years? I think you know which way which way I'm leaning here, you know, suppose that question to yourself, Um, Amber Heard. Did she, regardless of the you know what happened in her relationship with Johnny Depp, did she bring this upon herself by deciding to go and be vocal about something with all these skeletons in her closet? Right, she hadn't even been accused of domestic violence, um with a former you know, same sex relationship that she had previously, No, you know files were charged. But I clearly her her rooftop was not clean, right, Um, her behavior in her relationship with Don Johnny. So she knew that she had skeletons in her closet, She knew that she had liabilities hanging there, that all this evidence could potentially come out. But the odds were so stacked in the favor of the accuser. From let's call it two thousand, sixteen seventeen through you know, let's call even the last year. The odds were so stacked in favor of the accuser, and you could get so much more clout from portraying yourself as a victim that the risk reward the cost benefit for Amber seemed to work out in her favorite for her to go and least this op ed, she could have saved herself quite a bit of trouble and now about eight million dollars, her reputation and her entire net worth by simply handling this privately that you know, this could have been hashed out in the family court system instead of trying to become one of the me too Darling's and kind of a champion of quote unquote survivors. She could have handled this on a private level, and she should have could have saved herself a lot of trouble. So, going back to the case specifically and why she lost, the evidence showed her contradicting herself so often that it just cast it cast suspicion on the op ed entirely. So when you can kind of see from the way the op ed was written that they even Amber in the A c l U even kind of questioned their approach in the first place, because it never refers to Johnny Depp specifically, and they're kind of trying to end around. They want plausible deniability that they weren't specifically just talking about Johnny Depp, And obviously the attempt to do so, I mean that backfired because any neutral observer can read this and tell that that's who she was referring to, and anyone who was going to read that going to then the implication is this, The direct assertion is that Johnny Depp is a is a domestic compuser. So Amber even said it, even she tried to weave her way out of this and saying on the stand she said, this op ed is not about Johnny. The only one who thought it was it was about Johnny is Johnny. I mean that's ridiculous. If you try to put forth that argument, a jury is going to look at that. Any rational jury is going to look at that, and no, you're full of ship. And Amber even kind of walked into a contract contradiction on the stand and then later acknowledging that she wrote it with Johnny in mind and that people were supposed to know that it was him. Right, So, man, I think this is making the private public. This is even something I discussed previously in the terms of you know, people's private dating lives becoming public within the context of me too. Caleb, that was an interesting one. But this is this is something that keeps on happening, and so situations that were once handled privately that at least people tried to handle private, right, because obviously the media and the tabloids, they they expand and they you know, explode anything that's between celebrities than is glamorous and controversial. You can't really blame the media for doing this, right, But in prior era, as people in Johnny's and Amber situation, they would have tried to keep it private while the media that would have been a tug of war with the media trying to make it a more public incident. Right. But in this case, no, Amber heard, with the the urging and the support of the a c l U, which is a civil liberties organization, it's not a battered women's organization, they went and made this public and tried to essentially uh create or engineer Amber heard as a as a darling of the me too movement, and it completely and utterly backfired. Right. Um, And yes, this, like I said that this does have in thinking of what impact this is going to have on society overall. It's definitely gonna chill some false claims. It also made chill some more legitimate claims. So we see where the supposedly good intentions of support victims, believe victims, and don't let powerful men get away with their bullshit, right, and these otherwise virtuous or admirable objectives completely backfire when you take it too far. And that's we keep on doing recently, when we create the conditions for some civil rights organization that has no business getting involved in this incident, and you know, a a somewhat suspicious and a person involved in a situation that maybe has a few two liabilities on or has too many skeletons in the closet, really should be keeping things quiet. No, Instead, they want to get public about something that should be kept private, and look what it leads to. It makes everything messy. So right now, to a certain extent, we're still in the tabloid phase. Everybody Team Johnny is celebrating, everybody Team Amber is obviously lamenting, and a lot of people are writing op eds suggesting that this is that this means that nothing has changed, that me to change nothing, and this is just another instance of a powerful man getting away with abuse, and it's going to have a chilling effect on all women, even those who are victims of domestic abuse, and not in the way that Amber heard was where it kind of takes two to tango. Um. Unfortunately, this needed to happen. There needed to be a seminal There needed to be a seminal case, a seminal situation where it was clear that we have to take more skeptical eye and be scrutinized more heavily those claims, because that's what an adult society does. The accused has the presumption of innocence, Okay, the burden of proof is on the accuser and all circumstances. That doesn't mean that we just dismiss all claims and we don't believe any women. It means that we have to take each situation, look at the totality of the first of all, reserve judgment once a claim is made, gathered the evidence, and look at the totality of the evidence in making a judgment, and stop trying to do with the A c L. You tried to do what Amber her in the A c L attempted to do and essentially win the battle through the court of public opinion based on accusation alone. It backfired spectacularly and to a certain extent, is ruined Amber Herd's life. Like she's gonna she's bankrupt, Like, no, she doesn't have eight million dollars and she's going to she's gonna have to declare personal bankruptcy. I'm sure Johnny Depp will get a couple of bucks out of it, but nothing close to the entire award. And um, this is not turned out in her favor, and I can't. I cannot sympathize with her, even to the extent that I could see that. Yeah, Johnny Depp was no angel either, and he was certainly not was not sober, he was not a pleasant guy to deal with her to be married to. Um. But in trying to take this too far and pretending that this was just a one that the villain was just one sided here, Um, this woman has ruined her life. It's because society was handed out too many victim awards. So, as I said, perhaps this will help some of the blood letting right, and that it can help us return to a healthier equilibrium and can hopefully pour some cold water on the flame of the battle of the sexes that's been going on for a few years now, and hopefully we can get back to kind of analyzing things more soberly and beyond that, Jesus Christ, the A c l U is just toxic. They need to be avoided like the plague I do not know and goes back to the institutional poisoning and corrosion that I mentioned quite often on this podcast that you know, formally sinse making and trustworthy, admirable institutions like the A c l you just hold no value for society. It's the big travesty is that the A c l U is gonna get off scott free other than maybe some other than maybe some reputational hits here. I mean, they're the ones who wrote the op ed. I know Amber heard put her name on it, but they put her in the line of fire. I can't imagine she does this without their encouragement, and they led her right into an eight million dollar Annville dropped on her head by Johnny Depp and it's gonna take her a while for her life to recover. Also this episode, I'm gonna be speaking with a friend of mine named Justin Rosavani. He's had successful ventures in the tech space with successful social media companies. He's now translating that for a crypto project called Zion, and it's really informed by a lot of principles that I hold near and dear in terms of free speech and freedom and decentralization. So um, we're gonna get into the project in my discussion with Justin, but also the principles that inform it, and I think you'll find it really interesting. But before we get to Justin oh Man, our President Joe Biden. Things are bleak. They are not looking good for his presidency so far. His poll numbers are atrocious. Latest poll numbers disapproval ratings at fifty thirty percent approved state by state, and this is really fascinating and kind of troubling if you're Joe Biden. I mean, he's above fifty and pretty much zero states, including deep blue states that voted firm heavily, like California. He's at fort approval rating in the state of California, which is insane. We're now, what about sixteen months into a little bit more of that, we're about seventeen months into his presidency. It cannot be described as anything other than floundering right now. And there was a piece that came out this week when NBC News inside of biden White House to drift amid a rolling series of calamities and sinking approval ratings. The president's feeling lately is that he just can't catch a break and that angst is rippling through his party. Okay, so the vibes around Joe Biden not good. His presidency can be considered nothing other than a failure right now, and even going back, everything of course these days needs to be compared to Trump view through the prism of Trump. And yes, even the story about Joe Biden's dismay at his approval ratings through the prism of Trump, because part of the article is about how he feels that he's now lower than Trump and he's really twisted about it, and the fact that Americans seem to disapprove of him at a level that they've disapproved of Donald Trump is really irking Joe Biden. Okay, So is this an illusion? Is this another one of those temporary, uh, temporary conditions that Americans really don't know how well that they have it. These are just a reaction to high gas prices, things of that nature, and it's all Joe Biden's approval ratings will all float back up to a regress to some sort of mean and you know, the kind of lovable, likable, calm, poised Uncle Joe that we saw during the campaign in twenty who was just kind of sitting there with a smile on his face, promising to restore America's dignity and the soul and kind of turned down the heat on the culture that had really just everyone was at each other's face, and that Trump kept on pouring gasoline on the fire. We're gonna return to that, Joe Biden. And I gotta be honest, I don't I think this this is the Biden presidency. Okay, this is not some illusion. People aren't imagining that things are not going well. And it's really a question of Joe Biden not not reading the tea leaves and understanding that. And this is a certain same thing I could have I could have said about Donald Trump. Maybe people just aren't into your bullshit. Donald Trump kept on blaming media. A lot of it was the truth, um, but a lot of it was his own behavior. That maybe people don't like your stick, maybe not just people who had given not just super resistency. People who are going to be against Donald Trump no matter what. Maybe they didn't like how he seems so callous in regards to to COVID that a guy that Donald Trump tweeting out, you know, during the early days of COVID about his ratings, seemed insensitive and unhinged. And if a person acts like that, the populace cannot be blamed for not wanting them to be the leader of the free world. Similarly, Donald Trump, I mean his performance in the first, uh, the first debate, and this guy looked unhinged. You can't go and then blame everybody. Everyone's like, how did Joe Biden get eighty one million votes? Well, I I find it hard to you know, you go watch Donald Trump's performance during that first debate. He came off like a complete lunatic. No, you can go find eighty one million people who want to vote against that. So similar similar lead to that Joe Biden and his performance in the office as opposed to one. He all he had to do was simply not be as crazy as Trump. So let's look at his performance. The let's be the major issue was COVID, right, That's what fell Donald Trump's presidency and his reaction, if you even go Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager for most of his campaign, even admitted it on a clubhouse. He said, yes, Donald Trump lost because people were dissatisfied with his reaction both tactically and kind of personality wise to COVID. He seemed unconcerned, insensitive, and to the extent that he could have made the case that COVID was uncontrollable and not his fault, or that he was being unfairly blamed for not being able to get the virus under control, to the extent that he could have made that argument, he didn't make it clear enough. He didn't make it articulately enough, and that's what he was punished. And he was punished for that at the ballot box. Okay, So Joe Biden was very clear. He says, hey, they COVID such a problem in the U. S. Because we have Donald Trump. When you lect me, I'm going to get this thing under control. So what happened It was not under control. The first few months of Joe Biden's presidency were some of the worst months that we had for COVID results. Period. Well, hey, you sleep in the bed that you made. Joe, you said you were going to get this thing under control and you didn't. Okay, you're gonna have to take the blame. You got elected off those claims. So you live by you live by the promise, you die by the promise. So instead of taking responsibility and acknowledging, hey, this thing, it's an airborne respiratory virus and it's simply tougher to contain than we like to represent, particularly in a very active social you know, high octane society like the United States that has fifty different states and a lot of fragmentation. As the policy, we exaggerated the extent that we were that that this was policy based, that maybe this was something that was out of control of even the most competent president. But he didn't do that. So instead he downshifts to becoming very device and around the vaccine, he became just as devisive as Donald Trump. This is a post I couldn't believe my freaking eyes as this was May of last year. Uh, Joe Biden tweets out, the rule is now simple, get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours. Excuse me, what the hell you're the president, don't speak to people like that. The vaccine is a very personal choice. And as we've now well documented, there's a hell of a lot of evidence to suggest that the cost benefit analysis for the vast majority of people out there who were not in high risk categories did not work out, and either one did not work out in favor of them getting the vaccine, or to certainly certainly did not work out in favor of there being such a strong argument that it was such a no brain or choice and that you get to lambast and lecture people like that. But Joe Biden felt compelled to one lecture people about the vaccine and to pass the most sweeping vaccine mandate in the history of the United States, which is what he did in September while he was uh while his presidency was reeling from the Afghanistan to bacle. And he expects, I guess he read polling numbers about you know, Americans views on the vaccination that most Hey, who's the vast majority of people out there in September, June, June, July, August, September, two thousand twenty one, if asked about the vaccine, we're gonna be We're going to praise it. We're going to embrace the vaccine. So Joe Biden took a look at that and said, Okay, I'm going to deflect blame for the COVID results under on my watch, and I'm gonna blame the unvaccinated. And he did it again before the winter and saying that it's going to be a winter of death and destruction for the unvaccinated. And like he thinks that these are not things that are going to turn people off, that if if they do turn people off, they'll only be maga types. That just like Donald Trump engaged in the fallacy that the only people who could validly dislike or or not embrace his behavior were resistance types, Joe Biden's making the same mistake and thinking this divisive, arrogant, and poorly informed behavior in these policies will only turn off those who are his enemies anyways, and that's not the case. Maybe the average person in the middle of the road voter takes a look at you lecturing people about the vaccine, which people, you know, a lot of people out there could understand some skepticism or some hesitation, and people looking at this type of communication saying I'm not on board. Then we go to the Afghanistan pull out. We don't have to account that, but it was an absolute disaster. It was embarraed rasing for our nation not to mention how the armed forces have conducted themselves. And then a lot of people a lot of the social justice when looking at the military and seeing the military embrace these equity campaigns and diversity campaigns and the Marines tweeting out about Pride Month or saying wait a second, is something we might be in favor. We're all for tolerance, but we don't think if we're concerned about the performance of our military, which we are concerned about after the Afghanistan debacle, that maybe this is not what we want them to focus on. That these kind of pet social democratic causes might be fine in certain circumstances, but we don't want an administration that is going to direct the military to embrace them like this. Joe Biden might consider the possibility that these things are a turn off, right because he's sitting there scratching his head apparently over how his approval ratings are at the same level of Donald Trump. Will maybe look into this stuff. Maybe voters are not on board with this ethnic narcissism and dividing everything by race. Maybe they don't love the fact that we now have a vice president who's really unqualified in every which way, shape or form, is incoherent every time she speaks, and was chosen specifically because of a race and gender. Kamala Harris is a disaster. She was a disaster from the beginning. She was a disaster when she tried to run for president. She didn't even make it to the first primary. Her short lived campaign for president was an embarrassment, and Joe Biden went and put her in the number two seats just because of her, just in order to placate the Democratic base based on race and gender. He goes and then repeats that he shows someone I think is you know, far more qualified as a Supreme Court justice than Kamala is as a vice president, but once again vocalized and was very explicit that he was making his decision limited by race and gender to only a black female of color. Possibly this turns people off. Does the Biden administration ever consider that that other than this kind of activist and and managerial class that embraces all of this wokery and the social justice causes that your average voter out there does not like this stuff. Perhaps needs to occur to the Joe Biden that this is the case. But I think everything got so distorted by Trump that the the Democrats and the Biden administration in particular, assumed, assumed that they were that what they were putting out there was far more popular. And no, it wasn't popular. It was just popular in comparison to what Donald Trump was putting out there. But this never registers with them beyond that Joe Biden wants to take no he wants to take no responsibility for inflation whatsoever. Despite the fact that a lot of people predicted this, Joe Biden went went ahead and essentially passed a handout bill of one point eight trillion dollars is of COVID relief package in two thousand twenty one, when the economy had already recalibrated, had already recalibrated around the pandemic. Right you could look in you know, June May June two thousand twenty once we essentially shut down the economy and said, hey, we need an immense government assistance right now. We need the government to come in as kind of the buyer of last resort. We need them to fund businesses because the the the economy has to recalibrate around these new conditions. By the time Joe Biden had already taken over, that had already had happened, consumer spending was still high um, people were still were going back to work other than the businesses that were specifically shut down. And then Joe Biden comes in with one point eight trillion dollars. If you go look at it of this one point eight trillion dollars and where the money was spent, what it went to, a lot of insurance, how it looks like handouts, A lot of it looks like unnecessary. A lot of it was racially directed. A lot of that money was earmarked based on racial preferences. Once again, Joe Biden doesn't consider the possibility that this ship turns people off. Larry Summers, Harvard economist, former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, Democrat, warned him ahead of time. He said, Hey, the economy does not need this one point eight trillion dollars. This is going to lead to intense inflation. And that's some of Democratic strategists themselves warned Joe Biden about inflation for this unnecessary spending bill. Then they passed the bill inject this money into the economy. The inflation comes around, and he doesn't. He still does not want to take credit for it. They just completely want to pass the buck in every way, shape or form, wants to go blame flat term and Putin for high oil prices. But okay, Joe, you knew the situation with Vladimir Putin and Russia's and the extent to which the Western world relied on Russia for oil. Yet you were unable to prevent this conflict with the Ukraine, and you certainly don't seem to be doing anything to bring along a ceasefire and perhaps get you know, international oil production back in order and reintegrate Russia into the world's economy. You kept on telling us that it's a moral imperative to support the Ukraine, to oppose Vladimir Putin at every turn, and it was worth the high gas prices. So you can't simultaneously tell American citizens that it's their moral obligation to accept higher gas prices and then deflect all blame when those higher gas prices materialized, because you've created conditions you don't want to aim you don't want to do anything to bring about peace in this conflict because you believe we're on the side of the morally righteous. Another issue that was mentioned in the NBC newspieces that Biden thinks that his verbal mishaps are being indulged, that his staff and apologizing or trying to retract some of his statements that seemed to go off kilter is feeding right into his opponents, feeding right into the Republicans claims that he is senile, that he doesn't have a grip on the White House. Things like the misstep about you know, um saying that Vladimir Putin cannot be allowed to remain in power. A lot of his aids, a lot of his advisors then walk back that statement. Well, Joe, if you don't want people to walk back the state a crazy statement, they don't make a crazy statement. Okay, if you're concerned, if you're trying to portray, if you're trying to project that America is not really looking for regime change with Vladimir Putin because we don't want to instigate him in that manner, and then we just want to support the Ukraine. If you make a comment like we cannot allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power. I mean, that's gonna stir the pot that is gonna worsen the situation, which is gonna worse situation around oil. And also, I mean, you're you're radically altering Americans America stated foreign policy. Yet Joe Biden seems to have a problem with that tension between his statements that seemed to his statements that seemed to rile up or concern his staff in the administration. As NBC News puts it, be on policy, Biden is unhappy about a pattern that is developed inside the West Wing. He makes, as he claims, a clear and succinct statement, only to have aids rushed to explain that he actually meant something else. The so called clean up campaign, he has told advisors, undermines him and smothers the authenticity that fuelled fueled his rise. Well, you know, maybe it was an authenticity that fueled to rise, Joe. Maybe it was that you were actually being a good guy, right, you were being poised and calm and not divisive like like Trump was. And once you became president, you became the the more polite version of Donald Trump. That being this devisive that trying to pass the buck around everything that catering to only Democrat based pet causes has not endeared you to people. It has not been the person that people thought they were voting for. November two thousand twenty, once again, maybe you could consider this. So can Joe Biden salvage this presidency? Is this just a matter of high gas prices and taming inflation? Um Biden released? I mean, this is also not a good sign. He released an op ed in the Wall Street Journal his plan for fighting inflation um as He says, I won't metal at the Fed, but I will tackle high prices while guiding the economy's transition to stable and steady growth. I read the op ed, you can go read it for yourself in the Wall Street Journal. I mean, it seems like more gibberish. It seems like more blaming the Republicans, blaming supply chain issues, blaming Russia for high prices, taking no responsibility about the one point eight trillion dollars he injected into the economy, nor any real tangible plan to tackle inflation. But let's say that it is to a certain extent supply chain issue overheating the economy from that one point eight and things are gonna slow down and inflation is gonna get tamed over the next six to nine months. Can that salvage the Biden presidency. I think he still has an immense blind spot. His approach is one that caters more to the Democratic base when he thinks he's still being that centrist and he has him and his administration have this immense blind spot as to this. The only place where he seems to have recognized that blind spot was in speaking out very aggressively against defund the police. He seemed to have finally tracked back to the center. Seemed like, Okay, this is just what you know. This is a crazy thing that the democratic activist class in the media have normalized. But it's not normalized. The average voter does not want that and has gone on record zealously against defund the police. Okay, great. On every other issue that I've seen, he's catering to the demn base, he's catering to the activists and seems to just not notice it. Maybe people, maybe Americans don't like racial narcissists. Maybe they don't think that these social justice causes. They think like, okay, by all means they can be a priority, but they're not the entire priority. Perhaps this is the case, and this is something to consider, So maybe the economy stabilizes a little bit, although there seemed to be a lot of choppy waters on the horizon. So yeah, I think it's fantasy land, the idea that this is just a matter of gas prices and temporary inflation which they claim to be transitory, which clearly end up not being transitory. That is not the extent of the problems for for Joe Biden's administration. I think it's going to be next to next impossible to salvage because they still have this massive blind spot that kind of this woke professional managerial class approach towards governance and towards culture is popular. It works, It's not popular. It does not work. It just worked as compared to Donald Trump, until they get rid of that blind spot and come back to reality, which I don't think they're gonna do. Joe Biden's gonna keep on scratching his head and licking his ice cream beream and wondering why his approval ratings continue to hover in Donald trump territory. And another issue that I think the Biden administration had a major blind spot on the issue of masks. God, I thought I was done talking about them, but they have reared their ugly head once again this week. We've got some rising case counts and hospitalization counts around COVID, and it looks like Alameda County up in northern California has become the first major county to reimpose an indoor mask mandate. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Fair, otherwise known as the chalk Woman as I referred to her as She also mentions that if hospitalizations keep on rising in Los Angeles, indoor mask mandate is coming back to l A. I cannot even begin to fathom what the reaction to that is going to be. Okay, but the Biden administration's approach to mass Oh my God, of court, masks work. How could you ever question that masks work? Only completely callous, knuckle dragging idiots would oppose masks. And why don't you want to wear your mask? If you don't, you are trying to kill Grandma. Screw you. That was essentially the Biden administrations approach towards masks that continued to push them at every turn. And I think we saw it once again. They don't know how to check public sentiment. They look at polls that they seem seemed to reference poles that say a lot of people were in favor of mask mandates on planes, and then once they released the mask mandates on planes, one do you see the reaction, people explode in joy and cheer and to nothing happened. There was no increase, There was no impact on the state of COVID or the trajectory of the virus whatsoever, which once again makes the Biden administration look stupid because their claims were we can't relax the masks mask mandate on planes because it's gonna it's gonna result an explosion of COVID that didn't happen regardless, So slightly a slight rise in case counts. Recently starting to see some of the more liberal cities suggest a reimposition of mask mandates. Okay. So this is interesting as it also coincides with the release of an interesting piece in the New York Times, Why masks work but mandates haven't. Okay. This is by David Lenhardt, who has been one of the more sober and actual, you know, more thoughtful comment commentators from the mainstream media on COVID. He seems to at least allow for the possibility of reality to enter the conversation. And this piece it acknowledges Listen, masks can work in certain controlled, specified settings. But the problem is the world doesn't work that way. This isn't a laboratory, this is not life, is not a controlled setting. So when you impose mask mandates, when people have to operate normally in over the course of people's lives on a day to day basis, over the course of weeks and months, they're not always going to be wearing their masks. It's impossible for them to do so. And simply by stretching out the sample size over a longer duration, mask mandates end up having no real discernible impact whatsoever. And this piece in The New York Times for Crying out Loud finally acknowledges this. As the piece goes from the big getting of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr Sheer dar Owne, an epidemiologist at Toughs Medical Center, puts it, it is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not. Work, and once again, because life is not a controlled laboratory setting. To start with, the first half of the paradox, masks reduced the spread of the COVID virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person's nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies repeatedly demonstrated the effect. Okay, fair enough, they go on. Given this, you would think that communities where mask wearing has been more common would have had many fewer COVID infections, but that hasn't been the case. Once again, reality conflicts with the with the controlled laboratory settings. Okay, it's like going into the restaurant. People have to take off their masks to eat and drink. Okay, people aren't going to be wearing their masks every second of the day inside their house with their family. So once again, while you could try where you could, you could postulate masks during a confined period, and confined circumstances will have an effect. You draw that out over weeks and months, you draw that out are a larger territory, and it's simply there's no discernible impact whatsoever. Thus, the mandates really don't do anything, and it's got to be everyone's personal decision, and the mandates are really just making life a little less pleasant on everybody else. The New York Times piece seems to acknowledge this. The main explanation seems to be that the exceptions often end up mattering more than the rule. The COVID virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place. For instance, airline passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Airlines, you've got a three and a half hour flight. The aggregate amount of particles that escape one just naturally, because not all masks can kind of keep all particles can shield all particles from escaping. But also you add that to the aggregate amount of time that people are eating or drinking or have to breathe or sneeze or god knows what, and it ends up having no impact whatsoever. If there's a half hour plane flight and nobody ate and nobody drank and everyone was wearing an N ninety five, Okay, but that's just not how the world works. And these mask mandates, they still continue. You to follow the disease of doing something. Case counts rise, so people think we have to do something, we have to reimpose this mask mandate. They're not gonna do a goddamn thing, as we've seen has been evidence over the course of the last few months, when the entire world has been operating completely normally. Okay, the virus is gonna virus. The trajectory of the virus will not be impacted by these mask mandates whatsoever. And finally we wake up to reality. Finally the mainstream media seems to acknowledge this, and all of a sudden, it is so ironic that it coincides with the suggestion that we may reimpose these in a couple of territories. So, these mask mandates, why would we even consider reimposing them? Everybody knows at this point, even the most insular and conformist publications are now admitting the mask mandates to not work. We've seen the evidence of the last few months with the mask mandates released. What could be informing these decisions? Okay, then we go also a weird for these reimpositions. That's New York Times piece to coincide with an interview adopted Dr Deborah Burkes. She was the coronavirus coordinator for President Trump for a few months into one. She's been a little quiet recently, so she was interviewed this week, and this is what she had to say about mask mandates. Sometimes we use mandates because we don't want to take the time to explain the science and the data and really have people really understand who should be using them and why. Well, that's a fascinating admission, Dr Burkes, that's, of course, that's exactly what's been happening. These public health bureaucrats that nobody elected don't want to take the time to actually explain to us the truth about the virus and its risk and how it weaves its way through society, so they just hand down universalist mandates because they figure, Okay, the only way if we just get everyone to comply, if everybody falls in order, then we don't have to explain ourselves. Thank you for dropping the mask quote unquote Dr Burkes and admitting this. I'll admit I am fascinated to see what happens if Los Angeles tries to reimpose is I. I don't see it working. I think there's gonna be either one an uproar or just to just nobody's going to abide by it. Whatsoever. People have gotten to use. The pandemic is a distant memory to of society at this point in four months. I mean, do we even remember what life was like in two thousand twenty and two thousand twenty one. I think people have kind of generally, you know, collectively memory hold it. Think trying to go and reimposing this. Small business owners are gonna be willing to go back to that. Gyms are gonna go and you start like your your trainer, equinox is gonna start hassling people about masks again. This is just not gonna happen. I'm actually more I have a morbid fascination with the fallout from this, Like it is going to be an absolute ship show if they try to do this again. I don't think it's gonna serve anyone's interest and only serves my morbid curiosity. It's not a good for society, but hey, it's out of my hands. At this point, it seems like there's no way still to pull in the reins or give any oversight, or have these public health directors be informed by the actual science, or to abide by the will of the people. So I guess we'll see as some of these case counts rise, and they're gonna rise from essentially nothing to just above nothing over the next few months. Um, we'll see if if COVID regime part do or I guess it'll begin part three or four. At this point, is it going to rear its ugly head again? And what will the societal reaction be will regardless of whether they try to do it. I think at this point we all know, even the New York Times acknowledging it. We do not live in a lab. We do not live in controlled settings. Okay, widespread societal mask mandates do not exist in a lab. They do not exist in controlled settings. Thus they do not do a goddamn thing except allow ugly people to hide their face and inconvenience everybody else. So I think it's clear they don't do a damn thing except help ugly people hide their face and inconvenience the rest of us. Okay, once again, hopefully my last segment ever on masks, but it's looking less and less likely they're um either way, Please read the New York Times piece once again, David Leonard. It is why masks work, but mandates haven't. Okay, straight and to the point they seem to finally get it. We'll see if the public health if the public health officials follow that advice. Regardless, this has been the prevailing narrative this week. We've got a conversation with Justin Risvanni coming up in just a minute. Think you're gonna find it fascinating. Please stick around and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. Ladies and gentlemen, I am at Polinski. This is the prevailing narrative. Okay, So crypto winter, the memes are flowing fast and hard right now, you know, uh fast food McDonald's managers welcoming back their bitcoin former bitcoin millionaire employees, uh saying hey, how about those lightning eyes. Everyone kind of dancing on the grave of the crypto world right now as an enormous amount of wealth and value was wiped out over the past couple of weeks, uh and months even. But then you take a look around and you're like, wait a second. If I'm looking at bitcoin at about twenty eight thousand, five hundred today, still up about three x from its pre pandemic from February two thousand twenty. It's like, hmm, that's actually not a bad return. Then you're looking around and you see so many people who kind of poo poo the crypto world um and essentially dismissed the notion of any utility. But then you look and you see that there's so many incredibly smart people with great track records who seem to be building things in the cryptocurrency world during the bitcoin world for usage with utility. One such individuals here with us today's name is Justin Rosvani, the founder and CEO of Zion, which is a decentralized platform built for creators. Justin, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you my brother, so excited to do this. I appreciate you so much. Absolutely no doubt same here. So let's get right into it. What is Zion. Zion is a censorship resistant social network that creators can actually own their content for the first time and and not saying it. And it's like kind of like uh wagh in the ether. But you know, the three things that are broken on the web is identity, messaging, and data storage and ultimately the money. And Zion is trying to solve for each of those. So when you join Zion as a creator, you're establishing a D I D right, So this is a persistent identity over not just space, but also over time. And I think I D stands for what necessary essentialized identifier and that's an open standard that will be using for creators. Then we're using a decentralized web note protocol that allows the messages to relay peer to peer. And finally, the money, the money and how value is actually transferred in some ways, and I believe money is actually speech. We're using bitcoin and specifically the Lightning network to also move money over space and time. And I think this is something that's kind of a new idea because we've never had the ability to do that. We can move within space, we've always been able to do that, but you can never move identity and money over time because it's highly centralized. For example, your Instagram account, I mean, one of the best Instagram accounts out there. I love the content. I love the content you're pumping because like it's it's what I'm thinking about all the time. But you're distributing in a much better way. You don't own anything on that right, Like that's not your identity. You can never take it with you. If it if it gets deleted, it's gone forever, and you you don't have it persistent. You have it persistent in space, but not over time. And so now with the creator establishing a D I D doing messaging to a decentralized webne and then allowing a monetary relationship to appear to peer channel, which is lightning, creators can build a whole new system and a whole new network. And that's what I'm really hopeful for, right That's what Zion is designed to be. It's an it's an open protocol on a platform. But we're not building blockchains, we're not making up our own tokens. We're not doing like all these other things to me are just noise. And and why you're seeing the markets destroy it is that noise will be destroyed within a bear market, where signal will thrive in a bear market. And that's why Zion is thriving. So you actually tweeted out something, uh the other day that kind of spoke to that point. The tree of bitcoin must be refreshed from time to time with the liquidation of fools and ship coins, and you just mentioned something very interesting for a lot of both the crypto no novices outsiders, but also some people who are fairly involved in the crypto world, but you know, not experts. They only associate this world and the except there is any functionality and utility with tokens, right, because they see the value, they see people getting rich off it, and um, they kind of understand the notion that there's a blockchain underlying it, but they don't really it's not necessarily crystallized in their minds. So you say, hey, we're not We're not building a blockchain here. We were not issuing a token. There's no liquid market for this, and we're not. Um, we don't have any injury. You can't go buyouts on coin base or or f tx or any other exchange, right, So Okay, could you maybe elaborate on what you're building something in this space that is not a token eyed that is not a blockchain, and how um that still really aligns with the principles of the blockchain, but how you know utility can be built without these other kind of fundamental building building blocks. Yeah, because we are not trying to build additional complexities for users and for clients. Because I think those businesses are trying to do that, and they think that Bitcoin can't solve for most of the problems that they're thinking of. My Zion is. The mission for Zion is to create value exchange between two individuals through peer to peer money. Bitcoin is is the most secure peer to peer money ever created. UM, we're trying to establish identities. There's open source protocols that other companies are using to establish identity. This did spec that we use in Zion is being used by block Yesterday you saw an investor meeting that Block had and Jack Dorsey said, we're gonna have persistent identity using d I d S. We're using the exact same spec inside Zion because now we're allowed to be interoperable across these networks. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'm just trying to build the best in class technology without these alternative distractions. And I think a lot of these other things are inherently distractions and people making up basically illegal securities for the most part, and that's why you see two hundred billion dollars worth of value wiped out. I had an email I said yesterday about Tera. You have this algorithmic stable coin that within I think it was twenty four hours lost forty billion dollars water. Since we brought that out of you could, yeah, if you could maybe dig in and start from the wound up about terror and Luna, because in the history, when you know, when the history of the crypto has written, this is gonna be a watershed moment. And so I think a lot of people have once again heard about it. It don't necessarily understand what transpired. Maybe if you can kind of get into the blood and guts of that. I wish I knew more. But as far as I understand, there's this algorithmic stable coin out there, which means that a stable coins is supposed to be backed one to one by dollars, but it's algorithmically algorithmically backed, which I don't even know what that means. And I guarantee you the people that owned this thing had no idea what it meant either. She was like, oh, it's like a dollar and then it gets deepegged and then it gets destroyed. It didn't just get deep pegged. It went from down to zero like zero within a few days, and all these people just got completely wiped out. They woke up and all their stable coins were gone. And this is the function of defies that there's no one to call, like I had this tweet. Actually there's like there's no one to save you, and there's no one to call. That was the realization of all that the customer service presentative on the there's nobody to call, right And I actually, I mean, honestly, I'm trying to figure out where the money go. I don't even understand where it went. That's that's why I'm a I'm a founder and a CEO of a company. I'm spending over twenty months buildings on on lightning. I don't understand how that stuff works. And there's people just throwing their cash. They're gambling effectively. And this is the this is the inherent difference about bitcoin. Bitcoin is a whole other thing than this entire crypto ecosystem. And I think the thing that I want people to understand is this, this this narrative. When the iPhone came out, no one understood that this device will disrupt the entire taxi industry. No one knew that. They had no concept that the iPhone would destroy the taxi industry. That's the same analogy for bitcoin. Most people don't actually understand the inherent implications of having digital money on the Internet and the implications that will have for us in the future. Bitcoin is inherently different than every other one of these cryptocurrencies. That's why it's in a different category. I think those are the Yeah, it's the one, the one, well, the two qualities of bitcoin that seemed to be distinguishing factors for me. And why I my faith in them is not in faith and bitcoin is not shaken, um, and you know, and why I'm long bitcoin is one scarcity into just it's fucking unhappable. I mean it's it's now, it's got proven durability. Now, I mean, you know, it's been exactly well, you've got your twelve years into it right now. With all these sinister it's very no shortage of very smart, bad faith actors who would love to go hack that network or love to find a way to disrupt it. And no one's been able to write. So those two factors really seem to distinguish it from everything else in my mind at least. And and and it's the inherent value of proof of work. I think people are forgetting that. Oh, there's a lot of energy. There's a lot of this, but if I could secure the most durable money ever created through proof of work, it is worth it to me. It's worth it's worth the energy that we're spending to ensure the security of the network. And I think that's why I'm really excited about it, and and most I'm also excited on how the actual payment rails move right, Like we're buildings on on Lightning layer two bitcoins. I'd love to hear more about Lightning right because this is you say you got You're not conducting the payments. That's another interesting feature about like you guys do do not conduct the payments. You're just creating the connectivity between the community that allows payments to be made via Lightning. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. And so it's nodes on the network communicating. And why is this different than PayPal and Venmo and all those other things, Because those are centralized money transfer services that are moving bitcoin between accounts inside of their system. Where in the Lightning network you have two nodes with a Lightning channel sending across a protocol. Zion is not an intermediary of actually moving funds. We're not a money transfer service. We're using this open source payment rails that allows money to move across the Internet. It's it's highly efficient to move small micro transactions. And I think this is the cool thing about the new world we're entering is never be four Could you move subs of a penny to another individual to buy things or listen to podcasts over space and time? So I can send you under twenty cent transaction inside of the Lightning network because there's basically one SAT transaction fee to send it, and one SAT is there's a hundred millions totosis in one single bitcoin. I think that's going to create a completely new dynamic that we've never seen before, is the able to move this small amount of money. The credit cards can't do that because the minimum is cents, and why is because they're underlying fraud inside the system. Most credit card transactions do you think are instantaneous, but they take three days to finally settle. It's not just the finite amount of how quickly the money moves, it's also instant settlement. And I think the settlement layer we haven't really understood, particularly if you're a retailer or you're a creator, like if you have a Patreon for example, or you have an only fans and all these others that are supposed to be direct support platforms. There's six layers of companies in between you and your fans. Most importantly, there's usually a thirty day to sixty day window before you can finally settle at the bank layer. And I think what allows this new payment rails is instance transfer, but also instant settlement. And so you made an interesting point about the nature of payments on a podcast I listened to UH in terms of single direction UH single directional payments versus bidirectional payments or omnidirectional omnidirectional payments. So I think that the future also allows for this concept of omnidirectional payments where right now we're looking at I can send a payment to you as the creator, but can you send a payment back to me? And can your fans pay each other? So Zion is building inside of the spec and how we release the V one of the application is that anyone can pay anyone at any time for any piece of content. So every conversation, every comment, every meme, everything that's posted inside the network is an active opportunity for a payment. I think that's a new concept that we haven't seen before is like imagine Instagram, but instead of sub liking or replying to a like, you can send SATs to that individual. You've never met this person, you don't have a relationship with them, but you can send them a lightning transaction and lightning payment over space and time instantly. And are you seeing these use Are these use cases playing out in real time on Zige? Course? Yeah, we because we processed over one and twenty thousand lightning transactions between fans inside the V one of the application. So we launched the first version of the app in August. We had over three thousand creators joined the app. They're running their full they were running their full notes, and we just saw this as a thing. We said, okay, wow, there's actually user actions where they're sending each other. It's a small amount of money in this case, but because it's a small amount of users, but they're doing it right. And now what happens if we can make the product better, faster, more engaging, and so in January we took basically took some time to now build the V two, which is coming out in a few months as a completely new UI and new UX experience allowing onboarding to be a lot faster, because the first version we launch is kind of a science experiment, like will people do this stuff that's never been done before? And the answer is actually yes, they love to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so this does you you know, you said earlier that you're not reinventing the wheel and that you're kind of just using, you know, utilizing new technologies that are an improvement on prior technologies UM and for you know, more user, more user and community utility. And maybe you tell us a little bit about your background with the company called amplify um in that to a certain you know, essentially building the infrastructure for like minded parties who wish to transact to transact more seamlessly is something that you've done before. But you did it in the You did it the Web two point o version, and you seem to be now doing the Web three point o version. And am I correct in saying that they are an enormous parallels between your your prior tons tons? It just it's so I've always believed that creators are the most powerful mechanisms have changed in the world. So my first business star in twelve was an app on the app store that connected an influencer. So this is like Instagram gets bought by Facebook for a billion dollars. There's no way to do ads. So we built an app that a brand could ping an influencer on their phone to create content on Instagram. So this is like the beginning of influencer marketing. Where one of the first applications on uh Instagram that actually had an API connection into Instagram Instagram. So I was getting a ton of data, but there's no ads at the time. So I said, if you're a creator and you want to get paid for creating content, you have to go to like CIA, w am me contracts, blah blah blah. So what I did was build this app. It pings them, Hey, create a photo for this movie coming out next week. Go take a photo in front of the poster, and we'll pay you on PayPal instantly. So using PayPal as the payment rails, using I mean lightning didn't exist Bitcoin, you couldn't do Bitcoin transactions in this way. Um, and then send the payment directly once the content is posted, confirmed that it's up there, and that's it. They're done. They don't have a content like they used. Contracting inside the app. So we had tons of creators that love this because one would make five thousand dollars in a week for a photo on Instagram like this, This person would have taken and ten percent. So I said, okay, that's a model for advertising. So you're bifurcating this advertising industry. Now what can I do? And I so I sold that business in two thousand and sixteen, stayed on the board till and then I started Zion. It was okay, what can we do to now make the relationship between the creator and the fan closer? Because ultimately that's the most important relationship. It's not that let's monetize through a third party. Let's make let's build the system for peer to peer economics because that's everything that we want to do. Everything we do is peer to peer essentially, So what can I do to build that? And that's where I found out about the Lightning Network. So it's a clear evolution of my my previous business, which is work with creators. And that's why our cap table is so heavy with influencers and creators. Right, So obviously, like you know JP, but Tony Robbins, Aubrey Marcus, Mark Moss, Robert Breed Love, Aaron Rodgers, uh, Athony Pompliano, Sean Stevenson, like Griffin Johnson just joined the cap table. It's a huge TikTok Like these are people that were around because I want them to have ownership in this thing. I wanted to be the first social product. They have true ownership and and and those types of network effects. What interestingly, so I'd like to get your thoughts on on how you see social media? Right it's people still don't they understand that some of these companies are very successful, that they make a lot of money, that there's a lot of users on them. But people still don't I think necessarily understand social media as a commercial concept, right, um that the this is business. You know that that connecting people, building communities as business. What are you seeing now? I mean, obviously, as you just mentioned, you're trying to uh, you're trying to build the off rent for these people from Web two to Web three necessarily, what do you how do you see social media? You know Web two version right now? How it exists in two thouso? I mean TikTok obviously is you know the new kid on the block and is sucking up a ton of eyeballs. I mean Snapchat, I think people has been oddly um, you know, it's been the chatter has been oddly quiet about Snapchat giving its success it's user based in the trajectory of its market gap. Over the last fews, Snapchat and Snapchat and ended up doing very well. Um, you know, how do you how do you see? What? You know? But the both the positives negatives, um, and you know and just your thoughts on the web to social media landscape right now. I think that they, the incumbents, have a lot of a big problem because they haven't created a way where the creators own have ownership inside of their systems. And I don't believe that they've built a way for creators to actually also monetize in a very effective way. YouTube by far has done the best in that, but they still take I think over fift of your revenue um that allow you to kind of upload continents of these programs. Because a lot of these companies did build programs and departments out to create more direct relationships with creators and try to become their partners in essence or almost there's pseudo managers. I mean, I'm sure they've they've you know they have accomplished some of their objectives in doing so, but I imagine you think some of those are also lacking. I mean, it's completely lacking because that's not their business model. And no creator will tell you like, oh my god, Snapchack gives me so much money? Like how many people like is that? Does anyone think that's true? I don't think anyone thing. I guess, like the one we'd ask creators, I don't think that's true. Sure, But let's say a Griffin Johnson can look at TikTok and figure, all right, Um, the amount of money I'm making off this is for better for worse. Unless I had gone and tried to become a child actor and you know, gotten a bunch of big roles, this was the most money I was gonna make doing what I'm doing. If not for TikTok, I wouldn't be making this money. However, Uh, that doesn't necessarily speak to their relationship with the platform itself. Yeah, absolutely, And I think that they're building a relationship with their audience, but they don't own the actual audience. And I think that's where we're trying to kind of evolve. The new systems too, is that Zion is not creating another walled garden, right, We're creating this interoperable network that will be persistent forever. That's why, like when you create your identity inside is On, it's interoperable with other Web three applications. It will be like that. The key is that I'm not building another walled garden. That's the problem where I look at a lot of these other companies that are starting, is that oh, come join our platform. We are not a platform where a utility. And yes we have an application that people can can go on to for the first time, but essentially it's an interoperable identity. This is an identity that can be persistent. Also, your content will be persistent. So the way I can I talked to creators about this imagined Facebook, but you can leave and take all of your fans with you. That's the kind of service that we're providing inside is On Because eventually, this d i D decentralized Web node lightning layer will be the established pattern that all companies in the future will use because most of these ship coins are going to disappear, most of these block chains are gonna go away. Nobody wants your random token it's all gonna come back to bitcoin in the end, Like we're gonna see that happen over the next few months. So this is I believe, the persistent pattern over time. So you really do think, I mean, because I talked to people in this space all the time, and I mean we talked to the Bitcoin maxis and and some of them will say that, yes, this entire world has sprouted up around bitcoin is kind of with Bitcoin is the centerpiece, and there are tons of smart people involved in it, um in you know, hundreds of billions dollars in capital invested into it. But at the end of the day, it's all bullshit, and it's all going to come back to bitcoin for its inherent properties, a couple of which we discussed earlier. And you you know, you think that that is that could some version of that could definitely be I think some version of that will will come into case. And that's that's the bet that I'm making. I'm making a bet on this pattern. I'm making a bet on this technology, and I have to have you know, look, conviction matters. There's something to be said about focus, and that's that's my decision. I'm not not open to listening to these other things and how these other systems will work. But that's my general opinion at this date, which is Friday, May twenty two. That's my opinion at this at this stage. But I could evolve. I don't know. I mean, yeah, and listen, I mean, I'm I don't think I qualify as what many people would call him MAXI, but um uh at viewing this as the cream of the crop. UM. I think it's certainly proven itself out and I think that you're seeing the price action across the board right now. As I said earlier, I mean, we're still you still got a three x on bitcoin if you bought before, you know, as a virus was starting to circulate in China in January and February, and you still got some nice returns here. The durability of this system UM and the economics around it have been pretty shocking, UM, regardless of whether it's you know, retraced fifty from a high UM timeline wise, you guys, you know, you've onboarded a number of people. You've got creators who are on your big very prominent creators on your cap table, participating in your network. UM from a lot of perspectives, this seems like the most obvious, like an incredibly obvious improvement on what's currently available in Web two. So to the extent, what is it just a matter of time? Have you found any any friction? Was there any impediment for you to continue onboarding people? Total friction? Right? So, I think what we realized and and this is just the truth of the matters when we launched. The technical pattern we developed was every user onsen as one node and then one lightning channel to be on the network, which is why we had a cost to them joining. What we found was within thirty days we became thirteen point five percent of the global lightning network in terms of total nodes on the network. Right, so one intent almost like to inten nodes effectively we'll run on Zion's infrastructure. We realized that this is not a scalable model for patterns, so we we went in January and started developing the second version of the application, and that's why we've kind of paused onboarding actually of users until we launched the next version of the application, which will be a few months away. So right now we're kind of in this hold and build pattern where we're just building the underlying technology. But we've proven that the model is valuable. So right now it's all about we want people to hear our story. That's why I wrote this book. That's why I wanted this to be out in the world of like, I think, this is how the world should work in the future. And we're so excited to release the second version in the coming months. Fantastic. UM. The principles underlying this network and these activities, the ones you can previously laid out six of them, UM. A few of them we've already gone over in terms of you know, building social and digital monetary layer UM. But one that you also focus on, and that it just from U that that seems to reflect one of your interests is censorship, free speech, and bitcoin and these these various protocols related protocols or or internal protocols UM. You know, making communications censorship resistant and decentralized and bypassing the kind of cultural sensors that at this point anyone who denies our exerting you know, outsized influence on you know, our social networks, UM, And it's just ridiculous to deny at this point. UM. Tell us a little bit about how that you know that principle informed um what you're doing with Zion and what you're seeing. More more generally, I when I started this company was basically the middle to end of and I and I saw the beginning of the emergence of censorship, and I realized, like, having a voice in a digital world is in a very important part of civil society. And I was telling my friends at the end of twenty I was like, Hey, I think one of the most powerful people in the world's gonna get wipe wiped off the face of the Internet. And then January six happened. Regardless of your politics, the president of the United States, the standing person that runs this country disappears off the face of the Internet indefinitely, like indefinitely, not just like, hey, he'll be back in thirty days because he was a bad boy, whatever you want to say, like, which seems like it would have been a more sensible punishment, so much sensible. I mean, Jack just said that. Ellen just said that, Like, it would have been sensible to bring the person back, because what you created is the divisive nature. And then you have Trump going down his own technical rabbit hole to build another bullshit social network that no one's ever going to use because it's been divided. There's no town square to actually have discussions anymore. It's created this with terrible riffs. So you need something that allows an open conversation and it's proven right, like like the richest person in the world is saying it. Everyone's like, yeah, free speech is a thing we need. But the technical patterns have to be implemented, so there isn't centralized control. That's why Zion is not built in a traditional lamp stack. We're not just putting names on a database. We're saying no, no, no. You establish a d I D and the private key to access Zion is only held on this device. Like we don't even have access to private keys. There's no user names and passwords and Zion. It's just private keys that allow you to and then every message you send is signed. Anybody in the world can host a relay, and then all the transactions are on a open d centralized network that is Bitcoin and Lightning. We're not developing a lot of ore. We are developing some elements of proprietary things to make things faster, but ultimately these are open standards. You can fund your wallet from cash app from strike from any open lightning wallet. We're not building another walled garden. So I think you need those technical patterns to build a truly censorship resistance technology. And that's just my approach to all this stuff because most of these, by the way, most of these other blockchains are still highly centralized, right there, turned off every hour? Okay, well, this is off because they want throughput, they want speed, and I get it. Reliability and speed matters a lot in technical products. But what like asking the question, how is this actually censorship resistance? Is mostly a pledge? Right like Trump is pledging. Okay, I'm not going to censor you, but there isn't actually a technical pattern that allows them, yes or not to do it. You actually own anything? No? Do you have a private key? Noe? Do you have a d I D. No, you're using an email user, name, your phone number, same thing everyone else uses. There isn't per us an identity over space and time. And we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. I do still think, however, that there are you know, it's gonna be a while until we shift to an completely decentralized or we actually the pledges, the the enforcement of cultural guardrails around censorship, where hey, people are these days you're more scared to oppose censor, or at least in recent times, I think we've seen a real shift in the physics of this over the past six months even or even three months um, where there's there's cultural taboos around censorship as opposed to cultural taboos around expressing yourself and then uh, putting yourself at at risk of censorship. Right, And you know, we really shifted heavily in the latter direction over recent years and culminating with the banning. Right, you know, the pendulum seems to be swinging a little bit um. How optimistic are you that during this transition phase too, from centralized to decentralized, that whether or not, let's call it, whether Ellen executes on his purchase of Twitter, that the that now that the cultural pressure seems to be pushing back against censorship and in favor of freedom of speech, that that there is some demonstrable shift here, that that you know that that this recent phase is going to be kind of a blip on the radar as opposed to the new norm. So the constraints are the business models. So one of the things I outlined in my book is that the fundamental cornerstones of censorship isn't just the employees of these companies, it's also the business models of these companies. And everything that monetizes Facebook and Twitter and TikTok is a third party subsidizing the cost of the service to run through attention of individual users. So I think the business models also have to shift to go into this new model. And that's why one of my tenants of the future of social media is peer governance versus platform governance. Is that inside of a peer governed world, it's not just that the governance mechanisms are the individuals that use this system, it's also the monetization vehicle. It's those individuals. Right, We're not using a third party to subsidize the cost for this service to run. And that was that was a weird thing for people to like, Oh wait, Zion is not free. It's not free to join, it's not free to be honest, like, no, we were a business because this can't just live in perpetuity if we don't have some sort of a fundamental business model. We're not a five oh one C three foundation. We want to build a sustainable business model for the future. And that's the interesting thing about building things through money and having all these potential transaction fees inside the network is that will be the eventual end state of monetization is using the Lightning network and the payment rails from micro transactions. Speaking of blips on the radar, there's a project called bit Cloud that seemed to reflect some of what you're you've been discussing in terms of creators everything being built on a monetary layer, where every interaction of a creator had some monetary component. The the um fans were monetarily invested in the creators and vice versa. UM do you you know that seems to have that that that project seems to have dissolved, at least the interest and it dissolved very quickly. Any thoughts on where that went wrong to the extent that they got anything right that that may have some continuity or be relevant to the future of the social you know of social web three UM, because I don't know, that's just that one that that perk that project perks and people's ears up. A number of individuals got on it for a minute or two. They kind of disappeared into the ether. So I was asked this exact question. Um Tomath actually asked me this question directly two days ago, is that what about DI SO right? Why didn't you build this on SO? And I just had a very clear opinion, which was, I don't believe that you need a token to build this type of project. I also didn't understand the reason that you needed a creator token to monetize this system. And I also didn't understand why you needed a block chain to store individual messages. Is of data, I don't. I don't think that because also that doesn't provide persistence. I think that the new pattern is using a d I D using a decentralized web node is an open source pattern that anyone can implement in terms of content and content tagging and thinking like like what people have to think about d I d s are like d N s, right, DNS is a is an I P address. It's like a website WWW. That's the same thing, but for social identity. So the things that we did for websites now we need for applications. We use d I d s for that. So this was an exact question someone asked me, and the answer was, I don't think you needed a token. That wasn't my opinion, I think we could use bitcoin as the monetization mechanism. So I think that where maybe just a small opinion of where I think it went wrong is I don't think people wanted that token. I don't think they wanted to use another thing. People just want bitcoin. They want simplicity in their life, not more. Okay, now I have a wallet with thousands of tokens, how can I manage all that? It's complicated. It's really complicated, right, Like you have all these different things like oh, I have this token, and I have this token, I have this token. I don't think you need it. And I think the blockchain also made it complex because there's a there's a cost, there's a throughput for that data storage, there's there's all these other elements that make it a little bit and and blockchains I think are highly inefficient generally. They're they're not they're not a good way to store data. They're they're good for security, they're not great for speed. And I think social doesn't require security. You don't you don't need like bitcoin, you need security because it's money. It's like you can be holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in one single transaction. You can move billions across the world. So speed is not as important as security. So if you remove the blockchain element, you can actually increase throughput of speed, but you don't need a lot of security. It's a photo, it's a video. Who cares, it's a tweet. It doesn't matter, doesn't Like I think we've we've overcomplicated life in a lot of ways, like everything needs a blockchain, Like, no, it doesn't. So I think those are the things that look, I could be wrong. I'm not a highly technical engineer, and I don't know, but that was my honest opinion to actually an investor probably the company. Yeah, just that it's some interesting parallels or let's call it distinctions, uh, in terms of you know that built really building an inherent monetary or financial relationship between creators and their fans. Thought that that was what I found interesting. Obviously it seem you know, it did not work. Um. I saw one criticism of it that, hey, you guys screwed up by putting the token price. You by by sticking the price and the value of the token on everybody's profile. It just became this little like kind of obnoxious game, you know, a way to try to game your price up. Um so, what what did you see? You saw really rich people buying their own tokens to make themselves feel good. That's what you saw for basically two months, right, They all like we we have mutual friends that did that exact thing because it made them feel good on a website that they're token is worth twenty three dollars. It was a lot of a lot of ego stroking and trying to get attempts to gain the system. So and you can't gain bitcoin, right, like, that's the thing. You can't game this other thing. You can't just like add more funds and then do like look, people probably made a lot of money and it was great, but no, no no endurance there at all. Um So you were at the all in summit? How was that? It was great? Those guys are geniuses, Like what what they've done. I have so much gratitude to them as individuals. It's a it was an honor to go. Was honored to meet the guys. Like, what a cool moment. I thought it was a really cool moment in time because we saw the Elon thing live and listening to him. There was a weird moment at some point where Ellen's talking about kind of this super ap idea using like like building a social layer with money. And I had a friend in the front road texting me like, hey, is Elon talking about Zion And it's like yeah, kind of yeah, that's exactly what we're building. We're building on bitcoin though. Yeah. Well it seems like and I discussed this a little bit with David when I had him on, is that the type of conversation that these guys are having is the type of conversation that everyone now recognizes we should be having. Right kind of matches people to their interests that people are interested in the startup world, the crypto world, where that intersects with international affairs, politics, speech, and how technology affects speech. I mean, it seems like those all of those topics are intersecting, you know, in the public in public interest, and they're very few people that are having that those conversations in a constructive manner because we've discussed with a lot of political divisiveness. You know, everyone wants to everyone. Everybody either is talking within the same channel over here, the same channel over there, um and you know, and always always informed by their biases and audience capture and not wanting to piss off the people that all these all these creators with followings, they know how they got their following, and they know how they could lose their following, and they don't want to have a conversation that risks losing any following whatsoever. But these guys, you know, they're all very successful. They didn't they did not become public figures because a bunch of people follow them on Instagram or Twitter or whatnot, and so they are kind of insulated to have those conversations. And I think what they're doing and trying to kind of really they're trying to amplify a healthier cultural and economic and business conversation seems to bolve culminated at this conference. I'm really glad that they did it. I'm I'm yeah, it was. It was an amazing moment in time. I think it will go down as one of the best kind of high It was all signal like, like that's the way I think their podcast is. It's pure signals, zero noise. Like you listen to that for an hour and you've consumed a much enough things that could that can take and for me, like it's me I'm like the perfect demographic, right founder previous exit, thinking about my own wealth, investing of my own liquidity, and trying to build a business fund. It's like the perfect storm for everything that I want to do. So I'm like honored, Like it was so cool to hang out with them. It's kind of give it my book. It was a cool thing. Like I gave him my book. It was a fake that's awesome. It's way. So you were on a panel. What what panel was this? I wasn't on a panel, just asked. I gave autch. I gave him a copy of my book and we talked for a few minutes. Very cool. Tell us a little bit about the book, So Unapologetic Freedom here it is. Here's a little little copy of the book. So this book, um, you know. JP did the forward of the book, Tony Robbins did the endorsement on the cover for me, Aubrey Marcus did the endorsement on the back, and Mark Moss did endorsement on the back. All investors in Zion, and the whole idea was to just give a true view of what's happening in the world. What is censorship? How did censorship happen? So I talked about the de centralized century versus the centralized century, and then a path forward, a very clear like none of this stuff is really an opinion. It's just a matter of fact. This is how it works, this is how the centralized systems make money. This is a and then what is a potential solution through proof of work? And I described staking how do you prevent spam? I just wrote this article about spam. Actually it's a chapter of the book is how do you prevent spam on centralized social media? And I there's a whole part of section in chapter four that outlines how you defeat spam through proof of work? So all this stuff, I think it's just like a practical, like really quick two hour read of like this is what's happening, and this is a potential solution. Will give us the really quick two minute read on how you do uh prevent spam? Because I know it's something that's been kind of primed to the Elon conversation. That's just fascinating to watch him direct this. He's orchestrating this conversation about his purchase of this massive communication platform in real time on the platform itself, which is fascinating, but it's it's so cool, um, and he's a genius. He's so smart and now he's really doing an incredible things right, Like God, it's like everyone can go find fault, right. I understand why the haters are there, But can't you like, don't people see this guy as like a truly independent, sovereign individual who is is taking on a system that he's found to be oppressive in a lot of other people have found to be a pressient. Like how could you not root for the guy? So so odd to me to see people such a fan? Yeah, like if I like, that guy is a genius, he's fighting a good fight. What elso you see it's like all of a sudden, oh, Elon starts speaking up a little more. All of a sudden, curiously, Jeff Bezos starts speaking up a little bit more. It's really you know, once you break the ice there, uh, it empowers a lot of other individuals. You think, how these richest the second richest man on earth, how is he not does not feel empowered to speak out about these things? And it really takes a person willing to speak out to even empower people that you think would be would be you know, cancel proof otherwise, But um, I would love for you to summarize how you see this technology being able to prevent spam. So we we use a steaking Yeah, so we use a staking protocol and we use the concept of proof of work inside of Zion to prevent spam. Because I realized, like, this company is going to have millions of people using this application, and I don't want to have twenty thousand people in the Philippines reviewing content every day, So how can I build and and And the methodology is through accreditation and not accreditation like a university, but through a lightning payment. So what happens in a community is that I can remember everything is inside of a community. Zion doesn't have an open network. It's all inside of communities. So the creator's community that you join, let's say it's the map Lensky community, you can set a certain amount of steak, which every time anybody inside of your community makes a comment, a certain amount of bitcoin is put into your wallet for a twenty four hour period of custody. And if you, as the admin, delete that person's comment for potentially spam, hate speech, whatever you wanna call it, it's your it's your thing. Too, it's your community, not our community. They lose that steak. So now spam isn't free. It's not a free thing that can exist across the world because it costs money to make a contribution. You have to prove that you're an individual that has a wallet that has and we're not talking about made up tokens. We're talking about you staking a certain amount of bitcoin, a finite asset that only is twenty one million of the one million times a hundred million, those number of setoshi's that will always only be created once half the stake. So now you're establishing proof of work inside of a social network to prevent spam. And that's where I think we're gonna be able to scale without having all this complex like review and a I blah blah blah, because there's accreditation towards the user and what happens after twenty four hours if the common states, you get the money right back as the person that made the comment. So it's not that you're taking money every time a comment happens. It's a prevention vehicle because now you actually there's a cost, there's consequences for being a bad actor, and in the end, state I want Zion to be the safest and most civil place on the web, and right now, it's not because you don't have consequences. You could be a terrible person, tell someone's you know, really really bad things on social media can be said to another individual and there's no consequences. Maybe your account gets deleted, but you run it right back. The worst people are not accredited users. The worst people aren't people with blue checkbox. It's the random people that you don't know that are the worst people on the Internet. We want to eliminate that. Would you necessary there would be negative financial consequences simply to bad behavior exactly, Okay, But there's positive financial consequences for being a good actor. Right So, if you're creating content that's valuable, people can boost that content inside of the system. But the determination of good verse bad is not made by the central authority of the people working at the at the platform peers peer governance versus platform GUD. You decide, it's your community, and then if okay, Matt, if you decide starting to delete other people's contents because you don't like it, that's your prerogative. It's your community. If someone comes into your house and you don't like what they're doing in your house, you get them the funk out of your house. It's your house. It's not my house, it's your house. They are deciding to enter your house. They have made a conscious choice. We're not forcing anyone to join a community. They're making a conscious choice to join that community. So who are we to be the arbiters of truth? Right? We have Remember we have two hundred years and like this goes back to the free speech conversation. I think David talks about this a lot. We have two hundred years of Supreme Court law to know what is free speech and what is not. And and my opinion isn't it doesn't matter like facts don't care about your feelings. Right, that's the proxy of what we're trying to do. We are just going to follow the law. I'm not saying anyone can do anything. We're gonna follow the law. And I'll ask yeah, and the law that as David point that he always comes back to, it's about systems that have been tested, right, and to the extents you keep on, you iterate based on the testing. And that's what the the legal system has been in terms of interpreting the first Amendment and freedom of speech. And that's why it's so strange that people want to disregard that as essentially disregard that as a guiding principle to simply put decisions in the hands of people who mid level people don't understand how these social media companies work. They're massive bureaucratic organizations and a lot of people sitting around their executives making two hundred dollars a year. Who's thirty two years old. They graduated from you know, an upper tier college, uh sometime in the last decade, and these they're just trying not to get fired, and they're making certain decisions based on who gets to speak and who doesn't get to speak, based on their own internal professional concerns. It's craziness. Yeah. And I think this, I mean, if we go ten layers above this, this is the challenges of the Fiat system. The challenges of the Fiat system has allowed companies to be able to bring in individuals into their and pay them these exorbitant amounts of money for the services that they provide. And it's the fundamental broken nature of the FIAT system and it allows and this is like I think safe Adine did a podcast with Lex Freedman that really dives in deep into this this topic. One of the best four hours I spent two weeks ago listen to this thing chat or recent chat. I think it was last week or the weeks after. Lex is great but safe Adina. I mean, one of the incredible, most incredible economists in the world wrote the Bitcoin standard, the FIAT standard. I think really understanding the economics around how these systems work. And I think some of these centralized companies also have people that are um not really understanding Austrian economics. And I'm I'm in Austrian. I don't I don't. I don't believe in the Keynesian methodology. I think some of these people that work at these companies are so focused on Keynesian economic methodology that they don't understand where the money comes from or why it comes from. They believe in inflation, it's a good thing, blah blah blah, or maybe they just it feels like they came of age during a time when it was second nature, when it was just accepted as fact. Right where okay, um, we had to print a bunch of money to keep the to counter the deflationary demand cycle in two thousand eight during the Great Great Recession, and Okay, that didn't lead to Zimbabwe like inflation like some people claimed. So it means that Keynesian Kaenzianism works, right, They overlearned the lessons of that. Essentially, the the financial system coming back from two thousand eight and not exploding just all over the place into people carrying, you know, around wheelbarrows of money because of inflation, because that didn't happen. They they disregarded the risks of Kinsianism. It feels like, I don't know that. And I also think a lot of these people are about to get punched in the face. And and you know, my you know, I grew up in an immigrant household. I grew up with not a lot of money. So I've always built been built in this kind of way. I like, I like, like like this kind of mentality. But I also graduated in two thousand eleven in university, so I've also not seen the worst. But I've always been feeling like the worst is yet to come. And once it happens, then we're like, Okay, now we lived through it. Now we can change our perspective of how things. But things have been way too good for people in a lot of ways. So what's the outlook. You listen, everybody's trying to read the tea leaves, I mean sacks earlier days. Like clear, we're about to enter some some hourly times. And I'm actually I'm excited about it because I thrive in chaos. Like my my m O is that if shit is fucked up, I'm gonna figure it out. And I'm like, I think building a company in this stage at this time, I'm so excited about because I know the week are going to get destroyed and I know that. I'm like, I'm relentless. I would make it through. Look, two years ago, I survived a brain tumor and I survived brain surgery. Like this ship is nothing like we're about to We're about to go through a time where the wheat and the chaff, they're gonna get separated. And this is where the real winners will thrive and these weak founders and we we we companies are just gonna be destroyed. And I'm I'm excited for it because it resilient, No doubt, there is showing who's resilient, who's got durability? And you know, as you said, separating the wheat from the chaff and just hopefully the negative externalities of so much capital getting blown up, you know, won't drag the economy down too much. Um, it seems like the stock market keeps on taking hit after hit. We're wondering, is gas gonna be seven dollars a fucking gallon in California forever? Starting to fund? Um? Okay, well, what's gonna put what's gonna put downward pressure on this? I don't know, it's it's hard to even envision it. If if what's happening so far doesn't reduce the press what it is, I hope they just continue to take money out of the system. I think they're promising a hundred nine billion. The stock market is crashing, great news, let's get it all back and just like like let's normalize stuff, Like, let's get back to normal. Like these companies are clearly overvalue. Everyone says they're overvalued. It makes tons of sense, like like it doesn't make sense to me that houses in Austin are more expensive than some in Los Angeles, Like it still doesn't make sense to me that some of these places are worth what their worth. So we got to like bring things down to some normal values and say, okay, now let's let's let's like reset this a little bit, because the last three years has been crazy and look at look at like the money printer went so fast that everyone thought they were so rich all of a sudden. Now it's like maybe not, maybe not? What is thinking before? So what is your pur view on the the notion up? You know, people are trying to test out the thesis that bitcoin is the true inflation area hedge that because of its stayed properties, because it is because of its scarcity um, the more dollars they print, just a to certain extent, automatically it serves the interests of the price of bitcoin because some of those dollars are going to go into you know, and a fungible essentially fungible but unchangeable asset like bitcoin. Um. Perhaps may has that thesis been blown up and just that this was simply a repricing and the fact that there are more dollars and more current you know, just general currencies floating around, just we're waiting for the inevitability of some of those floating to bitcoin and raising the price or something else going on here. I think that it's very clear that there is not a single non correlated asset at all, because all assets require liquidity, and particular really a risk asset like bitcoin, and no one should doubt that bitcoin is not a Bitcoin is a risk asset um inside of inside of the system. And until the established utilities that stuff of the stuff that we're talking about become mainstream and understood by thousands of individuals around the world, millions of individuals around the world, the price will continue to be kind of at at a nominal rate. Do I believe today it is the inherent hedge agus inflation. I don't know, because I don't know what's gonna but I think over a long time horizon it absolutely could be. But the market needs liquidity, and when you suck liquidity out of the system, the price will go down. That's just how it works. That's what's happened with everything. Everyone's scared, so they're selling their stuff and putting it in cash. Right, that's the that's the current state of probably what's happening in the world. And people like, oh, I don't know this is worth that much, Let me cash, let me cash, let me guy, I did that, So I think that's the that's the thing we have to think about over a long enough time horizon. Yes, yes, I think it does. Is going to be an interesting one man. People gonna have to kind of find their bearings, get their feet on the ground and and you know, and breathe deeply for a minute or two. Just this month, amount of uncertainty in the in the market and a lot of big players kind of retrenching their stress, their kind of loose money strategies over the last couple of years, gonna be some pain here. I think it's gonna be great. The eternal optim is justin rose body. Um So, those who want to participate in Zion, those want to get involved, how do they do so? So, um, we'd love for you to join our wait list. Um so it was Zion was closed until we launched V two. So you go to Zion dot f y I you can put in your email address and eventually, um, we're gonna be releasing the V two very soon, So please join that email list. If you want to get my book, we've we've made it the lowest price possible on Amazon so they don't kick us off, which is ten bucks if you want to actually get the hard copy. If you want the audio book. I think it's six dollars is the audio book? Literally, it's like I can't make it lower. They get mad, like we want to put it on our store. Uh. So book is Unapologetic Freedom. If you google Unapologetic Freedom or go to Unapologetic Freedom book dot com, you get to find everything there that would be the biggest support you can. I'm on all the social media is just my full name, and you can find me there sometimes posting and mostly retweeting some smart people like you know, it's quite the honor and for the the true optimists shining some a little bit of a sunlight on the crypto winter that we're experiencing right now, building something fascinating and more so, you know, And and this is what I what really continues to draw me to the crypto world is that there's people who are truly operating from first principles in what they build, in terms of freedom, in terms of self ownership and self sovereignty. And you know, these are the types of principles that that should be guiding what we build and in commerce, uh and communication tools, and Justin's doing just that. So it has been a pleasure to chat with you this morning. Um, everybody, you know where to find justin now and look forward to what what Zion has to hold for everybody. Thanks Putty, it's great, awesome guys, thanks so much. This is the Prevailing Narrative. I am at Bolinski once again. You can listen and subscribe to the Prevailing Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Bolinsky m A T T B I L I N s k Y. The Prevailian Narrative is a Cavalry Audio production and association with I Heart Radio, produced by Brandon Morrigan, Executive produced by Danna Bernetti and Kegan Rosenberger for Calvary Audio. I'm at Bolinsky