Shownotes
Monero is blockchain and token dedicated to privacy. While I would not recommend it as an investment, it may have utility as a way to transact with other people while providing privacy in a digital universe. In this episode I provide a brief overview of Monero, where it might fit into your digital assets and even cover a bit of how to mine for this privacy focused coin.
News and Links
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/06/29/coinbase-is-reportedly-selling-geo-location-data-to-ice
https://decrypt.co/104097/bitcoin-miner-compass-denies-allegations-of-unpaid-bills-to-dynamics
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I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
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Music Credits
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Transcripts
Hey, everyone.
Speaker:Welcome to the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, Macintosh.
Speaker:So today, we're going to be giving you a brief overview of a coin that I've never talked
Speaker:about that I recall called Monero.
Speaker:So let's jump right on in.
Speaker:So why are we talking about a new coin?
Speaker:Probably given the last few weeks when I have made it very clear that I'm not interested
Speaker:in a lot of these tokens that are out there.
Speaker:What I said stands, but I will say that Monero is a little different.
Speaker:Monero is one of the coins that is very much created for privacy.
Speaker:And I think it's worth looking at simply from that aspect, not even honestly as an investment,
Speaker:but just from the overview of it being a privacy coin.
Speaker:Now, let me go ahead and say this upfront.
Speaker:Can Bitcoin be private?
Speaker:Not truly.
Speaker:There are ways to make Bitcoin more secure.
Speaker:Your best bet for Bitcoin, honestly, is to mine Bitcoin yourself at home, preferably,
Speaker:and store that in a nondescript wallet, not on a centralized exchange.
Speaker:That provides a fair amount of privacy, however, there's a lot of things about the Bitcoin
Speaker:protocol that don't really lend itself to privacy.
Speaker:And Monero was actually built from the ground up with privacy in mind.
Speaker:That's its sole purpose.
Speaker:So I told you guys last episode, I believe, that I was going to be talking about the previous
Speaker:French colonial nations in Africa soon.
Speaker:And I will be.
Speaker:I'm going to actually be out of town for a few days, and I think I'm going to make a
Speaker:two-part episode that's going to play during that time.
Speaker:So be looking for that the week of July the 11th.
Speaker:But in the meantime, my research for that is actually one of the reasons that got me
Speaker:looking at Monero.
Speaker:I think here in the United States, we typically don't give a lot of thought to privacy, and
Speaker:maybe we should, but the average person truly doesn't.
Speaker:And so it's not really part of the typical crypto discussion.
Speaker:The reality is, there's a lot of evidence that would, there's a lot of reasons for people
Speaker:to even be concerned with privacy here in the United States.
Speaker:Now, moving to a country like Toga that I was discussing briefly last week, where I
Speaker:heard the interview of the woman who was fighting for rights there, and in that environment,
Speaker:privacy is a huge concern.
Speaker:Now, to my knowledge, she chooses to only work in Bitcoin, and that's fine.
Speaker:I believe she certainly understands the risk, but I want to approach this as maybe Bitcoin
Speaker:as an investment, and maybe Monero as something that I would be using for, maybe, potentially
Speaker:for transactions that I don't want tracked.
Speaker:Because by default, just out of the basic wallet, from what I'm understanding, transactions
Speaker:are extremely difficult to trace, which is excellent, in my opinion.
Speaker:See, I think, just to frame this a little bit, in case you haven't figured it out, I'm
Speaker:not 20 years old.
Speaker:We're not going to discuss my age, but I'm not 20.
Speaker:I think I've probably given away enough information to give you some idea of how old I am, but
Speaker:the reality is that I think this generation that's the 20 to 30-year-olds, they're losing
Speaker:sight of the fact that cash, paper dollars, despite the fact that they're not backed
Speaker:by anything of value, leaving that discussion aside, they do provide an extreme amount of
Speaker:privacy.
Speaker:And maybe on some episode, we'll go into why that would even be necessary for the average
Speaker:person.
Speaker:I'm not a drug dealer.
Speaker:I don't do things illegally, and yet I still, frankly, don't want the government to have
Speaker:their nose all up in my business.
Speaker:And dealing in cash is one way of managing that.
Speaker:When you involve a standard credit card in that process, then it is instantly traceable.
Speaker:So, we've moved to a system that is largely digital, either credit cards or cash app or
Speaker:strike or these type of things, but what we don't take into account is the digital trail
Speaker:that they leave.
Speaker:And this is actually what Monero was created for.
Speaker:So let's talk about some of the basic aspects of Monero.
Speaker:Now, first of all, Monero, I think you could say that Monero was very much modeled after
Speaker:Bitcoin, at least in the early days, but with very much of a security view.
Speaker:Now, they have done a number of things in order to improve that security over the years.
Speaker:They started in 2014.
Speaker:It is open source, of course.
Speaker:The token, just in case you were wondering, is XMR.
Speaker:It is mined by proof of work.
Speaker:Now here's one of the differences.
Speaker:There's not, from what I can see, a fixed limit.
Speaker:Now they've done something interesting.
Speaker:They have already dealt with, at least in their mind, one of the issues that Bitcoin
Speaker:will have to face in roughly 100 years, a ways off, granted, but still.
Speaker:What do you do when you reach the end of the mining?
Speaker:Who maintains the security of that network?
Speaker:Now the Bitcoin's argument is it will be basically the transactions that move over the network.
Speaker:The miners will have some part in that, and they will continue to provide that security.
Speaker:Now maybe that's a little hand-wavy, but that's kind of where they're at.
Speaker:Monero on the other hand, they've already actually virtually mined all of the coins
Speaker:that they're going to mine.
Speaker:It's $18 million and something.
Speaker:But even so, they continue to mine blocks.
Speaker:When you mine a block of Monero, it's only, I think it's 0.6 XMR, so it's a very minimal
Speaker:amount, but that will stay steady.
Speaker:The idea is that 0.6 Monero per block will replace things like lost Monero.
Speaker:There may be some inflation of tokens, but it will not be dramatic, I think is the general
Speaker:idea.
Speaker:And, of course, the servers mining that will provide the security and the transactions
Speaker:flowing across that network.
Speaker:What's another difference?
Speaker:This one I thought was a very interesting choice.
Speaker:They have specifically chosen not to, I guess, basically ratchet up the difficulty level of mining.
Speaker:You can mine with a standard high-end CPU, not GPU, CPU.
Speaker:So these thousand dollar GPUs that you buy to mine Ethereum, you don't have to do that
Speaker:with Monero.
Speaker:If you have a high-quality, AMD seems to make a lot of the ones that they use, Threadripper
Speaker:CPU with a large number of CPUs on it, these can range in price from $400 to several thousand
Speaker:dollars from what I'm seeing for the CPU.
Speaker:It's certainly quite reasonable compared to a GPU mining rig or an ASIC mining rig like
Speaker:you use for Bitcoin, which currently costs $4,000 plus for a high-end ASIC rig.
Speaker:I actually like that, to be honest.
Speaker:To me, this is a benefit.
Speaker:We'll see long-term if they made the right choice, but I guess they could always change
Speaker:that down the road if they need to.
Speaker:One thing that Monero is not afraid of doing, unlike Bitcoin, here's another difference.
Speaker:They will hard fork to add new features.
Speaker:They hard fork, meaning they create two branches, because you basically have differences in
Speaker:the protocol that that's the only way you can manage that.
Speaker:Bitcoin is very, very averse to that.
Speaker:Monero does it, from what I can tell, fairly recently.
Speaker:Now, what does this mean?
Speaker:In a nutshell, what this means is that if you have privacy concerns, you could run on
Speaker:a powerful desktop, granted, but a reasonable desktop for $1,000 or so.
Speaker:You could build a mining rig and run that in your home.
Speaker:The rig might only use 150, 200 watts, because you're not running a super powerful GPU.
Speaker:You're certainly not running an ASIC, and you can mine Monero.
Speaker:Now, will you get a lot of Monero?
Speaker:No, but you will get Monero, and over time, you can use that to build up what amounts
Speaker:to non-KYC, so know your customers, what that means, non-identifiable Monero.
Speaker:You're not buying it off of an exchange.
Speaker:It's basically untraceable.
Speaker:Now, like I said, we'll save the discussion about why that's really necessary.
Speaker:I think that deserves its own podcast, maybe even a rather lengthy one.
Speaker:But it's not just because people who want to do things illegally.
Speaker:There's always going to be people who want to do bad things.
Speaker:That's just the reality of life.
Speaker:But there's other reasons.
Speaker:Maybe this is somebody who lives in a country like Togo or one of these other places where
Speaker:the government overreach is so extreme that that's really necessary.
Speaker:Or maybe it's just because you just kind of don't want the government in your business.
Speaker:That's kind of where I fall, to be honest.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:What are some other things?
Speaker:When I had the price of Monero, I looked at it... All right.
Speaker:So let me go back out.
Speaker:Let me go to the weekly chart here.
Speaker:So currently, Monero is sitting a little above $100, $112.
Speaker:This is not, again, I think I even said this up front.
Speaker:To me, Monero is not an investment.
Speaker:It's a way to facilitate private transactions.
Speaker:So I'm not really looking at it for that.
Speaker:But back at the high, which actually for Monero was in June of 2021, interesting May of 2021.
Speaker:So that was last year.
Speaker:It did not reach a high in December or November along with the rest of the market.
Speaker:But it was the middle of May and it was a high of around $516.
Speaker:So more than four times higher than what it is right now.
Speaker:So one thing you could do, I suppose, you could mine Monero, collect it up, sell it
Speaker:at the high.
Speaker:I don't know what you do with that.
Speaker:And I don't know where you sell it.
Speaker:And I'm not going to give you financial advice about that.
Speaker:So that would be something you would have to deal with, of course.
Speaker:But again, this to me is not an investment.
Speaker:This is something that I would do just strictly to have privacy in my transactions, regardless.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:Like I said, it's just not really... It's not an investment.
Speaker:And I don't want to look at it as that.
Speaker:I have no reason to believe that Monero is going to go away.
Speaker:They're not out there trying to make a profit.
Speaker:I will say, because of its privacy nature, it's gotten a lot of governmental pressure.
Speaker:In fact, there was one story that I came across... Can't find it now.
Speaker:I thought it was the CIA.
Speaker:One of the governmental agencies... Oh, actually here it is.
Speaker:Actually the Internal Revenue Service.
Speaker:Oh, this is too funny.
Speaker:In September of 2020, the United States Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division
Speaker:posted a $625,000 bounty for contractors who could develop tools to help trace Monero.
Speaker:Other privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies, the Bitcoin Lightning Network, or other layer
Speaker:two protocols.
Speaker:I'm not aware of any progress on that, at least in regards to Monero.
Speaker:Now, if they did make progress, would they tell us about it?
Speaker:Probably not.
Speaker:So with this type of stuff, it's always a cat and mouse game, but I would tell you that
Speaker:if you look deeply into Monero, they do everything they can to make it private.
Speaker:They clean up your IP address, for example.
Speaker:One way of tracing somebody, just as an example.
Speaker:So your IP address is obscured.
Speaker:They do something that amounts to what they do in Bitcoin terms called a coin join, where
Speaker:transactions are mixed up so that you can't trace based on, oh, I see this wallet sending
Speaker:that wallet $100,000, and then that wallet is sending this other wallet, and you can
Speaker:build up this big network of transactions even though you don't know who owns those
Speaker:wallets and then deduce things from that.
Speaker:The coin join, the washing, so to speak, of these transactions is a way of covering that
Speaker:up.
Speaker:And there's nothing illegal about any of this that I'm aware of.
Speaker:We're not required to log our transactions.
Speaker:The requirement of all of this always falls on the centralized exchanges, which brings
Speaker:us to the news.
Speaker:So I'm actually going to go ahead and move on.
Speaker:We will probably look at Monero a few more times.
Speaker:I may talk about some mining stuff with it down the road, but that just to give you a
Speaker:brief overview, a brief idea, I do want to jump into the news though, and we'll just
Speaker:start with Coinbase, because I'm a Coinbase customer, and this kind of annoys me, and I
Speaker:don't even understand it.
Speaker:Now I will say this at this point.
Speaker:It has not been proven to my knowledge, but apparently, and I'll put a link in the show
Speaker:notes to this, but apparently Coinbase has a three-year contract with US Department of
Speaker:Homeland Security and ICE, the Immigrant, what does that stand for, Immigrations and
Speaker:Customs Enforcement Agency, that Coinbase will provide data about crypto users, including
Speaker:quote, historical geo tracking data, close quote, and transaction history.
Speaker:Now, I don't know why it's Department of Homeland Security's business about what's
Speaker:going on on Coinbase, but I'm not really happy about this.
Speaker:Now this article says, a representative for Coinbase denied that the information provided
Speaker:by the analytics software is the exchange's customer data.
Speaker:Now notice, he did not deny, he or she, they did not deny that Coinbase's tool was being
Speaker:used.
Speaker:They denied that it was the exchange's customer data.
Speaker:So first of all, that to me sounds like this is legitimate, and whether it's Coinbase's
Speaker:information that's being sold or just the general data that's floating around on the
Speaker:blockchain, so to speak, is irrelevant.
Speaker:Now I'm sure the Department of Homeland Security and ICE would say, but we're using this for
Speaker:good.
Speaker:We're using this to track down blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever evil
Speaker:person it is that they're trying to catch.
Speaker:But when you drag a net like this, you catch a lot of people.
Speaker:You catch a lot of fish, to continue that analogy, that you're not trying to catch.
Speaker:So this kind of junk, oh, to continue, this person said, all Coinbase Tracer features
Speaker:uses data that is fully sourced from online publicly available data, i.e. the blockchain,
Speaker:and do not include any personally identifiable information for anyone or any proprietary
Speaker:Coinbase user data.
Speaker:So then, what's the point?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It's actually a small contract, $1.37 million.
Speaker:They should have at least shooken down the government for a lot more than that.
Speaker:Come on, Coinbase, laying off people.
Speaker:No, seriously.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:This stuff's garbage to me, and this is the kind of stuff that makes me think that privacy
Speaker:needs to be more of a concern.
Speaker:Now, I've touched on it a number of times in this podcast, but it may move up my list
Speaker:of important things, all right?
Speaker:Because at some point, people have to say, enough is enough, and do everything at least
Speaker:that's legal to protect themselves.
Speaker:Now, I'm not going to tell you to do something illegal, but to my knowledge, any of this
Speaker:that I'm talking about, using Monero, anything like that, that is not illegal.
Speaker:It's not illegal for you to run your own Bitcoin mining node.
Speaker:It's not.
Speaker:It's just expensive to start up, although I would mention mining rigs are going down
Speaker:in cost.
Speaker:Hey, that's one thing about when the price of Bitcoin goes down.
Speaker:So does the cost of the mining rigs.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So it's something to think about.
Speaker:I know we typically just talk about investments here and whatever, but there is more to this
Speaker:than investments, at least for some people.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Moving on in the news.
Speaker:Funny, I mentioned mining rigs.
Speaker:So I don't know how legitimate this is.
Speaker:I know some of this did happen.
Speaker:Three days ago, supposedly, Compass Mining lost a main facility for not paying the electrical
Speaker:power bill that was outstanding to the building owner, something like $1.2 million worth.
Speaker:Now, the facility is owned by a company called Dynamics Mining.
Speaker:Compass Mining disputes that it's about a power bill.
Speaker:However, clearly, they've lost access to that facility and the servers that are in it.
Speaker:So this is a little concerning.
Speaker:Now, they have a number of facilities across the United States and probably elsewhere,
Speaker:but I don't know exactly what's going on here.
Speaker:But this is the kind of things that, to me, make large companies, really, anybody who
Speaker:anybody else, I would much prefer to have my mining rig in my house.
Speaker:It's just a problem, especially if you have more than a couple.
Speaker:You're running up your electrical bill, it's not necessarily in the cleanest environment,
Speaker:which means it won't run as long, it won't have as long a lifespan, and it's noisy and
Speaker:so on and so forth.
Speaker:And you can tell me, yeah, but you could do this, this, and this to make it clean, to
Speaker:reduce the noise, so on and so forth.
Speaker:To me, it's just easier to, I used to work in data centers, which that's what these are.
Speaker:I'm very aware of how they're set up and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:That's the kind of facilities that they're designed for, this kind of thing.
Speaker:But this kind of stuff, like what's going on right now with Compass Mining, makes me
Speaker:extremely nervous.
Speaker:Now, a lot of these Bitcoin mining companies are experiencing difficulties right now because
Speaker:of the drop in price of Bitcoin.
Speaker:So it just remains to be seen what's going on here.
Speaker:If I find out anything more, I'll let y'all know.
Speaker:But all that happened, and then something else happened.
Speaker:Good times, good times.
Speaker:So that was roughly three days ago.
Speaker:Two days ago, the CEO and the CFO of Compass Mining resigned amid, quote, setbacks and
Speaker:disappointments, close quote.
Speaker:The CEO, I know, well, I should say, the CEO, Witt Gibbs, was at least one of the people
Speaker:who helped start Compass Mining.
Speaker:So I don't know what's going on there, but again, I don't have any mining rigs there.
Speaker:I was actually thinking about getting some rigs there.
Speaker:They seem to have a really good setup.
Speaker:I don't know what's going on.
Speaker:Clearly, there's turmoil.
Speaker:So I may let that settle.
Speaker:I may put some rigs somewhere else if I choose to make that move in the next few weeks or
Speaker:so.
Speaker:We will just have to see.
Speaker:They've had other people take over as interim presidents and co-presidents and CEOs while
Speaker:they search for their replacement, but we will see.
Speaker:I'll read this very briefly.
Speaker:It says Compass Mining was created to make mining easy and accessible.
Speaker:This is a statement from Compass Mining.
Speaker:The company recognizes that there have been multiple setbacks and disappointments that
Speaker:have detracted from that objective.
Speaker:Through this restructuring, the company is wholly focused on regaining the goodwill of
Speaker:the company's stakeholders and the community, as well as delivering on the company's mission
Speaker:of providing best-in-class service for miners of all sizes.
Speaker:I'm not an investor in Compass Mining.
Speaker:I don't care one bit about their stock price and about their profitability.
Speaker:But what I do care is whether they're going to be there next week with my expensive mining
Speaker:rigs, with my expensive mining rigs.
Speaker:So it is a bit concerning.
Speaker:I'm not sure that Compass will be the last of these either, but we will see.
Speaker:I do wish them the best.
Speaker:I do hope that they make it through this tough times, but we'll just see.
Speaker:We will just have to see.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Now I do have some more news.
Speaker:I'm so tired of talking about this stuff.
Speaker:3AC, the venture capital firm, investment firm, hedge fund, the crypto hedge fund.
Speaker:That's the proper words.
Speaker:The crypto hedge fund basically has been ordered to liquidate.
Speaker:So they are not making it.
Speaker:Now we will see the chain reaction that that causes, I believe that we know at this point,
Speaker:that Celsius had investments with them.
Speaker:And one of the things that came out this week, and I'll try and make links to all this in
Speaker:the show notes, is that FTX had basically made some overture to Celsius to bail them
Speaker:out.
Speaker:I think I even brought this up a few weeks ago.
Speaker:And they've actually now backed away from that and said, nope, we're not doing that.
Speaker:Because apparently, there's almost $2 billion in Celsius assets that are virtually unaccounted
Speaker:for.
Speaker:So really sloppy bookkeeping, not a good situation.
Speaker:So Celsius, to me, is almost a matter of time until they default and get liquidated, unfortunately.
Speaker:Now they actually released something recently saying, hey, we're restructuring, we're trying
Speaker:to put this all back together.
Speaker:I don't buy it at this point.
Speaker:I still think what they've got going on is they're working with the lawyers, the bankruptcy
Speaker:lawyers essentially, to figure out how they can extract the most value out of it, which
Speaker:is pathetic, but it's true, most likely.
Speaker:And so that saga continues.
Speaker:We need to talk about the price for a minute.
Speaker:We continue the price of the market, the Bitcoin price, and the market in general.
Speaker:The last episode, I think we were somewhere around $21,000.
Speaker:I'm sorry.
Speaker:This stuff comes and goes.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Frankly, I'm having trouble keeping up with it anymore over a few days.
Speaker:But we have been going down, okay?
Speaker:June just closed a few hours before I recorded this.
Speaker:And it was a huge amount down for the month in terms of percentages, like 30% or something.
Speaker:Tonight, right before market closing, 8 o'clock Eastern, we kind of took a big bounce, actually
Speaker:went up.
Speaker:Even after, so the very first part of the new day, so to speak, after 8 p.m. Eastern,
Speaker:we all went all the way up to about 20,845, at least according to this chart.
Speaker:But it's already started going back down.
Speaker:We're at 19,400 right now.
Speaker:We were down as low as 18,600, roughly, 18,600.
Speaker:So it does look like we're going to continue to go down.
Speaker:We've been going down, like I said, took a brief bounce, a few hours, maybe 8 hours total.
Speaker:And now for the last few hours, it's been continuing to go down.
Speaker:It's not looking good.
Speaker:We've discussed this.
Speaker:I've almost thought about calling this episode just steady boys because that's what we need
Speaker:to be doing.
Speaker:You need to just be patient.
Speaker:You need to continue to do the things that we've talked about, DCA.
Speaker:If you've got some capital on the side, two episodes ago, three episodes ago, I discussed
Speaker:how you could move that onto an exchange and prepare to buy what may be a very brief debt.
Speaker:We may go down to 17.5, for example.
Speaker:We may go down to 14.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I gave out all the levels in that episode.
Speaker:Same thing for Ethereum.
Speaker:We may ratchet down.
Speaker:We could potentially, I think with Ethereum, see down to $350, which just would be incredible.
Speaker:And have it ready.
Speaker:You can have an order so that if it hits that level that you buy.
Speaker:But beyond that, just continue to DCA.
Speaker:Just continue to do your thing.
Speaker:The price will come back.
Speaker:There's a lot of reasons for this.
Speaker:A lot of this has to do with the market, and the market is just in terrible shape right
Speaker:now.
Speaker:And it's not showing any signs, in my opinion, of changing.
Speaker:I think the rest of this year is going to be rough, maybe, potentially.
Speaker:So we're just now starting the third quarter of the year.
Speaker:Potentially maybe the fourth quarter gets better.
Speaker:I don't think the third quarter is going to be any better, honestly.
Speaker:We will see.
Speaker:I may be pleasantly surprised.
Speaker:I frankly, at this point, hope it goes lower.
Speaker:I want to flush all this leverage out.
Speaker:This is just part of the process.
Speaker:Oh, and one interesting thing I saw right before I started recording, Naib Bukele, who's
Speaker:the president of El Salvador, which, love him or hate him, he's an interesting fellow.
Speaker:And of course, they made Bitcoin legal tender last year.
Speaker:They've been buying Bitcoin, so on and so forth, and the IMF and a lot of these extra
Speaker:government, what I would call extra-governmental organizations, are really not happy with what
Speaker:they're doing.
Speaker:So what did they do?
Speaker:He tweeted earlier tonight, we bought 80 Bitcoin at an average price of $19,000.
Speaker:We bought the dip, right?
Speaker:Because as I said, it got down to like $18.6 or so earlier tonight.
Speaker:And so there you go.
Speaker:El Salvador undeniably has issues.
Speaker:There's a lot of gang violence going on right now.
Speaker:In fact, I just saw where three police officers apparently were gunned down.
Speaker:They were just out on patrol.
Speaker:They were gunned down by one of the gangs.
Speaker:And he has responded to that, not that particular situation, but the gang violence situation
Speaker:in general.
Speaker:Some of the people in the world, media and whatever, don't really like how he's handling
Speaker:that.
Speaker:I don't live in El Salvador, and I don't know, maybe.
Speaker:I do not know.
Speaker:I truly don't.
Speaker:But I will say this, in regards to Bitcoin, Naib Bukele is either going to be the greatest
Speaker:of all time, or he's going to be the laughing stock, right?
Speaker:I hope that they make it, and I hope that they do well because of it.
Speaker:That does remain to be seen.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Just a little extra.
Speaker:You can always follow him on Twitter.
Speaker:You can look him up.
Speaker:It's not hard to find.
Speaker:I don't know how to spell his name.
Speaker:Just President of El Salvador.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, that's about it for tonight.
Speaker:I hope this was helpful.
Speaker:As with my usual podcast, probably not really what you were expecting.
Speaker:The only thing I know is that things change.
Speaker:Maybe the privacy thing isn't a big deal to you.
Speaker:If not, don't worry about it.
Speaker:Just keep buying your Bitcoin on your centralized exchange, and don't worry about it.
Speaker:I'm not honestly super worried about it.
Speaker:It is something that I think about.
Speaker:I've gotten on here before and talked about even just recently.
Speaker:I sent some money from one bank to another bank recently involving a real estate transaction,
Speaker:and it took what I would call an act of Congress.
Speaker:I had to fill out this multi-form thing.
Speaker:There was nothing illegal with what I was doing, but because of the governmental rules
Speaker:that are in place about banks specifically.
Speaker:Now, I could take cash money and go drive across the country and hand it to that person,
Speaker:but of course that's not convenient.
Speaker:That's why we bow down to this pressure.
Speaker:I don't know how else to put it.
Speaker:We submit to say, well, this is what it's for, and this is why we're doing it.
Speaker:And yes, sir, and no, sir, and please take my money, sir.
Speaker:And that's really frustrating to me, to be honest.
Speaker:I'm not worried about my privacy safety.
Speaker:I'm not doing anything illegal, but that doesn't mean that it's not important.
Speaker:So that's why I had this discussion.
Speaker:We may talk about it some more.
Speaker:For me, I'll just be honest, if I get involved, it will be by hooking up a miner.
Speaker:I'm not going to go buy it on an exchange because frankly that defeats the purpose.
Speaker:So I will mine it.
Speaker:This might be an opportunity to not create money out of thin air.
Speaker:It requires electricity and work, but I might choose to mine this.
Speaker:I'm still thinking about that.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Hey, good news.
Speaker:I did have some people supporting the podcast this week.
Speaker:It looks like we had a couple of people streaming.
Speaker:I didn't have any booths this week, but I actually got more because people were streaming it.
Speaker:So that was awesome.
Speaker:I really appreciate that.
Speaker:I have no idea who, but if you're listening, thank you.
Speaker:If you're one of those people, just let me tell you that I do appreciate that.
Speaker:You are truly providing value for what I hope is value that I'm putting out here.
Speaker:I do want to mention one final thing before we jump into the ending.
Speaker:I've been working with Fountain, the Fountain app, quite a bit this week.
Speaker:It is basically as I described it, people, podcasts can choose to participate and basically
Speaker:give them some sats that are distributed to listeners as a way to kickstart that system.
Speaker:I get that.
Speaker:I'm not going to participate in that, at least at this time, but I would encourage you to
Speaker:go over and try it out because you literally can get paid to listen to a podcast.
Speaker:And honestly, I've listened to a few different podcasts that I'd never listened to before,
Speaker:and I've started following them, which is, I listen to too many podcasts already.
Speaker:Even if somebody doesn't, I'm not certain of the mechanism on this.
Speaker:It's not completely clear, but even if somebody doesn't provide that money, I believe Fountain
Speaker:is going in there and saying, well, for a certain amount of time, you could listen to
Speaker:the Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency podcast and you would actually get paid to
Speaker:listen to it.
Speaker:Now, it's not every time, and there's a certain amount you can do it per day.
Speaker:I don't know all the details, but I do know, I've stacked 5,000 sats over the last few
Speaker:days just listening to different podcasts and streaming back some of them to them, certainly.
Speaker:So hey, it'll give you a chance to kind of check all this out.
Speaker:I know I talk about it all the time.
Speaker:I have a suspicion, in fact, from looking at the statistics, most of you don't actually
Speaker:listen on a Podcast 2.0 app, and you're missing out.
Speaker:It truly is a better experience.
Speaker:Now, sometimes these apps are a little buggy, but they do so much more, right?
Speaker:We've got chapters, we've got transcripts, we've got streaming of sats, you've got the
Speaker:ability to boost a podcast if you like what you're seeing, and more.
Speaker:So I would encourage you, in fact, to go to the newpodcastapps.com website and check out
Speaker:the list there.
Speaker:Fountain is a fine app.
Speaker:Oh, let's see.
Speaker:Let me bring up the list.
Speaker:I used several of them.
Speaker:I guess I could look on my phone, but I'll bring up the website real quick.
Speaker:Podverse is pretty good.
Speaker:I've used CurioCaster quite a bit.
Speaker:Fountain, Cast-O-Matic, Breeze is on here.
Speaker:This is actually a new one, Zion.
Speaker:I'm not familiar with that.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:There's a few more on there as well.
Speaker:Those are kind of some of the bigger ones.
Speaker:I would encourage you to go check those out.
Speaker:Try a few of them.
Speaker:See what you think.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let's wrap this up because it's been almost an hour.
Speaker:Of course, Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency Podcast supports Podcasting 2.0, just like
Speaker:we were talking about.
Speaker:It's a value-for-value podcast with no sponsors, no advertising.
Speaker:You can support this podcast in three ways by time, talent, and treasure.
Speaker:If you want to support the podcast and have some time or talent, I could use some help
Speaker:with things like chapters for the podcast and transcriptions, probably a few other things
Speaker:as well.
Speaker:Treasure is just what it sounds like.
Speaker:If you find the content valuable, you can support the podcast by streaming stats from
Speaker:Podcasting 2.0 app or sending support via PayPal to macintosh@genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:You can get a Podcasting 2.0 app for the optimal listening experience at newpodcastapps.com.
Speaker:If you like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the Generational
Speaker:Wealth of Cryptocurrency Podcast.
Speaker:Hey, thanks for being here.
Speaker:I hope this has been helpful, and I sure would love to hear from you all.
Speaker:I'm on Twitter at MacintoshFintech, and you can reach me by email at macintosh@genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Now go out and make it a great week.
Speaker:I'll see you in the next one.