Okay. The recording is on. Welcome, everyone. And good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining the Class BC 308 Revelation and Daniel. This is our first lecture, actually, after almost a month of the college reopening. I apologize for all the breaks and for us not getting started earlier. But we will do our best to cover all that we are supposed to cover and have a wonderful time. Okay. Let's please pray together and get started. May I request somebody to pray with us as a class and we'll start. Anyone can pray. Can I pray? Yes, Siddharth, please. We believe in Jesus' love. We thank you for this day for all your good works in us love. Lord, as we are studying the book of Revelation and Daniel, let the revelation of Lord Jesus Christ be revealed to us. But we thank you for all things. Let everything become easy to understand and receive. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Okay. So we are ready to start our course on Revelation and Daniel. So what we're going to do is quite straightforward, which is we're going to read verse by verse the prophetic scriptures, Daniel, and then Daniel and Revelation. You can just read it and then we're going to understand what the scriptures are teaching us. So you remember in our second year, we did a course on the end times. There in that course, we were giving an overview, an outline of the sequence of events, the timeline of events. So that was our objective in that course. We couldn't necessarily go into verse by verse and read everything and explain everything. But that course served a purpose in helping us set out some sort of a sequence of events. And say, okay, this is how we see the end time events unfolding. So that that course served that purpose. And also to answer some questions about, you know, when would certain events take place and the signs of the end times and so on. But in the course that we're doing now in the third year on Revelation and Daniel, our objective is to actually read the text and then try to understand it. I don't know if my mic went off. Okay, you can hear me, right? Everyone can hear me. Okay. So although in the course, you know, we call Revelation and Daniel, we'll study Daniel first and then you will come into Revelation. And we agree to focus on the prophetic scripture. So in the book of Daniel, there is a little bit of historical record. We will not be reading those portions. We'll be mainly focusing on the prophetic part of the book of Daniel, the prophetic scriptures. So we'll be reading those prophetic scriptures and then understanding them. And it is very, very amazing, right? So let's get started. I will share the notes and then we will, you know, read the scriptures together. We will read the... I have to open the PDF. We will read the scriptures together and go through it, go through Daniel chapter by chapter. So let me share. All right. So Revelation and Daniel course objective is very simple. We need to read through Daniel, read through Revelation and then we will connect a few other passages. You know, we'll connect passages from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah. We will connect them to Daniel and Revelation as we read through. Okay. So that's what we will do. And I've shared a few reference books. These are, again, quite detailed. If you're interested in reading, you're welcome to read them. So let's get started with the book of Daniel, a little bit of introduction background. Daniel. In other words, the name Daniel means God is judge. And he was there about 600 years before Christ. So he ministered around that time and he, Daniel lived to be, lived very long. So about 18 some years. And what is interesting is Daniel's life record in the book of Daniel starts from the time when the Jews were taken out of Jerusalem and they were brought into Babylon as captives. So this was under Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem and he took people away to Babylon. So Daniel's life begins with that captivity being deported, taken out of Jerusalem. And then he lives actually through three different empires. So there was the Babylonian, the Medes and the Persians, three different empires. So he lives through them. And so there is a little bit of historical information recorded for us in the book of Daniel. But the book of Daniel, especially the second part of the book focuses mainly on the visions that God had given Daniel. And these visions were about future events, about things to come. Now very interesting is even the Lord Jesus in Matthew the 24th chapter, he referred to Daniel the prophet and he referred to what Daniel spoke about. And we will see this. And Jesus quoted from Daniel chapter 9 in Matthew 24-15, Daniel chapter 9, 26 and 37. So the Lord Jesus himself quoted from the book of Daniel.  So the Lord Jesus, if you want to say it, validated, authenticated Daniel's prophecy. That is amazing. That is amazing. Now about that time period itself, there were prophets who preceded Daniel, that is Isaiah and Jeremiah. Isaiah the prophet, he prophesied that, you know, he prophesied about the fact that Israel, the Jews would be taken away into captivity. And he also prophesied that some of these Jews would serve as officers. If the king of Babylon, Isaiah also prophesied about the fact that the Jews would be sent back to Jerusalem, the land. He called by name King Cyrus, who was the Persian king who issued the decree that the Jews should go back to Jerusalem. So Isaiah, preceding Daniel prophesied about the whole captivity and the return to Jerusalem, he prophesied. Jeremiah also prophesied about Nebuchadnezzar, he prophesied about the 70 year Babylonian captivity. So these are people who preceded Daniel. So when Daniel came along, he knew what these prophets had spoken, what they had spoken, you know, he knew. And that was part of his prayer, as we will see later on in Daniel 9 and 10. Daniel prayed that, you know, what Jeremiah prophesied that at the end of 70 years, the people should be sent back to Jerusalem. Daniel would pray those prayers. Like I said earlier, Daniel served in four different kings or three different empires. The Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, they are the Babylonians. They are Darius with the Medes and then Cyrus with the Persians. Three different world empires or four different kings. These two kings were from the same empire, the Babylonian empire, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar and Darius and then came Cyrus. So he served in these four different kings. So that's an amazing thing that a Jewish man would have a very important position in the empires of these kinds of kings that they would respect him and hold him in high regard. Just again, as part of the background, Daniel, its place in scripture. It's the last book among the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, major prophets. The purpose of the book of Daniel is both historical and revelatory. It is historical, records what happened to the Jewish people while they were in captivity in Babylon and a little bit about what happened during that time. But most of it is revelatory in character, meaning it is speaking about future events. It just records the prophecies or the visions God gave Daniel about things to come, starting from his time on way into the future, into the millennium and beyond. So it's a huge time span that God gave Revelation to concerning about. Okay, let me just say I think somebody raised a hand or something. Say, go ahead. Sorry, Pastor, sorry to bother you. I was just going to ask that what was the basis of Daniel being a major prophet? What was the basis for minor and major? Is it the content of the prophecy or? Yeah, so we would look at it from two things. One is the content of what they prophesied and it's also the significance of their prophetic ministry. So when you look at Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, we see that, of course, the content of what they prophesied like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel prophesied and foretold of many things. Two examples. If you look at Isaiah, he speaks about the birth of the Messiah, the death of the Messiah. He speaks about the millennium. He speaks about new heavens and new worlds.  Secondly is also the significance of the ministry. These men, the ministry spanned large periods of time. Like we were saying, Daniel, he lived well into the 80s and, you know, if he, the prophetic experiences began from his early youth, as you will see in Daniel chapter two, and then went on to, you know, maybe a span of almost 50 years, 50 to 60 years. So these were very significant prophetic ministries unlike all the minor prophets who, you know, not only the content of what the prophet was small, but they were there for very brief periods of time prophesying at particular junctures, mainly when the Jews were sent back to the land, when they were involved in the rebuilding of the temple, as in the case of Zechariah and Haggai and so on. And then towards the end of just before the start of the 400 year silent period, that's Malachi. So they were very brief in their prophecies. So, and there were mainly, many of them were mainly calling Israel back into repent back to God. You don't find too much other than Zechariah. You don't find too many of them pointing way out into the future to foretell coming events. So you find that difference in the content of the prophecy. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you. All right, good question. Let's go back now to just the introduction. We're doing an introduction to Daniel. So the other interesting thing about Daniel, which is actually the interesting part of the Old Testament is that there is a portion of the book of Daniel in the originally written in Aramaic. The rest of the entirety of the Old Testament is in Hebrew. But there is a portion in Aramaic and that entire Aramaic portion is in the book of Daniel, Daniel chapters two to seven between two and seven. And the reason is because that was the language used by the Babylonians. And that was a time period when the Jews were in exile. They were living there with the Babylonians. And so that part of both historical and prophetic, mainly historical content and a little bit of prophetic content is captured in Aramaic in the language of the people among whom they were living. So that's kind of an interesting note about the Old Testament. The entire Old Testament is in Hebrew. There's a small portion, Aramaic, and that small portion is in the book of Daniel, chapters two to seven, simply because that was the time the Jews were living in exile in Babylon. And that was a language that is being used at that time. Some just interesting ways of looking at the book of Daniel, you know, generally speaking, and this is very easy to observe is that the book of Daniel, the first six chapters in the book of Daniel are more historical in nature. That means this is what happened while Daniel and his friends were in exile in Babylon and this is what happened to the people. Okay, historical. There is, of course, some prophetic, which we will see in chapter two, very important. But then the second half of the book of Daniel, chapter seven to 12 is fully prophetic and it's amazing. It's like we said, looking way into the future, all the way into the millennium and beyond. So it is very easy to divide the book into these two parts. Just by looking, just when you read through the book of Daniel, it becomes very obvious there's historical part and then there's completely prophetic part in the book of Daniel. Now, other people, you know, just for information, other people may divide the book in different ways. So we can definitely look at other ways to divide the book. Like we said, they can do it as an, okay, Daniel one is an introduction. Daniel two to seven is the dynamic part of the book. Daniel three is, I mean, the third part is really talking about Israel, the nation of Israel and in relation to the Gentiles. That's one way of looking at it. One way of dividing the book because the prophetic part of the book is specifically dealing with Israel versus other world empires that are going to come and what God is going to do. So, so you can divide the book in that way if and some people may do it like that. But the easiest way to divide it is just with the obvious way. Chapters one to six are historical, seven to 12 prophetic, very simple, and it's very, very apparent when we read the book of Daniel. Now, again, just a piece of information is the book of Daniel was never questioned. The authenticity of the book of Daniel was never questioned up until the third century AD.  They accepted it because, hey, historically it is very authentic. All the historical details are valid and, you know, things that were said were valid, but there were people and maybe they did it intentionally. We don't know the motivation who attacked the book. You know, sometimes people intensely attacked the Bible. They want to disprove the Bible and try to create things. So most notable of the attacks against the book of Daniel came around the third century when there was a pagan plutonist who claimed that, you know, this book was forgery, not genuine. Trying to question its authenticity in terms of the, you know, it's being part of the Bible. They shouldn't be rejecting the detailed prophecy saying, no, no, you know, it's not possible for somebody to prophesy like this in such detail. Therefore, it is just somebody who wrote it backwards, you know, prophecy is telling history in advance. So he couldn't accept the fact that there's such amazing detailed prophecy. So he said, no, no, no, this is somebody writing retrospectively and claiming it to be prophecy. Things like that are rejecting these miracles that we see in the book of Daniel. We know how the Jewish people, their lives were preserved multiple times in the time of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, not refusing to bow to the golden image and the fire and the Daniel and the lion's den, just rejecting that these things have actually happened. You know, questioning these things, trying to point out problems in language and text and claiming historical inaccuracies. But none of these things have stood, you know, what I'm just saying that they were an attempt was made to question the book of Daniel. But none of these things have stood. They've all been disproved and rejected. So nobody actually holds to these attempts. Now, the biggest challenge is, I mean, with the book of Daniel is the interpretation. Because especially when we come from when you come into the prophetic part, everything, I should say, almost everything is given in very figurative language. And the figures, the pictures that I used are not what we are normally accustomed to.  And it's like, what is he seeing? You know, what is all this? But actually, the keys to understanding all of this is in the book of Daniel itself. That's the beautiful part. And that's what we're going to see that actually these things are not difficult to understand. Because in the book of Daniel itself is the interpretation of these difficult images that the pictures that Daniel records. So when we read about these images, we shouldn't be alarmed. We just have to read it very carefully, because in the text of the book of the scriptures in Daniel, there is the interpretation of what these images are. So that's the approach we are going to take. We recognize that interpreting Daniel at a surface level seems very difficult. But we also recognize that the meaning, the interpretation of all of what Daniel is seeing is right there in the book itself. And it's very, very interesting. Now, the advantage we have today is we have additional scriptures, meaning we have what, of course, as in Jeremiah before Daniel, they wrote, we have those scriptures. We have what others wrote, Zechariah, and then we have what Jesus said. Then we have what Paul the Apostle wrote in Thessalonians, and then we have what John received as in the book of Revelation. So we have such a big advantage that subsequent to Daniel, there was more prophetic scriptures, more prophetic scriptures have been given to us. And we can put all that together and interpret the book of Daniel. So we have a big advantage and we must learn to do that. And when we do that, things become very, very clear. We have a lot of scripture to put together and understand the book of Daniel. So we are not going to interpret the book of Daniel only by the interpretation given within the book, which is very clear. But we're also going to see additional prophetic utterances concerning the end times, which further clarifies what is given to us in the book of Daniel. Another interesting observation in the book of Daniel is the theology, the revelation of God that we see in Daniel. We see throughout the book how God was at work in and through the Jewish people. From the very first chapter, we begin to see how God imparted knowledge and skill to these four Hebrew boys, Daniel and his three friends. God is at work. We see how God reveals. God is revealing something to a pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, in a dream. How God empowers Daniel to interpret it. We see Daniel himself revealing, receiving visions. We see God bringing supernatural protection in chapter four and chapter six to these Hebrew boys. We see in Daniel chapter seven an amazing picture of the throne room that explains, or I would say, that reveals to us the Trinity. We see Daniel says, I see the ancient, and we will read it later on. I see the ancient of days, God the Father. I see the Son of Man, God, that's the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Word. And of course, it's the Holy Spirit in Daniel, giving him this vision. So we see the Trinity revealed to us there in Daniel chapter seven. The theology of the book of Daniel is amazing. It's actually unveiling God to us at the ancient of days. We see the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit giving this revelation. So when the Lord Jesus comes and he begins his ministry and he begins to use the term Son of Man in the minds of the Jewish people. It's a very powerful thing because for them, that's the term Daniel used to talk about the one who stood next to the ancient of days and to whom all the authorities in the kingdoms were given. And here comes this carpenter from Nazareth, and he's referencing himself as Son of Man. So it shocks the Jewish mind. How could somebody use that title that Daniel used for someone in the Godhead along with the ancient of days to whom all the authorities are going to be given?  So the theology in the book of Daniel is really powerful. And then you come to Daniel chapter 12. He talks about God sitting as the judge and everybody standing before God. So there is this unveiling of God in the book of Daniel through both the historical and the prophetic scriptures. And it's beautiful just to trace all of that in the book of Daniel. Now, a little bit about the history that we're going to see in the book of Daniel. Now, for us, it is history, but for Daniel, some of it was still future. So Daniel was living, let's say, he started off his life in ministry somewhere here. Okay. So this was when Daniel was alive initially initially, and of course he lived through the need of Persian Empire. So before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Assyrians. The Assyrians had come and they'd attacked the northern part of Israel and they'd gone. So Israel at that time was divided into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, which was just basically Jerusalem, Judah. So the Assyrians had come and attacked the northern kingdom. The Babylonian Empire. So the Assyrians then were overtaken by the Babylonians, the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar. He came down south. He came to Jerusalem and he attacked Jerusalem. That's the time we read about Daniel being taken along with the other Jewish people taken captive to Babylon. They're there, which would be modern-day Iraq and that region around Iraq. Now, what happened was after the Babylonians, so Daniel prophesied. So Daniel is living in this time, Babylonian time, and God is giving him vision about the future empires. So, and we will see that today in Daniel chapter 2. Daniel foretells in Daniel chapter 2 that the Babylonian Empire will be overthrown and will be overtaken by other empires, the Medo-Persian. So he foretold this, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, and then the Roman Empire. Let me just highlight this here. So Daniel, while living here during the Babylonian Empire time, he prophesied ahead of time about the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Now, Daniel never lived to see this. That means he died during the Persian Empire. So he lived to see what happened. He lived to see the Medes take over. He lived to see the Persians take over and then he died. He never saw the Greek Empire. He never saw the Roman Empire. Now, for us, it is looking back at his history, but when Daniel was prophesying, he was speaking into the future. So he spoke ahead of time and he prophesied about these coming empires. Even foretold what would happen to the Macedonian, the Greek Empire. He foretold that this empire was going to be divided into four pieces. It happened exactly. He never lived to see that, but it happened exactly. And he spoke ahead of time about the Roman Empire and so on. Now, for us, looking back, we can put this down and say historically this is what happened. But what is amazing is Daniel, living in the time of the Babylonian Empire, he looked ahead and he foretold all these things and more and more. Which we will look at. Okay, so this is very interesting. Now, we've put this down here as history, but remember Daniel spoke about it looking into the future. Now, of course, in looking at this, the Empire, the Division of Empires, we take a dispensational view. We look at them and understand the unfolding of Daniel as time periods and which we will explain how these time periods are divided. And we will talk about historical time periods, meaning things that have already happened. And we'll talk about time periods to come, which are out in the future. So we find both time periods or dispensations in the book of Daniel, and we will explain that as we read through. Now, the same historical information. I'm giving a little bit more information here, which you probably have seen. We saw earlier in our second year course, that means just to know what these people did because we will find that some of these things, there's all historical information just for us to, just as information, that some of these things were actually foretold. So what Alexander the Great, the Macedonian or the Greek Empire, what would happen to him? Daniel foretold that. The Seleucid Empire and what they would do, Daniel foretold that. We will read in Daniel's chapter 11 in quite detail. He foretold that. It's interesting to have this historical information. Remember that Daniel was prophesying or having visions. It is all out in the future. Today we can look back and say, hey, Daniel spoke about it around 500 BC. And here, about 160 BC, those things actually happened. Okay. So what happens to this Alexander the Great Macedonian Empire? What happened during the Seleucid Empire? Daniel foretold that is of interest to us. Okay. So now we're ready. That was quick introduction to Daniel. Now we are ready to actually begin reading the book of Daniel. And we're going to go through it chapter by chapter. I'd like to request everybody to be involved. Any questions as far as the introduction is concerned, before we start reading Daniel chapter two? Any questions, please? Everybody with me so far? Okay. Okay. All right. Feel free to ask any questions. All right. So now let's go to, let's open our bibles. We need to keep our bibles in front of us. We're all going to read the scriptures. Daniel chapter two. And we're only going to focus on the prophetic portions of scripture. We're not going to read the historical part. Those are stories many of us are familiar with. So in a chapter two, we're going to start from verse 31 till verse 49. So just as a background, Daniel chapter two, Nebuchadnezzar wakes up one day and he realizes he's had a dream. Problem, he doesn't remember the dream. So he sends word saying, hey, he calls all his wise men and Daniel was and his friends among the wise men in the court or Nebuchadnezzar says, you have to tell me what my dream was and you have to give me the interpretation. And otherwise, all the wise men are going to be killed. We know the story. So Daniel, that's where Daniel steps in. He tells the captain or the captain of the army. Well, say, hey, just give me one night. I'll be back with the answer tomorrow. So that night, Daniel and his friend and the three friends, they all go and pray and God reveals it to Daniel in the night and Daniel goes back to Nebuchadnezzar the next day. And he tells the king the dream and then he helps the king with the interpretation. And that's where we're going to pick up in Daniel chapter 2 verses 31 to 49. Maybe we'll just, you know, to read three verses each. We'll just go through this quickly. Three verses each. Daniel chapter 2 verse 31 to 49, please. Let's read.  The head of the statue was made of pure gold. It's just an arms of silver. It's belly and thighs of bone. It's legs of bone. Sorry, it's legs of iron. It's feet partially of iron and partially of baked of clay. Yeah. Verse 34 next 34. While you were watching a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It stuck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. You want me to continue? Somebody else could read the next three verses. Thank you, Shri Kumar. The whole statue was crushed into small pieces of iron. Clay, bronze, silver and gold. In the wind blew them away without retreats. Like a chair from a trashy floor. But the rock that marked the statue down became a great mountain that covered the whole earth. That was a dream. Now we will tell the king what it means. Your Majesty, you're the greatest of the kings. The God of heaven has given me a sovereign, sovereignty, power, strength and honor. Next three verses, somebody please. Thank you, Asha. And wherever the children of man dwell, or the beast of the field and the birds of the heaven, he has given them into your hand and has made you ruler over them all.  But after you shall arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron. Inasmuch as iron break in pieces and shatter everything. And like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Yes. Verse 41 onwards. Thank you. Appreciate it. Just as 41 says, just as you saw that the feet and toes were part of big clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom. Yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with big clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united anymore than iron mixes with clay. Thank you, Serene. And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed and the kingdom shall not be left to the people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it broke in pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, the gold and the great God had made known to the king, what will come to pass after this? The dream is certain and its interpretation is sure. The king Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate before Daniel and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him. Thank you. Next 47, 49, somebody please. The king answered unto Daniel and said, Offer truth it is that your God is a God of gods and the Lord of kings and the revealer of secrets. Seeing you could reveal this secret, then the king made Daniel a great man and gave him many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon. Then Daniel requested of the king and he said, Shadrach, Meshach and Abidnego over the affairs of the province of Babylon but Daniel sat in the gate of the king. Thank you. So very interesting. Now what is revealed in Daniel chapter 2 becomes the basis of all that's going to come in the succeeding prophetic revelation in the book of Daniel. So this is like the outline and then based in the succeeding chapters five, six, seven and so on. Addition, more information is being added to this and things are being expanded, elaborated. So understanding chapter 2 becomes like the starting point, the foundation for the rest of the book of Daniel. Now it is very simple. So what does he see? Let me just share the notes here so you could follow along as I talk. He sees, so Daniel reveals to Nebuchadnezzar because God revealed to Daniel that he sees this big image, the head of gold. Then the top part, the body part is silver. Then the lower part, the belly and the thighs of brass and so this is in verse 32, thighs of bronze, legs of iron and then the feet is iron and clay, loosely mixed. Now iron and clay cannot hold together very easily. It cannot hold together so it's loosely mixed and then there are of course two feet, ten toes and then there's a huge rock but it is not cut off by human hands. That means it is from heaven, it's not from earth. It's not human, it's divine. It's not earthly, it's heavenly. And that stone comes and it crushes this whole image completely crushes it and this rock becomes a huge mountain. Okay, so that's the dream Nebuchadnezzar had. Everyone with me and I think we'll have a little picture of this somewhere in the notes but that's the picture. Gold, silver, bronze, feet of iron, toes, iron and clay mixed, legs of iron, feet are unequally mixed, ten toes. Rock, not made by hands, comes from heaven, crushes all this and becomes a big mountain. That's the dream. Now Daniel interprets the dream. What are some of the things we see revealed to us here in chapter two? What we see revealed to us is Daniel interprets and says, he's talking about kingdoms, he's talking about empires because he says, king, that head of gold is you. So Daniel says this, verse 38, you are this head of gold, you. But after you will arise another kingdom, verse 39. So each part of this image represents a kingdom and an empire. Now obviously an empire is made up of kings and rulers or emperors. So what Daniel is saying is the head represents the Babylonian empire. So when he's pointing to Nebuchadnezzar, he's not speaking specifically of just him as an individual because the rest of it we know, he's talking about kingdoms, empires. So therefore the gold part of this represents the Babylonian empire. And then he says, these other parts are representing empires that are going to come after you. So the silver, the chest and arms of silver are representing another empire. Now Daniel does not specify what that empire is. That will come in succeeding chapters. So this is like an outline. As we progress in the book of Daniel, he begins to specify who's going to come. But right now it's like an outline. So he's saying there's going to be another empire. That's verse 39, another kingdom. They'll be inferior to you, but they're going to overthrow the Babylonian empire. They will rise up after the Babylon. And then there'll be another one, which represents the bronze, the belly and the thighs of bronze. Now I have mentioned who these empires are and the dates. That's because we know it now. But in Daniel chapter two, as Daniel was speaking, he didn't know who these were and he didn't mention them by name, but we know it and then it comes later on in the succeeding chapters. But we can put it down now because we have the information. So he says there's a third kingdom, a third empire made of brass. That's the Greek empire. Then there's going to be a fourth empire, legs of iron, very powerful. As you will see in the subsequent chapters, Daniel says that empire's going to be very powerful. It really expanded. Then what will happen is after that, there'll be feet of iron and clay loosely mixed, feet of iron. Iron represents the Roman Empire. So there is a mix of the Roman Empire with clay. Clay represents all the other mixed races. So they're going to mix into mingle. So today when you look at Europe, Europe is like this. It belonged to the Roman Empire predominantly, but now it's all mixed. It's all loosely held. There's a mix of what was belonging to the Roman Empire with all the other peoples. So it's a loosely held region, iron and clay. From there will come 10 leaders, 10 toes. You'll see later on here in Daniel 2, it's referred to as 10 toes. In other places, the same is referred to as 10 horns or 10 kings. You'll see this later. But the 10 toes, right now we're looking at it, 10 toes. And then he says, in the days of these kings, verse 44, interesting, now he's giving us a clue about the timing. In the days of these kings, when these 10 leaders are rising from this region, that is loosely held as a mix of iron and clay, in the days of these kings, something is going to happen. A rock from heaven is going to strike. That means there's going to be an invasion of this heavenly kingdom. And it is going to overpower all previously held kingdoms and he says God himself will set up his kingdom on the earth. That is the kingdom of the Messiah. I know it's supposed to be a break time. So let me pause here and just think about this and we will come back to and just continue this and take up any questions. So 10 minutes, we'll be back. We'll continue with this. Thank you.


Today, we're doing a live AMA with the CEO of Exodus, JP. JP, how's it going? Doing great, Rachel. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, of course. Thanks for joining us. So before we get into Exodus wallet, I just want to know a little bit about your background, how you got involved with crypto, because I know you've got some interesting insights there. So we'll start off with that. Absolutely. So my background is that of a software engineer. I discovered Bitcoin around 2011, and it was the first time where I felt like, wow, this is a way to empower people to control and hold and own their wealth. But at that moment in time, there was only one service to really manage your Bitcoin and buy Bitcoin. And that was Mt. Gox. And most of your viewers know how that story turns out. And in 2014, when Mt. Gox was hacked and lost a lot of money, it was half a billion dollars at that moment in time. I recognized that I wanted to contribute something to this space to prevent something like that from happening in the future. And so that's what I set off to do. That's awesome. So you're kind of an OG, then, in the space. Yeah, I like to brag that my Bitcoin talk account was actually registered in 2011. But unfortunately, I didn't buy until I think it was late 2012, early 2013. But I didn't buy because it was so difficult. It was so difficult to buy on Mt. Gox. But yes, I started in 2011. Awesome, very cool. OK, so on that note, let's hear about Exodus Wallet. I guess just briefly explain what it is, how it's different from other crypto wallets and all that good stuff. Yeah, so Exodus is the most beautiful, easy to use wallet to send, receive, and manage a portfolio of cryptocurrency. 1.3 million people trust Exodus to keep their crypto safe. And yeah, the company was founded in 2015. And we've been religiously releasing new updates since December 9, 2015. Awesome, cool. I just want to remind our audience to be sure to subscribe to Cointelegraph's YouTube. And we're doing a live AMA, so ask your questions and drop that below, and JP will answer those. OK, so next question. So can we talk a little bit about the security and those features that Exodus offers, just the things that make it unique from other crypto wallets? I think what a lot of people, first of all, really love about Exodus, again, is the ease of use and how beautiful it is. But in addition to that, of being on both the mobile and the desktop and allowing people to sync Exodus on both platforms, people love the ability of integrating with the Tracer hardware wallet. And so the Tracer hardware wallet is what we would refer to as cold storage. In other words, your keys are on the Tracer device itself, and they are not on your computer. And so you don't have to worry about things like viruses from taking your money. And so people really love the Tracer and the Tracer integration in Exodus. And that's something that we recommend today for people to store large amounts of money is to do it on the Tracer. Now, long term, we are working on solutions, two-factor authentication solutions, where you can take your phone and you can take Exodus on your desktop and you can require authentication from both devices to secure your funds.   So two-factor authentication would prevent something like that from happening or conversely, right on your computer, getting malware or virus, two-factor authentication could prevent that. So we're working on those sorts of solutions to really ensure that we create a secure environment because we don't want to see another Mt. Gox situation or some of the hacks like the Ku Coin hack that happened recently. There's so many hacks that have happened. Don't wanna see that. We want people to have their money protected. Right. And I mean, two-FA, I feel like that's critical. Like that's crucial. That should definitely be done as soon as you set up a wallet, the two-FA. What I also like about Exodus is that you mentioned there's a desktop version, which in terms of user friendliness and accessibility, I love desktop versions as well as the app. I think that's really important because it's so easy to get on your computer, log into your account and it's just like you're looking at like a traditional financial bank account or something on your computer. Absolutely. And it's kind of funny that you say all this because back in when we started, I remember I was at a conference in 2016 and we actually started with the desktop version first. And I remember talking to a potential investor at that moment in time. He flat out told me, he said, I'm not even gonna look at your company because you don't have a mobile product, you have a desktop-only product. And at that moment in time, a lot of people I don't think recognize that most of the trading happens on the desktop or happened on the desktop. Now it is shifting towards mobile. But at that moment in time, 2016, it wasn't the desktop. Right. I mean, for me, that's a really important feature. I only like to do things with the desktop because if it's just the mobile app, it's just, it's frustrating. It's like, you don't wanna do everything on your phone. Right, right, right.  Maybe you make a market move or two but you're not gonna sit down and do deep market research on your phone when you're at the grocery store.  Yeah, I'm making money there with Doge but that's about it. Exactly, yeah. So I'm gonna take a question from an audience member real quick. So Frank, he was asking. He's saying, ask him why they charge such high fees to exchange crypto and also ask him what's going on with the Spark AirDrop. Okay, so let's start with the fees. There's a lot of, a lot here, okay? So there's multiple aspects. We're gonna start with just talking about the exchange first because that's most likely what Frank is talking about here. So with the exchange, we ourselves charge 2% to actually do the exchange and that's what helps to provide the product to be a free product on its own but we charge 2%. Now, in addition to that, what a lot of people are recognizing here is that because the exchange is 100%, it's an on-chain exchange. So if you're gonna exchange, let's say, doge for link and if you go to a traditional exchange, you're not gonna see a market for doge to link. You'll see a market for doge to Bitcoin and then Bitcoin to link.  Whereas in Exodus, it provides the convenience. That's the big key here is ease of use and convenience. So if you see market moves happening, you might wanna just press the exchange button, the prices are locked in and the price that you see is because all of those moves are happening behind the scenes. So that's with the exchange. Now, a lot of people don't know this number two is that when you send crypto and Exodus, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can actually set a custom fee. A lot of people aren't aware of this. We introduced this, I think it was about six months ago and you can set a custom fee and if you end up setting the custom fee too low, we actually in Bitcoin, we provide what's referred to as RBF support or replaced by fee support and there's a nice little button that shows up if your transaction isn't confirmed and you can increase that fee to get that transaction confirmed. So we do that so that can help you as a customer save money and your day-to-day transactions if you feel that the fee that we've chosen is too high, you can slide it down and pick something that might be more friendly for you. And again, if it ends up being too low and it's not confirmed, you can press a button and that'll fix that. So that's number two. And then number three, when it comes to fees, Exodus, and I can say this confidently, that when it comes to purchasing Bitcoin with Apple Pay, a lot of people don't know that we support Apple Pay in nexus with our partner's wire and we don't unfortunately support the state of New York and Texas, but we support purchasing Bitcoin with Apple Pay and it is the cheapest way to buy Bitcoin. The rates are cheap in the way that I can say this because we actually subsidize every purchase that you make. We pay anywhere from $5 to $15 to pay up on the market for every purchase that you make and you only have to pay $1. So if you're buying $500 worth of Bitcoin, the fee is only $1 and you get $499 worth of Bitcoin. And so we're really cheap there. And the reason we do this is we want people to come into this ecosystem, start learning, start actually holding Bitcoin. It's so important. So that's how we're thinking about things with fees. We understand, so back to the exchange, we understand that the convenience there may, the convenience and the fee for the convenience may not be something that everybody's comfortable with. We are very aware that we are looking at other ways to really bring these fees down. There's a couple of interesting things that we're thinking about with working with actual other exchanges themselves to hook up and connect to those exchanges and decentralized exchanges. And so these are things that we are definitely considering. So before we talk about the airdrop, I'm just curious because it seems like Apple Pay is a really easy way to buy Bitcoin. Is there a max limit to that? Because let's say I want to buy, you know, $10,000 worth of Bitcoin. Is that feeling going to be $1? I mean. Yeah, so great, great question. The max limit per day is $500. It's $500. And we are working with wire to try to raise that, but we'll have to do some additional things. They have some fraud engines in place to really dial this in. So we're gonna work with wire to make that so we can raise it from $500 a day. But today it is only $500 per day that a person can purchase Bitcoin. But again, if you're talking to your neighbor and your neighbor is like, hey, I really want to get in Bitcoin, you can just be like, hey, download XS, get Bitcoin in less than two minutes. Yeah, I like that. And I'm also gonna say that's awesome because you could go back and every day buy a little bit of Bitcoin and just increase the amount you have day after day. But what's really great is like PayPal also makes buying Bitcoin easy, but you can't do much with it. And so in this case, you have the Bitcoin, you have it in the Exodus wallet and then you can do more with it as opposed to PayPal where you buy the Bitcoin and you can either keep it in PayPal, which, okay. That's not what I'm saying. Yes, that's such an important point is that we wholly subscribe to the not your keys, not your coins.  And that's absolutely right. It's all about you as a person having control of your assets, of your wealth, super important. And a platform like PayPal, it's great that they added support for cryptocurrency. It gets more exposure. I think everybody was happy when PayPal had announced that they were supporting Bitcoin. But yeah, a person's gonna have to transition from an environment like PayPal where as you've mentioned, you can't take your money out of it but with Exodus where it's self custody, you can take your money. If you're not happy with XS, you don't like our fees, you can just take your money and you can move to another platform if you're not happy. And that's what we want because we want everybody to have that control. And then one final point with this Apple Pay thing is that as we were talking before this call, a lot of people believe that you have to, like when they see the price of Bitcoin, 50,000 or 49,000, they think, I don't have 49,000 to go buy one whole Bitcoin. And so this is a really easy solution like look, you can buy $50 if you want and you can just get started that way. And it works really well for people. Yeah, I think that's a really important point that you make. And that's what I tell people that wanna get started. Don't buy one whole Bitcoin, just buy a bit of the Bitcoin and then you own Bitcoin. Yeah. What about the airdrop question that I mentioned earlier? Right, so I'm assuming that Frank is asking about our actual support of Spark in the wallet and the software. So for those of you who don't know, the Spark airdrop was if you have Ripple, or if you had Ripple at a certain point in time, I think it was Flare or Spark, they did a snapshot and then you would get these tokens later. And so we allow people to have the snapshot now as far as whether we're going to support it or not, that still remains to be unknown, but typically when it comes to supporting assets, we like to see them get at least enter into the top 100 so it's on a radar and then get into the top 50 and then the top 25. Once an asset hits the top 25, in almost all situations, we will support that asset. There are some exceptions. We can talk about that later. If somebody asked that question, but most of the time if it's in the top 25, we will support that asset. Awesome, okay, cool. So I'm going to ask you another question that's on a different topic. So this was exciting news. Exodus recently raised almost 60 million in crypto for a regulated offering. Can you discuss the details here and what the process was like? Yeah, so we made history in what we did and what we did is that we, and this is actually still live right now. This regulated SEC qualified offering is still live. And so what this means is that we have a public offering. Today it's the United States only, 47 states unfortunately without Texas, Florida or Arizona. We're working on those too, but it's 47 states, United States where you can go inside of Exodus, you can purchase Exodus stock with Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC. And this is all within the wallet. You have to register with an account with our partner Securitize and Exodus will walk you through that, but the offering is all inside Exodus software. And so the vision here is that we are trying to create a new interface to the stock market that's going to be on the blockchain. And we see that is an inevitable future is that all traditional assets, whether it's stocks, bonds, mortgages, currencies or you see that now, will make their way to the blockchain.  So our stock will be digitally represented on the blockchain.  And that's the vision we have here is you saw what happened with GameStop and Robinhood and how with Robinhood, you felt trapped. You're like, I wanna make moves with GameStop.  And so yeah, this offering has been live now for just a little over two weeks and we're making great progress on it. So yeah, that's really interesting. That's awesome. I'm wondering, do you think that we're gonna start seeing more crypto companies do the same? And also, is it a difficult process to do that? So what we did with the SEC regulation A plus offering, yes, it is difficult. It's very similar to actually doing an IPO and actually going through the whole process. So you have to go find a law firm and we found one of the greatest law firms out there to help us with this, Wilson-Sincini. We found them and they are the same firm that did something similar with you now in Blockstack. And so we got Wilson-Sincini on board and we started this process in the summer of 2020. And then we submitted, so we created a 200-page offering document called an offering circular and you can actually see that live on our website, xs.com, you'll see a big banner for it. You click it and you'll see this document that is on the SEC's website. And so we had to create this document throughout the course of the summer of 2020. And then we, and it describes the business and kind of the mechanics of everything. And then we submitted this offer, this document to the SEC in September of 2020. And you submit in kind of a confidential filing is what they call that. So nobody knows what's in the SEC. And so we submitted it confidentially. And with the market moves that happened around that moment in time, I don't know if you guys recall, but it was kind of Michael Saylor had just came out around that time saying that he bought Bitcoin to put in the micro strategy balance sheet. And he was, and then PayPal, I think in October was, that's about what the time when they announced cryptocurrency. And then you saw online, Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter. Like what a time to be alive to witness Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter talking about putting Bitcoin on a balance sheet. And so when we were talking with Wilson Sincini and they said, we got to put the pedal to the metal here and get going on making sure that we're all ready. Because again, we're building the technology for the offering inside of Xs. So we rallied the entire company up. At this moment, we were at 70 employees. So we rallied the entire company up and we said, okay, this is our number one focus. We're gonna get this out into the world by end of March, early April. That's the rough timeframe. And so that's what we did. We rallied the company up and we actually doubled the size of the company. Now we're, I think the actual number is 147 people. And we got this offering out live and I think that the actual date was April 8th. And the cool thing is, is you can buy, you can buy legal stock, you buy it at nighttime, you can buy it on Saturday or Sunday, just like the internet. The internet never sleeps, our stock never sleeps. And that's how it should be. Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's amazing, really exciting news. Let's take another question from the audience real quick because I know we've got people asking questions. So let's see here. Okay, this is, so this question is from Odial Asfiz, I can't pronounce the last name, sorry. So he's asking, do you plan on enabling 2FA for logging into the desktop application? Yes, absolutely. We will, we are going to create a 2FA experience. But the tricky part is, is that modern 2FA that you use to log into a service like Coinbase or Binance, it requires the authentication from that service because they hold your keys. And so the trick is, is that since in Exodus, you hold your keys. If we have to create an experience that kind of blends multiple devices together and use something like similar to like multi-sig. And allow people to have that control from both devices. So that's how we would solve a problem like that. And that will come at some point in time, but there's still so much work and research that's going into this to make sure that it's not only safe and secure, but that it's usable. I mean, that's the key, it's gotta be usable. Right, definitely. So since Exodus is a crypto wallet, I think this is really interesting and really like a good topic to discuss right now because obviously we all know Bitcoin is going down. So what are your thoughts on that? Do you have any advice for people? I'm sure people ask you all the time. Oh no, it's going down, what do I do? So I just wanna get your thoughts on the price of Bitcoin and all that. Yeah, look, Bitcoin, I say a number of things to this, but first of all, I think it's really important for people to have a bit of perspective as we were chatting about a little bit is that what was it a week or two ago, the price was in the 50s or so. So we're back to just two or three weeks ago and having that perspective. And I think that's really important. And look, I understand like Exodus holds most of our assets, our treasuries in Bitcoin, we pay 100% of our salaries in Bitcoin to every 147 employees, it's all in Bitcoin. So all the employees are excited that it's going down so they can get a bigger payout and they want it to go back up. But so I understand how that can cause people anxiety. But I think, look, we've had so much bullish news leading up to this moment. And I think one of the biggest ones is that Elon Musk buying Bitcoin for Tesla. I mean, it doesn't get any more bullish than an S&P 500 company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet.  And so to beat that bullish news is gonna be really tough. It's really tough. And so I don't know, maybe Apple has to support or has to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. I don't know, but I think people just have to have some perspective. I think I'm gonna make a prediction here too that I think ETFs are coming this year, Bitcoin ETFs. And so that's gonna be a huge exciting thing when that happens. I mean, there was two approved in Canada and I think one recently in Brazil. And so the SEC, again, I was purely speculating here. The SEC is probably seeing this and being like, we've got to move on improving the Bitcoin ETF, which one's the right one, who knows? But I think more good stuff is on the way. Oh, and then finally, the government, the Federal Reserve is not gonna stop for any money. We know that to be true. And so the long-term outlook I think is always bullish. Yeah, definitely. And you made such an important point that I just wanna point out again, it's like, you know, Bitcoin's at 40,000 something now, I think, and it's like a few months ago or maybe who knows when, that would have been considered amazing. And now we're thinking like, oh, 40,000-ish, it's so low, like disaster. It's all about perspective, like you said. Oh, totally. Look, I remember it was, there was kind of this ongoing kind of joke that in December, the price point kind of matched the day. And I remember it was roughly on Christmas day where we were kind of, I think, toying with $25,000 Bitcoin. And Christmas wasn't that long ago, right? And we're talking about $25,000 Bitcoin. And now, I don't know, with the price of what, $49,000 or so, or 50,000, it's around there. And so to 2X in a matter of just, you know, four or five months, it's just, it perspective really matters. Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember last June or July, I was so excited that it was at 12K. 12K, you know, to be excited about that, like it's insane to think about it. Oh, and you're so right, because what was it? It was March, it was March 12th, where we fell, we fell to what? It was like a little over $3,000. Yeah. And that was such a scary moment, because we rose up to like maybe 10,000, and then it just fell to 3,000. And who would have guessed? Who would have guessed that over a year later, we would be approximately at $50,000 Bitcoin? I bet if you'd ask anybody to make that prediction, there's nobody that would have made that prediction. Or if they did, they just bought an island somewhere and live in large drinking margaritas right now and they're laughing at us. Yeah. Well, the lesson learned from all of this, I think is like hodl, hodl for life, because we know Bitcoin, I'm a big believer that Bitcoin's gonna keep going up and up and up. And if you don't hodl, you're gonna really regret that decision. Oh, absolutely. And I think I love the messages of guys like Michael Saylor and Robert Breedlove, where they're talking about how Bitcoin is the ultimate way to store money that transcends both time and space. And then we haven't seen that before. And that's why this is the best store of value that the world has ever seen. And I agree, just hodl, hang out, get comfortable with the ups and downs and over time, long term, I think we're gonna be looking okay. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Okay, I'm gonna take another question from an audience member. So I think this one is coming from Raj Kumar. He's saying DeFi has really taken off recently and proven to be an important investment vehicle for crypto traders during bear markets. Does Exodus plan on adding DeFi staking pools? Yes, so we, it was in the summer of 2020 where we just got really, actually, leading out, it was early 2020, we got really into DeFi. And you can still see some of this in Exodus desktop. So if you download Exodus desktop, you will see that there is a vision for creating an apps platform that makes DeFi very simple. And so we started with our friends over Compound Finance and we integrated Compound Finance directly inside of Exodus. And the vision was exactly at just one click. If you have die, the dollar stablecoin, you can just deposit and you can earn a high interest rate without messing around with any browser plugins or anything complicated. And that was the early vision. And then after that, after Compound, we went to our friends over at SportX. And SportX, for a lot of people that don't know, is a service where you can wager on live sports and in eSports. And we thought, what a cool, amazing use case for the mainstream, average mainstream person to be able to come in and then those that like sports to actually participate and use cryptocurrency in a fun way. So we brought in SportX into Exodus. Then the summer of 2020 with Ethereum, the rise of Ethereum and the rise of the gas fees caused us to reconsider everything.  And so SportX saw that this is a problem and they migrated over to a layer two on Ethereum. And then with Compound, our Compound integration is still there today, but to withdraw or deposit, the price is about $100 to $200 or so, depending upon where the price of Ethereum in the gas fees. And so for us, we're thinking not only can we make this easy for people, how do we make it, part of making it easy is making it affordable for people. I spent some time, it was a few weeks back, I spent some time on OpenSea and Rarible. And for those that don't know, OpenSea is a platform where you can buy and sell NFTs. And I was like, I know that we're gonna build an NFT experience. And so I'm like, I gotta figure out and learn how to use these things. So I go to OpenSea, connect my browser plugin and I'm starting to buy, you know, I think I found like an Oprah meme or something like that. And I'm like, I'm gonna buy this NFT. And oh, no, no, no, I created the Oprah meme to sell on Rarible. I bought like some 3D hologram on OpenSea. And I bought it, it was like, I don't know what the price was, maybe 50 or 100 bucks or whatever. But the gas cost was 70, it was like $75. And then I went to Rarible. I'm like, okay, I gotta mint an NFT. And to actually mint one, we was like, I don't know, $75 to $100 in that range. And so I'm thinking, okay, is Ethereum really gonna be that platform to scale with, to scale DeFi? Now I know that there's liquidity pools on Ethereum. And I know that a lot of other chains are working on integration with Ethereum and making that really easy. And that's super exciting. But we really have got to make an experience where not only, like I said, not only is it easy, but it's affordable for the mainstream to come in and start using these things. So to answer the question, yes, we will sometime, but that's the key, we gotta do those two things. Right, yeah. And you bring up a good point. It's like those gas fees are crazy. I mean, I know people that don't wanna send ether just because of the gas fees, it really needs to be, it's a challenge. It's a huge challenge. Right, and look, I'm sympathetic towards Ethereum. They were the trailblazers here. Back in, let's see, the Ethereum crowdfunding was that, I think in 2014 or 2015, around that timeframe. And so they had this broad vision of creating a world computer. And they didn't know at that moment in time how much traffic they would really get. A lot of people have heard the old, kind of the old adage or something like, nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's so busy. That's kind of how it is with Ethereum. It's like, it's so busy that people don't wanna use it sort of thing. But people are using it. So I think they'll figure some of these things out. The problem is I don't know that they're gonna figure it out fast enough. And the pace at the way this ecosystem moves. Wow, Ethereum's gonna have to find a way to move faster. Yeah, I mean, it's just like the early days of the internet. Yes. And obviously it's gonna be solved at some point, but like you said, they've gotta solve it ASAP, like as fast as they can to keep up with the space. Because yeah, things are changing in the space every single day, every single second. Absolutely, it's like out of nowhere, all of a sudden like the finance smart changes rises up and I start hearing about pancake swap. Like, I was at a family gathering and my sister's significant other asked me about like pancake swap. And he's talking to me about pancake swap. I'm like, wow, like this is making all of the places. It's moving so quick. And he asked me, it's like, dude, what do you think about pancake swap? I'm like, dude, I haven't even used pancake swap yet. I think it just was invented yesterday. I didn't even, I haven't used it. You know what's funny though, JP? It's like, I feel like I can, I mean, not people asking me about pancake swap, but it's like when people find out you're in the crypto space, especially family members and like friends that aren't in, every single time something happens in the space, they come to you. Like it's just, you're getting probably so many messages from random people. You haven't even spoke to in five years, like, hey, should I buy Bitcoin or what's pancake swap? Or like, should I buy this like altcoin? You know, what about Doge? Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. I, when Doge was pumping even the first time around, I don't know, a month or two ago, I got a text message from somebody that an old friend who I hadn't seen for a while. And he asked me that. He's like, should I buy Doge?  I like to tell them about my behavior. And I said, look, man, I'm not going to tell you to buy or not buy, but I can tell you I don't own any Doge. So you do what you want. And then I think it was like an hour later when Doge had pumped even on another 100% or so. I think I got another text message from him. And he's like, dude, should I buy Doge? I'm like, oh man, come on. Come on. I know. Definitely get those messages. It doesn't stop. And people asked me about, they were asking about Doge also. I'm like, I don't have that. And quite frankly, it was created as a joke. And I think it's a joke. I mean, I don't want to sound mean or harsh or whatever, but it's like, it really was created as a joke. But isn't that, isn't that wild that, okay, like Elon Musk, I think he, didn't he tweet something about, he actually is experimenting with Doge miners with his children. And they're kind of getting into Doge mine a little bit. I know he tweets a lot about Doge, but I think I saw something like that. But who knows, is Elon Musk buying Doge? Maybe he is because he thinks it's funny. If I'm the world's wealthiest guy, am I buying a meme coin? Maybe, I'd probably think it's funny. And just be like, yeah, why not? You know, a billion dollars in Doge is hilarious. Like they see that puppy staring at you. And you're like, it's funny. Right. And you're probably telling your friends, like I'm a Doge billionaire.  And then you have Mark Cuban. Here he is. He's doing the maths. He's, you know, he has his merchandise. And he's like, we're going to take Doge. And then he goes one step further. Not only are they going to take it. He says, we're not going to liquidate Doge. We're going to actually hold our Doge.  Like, but they're billionaires. So they're having fun with it. But I can't blame them. If I'm in their shoes, I'd probably be doing the same. Yeah. Yeah. And also it is a cute, you know, like the dog is really cute. So it is, it is fun. I had another, a neighbor of mine actually, when this is another one, Doge was pumping. He actually, he hadn't used X's yet, but he downloaded Exodus. He bought Bitcoin. And then he exchanged for Doge just to get Doge. That was the easiest way he'd get Doge them all the time. I'm like, but do you have any Bitcoin? He's like, no, but I got Doge. But the cool thing is, is he bought Doge to his crate. He bought Doge. I don't know, it's like a penny or two or something like that. And I texted them, I'm like, you still got your Doge. Like I still got it, man. I still got it. So I don't know, people are having fun with it. And I think to have fun with cryptocurrency, it matters. I mean, it matters. It's like, we got Doge. We got pancake swap. You got yams, right? You have all these, you got sushi, right? There's a person named- You're making me hungry. Yeah. It's like, Chef Nomi, I think is what his name is, is making sushi swap. It's like, so this ecosystem, I love it. It's like, we are looking at traditional financial system and we're saying we're going to do things different in a fun way. Yeah. Got it. Very cool. Okay. So I'm going to take another question from the audience. And by the way, guys, just want to remind you, subscribe to our channel and keep sending your questions. JP has a lot of knowledge here. So send them our way. Okay. So actually, this is a really good question that I wanted to know about myself. It's coming from OkonMix22. He's asking or they're asking, when interest for BTC? Oh, okay. That would be incredible to have. And so there's a few things that we can do there.  They have a earned service. We can partner up with partners of services like that and potentially allow people to earn a return on their Bitcoin. That's one exciting way that we're thinking about. Another way that we're thinking about this is actually creating a decentralized mechanism to take Bitcoin, convert it into TBTC, which is an Ethereum token, or RenBTC, one of the two, and then move it into an Ethereum liquidity pool and allow people to earn interest there. And then finally, another potential is I have interest in the Stax token. And the Stax token actually allows you to earn a payout with Bitcoin. And I don't fully understand the mechanics just yet, but it's something that I have my eyes on because I think that would be the holy grail to have Bitcoin in your excess wallet, press one button, like how we do with a lot of other staking in excess, one button, and then you're just earning interest and yield on that Bitcoin. That would be incredible. And so it's something we're thinking about and doing. We don't have any formal plans just yet. Yeah, awesome. Well, that's good to know because I always like it because I huddle, obviously. So to earn interest is a really good feature. I like BlockFi a lot because they offer that. So hopefully I'm gonna see that from you guys too soon. Cool. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about where wallets fall into the future of crypto. I think crypto wallets are so important. In terms of the future, where do you see wallets looking or heading into or all that? I don't think people see how important wallets are yet because it is the gateway to how a person experiences crypto, right? Like today, people will go to exchanges and that's fine. But I think as we see more and more distrust from the mainstream to big centralized institutions, I think that distrust will be applied to exchanges. So platforms like Coinbase, Binance, there's gonna be more distrust there. And let's be honest, like hacks on exchanges are never going to stop, right? Exchange the servers with exchanges, they're always not gonna be up 100% of the time. That's just impossible, right? They're gonna go down from time to time. And so I believe people over time will seek out solutions to actually be in control. But the key is for people to actually feel like they don't have to have the responsibility.  And you get in the car and you're like, oh no, I think I dropped my phone in the supermarket. And they're running there and get it.  That's a problem. So we've gotta solve those problems. We've gotta make it feel as a person like you have the control and ownership, but you don't have like the technology is so good that it doesn't feel like you have the responsibility. And so that's a very key and important aspect. That's one of the number one things that we're thinking about in addition to that. So our mission is to help half of the world exit the traditional financial system. And so to do that, we have to make it so that anybody in the world can buy Bitcoin or cryptocurrency easy in a very easy way. And we've achieved that with Apple Pay. Great, but we haven't achieved that on Android yet. And we haven't achieved that on the desktop yet. And most of the world owns an Android phone. I think a recent statistic was anywhere from 70 to 80%. Don't know the exact number, but it's a majority of the world owns an Android phone. And when you think of people in developing nations, most of those people own Android phones. And so we've gotta make an experience for people where you can buy Bitcoin easy, whether it's with a credit card, whether it's with bank, whether it's with cash. These things are just kind of like the must haves. But really to where it's going is just that we've gotta make access like all these cool DeFi things that are happening, these liquidity pools that are happening. Gonna make it so simple that your grandma or somebody that's just starting out on their crypto journey can take $100 from bank account, move it all the way into a service like Compound or Aave and start earning interest and not have any fear whatsoever. But for us, it always centers around ease of use and security and that's how we're definitely thinking about these things. Yeah, you make really good points. And for me, I mean, I, you know, as a journalist in the space, I know a lot of the people behind the wallet. So like obviously right now you and I are talking, but a lot of people don't. And so with, you know, if you have an issue with your crypto, one thing that makes me sleep well at night is knowing the fact that I could literally contact the founder or CEO of that company and say, hey, I've got an issue with my crypto, help me rather than going through their support. It's like, I just want to know. So anyways, I think it's important for people to understand that Exodus and other wallets also offer great customer support where it's like, if you've got a problem with your fiat, you can call your bank and say, hey, there's an issue, help me. I just, you know, can you elaborate on that? Like, how's the customer support? So customer support. So I'm gonna have to do a confession moment too here in just a moment. But customer support is the company was founded with the notion that we will never get to the mainstream if we don't have good customer support because we believe that people that are just starting out on their journey are going to need a trusted friend to email and contact and talk to and talk to these things. And in fact, in the early days, we hit our phone number right on the website and it was actually, you'd talk to me, you'd call up, you'd be like, I'm having a problem with my dash or whatever. And I'm like, I'm talking through it. I wasn't like, hey, JP, CEO speaking. I did not say that. I was just like, thank you for calling Exodus. How can I help you? And just talking through and helping people out and over time, we learned the hard way that the phone support isn't gonna scale. And I think that was about Novemberish timeframe of 2017 when literally it was phone. I mean, my phone just did not stop ringing. I'm like, okay, this is not gonna scale. So we went into like, let's just have the best email support. So we went down that path. We went down that path. And we were really proud. We were really proud of ourselves up until it was early. I think it was earlier this year where we just got smacked in the face. We thought we were prepared. We thought we were ready for the bull market. We thought we were ready. We weren't. We were not ready for the bull market, unfortunately. And I hate to say that, but that's the true reality. We were not ready for the bull market. And so what we did is we doubled the size of our customer support. And then we did it again, right? We're growing our customer support. We're still not at the point that we want to be at, but our team, our customer support team is working super hard to answer everybody's questions. People that have written us will get answers that's going to happen, but just know that we are gonna continue to grow our customer support because for my co-founder Daniel and I, it is critical, critical, critical, critical for customer support to be great. It's one story I love to tell about this with a company that I want to really emulate is Zappos. A lot of people know about the story of Zappos. And one of the stories that their CEO told is that he was out with his friends one night and they had some beers or whatever and they asked him like, hey, do you think I could call Zappos and order a pizza? And he's like, I don't know, try it. And so the person calls Zappos and sure enough, they help him order pizza. Wow. We want to get to that level. And in the past, we have had things like that. People have, they've emailed us and they say, hey, I'm having problems with this exchange. Can you help me out? And we've done that and we want to do that. We want to be that trusted friend no matter what it is or whatever the problem it is that you have. And that's the aspiration that we have and we will get there, we will get there. Awesome, yeah, that's so important. I love that attitude. Okay, taking another question or two from the audience. All right, this is actually a great question because we touched on this but we didn't really go into the details and I think it's important. So Elle Millen is asking, what are your plans? Please tell me more about the partnership with Trasor. Yeah, so right now what we're doing is on our roadmap is we're going to add more asset support. That's the biggest thing is that nobody that is holding assets doesn't want more asset support in the Trasor. So we have, so all the assets that Exda supports, we want to get to that level with the Trasor. So we're going to add more assets. And the reason that this is so cool and important is that a lot of people have gotten really interested in staking, right? Whether it's Cardano, Cosmos, Tezos, Solana, whatever it is. And so how cool would it be if you have those, like say you have a large amount of those assets and you move them on your Trasor and then you can press one button and you can stake and you can earn interest with those assets on your Trasor. And so we want to get to that point. We're not quite there yet, but that is on the roadmap to do that. Because again, it's all about security. We want people to have a safe experience while using Exda. What are your thoughts on, because I think beginners, and this is my personal opinion, I think if you're a beginner user to crypto and you're new to stay away from hardware wallets, go with the wallets on your phone or stay away from the hardware wallets, but what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so I think that hardware wallets are great for people that are more tech savvy or are going to hold a large amount of money. But for the mainstream, whether you're starting out or you can just, you know, mainstream down the line, fast forward three to five years from now, I don't think that a lot of people are going to be using hardware wallets. I think there will always be people that will use them and that will demand them and we're gonna support those use cases for those people. But I agree with you. For someone that's just starting out, I think they just have to start playing with cryptocurrency and whether that's with like said Bitcoin or Doge or whatever, people just have to start playing with it. So I 100% agree with you that for people starting out should probably avoid hardware wallets to start. Yeah, but I like the fact that Exda has that partnership and you also have the option with Apple Pay. Like you're making it easy for beginners and you're making it easy for advanced users who have a lot of money in crypto and just wanna make sure it's safe. And that's a feature that not a lot of wallets offer. Right, I'm pretty certain we're the only wallet that has both Trasor desktop and then the mobile. Yeah. I don't know that there's any other wallet that has all three of those. Right, yeah. So that's important. Okay, cool. Another question from an audience member, Kubwio Keegan is asking crypto credit card, is that an Exda's future? We get this question a lot and I don't know, I might have to start considering this more because this question comes up way more than I would expect. And to answer the question, no, not currently. We don't have any formal plans for it but we're watching how this is playing out. It seems that a lot of companies are going down this path of issuing a crypto credit card. I think BlockFi recently just announced their support for crypto credit card. And that's awesome. So we wanna see how these other companies are going to do this and make these crypto credit cards work well or how they're gonna make them work. And then we'll come in and we'll say like, oh, okay, here's how we make them work well. For most things, we like to kind of sit back, observe and then do a fast follow and come in and just make it work really well. So that's kind of how we think about things. Right. What are your thoughts in general on crypto credit cards? Like I'm just curious. I think they're cool. I think they're really cool. In fact, early days, Exodus, all we had was Bitcoin. That's all we actually didn't have, we didn't have accounts or anything. We just had Bitcoin. And so we actually signed up for a personal account for BitPay and we used the BitPay card early on in the early days of the company to be able to purchase things like servers or whatever and use Bitcoin to do that. So I think they're amazing innovations. And so it's just, again, we're just gonna watch and see how it plays out. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so here's a question that I wanted to ask you about. Is it true that Exodus wants to build out a fundraising platform for other companies? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so with our offering right now, we are, the point of our offering is more or less for a proof of concept to show the world that this is possible. And so when we show the world that this is possible and we build in all the components from the actual offering itself to the issuance of the stock to the actual secondary trading, once we have all that bundled up into one package and we make it easy, then we will go to other companies and we'll say, come on in, you can do a stock public offering right inside of the Exodus platform. So absolutely. Cool, very cool. Are you able to discuss other plans for the future? I mean, obviously we've talked about the credit cards and interest and all of that, but is there anything else that we didn't mention that we can look forward to? I think one of the things that I'm really excited to figure out is how to make a usable NFT experience. I know we touched on this and talked about it, but still figuring out like, how can you have an NFT experience where you're looking at it and it's just very immersive, right? And then you have your mobile phone synced up with your desktop wallet. You have it both. And you can see the NFT on both and you can start interacting with the NFT and maybe you have something where you have an augmented reality experience with your NFTs where you're kind of seeing it and you can see it and it's a very immersive experience. So we're thinking about that and it's something that's on our considerations on a roadmap to figure out, but we haven't quite figured out yet how to make it work well. In addition to that, we need to have the chain work for us too. Because again, an NFT fees with Ethereum is just it's not gonna work. So we gotta look at other blockchains to make that a reality. Yeah, definitely. What are your thoughts on NFTs in general? Do you think they're cool? Do you think that this is a boom and then all of a sudden they're not gonna be cool?  They are here to stay. I am personally not like an NFT crazy person. Like I know some people like I actually, there's a person in our company that I love them to death and he keeps telling me it's like, you gotta buy a crypto pump. You gotta buy a crypto pump. And I look and I'm like, oh my gosh, these crypto punks, the cheapest one is like $40,000. Wow. So, but I think there's something there to NFTs. Like people love to collect things. I mean, MetaCovan, they bought that $69 million NFT, the Beeple 5000 days NFT for $69 million. So people love to collect things that's not gonna ever end. So I think that's interesting. I think it's interesting how some of these NFTs reward early artists. So you can be a digital creator, whether it's with music or art, and you can get paid on the royalties later to sell when you sell the NFTs and the next person sells it, you get a royalty back. I think that's really cool for people. And I think there are some use cases that make a lot of sense, like tickets and things like that to events or it makes a lot of sense there. So I'm a, I'd say, describe myself probably as a curious observer, but outside of the little 3D hologram thing they bought in the Oprah Mean NFT, I own no other NFTs today, but I am looking forward to creating an experience where I do own NFTs because it's such a great experience. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Cool, okay. So just to let the audience know we've got a few minutes, keep dropping your questions. I'm gonna take another question from the audience real quick. So Jeffrey is asking, will Exodus add Zillica staking? Yes, at some point in time, we will do that. We wanna add staking for all assets that support staking. If I recall, there was an issue with, I don't know if it was some hardware requirements or whatever, I don't wanna speculate too much on what the issues were with Zillica staking, but it is something that we will do because I know this is not the first time I've gotten this question either. So we wanna make it so easy for somebody to own the asset and earn interest on that asset. So we will support it at some point. Got it, cool. Okay, so while I wait for a few more questions to come in, I just wanna know, because we only have a few minutes, any additional comments, anything we didn't cover that you want the audience to know about? Yes, I think that as I mentioned, our mission is to help half of the world exits traditional financial system by 2030. So if you are a person out there that you like what we're doing, you want to come work for a remote only company that pays 100% of our salaries in Bitcoin and that excites you and doesn't scare you, we are hiring so many people. So go to exsys.com forward slash careers and come join us. Come join this movement that we're doing here and we would love to have. Did they get an exsys hoodie like the one you're wearing? I like it, it's really cool. I've been looking, I'm like, that's an awesome hoodie. Yeah, I'll tell you what, it's actually really comfortable too. It's kind of funny, I think I have 10 of these and so I wear it like you look in my closet and it's all it is, it's exsys, hoodies and sweatshirts and stuff. So it makes it real easy, but yes, they're very comfortable and whoever joins us will definitely get an exsys hoodie. Okay, cool. Okay, I'm gonna take one more question from the audience and then we're gonna be out of time. So, Okonomics22 is saying win Theta. Yes, we are working on Theta right now. We are working on Theta right now. I, it's been on the roadmap but we are working on Theta right now and Theta snuck up fast into, I don't think it's quite a top 10 ad but I think it's like top 15 now. And so Theta snuck up fast. So we were working on Theta now. I anticipate Q2 for a Theta release. Cool, okay. And before we end, I just wanna remind everybody to subscribe to our channel. And JP, do you use Twitter or is exsys active on Twitter? Be as crypto Twitter is huge. So what's the handle if so? Yes, you go to, my handle is JP Richardson or you could follow exsys at exsys underscore IO. Perfect, cool. Thanks JP, it's been a real pleasure, it's been fun. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me on.