Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Bitcoins are in the news. Their prices have been fluctuating a lot. Bitcoin prices were about $20 per coin in February 2013. Now they are ruling at more than $11,000. To speak about this, we have here with us Rabir Porkaista, editor-in-chief of NewsClick. Welcome, Rabir. But first thing first, how do bitcoins work? What are bitcoins? As popularly known, they are cryptocurrencies. There is no government which gives the impromatur of its state about the value of the coin. So, in that sense, it is supposed to be outside old state control. That is one thing about any cryptocurrency. The bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency works by actually solving what would be called a crypto problem, a cryptographic problem. And this happens when any transaction is done. So, there are two elements to the bitcoin. One is that each bitcoin maintains essentially a list of all the transactions in it. It stores it and this is stored as a blockchain. This blockchain therefore enumerates all the transactions that this particular coin is undergone. And this blockchain is also replicated in a whole set of registers, who also then verify that this bitcoin is actually the one being transacted if a transaction of the bitcoin takes place. When such a transaction takes place, all the registries have to work to find out is this the bitcoin that is a valid bitcoin? It was held by the person who is now saying this is to be transferred to somebody else. And this is set as I said a cryptographic problem. Now, it has a randomness to it and it leads a lot of computational powers, not something which can be done trivially. So, therefore, all the ones who are working on this cryptographic problem, whoever solves it first. And I said because of the randomness all of them even with the same power are not going to solve it in the same time. Therefore, whoever solves it first gets a certain token as something that it has mined it as it is essentially mining verifying the transaction is equivalent to mining for a bitcoin. So, it gets a bitcoin as a consequence of that for the value of a bitcoin as a consequence of that. Now, this whole transaction therefore has two parts. One is verifying the transaction, one is also mining for the transaction because the bitcoin once that cryptographic problem is solved. This verification is very easy. It is difficult to solve, but once solved the verification is trivial. Then 50% of the registries have to check at least that this is a valid transfer. This is a valid solution to the cryptographic problem and then this becomes the registry update of all the registries that this particular bitcoin has now changed from A to B. So, you get a mining result, you get a bitcoin as a part of this process and you also verify that it has in the transaction has really happened and it has been certified or verified by a certain number of nodes of the system which is therefore considered that a valid transaction. This is what underlines the cryptocurrency and this is where the government has really no role in seeing that this is being done. Neither is there a bank involved which verifies the transaction. It is therefore what is called also the distributed ledger system. The registries are considered as distributed ledgers. So, there is no centralized node checking the verification like in a bank or a credit card where a centralized node verifies the transaction. You just talked about mining of cryptocurrencies. What are the costs involved in this? We have read that mining of bitcoins consumes a lot of energy in terms of electricity and so on. So, what do you have to say about that? Well, because the cryptocurrencies need computations, obviously they are related to the speed at which computations takes place. Originally, it started with PCs running the cryptographic puzzles that is soon people discovered that the graphic processors got more computational power. So, people shifted to what are called the GPUs, the graphic processing units for mining bitcoins. Then it was found that this is really could be done much faster if you shift to what are called FPGAs, gate arrays which are essentially you sort of put the programming itself into the chip. And latest in the ASICs which are application specific ICs which have configured the entire bitcoin mining algorithm in hardware itself. So, these are the four stages which has happened. Now, after you have done it, it still requires a lot of computational power because as more and more computational power is put into it, the rate at which you can mine bitcoins is also being changed. The value of the bitcoin that you mine is also being changed. So, there are various steps being taken to see that the bitcoins that are produced are not immediately do not exhaust the total possibilities with the bitcoin. I think there are X number of bitcoins which can be produced, all of it will finish by 2040 that is a projected trend.  So, increasing computational power is a consequence of this as well. The more you can mine, the less you get out of the mining is essentially what the algorithm has been said to do. So, that you do not mine all the bitcoins at one go. I think we have mined almost 80 percent the total possible bitcoins that need to be mined, but the rest 20 percent will take a long time. That is the plan as of now. Consequence of all this long and short of it is that it produced needs a lot of computational power. And in fact, the argument is it takes roughly per day the consumption of all the bitcoin farms, computers which are working worldwide is enough to power a small or a medium sized country. Nigeria, it seems. Pardon? As much as Nigeria's. As much as Nigeria's for Ethereum which is a smaller crypto currency as much as Cypress is. So, it already is consuming a lot of power and as the mining becomes more and more difficult, as the number of people mining become larger, as harder becomes more and more powerful, you are going to see a rise of the electricity consumption for mining bitcoin. That is only one part of it. The second part of it to verify the transaction, the bitcoin automatically has a kind of maximum number of transactions it can see. So, the number of transactions a bitcoin can see, bitcoin transactions, number of bitcoin transactions that you can see sort of maxes out about 7 transactions a second. So, that is a pretty low number. So, you also do not you are not able to get bitcoins to be transacted in large numbers. So, therefore, the considering unlike say credit card or cash or other means of transactions that you have today. Bitcoin, therefore, is not very useful for transactional purposes. So, it is a cryptocurrency, but it does not perform the role of currency which a cash or for instance a credit card does because of the very nature of the transaction that needs verification. Not many number of transactions can be verified. So, if it is not very useful for transactions, what is the purpose of having bitcoins? Well, this is the whole debate. Is bitcoin a currency for like any other currency for transactions which is what we understand the role of a currency to be basically for transactional purposes or exchange purposes. Or is bitcoin just a holder of wealth and therefore, it is a kind of asset class like any other asset class like land, like a painting, like a house. It could be considered an asset and you may decide to hold that asset because you think its price will go up. Now, this therefore is not a currency in the sense that we consider currencies as basically an instrument of exchange or an instrument of transaction by which we buy or sell other goods. It remains therefore essentially an asset class people are using for holding wealth because they think the price will go up. Or it is used for criminal transactions where you do not want it to be traced because the way bitcoin operates, being a cryptocurrency, you really can operate in the market without any government or any bank or any other body which could oversee this transaction. As a consequence, it is being used for partly for criminal purpose. The bulk of the bitcoin is really being used for speculative gains or use it as an asset class. The question is why do people regard it as an asset? Now, here is the argument. This is what is called the bigger fool argument that people who buy bitcoins think that there are bigger fools who will pay a higher price for it. It is somewhat like shall we say the baseball card markets. The baseball cards are also sold and there are rare cards which apparently have much higher values. Now, this all of it operates not in the basis of intrinsic use value that you can use them for a specific purpose like buying goods, but essentially for the fact that somebody will someday buy it at a higher price review. So, at the moment the bitcoin market to me is a market which is entirely for speculative gains. Why people think that if the value should be there? I think it is also because people think at the moment there is a war on cash, the currencies are fluctuating. Therefore, they believe that bitcoin provides them in some sense a refuge for holding wealth in a currency which the governments cannot touch. I think this is somewhere of this is what is driving the bitcoin bubble. It is clearly a bubble. Otherwise the prices have gone up by 10 times, fallen by half. All of this fluctuation all in the last 3-4 months would seem to indicate a very volatile market. And the whole underpinning of the bitcoins is supposed to be because it was pinned to the hardware speeds. Therefore, it would not see such fluctuations, but there is an objective basis to the value of the bitcoin. What is the argument with which this cryptocurrency was introduced? That has not happened. Essentially what you are seeing is just another asset class. Therefore, essentially a kind of speculative bubble in which bitcoins today are operating. Considering all these, will it be possible for governments to regulate or ban bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies? Well, I think if the governments decide that this is something that will not be allowed to be traded or it is illegal, then it will operate only in a kind of black market way. So, yes, it would still have a market, but at the same time, its existence would be far more endangered. So, I do think that the bitcoins today are operating in somewhat of grey conditions. It is to be considered as wealth. In fact, the government of India is sending income tax notices to the bitcoin exchanges, to bitcoin holders, and therefore saying, well, bitcoins have gone up. You should pay wealth tax, you should pay income tax. All of these issues are there. But at the same time, because of the nature of this currency, it is going to be difficult for governments to regulate it. But it is possible for governments, all of them put together to agree that bitcoins should be considered illegal. Therefore, anybody holds bitcoin is doing illegal operations. And as you know, if you can declare X number of things illegal, you can also declare bitcoin illegal. So, it will be with the police powers of the state to regulate. But whether they will be able to regulate within the criminal world, which could still use it as a kind of exchange for themselves? Yes, that will be more difficult. Now, there are reports that Venezuela is considering issuing a cryptocurrency of its own. Do you think that will work? Well, you know, a Venezuelan cryptocurrency would have as much traction as a fiat currency would. This comes about for two reasons. One is, Venezuela's currency is actually in a kind of free fall against the dollar, partly because the Americans have imposed very severe sanctions, have virtually thrown them out of the financial system of the world. Venezuela has been as a consequent force to renege on some of its bond payments. All of this makes Venezuela's currency extremely difficult to trade. They are thinking by creating a cryptocurrency. Maybe they could then get into a position where they could use the cryptocurrency, mine the cryptocurrency and use it for the exchange purposes. I personally think that the value of this and a fiat currency that Venezuela could float if it reforms its financial system, there would be too much of a difference between the validity of either. So, I don't see much of an advantage to be gained in floating a cryptocurrency in lieu of what currency they now have. The thing that they could look at is for external market, they could look at, for instance, the Yuan, which the Chinese are making convertible. The only problem Venezuela has in that count is their trade is largely with the neighbors in Latin America and Yuan is not a very good convertible currency for Latin America. So, if it was Asia, yes, it would be quite easy to trade with using the Yuan because all Asian countries have large amounts of Yuan, so they could use it for trade with other countries. But for Latin America, that may be more difficult. So, I think that's why they are considering what is it that they can do. But personally, I would believe that the cryptocurrency would not really solve the underlying problem they have, which is the convertible value of their currency and the kind of sanctions Americans have introduced on them. And they may be better off with some other convertible currency like the Yuan. Thank you so much, Prabir, for explaining all these two news clips. That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for watching News Clip.


Thank you Pat. When I was asked to do the introduction for Mayor Castro, Secretary Castro, I was thrilled because I wanted to tell everyone here a story about a phone call that changed my life and it was a call from Mayor Castro. Right at four years ago, he called to ask me to be one of the tri-chairs of SA 2020 and let me just say for sure I had no interest in doing it. I mean I had beyond no interest in doing it and because really I had lost my interest in downtown. I had lost really, that is I had no vision for myself of ever really doing anything else in town. I thought I'm well invested in downtown already. Thank you very much. Don't need any more. And also I would just say that my interest in being more involved with the city was not very strong. In fact, I had never spent more than ten minutes with a mayor in my entire history prior to that time. And so really I had not been part of the political process in any respect in the city. The only exception to that was when the city supported the shopping mall, Windsor Park Mall to be converted into Rackspace's headquarters. That was really my only sort of brush with politics in San Antonio. But that phone call four years ago changed my life and one reason is because I was celebrating, four years ago I was celebrating having sold my first round of Rackspace shares. And you know what I did? I paid off all my debt, except for one exception. And it felt really good and I actually had some money in the bank for the first time. I mean I'm talking about this was sort of the after twelve years of toiling away at Rackspace with my colleagues. You know it just felt magical to have the debt that I had incurred buying Rackspace shares, building Rackspace and debt in other places totally paid off in money in the bank. That felt really good. And yet that phone call changed all that. I'm back at debt again because of the things that I'm doing downtown with my colleagues, Lorenzo, Randy and our other colleagues. And with that phone call, I didn't know it, but that phone call was to bring three gifts to my life. Three gifts. Gift number one is ambition for our city. I personally had very little ambition for our city. Four years ago Rackspace was 3,000 people. Today it's 6,000. Four years ago Rackspace was about a billion in revenue. We will end this year just short of two billion in revenue. And we're growing strong. Contrary to what you might read online, very soon I would love to be invited back when Rackspace hits 10,000 employees. And I know that day is not very far away. But that phone call really was the spark of gift number one, which was a personal ambition for our city, that he gave to me and I think he gave it to all of us. Did he give it to you? That ambition was an ambition that we should think bigger. We should dream bigger. We should believe in ourselves. We're a city that is evolving, emerging right now. This is not like Chicago or Houston or New York. Those cities have been great cities for decades, but our mayor asked us to be great during our lifetimes. I'm talking the lifetime that you have right now and to give it to our children in a very different city than the one we inherited. And it's going to be because of what we all do. And this was part of the gift is that he actually gave an invitation to me to say, Graham, do you think you have a role in the city becoming a great city? And so to me, gift number one is ambition for our city that included a role for me, I think a role for me in helping move us to the next level downtown. And that really is why we made that announcement last week about Frost Bank. We're going to be building the newest, biggest building in town and with the support of the city and the support of Frost Bank, that's going to happen. It's going to come to life. We're all going to be proud of that. Gift number two is during SA 2020, SA 2020 started in September of 2010, four years ago. And during SA 2020, I received an email from a racker, from a racker who lived in Blacksburg, Virginia and at one of our offices there. And we were asking him and his colleagues to move to San Antonio. Two of the three colleagues did move here. One did not and he wrote me an email that said, Graham, I just want to tell you definitively I'm not moving to San Antonio. Instead, I'm going to move to Austin. That's because San Antonio has no startup scene.  It has no software developer scene. I'm not moving to San Antonio. Thank you, sort of stop harassing me was his message. And he moved to Austin. I mean, he did move to Austin, but the rackers who moved to San Antonio made a big difference. Is Pat Matthews here by chance? Pat Matthews is a part of our city. He's making our city better. But I think this email, I actually forwarded it over to the mayor. And the mayor actually, the only email address I had at the time was an AOL address. And by the way, in the tech world, it very uncool to have an AOL address. Woo! So, but the second gift that he gave me arose from SA 2020 was the notion of the decade of downtown. Because before SA 2020 really solidified that downtown was something that we all aspired to have as part of our lives. We wanted to have a great hustle bustle downtown. Before SA 2020, it really was not on the mayor's agenda. So it was during that time that the words decade of downtown were coined. And that is really to me what brings us to this presentation. And to this, to Centro being what it is today. So that's gift number two. And I believe that today, having hired 3,000 rackers on a net basis since that time, you know, I think that our city is more marketable today. And look at what's happening around Pearl. Thank you, Pearl. Look what's happening around Southtown. Thank you to all the people there. That is, our city, you can get a glimpse of what the inner city can be. You can just get a glimpse of it. And it's going to be so exciting in a couple of years. The goal during the decade, the goal for the decade of downtown, and the SA 2020 goal was to build 7,500 housing units in the inner city. We're already halfway there at 3,500. That's incredible. And you can just see, we're going to hit that goal and go well past it. Downtown is going to change our city. It's going to make certainly our city more marketable to every new racket that moves here. And it's going to be a better place to live, and especially for the young people in your lives. The third gift is a gift that the mayor leaves behind, which is that we are genuinely a city that is on the rise. We're a city that has broken out of the sleepy city that we've been for the last 20 years. We were all proud to be part of, but it wasn't really known around the world. And didn't it really, I don't know that it aspired to greatness, the way that our city does today. And a mayor left leaves us with a city that is not only that has risen during his time, but that will continue to rise long after he's gone. Every time we see his face on TV, we can know that he is not only the face of our Washington government.  The city that's on the rise, the decade of downtown, and a city that is aspiring to be greater in the coming decades than it's ever been in the past. Mayor, over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Graham, for the very warm introduction. And more importantly, thank you for the tremendous work that you have done over these last several years and really over a career that is making San Antonio a greater place to live and to do business and even more prosperous than many of us imagine. So thank you for that, Graham. I also, of course, want to thank Pat DiGiovanni and Central Partnership for putting this together on fairly short notice. You all have done an excellent job, Pat. Thank you to you and Don Frost and the board. It's just been fantastic to see Central stand up the way that it has and to succeed and to help provide so much momentum to the decade of downtown. Of course, yesterday I got a bit of great news in my life. Thank you. And I was so happy that at around 11.30 yesterday morning, I could sit in front of a TV, never thought I'd be so happy to watch C-SPAN 2 along with my beautiful wife, Erica, and our daughter, Carina. Thank you all very much for being here and for your love and for your support. Erica is pregnant with her second baby. I used to tell her that I didn't want to be 40 years old and still changing diapers, but I guess that's inevitable now. And my only regret, I think our only regret is that our young son or daughter is going to be born in D.C. and not here in San Antonio, but we'll change that as fast as possible afterward and bring them back. I also want to acknowledge the presence and the great contribution of my colleagues who are here, my council colleagues. I'm someone who has very much appreciated serving with people who are very intelligent, who are competent, and who have the best interest not just of their districts, but of all of San Antonio in mind when they make decisions. So thank you all very much for your leadership and the leadership that you're going to continue to provide. I want to especially recognize Councilman Diego Bernal, the District 1 Councilman who represents downtown and who I've called a friend since we hung out in the playground at the Foya Middle School on the west side 20-something years ago. Diego, you've done a stellar job as Councilman, and I know that you have a very bright future ahead of you. Thank you. And we're very fortunate in San Antonio because we have, I think, the finest city manager in all of the United States, a true professional, someone who gets the job done and has worked hard over the last several years to get San Antonio to where it's at on many different levels. Thank you, Cheryl, for your great work. I especially also want to thank Lori Houston, you and your staff for your great work on downtown. Many of the folks who have worked with Lori and her staff know how excellent her work is and the great effort they put forward. Shannon Miller as well in the Office of Historic Preservation. Thank you for your work. Daryl Byrd, I know that the SA 2020 crew is here somewhere over here. They didn't buy the most expensive table, which is good. Thank you all for the work that you all are doing. SA 2020 has just been tremendous in our community. And finally, I wanted to thank my staff. Where's my staff at? They spent even less. I wanted to thank Francis Gonzalez that I see back there and Sarah McClornan, Adam Greenup, Matthew Shweiger, Jaime Castillo who couldn't be here today, Jed Mabius who's on vacation right now in Holland, Michigan, Patty Buente who has been one of my assistants, my secretary since I walked into City Hall as a 26-year-old councilman and Stacey Weber who's done just a fantastic job as well. And I am probably forgetting somebody, I hope not. But they have just been doing a tremendous job over these last few years. Same thing goes for Robbie Greenbloom who has moved on to bigger and better things in the city attorney's office. This decade of downtown has a lot of momentum. It has a lot of momentum not just because of the work that we have done at the city or the private sector has done but also because of the work that our county judge, Nelson Wolfe, has done. Nelson, it has been absolutely a pleasure and a thrill and very educational for me to get to serve with you. You have been a great public servant for many years now. We're all in your debt. Thank you for the good work that you continue to do for our city. So this is the decade of downtown. Cevallos, 1221 Broadway, the Mosaic, the Can Plant, 1800 Broadway, the Steelhouse Lofts, South Flores, the River House, Big Techs, the Casablanca Lofts, the Peanut Factory Lofts, Sojo, that stands for South Josephine, East Quincy, Elon, the Cherry Modern, Merchant's Ice House, 1130 Broadway, 307 Dwyer, the Southtown Vias, and the Sellers Project at Pearl. That is the decade of downtown that you see in front of you and it is unstoppable now. There are folks in this room and many folks in our community who remember a time when downtown San Antonio was the place to be in our city. Before there was a Northstorm Mall or even a Wonderland, before there was the Quarry Market or La Cantera, there was Frost Brothers and there was Jockeys and there was Hutchins Men's Store and McNeil's Jewelry Store. There was, on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, crowds that would gather to shop and to socialize, crowds that made San Antonio, San Antonio's downtown, the hotbed of activity. There are folks in every corner of this city, in single-family houses, in senior apartments, in our nursing homes who can tell you that story and over the last 15 years, I've heard many of them. Downtown was not just the retail hub of our city, it was also the commercial hub, the place for headquarters like Frost Bank and car dealerships all along Broadway. It was the place that was the medical center before there was a medical center with doctors' offices, the Santa Rosa Hospital with lawyers' offices that dotted the landscape around the county courthouse. It was also the cultural hub of San Antonio. Think about the names that we still see today like the Majestic and the Aztec, the Empire, the Alameda. It also had places like the Market Square, places that contributed to the everyday artistic and cultural advancement of our community. And then, somewhere along the way, the city started to sprawl. It grew further and further out. People moved to the Jefferson area and then out to Oak Hills and out to I-10 and 4-10 and then eventually to 1604 and 281. And now today, even beyond that, the downtown area began to get less invested in. In 1968, the Hemisphere brought an infusion of energy and of aspiration and possibility. Since that time, 13,000 hotel rooms had been built in our downtown area. Over time, the locals mostly left downtown with a few notable exceptions of housing developments and more and more tourists populated the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and the other attractions of our downtown. What happened was that somewhere along the way, something very precious went missing in San Antonio. What went missing was a sense of ownership by San Antonians, a sense of connection between the community and the downtown. Five years ago, in July of 2009, I declared that this decade would be the decade of downtown. I did so because I'm convinced that great cities need great downtowns and because there are few big cities that can prosper without one. I did so because I'm convinced that there are cross currents of this 21st century that demand that a city like San Antonio make sufficient investment to create a great downtown. The fact that people and capital are more mobile than they ever have been in this 21st century global economy. And the future belongs to those communities who create brain power and a good cost of living, but also who create vibrancy and cultural relevance and a sense that something is happening in your city. That's where downtown is so important. So as part of SA 2020, our community came together to dream about the next 10 years for San Antonio. And we set a lot of goals. One of those goals was that we would go out and create a downtown that is culturally rich, vibrant, and 24-7. One that is meaningful to tourists and to residents alike with something for everyone. But the fact is that declarations are meaningless themselves without action. And so over the last few years at City Hall and in our community with the help of our private sector, our county, and of course with Centro, we've gotten to work. We created urban core investment incentives like the Inner City Incentive Fund. We refocused city incentive policy to downtown by creating the Inner City Reinvestment Infilt Policy, also known as ICRIP, and the Center City Housing Incentive Policy, CCHIP, and we invested $93.5 million of our 2012 bond issue in downtown after only $11 million had been invested five years before. We invested it in important infrastructure projects in our roadways and in our parks like Hemisphere Park. We established a Housing First policy to incentivize the development of housing and also to incentivize our own city employees and others to come and live downtown. We worked on changing the mindset of our economic development approach from one that said first we're going to consider going out to the new parts of town to one that said first we're going to consider going into our older neighborhoods like downtown, so with the leadership of our city manager we had some good success with companies like VisionWorks and I'm confident that that success will continue. And the results that we have seen because of these actions are compelling. When we declared the decade of downtown there were 3,034 housing units in the downtown area. Since that time we've seen the development of an additional 3,573 downtown units. That's more than double what was there before. Of the 20 housing projects that I talked about earlier, seven of them are rental projects that have come online and on average they have a 93% occupancy rate and are 98% pre-leased. These housing units represent a total investment of $574 million into the city and the city of San Antonio has provided $54 million of an incentive and on top of that housing we also see the coming online of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the development of Hemisphere Park and that elusive catch that we've been waiting for for so long a downtown grocery store for people to actually shop in downtown and the recent announcement by Frost Bank and Weston Urban that will bring, I'm confident, the first high rise office tower to downtown in more than a quarter of a century will only catalyze that momentum even more and ensure that no matter the leadership in place, no matter the year, whether it's 2014 or 2024, that the momentum stays with downtown. The decade of downtown is not really nor has it ever been about trying to recapture the past. It's really about the future of this city and so as I get ready to say a very bitter sweet goodbye for now to San Antonio, I believe that there's certain things that we must do, things that we must resolve to accomplish as a community to ensure that San Antonio is as economically competitive as we can be in this 21st century global economy because of our downtown. The first is that we must continue to incentivize housing downtown until the market takes over. We're only about halfway to our goal of 7,500 housing units but I'm confident that we can get there by 2020 if we stay on course. Secondly, it's very clear that downtown is becoming a hub for 21st century entrepreneurs. There's no better example of that than Geekdom, a work sharing space in all the great small companies and individual efforts that are bubbling up that will grow into the rack spaces of the future. Recently we opened up Cafe Commerce, which I believe supplements the great work of Geekdom and others that are fostering, cultivating the brain power and the energy of so many folks with great business ideas, particularly in 21st century industries, whether it's in cybersecurity or information technology or gaming or anything else, we will all be the beneficiaries of the work that's happening there. Thirdly, we must do everything that we can to spark a revival of street level retailers downtown to fill vacant storefronts. I want to commend Councilman Bernal for his work on the vacant building registration pilot program, which I'm confident will be a great first start to help make that happen to better understand where we sit. However, we need to keep moving forward to look at ways that we can work with property owners and look at zoning adjustments in the future to see if we can incentivize movement. Fourth, it is in the entire city's best interest that we continue to invest infrastructure dollars in downtown. That means for our streets, that means for drainage, and that means for the Via Streetcar as well. The Streetcar project is an important part of revitalizing the urban core of our city. It will be an excellent people mover and a catalyst for future economic investment in our city. I have always tried to work as mayor in the spirit of thinking through what's good for our entire city and not just one part of town. And I would caution this community to over listen to the voices of folks who would pit one side of town against another side of town. Those who might scapegoat downtown as the reason that folks in other parts of the community still wait for their street to get fixed or still have drainage needs. The fact is that investment downtown or investment in other places is good for the entire city. The fact also is that significant investments are being made in each part of our community. Just as I'm proud of the decade of downtown, I'm proud of the work that we've done on our east side where for the first time, significant city and federal dollars are working together with the non-profit and the private sector to catalyze a resurgence of that east side and lift up the quality of life in those neighborhoods and in the schools. The same thing is happening in our south side where Brook City base is doing miraculous things and the new south side is blending with the old south side on the west side where we see signs of life in our corridors like Commerce Street and Gulevra Street on our near north side where the Broadway corridor with its children's museum and its parks and neighborhoods like Mankey Park, not to mention closer in to the downtown area have experienced a revival and also of course, far out in our city, beyond 281 and 1604 that continues to get developed and where over the last decade we have spent the most amount of transportation and infrastructure money. The future of this city's prosperity lies not in pitting neighborhoods against each other or singling out downtown as a place we don't want to invest but in understanding that all of us will rise together if we tend to all of the city's needs including downtown. And finally, going forward we have to make sure that ours is a downtown that belongs to everyone. Early next week I'll appoint a mayoral task force on diverse and dynamic communities to make recommendations on policy to keep our urban core lively but also affordable for folks along the income scale. I've asked Councilman Bernal to chair this task force and I'm confident that they'll come up with good policy to guide us going forward. Recent decisions by our city council as well as our zoning commission and planning commission remind me that there are always two sides to the coin when we experience prosperity in an area and what we want when we reach 2020 is a downtown where people of different means can afford to enjoy it. People of different places can be part of it. The truth is that I haven't seen a single city that's been able to handle this well but I am confident that here in San Antonio we can come up with great ideas and implement them and I hope buck that trend. Twenty years ago this week I reported for work as an intern at the White House in the Office of Cabinet Affairs. Of course I never imagined twenty years later that this summer I would begin as a cabinet member at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I mostly that summer shuffled papers and got to do what interns usually do. Sorry to my interns who are here which is not much. And throughout that summer and the time that I was away I always looked forward to getting back to our city and these days I look forward to that again. In fact, I look forward to Friday, September 25th, 2020. Ten years after we kicked off SA 2020 I look forward to walking in the downtown of tomorrow. A place that I know will be teeming with people from throughout San Antonio and the region when we hear different languages spoken. Place where locals and visitors both enjoy the sights and the sounds. Maybe I'll go enjoy a show at the Tobin Center or go check out the latest exhibit at one of our museums or catch a show at one of the theaters or maybe Erica and I will take our youngest son or daughter to go play in the playscape at Hemisphere. We're going to enjoy that downtown of the year 2020. We have in this city two of the most powerful things that a community can have that don't show up in a balance sheet or on a pie chart but they make a world of difference. The first of those things is optimism a sense that we are a city on the rise a city whose better days are ahead and that's true. The thing is and any one of you who have traveled much around the world can say this that's not the case everywhere there's something special about San Antonio because of that and secondly we have a vision for where we're going. We're building in this city a brain power community that is the liveliest city in the United States. I have always believed that cities have destinies that because of your work and the work of so many others and that optimism and that vision for San Antonio our destiny is prosperity. Thank you. Thank you Mayor. Thank you so much for energizing us and challenging us to stay the course a course that you've navigated so well for us and I'll tell you one thing we will not let you down sir. You've been an outstanding leader and we wish you great success at HUD. If I may Councilman Bernal if you would join us Erica if you would as well up on the stage and Graham and Paula before we close we'd like to make a special announcement and as you heard in the Mayor's remarks today was about the future of downtown but I think it's safe to say it's also about leadership now and in the future it will take continued leadership to return our downtown and our center city to the greatness that Mayor Castro described. Now I'm not going to be able to go home tonight unless I introduce my wife and life partner she's somewhere in the back Alicia where are you please stand and say hello. This this weekend Alicia and I were encouraged to watch a movie by our soon to be four year old grandson that movie was the Lego movie how many of you seen it oh good well there are two wonderful messages in that movie one an ordinary construction worker named Emmett turns out to be the real hero the ordinary became the special the second message was if we stick together in a team anything is possible so who will be our Emmett who will lead the master builders of the center city who will disarm the crackle of San Antonio with their own piece of resistance who will rally the people across San Antonio to use their creativity to build our community up and lead the charge important questions for all of us and at Centro we'd like to hear our answer with the help of the 80 20 foundation we are excited to announce today the launch of the Julian Castro future urban leaders scholarship program with an award of $5,000 mayor we initiated this program to celebrate your accomplishments honor your commitment to the center city and to provide a young student with the opportunity to develop leadership skills our city will need in the future with the continued support of the community we will award this scholarship annually to a deserving high school student who plans to attend the San Antonio university or college and dedicate his or her education to the field of urban studies mayor congratulations again best wishes for a great success at HUD thank you for your dedicated service and thank you all everyone for being here before you head out and as you head out today we leave you with a bit of musical inspiration to carry you through the rest of the day thank you all for being here it's been a great time hope you had a good time as well thank you all very much


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards rip in 23 top Star Wars chrome black hobby 12 box case break number one random auto or pack Get the pack or auto of course, I don't have them copied in for whatever reason so shout out Sam on that one. What a guy So I'm gonna do the random right now bring you over here We are going. Yeah, I know you're talking about it. I'm gonna roll the dice six times good luck one two three four five six Daniel M down to Joshua B and then six times we have auto one through twelve and pack one through twelve representing Of course every single one in the break six times on your autos and packs one two three four five and six auto three down to auto seven Got Daniel M with auto three Kyle Z auto two Dylan P auto four talk a hero Oh auto two Paul P packed or auto 12th So talk hero oh is packed to Paul P is auto 12 talk hero oh pack 11 Taylor M pack 5 Darius M pack 8 Luke B pack 10 Chris V pack 6 Robert D pack 7 William N auto 10 Dylan P auto 9 Travis M auto 11 William N auto 6 Matthew B auto 1 Chad I auto 8 Chris V pack 12 John oh pack 4 Jeremy T pack 3 William N auto 5 talk hero oh pack 9 Sean P pack 1 and Joshua B auto 7 so we get these copied over before it gets started And then I'll open the case and explain how that'll go down a single digits in both walks. Let's go single digits in both Looks everybody. Thank you guys appreciate that That was Carl P taking the nets in 15 and Heath F taking a spot to motto. Thank you, buddy Results for Star Wars number one results save and Here you go. All right, so I'm gonna open the case again. They're gonna be stacked two stacks of six Box one through six here seven through twelve there. So I'll take them out again for the best of my ability I Might be kind of a bot when it comes to this But well, I guess see box one two and three point five is ain't easy That's one through five, and then I'm taking six out right now. There you go five Boxes six through ten right there So there you go again empty case up top boxes One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve, and I said six or ten sixty twelve is what I meant All right, very nice very good very good Sort these so I know who is where sorts The all right good luck everybody box one So we've got Matthew B with the auto and Sean P with the pack. All right, so good luck to Sean P kicking us off here That is gonna be two one ninety nine Dexter Jets there Got a duel of fantastic fights. So Katana and Morgan Ellsbit and then Baru Lars and then we've got auto one going to Matthew B is Corrin nice one there. That's Indy Deroche as Corrin as Corrin very nice. Congrats to you Matthew and to Sean. All right box two Pack two talk a hero oh and auto two is Kyle Z Good luck talk a hero and Kyle God jeez Pack two here you go talk a hero. Good luck buddy We've got a Padme Amidala To one ninety nine Blaze Maldice And a green to ninety nine is Garvin Drace Very nice. Congrats to you. Talk a hero And then auto two again going to Kyle Z is a Rio de Rant 25 of 50 Katie Cartwheel as Rio de Rant Nice one there on the gold Nice one Kyle congrats buddy That was Amidala All right box three pack three going to Jeremy T auto three going to Daniel M. Good luck Jeremy and Daniel Hello forest Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep that's what that's what forest sounds like I believe he really recruited like the three biggest bots in the place that come and call us bots What do we do? How old are we? Two one twenty five Mon Mothma on the purple Monday night Mixer Mania Megapalooza Madness mayhem breaks are scheduled.  Let me go see what's uh Some of these breaks are As a hta bowman gilded threads three box gilded three box gilded four box 19 chrome 23 chrome choice Wow And then we've got for basketball Uh two box noir and prism draft Wow, that's a good deal man for 82 dollars a spot more of the fluxes I'm over it man. Oh man. What is going on? Alex L picking up a couple of random team spots We've got Joseph s with the cabs and bowls in 15 Thank you, Joseph Paul b picking up some star wars black Thomas c with a noir tiered spot Vaughn picking up The jazz kings jaz and kings in 15 and 16. Let's go Vaughn. Let's go Vaughn. Come on All right, and we've got a fn 2199 Nice one there. That is david accord. All right number four auto for dylan p tack for jonah You know, we got a vulcan shield in there Vulcan shield is that a sign? We're gonna need a vulcan shields I don't know man. That was weird Is that gonna mean we're gonna need a mag for this It's gonna be wedge and tillies A fin and kylo ren fantastic fights And captain phasma There you go jon and our auto It is uh, uh, Mina's velty That is ming chu Free ads for vulcan shield apparently God levine with 49. Good god, man And they're still down by 14 auto five william n pack five taylor n Vulcan just throwing their product in there.  Yeah, scott. Absolutely Always dying for a stormtrooper signature. Oh, yeah for sure BB eight uh famous fights is obi-wan and general greebus And anakin skywalker young anakin skywalker And then a jaco nice one there jacobi swain as a jaco That is william n Viviana picking up two noir spots. We're sold out on the war everybody. We're sold out on the war unbelievable, man And we've got just tennessee left in bowman chrome university hobby Unreal man. All right number six pack six chris v auto six william n He's done with fortnight with the bots apparently To 125 eith koth You've got a gold to 50 yoda There we go. That's sick chris v. Congrats, man. Gold yoda 13 of 50 will nag that one for you buddy. Hell. Yeah, dude Gold yoda As well on the base That's sick, dude And auto six is going to william william n That is vel sartha Faye marseille or marcy as Vel sartha Yeah, the color schemes are nasty in this dude All right, we are halfway through everybody. We're going on to number seven auto seven joshua b pack seven robert d Nice card that is Nice morning. Take such a bot sam is a bot. He is He just said sam is a bot. He is I'm messing up. Yep. See that's what happens. You know, you try to be funny And you don't think you don't think it through and then you end up sounding like more So good job there Swing on this Garvin trace Uh l 337 20 or 94 of 99 on the green leet. Nice one there And bosc to 75. That's awesome. One of the bounty hunters. I love the bounty hunters Jason oh with a bunch of uh, ginner spots Thank jason and then there was also another order that came in I did not see so i'm going to thank that person whoever it may have been And then we've got a Father of the mandalorian that is 87 of 99 bernard bullen as father of the mandalorian. That's cool. That's really cool Brent c pick up the wizards and both fluxes as well You could say no flux given Like that Uh chat i with auto eight and pack eight. Darius m It's a leet l 337 Uh ev 99 to 199 No flux zone. What do you mean scott? Can we batch psas? And ponder baba Uh auto zone is going to Uh toro calican that is jake cannavale as toro calican great name. Yeah, great name great name Great record. Uh auto eight was chat Right number nine auto nine dylan p pack nine toca hero. Oh good luck toca hero and dylan zam whistle obi-wan kinobi and quigan jinn lego star wars legend quigan jinn And auto is chrysanthem. It's forest forest. How'd you get in this product? That is carry jones as chrysanthem. Very nice All right the numero 10 packed and luk b Autoten is willie men Meryl kelly b b 8 2 99 nice one there 275 bid fortuna This guy always scared me when I was a kid Let's look weird and boss. I'm gonna try Carl. I'm gonna try to get you day around sharp That'd be pretty sharp Pommet Warwick nice one there Harrison Davis is Pommet Warwick going to William and All right, we got Travis M at auto 11 and Takira. Oh it pack 11. Yeah, it's like 50 50 which one's better to be honest more you Is that like it's on a battle oh is it What do you do?  That sounds scary. Is it scary? It is scary. I blew it and bought Madden so Cornelius of a zone So it makes me feel to one nine on bill Burr. There we go and The Mandalorian and Paz Vizsla Then we've got auto 11 going to Travis of Breja, Urgana that is Simone Cassell as Breja, Urgana next almanac and Then last box auto 12 Paul P pack 12 Chris V No longer exist. No flux zone. No flux zone Q9 oh That's general veers to 199 Pump it louder or louder. I messed up to 125 size noodles nice one there The band guy said the actual line Stupid nice one there and We got an orange auto of Jekyll that is our Jekyll 11 of 25 Tim dry as Or Jekyll I messed that one up. All right that will do it for the break everybody can't really do a ramp recap on that So thank you all again appreciate that up next is the second case