The presenter today is Patrick Gravel. Mike is not only in the earphones. The microphone is present, is in the speakers. Patrick graduated from Gallaudet University and got his bachelor's in English. He got his master's degree in deaf education, also from Gallaudet University. He taught graduate school at the Kendall School, and then joined NTD, the National Theater of the Deaf. He was one of the founding members in that theater company. He's been a professional actor for many years and has traveled throughout the United States and all over the world actually. Most recently he's been writing and working on ASL poetry. His topic today is creating poetry in ASL. Please give a warm welcome to Patrick Gravel, original poetry in ASL. Thank you, thank you very much. Are the lights all right? Is everyone able to see me? My top of my head too shiny, or are we all right here? All right, Susan Fisher, who just introduced me. I need to explain that my topic is original poetry in ASL, but I'm telling you I can't write poetry in ASL. She used the sign right, and that is not what I do. I sign poetry in American Sign Language. I wanted to start our presentation at 1.05, and it's 1.12 already. I'm afraid we're going to have to take away some of my topic today because we need to leave it to... I'll figure out how to handle that as we go along. First, I would like to explain what I'm doing today. I have an introduction to my presentation, and then I will go into the history. As I was growing up, what I saw in Deaf poetry, and what Deaf poets were doing, what they were doing with their own original poetry, I'll just have a brief summary of the history of that as I've seen it in my upbringing. Also, I'll discuss the features of ASL. We'll discuss... I won't go into depth on those, but I will discuss those briefly. There are six different features. After that, I will present one of my own original pieces, and we can analyze that together, that poem. And last, I will be discussing what I predict for the future in ASL poetry. I hope that we'll have five minutes left so we can have questions and answers. That's my expectation. Before World War II, I was born... I don't need to tell you my age here, but it was before World War II. I grew up in Kansas, and it's Kansas School for the Deaf, is where I was educated, and I saw many teachers and students reading poetry in English, in written English, and then tried to translate it to American Sign Language, or to sign it. Some were hearing in some deaf. They have... Poetry in English has written rules, and most of the people who were writing poetry in American Sign Language were born hearing and then became deaf. Gino Robert Panera, he's an example of someone who was writing poetry in English and then translating it to ASL. Another man is Rex Lohman. Also, Lloyd Galladay. These are examples of professors... professors emeritus. They've retired since, but there are many other poets as well. Deaf poets who wrote in English their poetry. There are many examples you can find, and I will not... I won't be presenting that in American Sign Language, but they have been written, and they have some derivatives from ASL in the poetry. This is a poem from Robert Panera. The title is On His Deafness. Maybe you've already seen that poem and learned it in English, and you see it follows the English poetry rules. It has rhythm, alliteration. There are these kind of rules that are being followed in this poem. You notice the S's are something that are used frequently in the first two stanzas here. And if people read that poetry, they think, oh, that's wonderful, and then it's printed. It was printed in Silent Network, Silent News. It was published in several different magazines. And other deaf people would read it and have much respect for Robert Panera for writing that. And growing up, I wanted to be a poet and write poetry thinking it would be in English. Even though English wasn't my native language or my first language, I still had the call of writing in English. And I realized when people would correct it that I didn't have the proper English in my poetry. It became very frustrated and decided I would get more into acting. I would read in English poem and then translate it into American Sign Language. When I...actually it wasn't American Sign Language, it was signed, it was more of a signed English with some derivatives of ASL presented in the poetry. And I would include those to hopefully make it a clearer message from the poem. This is another famous poem, Richard Corey. And while I was at Gallaudet University, I went into a... I entered a competition for poetry. That was in 1962 or 63, I think. And I was signing this poem, the first paragraph of this poem. The title is Richard Corey. Richard Corey went downtown. We people on the pavement looked at him. He was a gentleman from soul to crown. Clean, favored, and apparently slim. So I used some signs from ASL, but I still was following word for word quite accurately. I didn't care too much about the meaning. I wanted people to look and enjoy it. They accepted it. They didn't see the difference. Translating poetry. When you translate it for the stage, poetry for the stage, there's a poet that was a student at Gallaudet. And he made reference to how you translate poetry on stage. You need to set things up so that it's sort of like alliteration in English. And he made that comparison. We grew up together, and he was discussing this with me. Then in 1965, William Stokey, who was the chairperson of the English department at Gallaudet University, and there were two other people also. The three of them got together and did some research on sign language itself. And they analyzed the language. And then they shared the information with people about ASL being a real language that happened in 1965. And that was published in a book called The Dictionary of American Sign Language. Now, many other people at that time were really amazed at that because they thought, well, ASL isn't language, but I was an English major at the time, and the chairperson of my department actually announced that ASL was a language in its own right. And I thought about that, and I thought about ASL, and I had thought before that it was good for dormitory life or... but not really appropriate to use on stage. And it really took me years and years to understand what he was saying. But in 1965, onward, William Stokey, his work really influenced the deaf community. And many people after that, after 1965 became very proud of their own language. He was a professor of English himself, but he really encouraged all the students at Gallaudet University to become more creative in using ASL with their poetry. So around 1970, Ella May Lentz, who was another student, became very inspired and began to become very creative with ASL. And then in 1980, around 1980, there were more and more conferences held all over the United States where deaf people were invited to come and present their poetry in ASL. For example, Bernard in Berkeley, California, they had an annual event called a celebration... a celebration where they invited Ella May Lentz, and she went and presented, and I flew there at the time and also presented my poems, my beginning poems in ASL. And that happened on February 1st in 1984, which was a very big day for me because other people were involved too, but anti-ID, which was over at one side of the coast in California, well, anti-ID at the time was here. There was a famous American poet called Alan Gidsburg, who was a hearing man, and also Bob Panara. The two of them got together and they had invited a large group of people, a large group of people came to see their presentation and they talked about poetry and its meaning, and I was in the audience at the time watching their presentation. And Alan showed one poem from a book which was called The Owl, The Owl, and he had written it out on the blackboard with two words, jukebox. One of the words was jukebox, and I looked at the two words at the time and I really wasn't sure why he wrote that. And he asked people in the audience to translate the two words, and I at the time volunteered. Well, at the time other people were saying, go ahead, Pat, go on up there and try to do it. And I thought, all right, I'll try. And it made a lot of excuses why. And I said, I'll try. But there are many, many signs that can show the meaning of both these words. But the two signs that I think are, to come up with two signs equivalent to those, it's really impossible. And Alan at the time said, go ahead, just try anyway. So this is what I signed. You press the button, the record comes out and comes down, then the arm of the record comes down and the music starts to play. And then he gets louder and louder and louder until the record actually flies off and the jukebox breaks. And Alan said, that's wonderful. It's a very equivalent translation. You call it the meaning. And at the time I thought, wow, that's great. Well, after the class, I got together with a hearing person named Jim Cohn, who worked here before. He was also a poet himself. And we were encouraged to set up a class called A Bird Brain Society. And what we would do is we would sign our poems in the cellar of the Ritz, which was a bar at the time, or in the dorms, there was a bar with the dormitories. And there was also a coffee house, a restaurant called the Jazz Berries, which is located in downtown Rochester, where we held this also.  And it's become history now. It's still going on. If you have questions that pop up about the history of the Bird Brain Society and Jazz Berries and so forth, you can ask me later about that. Now, I'd like to move on to my next topic, ASL and the analyzation of it in the classifiers. Now, you know some of you are already familiar with it, but I think we should have a review first of all. Dr. Stokey himself, in the process of analyzing ASL in each sign, notice that signs themselves can be broken up into, they have three distinct categories within a sign. The first is the handshape. The second category is called the location, where the sign is made and location to the body. The third is movement. Then later on in 1975, Madison added a fourth category, which was palm orientation. Well, I'll give you one sign as an example. The sign for hello. First of all, this is the handshape. It has a B handshape. Now, the location where the sign is made, it starts from the head and moves outward. The movement itself, this is the movement that's used. And then the palm orientation, you notice where my palm is pointing, away from me. No, it's awkward. It's not pointing down. It's pointing diagonally. And that was how he analyzed each sign. Now, a poet. Well, first let me put that on hold. I have to discuss something about signing and poetry in the sign for poem itself. This is the sign for poetry. How that sign was developed, it was dealt over many years and it was developed from the English. ASL or poetry, we really wanted to have a distinction from hearing poetry. So they tried to come up with this sign or they thought maybe they could show this meaning poetry. And there were a variety of different suggestions on how to sign that. And finally it was agreed upon to pick one sign as the sign for ASL poetry. We haven't really done that yet, but we're still tending to use the sign, even though it's been derived from English. So this sign for poetry is used to describe both ASL and English poetry. Okay, so I was talking about the sign for a low. Okay, now I remember what I was leading into. Now, deaf poets tended to use the four categories, but they would play on those. And the deaf community really tended to play on these four categories, such as, for example, the ABC stories that you've seen, like A, for knocking at the door, the letter B for opening the door, C means you're listening, and they would use each letter of the alphabet in a sign and play on that during the ABC stories. Now, deaf poets looked at that element of the deaf community and how they played with the signs and the letters and the shapes, and they thought, well, that has rules that have to be followed. Now, who decides on the rules? We haven't really discovered that yet. Really, each poet himself will tend to develop and use his own rules, his or her own rules. Now, maybe someday we will hold a conference and we will be able to set up a definite list of rules for all poets to be able to use, but at this time of that isn't being done. Each poet tends to use their own rules. But really what poets do is they play with the handshapes. I have another example I'd like to show you at this time. For example, the five handshape creates something right now to show you what I mean by this. For example, this is a five handshape using the base or tree, and then continuing with that handshape into a river, and then the sun coming up and the rays from the sun, and the wind and the tree blowing in the wind. That's a poem. Ah, made with the same handshape, the five handshape. And deaf poets tend to play a lot of handshape when they're creating original poetry. Time is going so fast. I wanted to discuss the difference between the dominant hand or non-dominant, the strong or weak hands.  Another word's dominant. Your dominant hand.  People who are left-handed, the left hand would be their dominant or strong hand, and the right would be their weak hand. Is that clear? For example, the sign for help. The weak hand is just supporting the right hand, the strong hand with the sign. There are rules pertaining to strong and weak hands. If the right hand is moving and the strong hand is moving, the weak hand will follow. For example, the wind. You notice that the two hands are following the same movement. The sign for success. That's one sign. The same hand shape. And the movement is following the dominant hand, that both move moving in the same direction. Pointing to this, the weak hand is just supporting the motion. The right hand is doing the motion. Can you think of any other examples? Example is a sign. The weak hand is just supporting the movement of the right hand. And deaf poets break that rule. Sign language has a specific rule, but in poetry you can use right or left. It doesn't matter if it's a dominant or weak hand. You flip back and forth for poetic reasons, and explain those more in detail in a moment. Classifiers is another feature of ASL. And maybe most of you are aware of that. It's similar to an adjective in English. It serves as a similar function. Sometimes an adverb or a pronoun are different English grammatical features that classifiers take up in American sign language. For example, this hand shape is a person walking. You wouldn't say if there's a woman or a man, so you'd have to say woman, and then move this hand into a classifying movement. ASL poets love to use classifiers so much. ASL depends on facial expression to show feelings. However, within the rules of ASL, there are certain rules. For example, raising your eyebrows is showing that there's a question. There's a rhetorical question. It has specific rules in American sign language. In ASL poetry, however, facial expression is really used minimally. Minimally. And they're much more playful with the actual movement of the signs. And facial expression does not play as an important part as it does in American sign language. On a similar note, if you listen to English poetry, sometimes the meaning, the voice is not following the meaning. You're not using a conversational spoken in English. And that may be a comparison with how American sign language is used in poetry. Deaf poets are using American sign language, but might not be using facial expression, and the meaning would be more obscure. Space is very important for deaf poets especially. They use the feature of space very much in their use of ASL poetry. Deaf poets love to play with fingerspelling. Just love it. I'll give you one example. I have a poem that I'd like to present. I'll let you look at this for just a few minutes, and then I will present it. Reflection. Four. Three. Two. One. The lift off of the challenger inspired me. One minute and 45 seconds later, explosion. My heart halted. The maimed shuttle descended and depressed me. He dawned upon me in 1963. President Kennedy was shot. His body bent. A teardrop. Thank you. Did you see the ASL features used in that poem? I gluted fingerspelling, actually, numbers, and used that with my weak hand, my left hand. My dominant hand is my right hand, but I did not use that for the fingerspelling of the numbers, the countdown. And the reason for that is because I wanted to establish this area as the space shuttle area for the action in that. The next time you see numbers in the poem is representing the minutes going by as the shuttle is going up. I'm still not using my right hand. My numbers are placed in a higher location because that's where the shuttle is at the time. One minute 49 seconds. I wanted to include the motion and the placement of the shuttle in the poem. The third number is the date 1963. That's placed over here and to the back because it's mentioning something that's happened in the past. In everyday conversation, we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't put a date behind us because it happened in the past. You would just say, a long time ago in 1963 and put it in the past tense. So as you can see, we're playing with the rules of American Sign Language. I plan to use the left hand. And in everyday conversation, deaf people would not plan to use a left hand or a right hand. And this is just the tendency we tend to sign with our strong hands. As we're creating poetry, we do change the rules to create certain effects. Setting the date in the past, setting the shuttle action in the one area. As you notice, I'm using two hands. The rocket is going up and I'm being inspired. The two different signs, two different hand shapes at the same time and it's still successful. You notice with the sign wind, they're both the same hand shape moving. Here there are two different movements, two different hand shapes moving at the same time. Also as the explosion of the shuttle goes off, I'm shocked and that those two signs are happening at the same time. And that's for effect, the two different hand shapes and two different motions in both those signs. Breaking that rule of motion into the dominant and non-dominant hands. As the shuttle comes, as the body bends of the president, my teardrop falls at the same time. I have several poems, but I don't think time is not going to allow us to go through all of them. If you want to see some of the different poetry that I have, I have a videotape this for sale. It's called Poetry in Motion. I have three poems there. One is called, there are three poets included in this, Debbie Reddy, Clayton Valley and myself. And hopefully as this time goes on, we can collect more poems and make further videotapes. Now what I've been discussing so far has focused on ASL, features of ASL in comparing deaf poetry with the analysis of ASL as a language. If we had time, really, we had more than an hour, we could also talk about maybe psychological aspects of it. And one of my poems is a good example. It's called Paradox.  Now I myself really didn't know what the song was about, but the title of his song was Where is the Man? That's how I watched him. And then later on, I talked about myself and my mother, my mother was a hearing person. She can sign somewhat. She's not fluent, but she can sign. And my father, who's a hearing, cannot sign. And I compared them. It was a psychological poem comparing the two of them. And the song that this man was singing was all done. It was in black and white. And I myself, when I presented my own poem, was dressed in black and white and used the colors to also talk about psychological aspects. Now, what I see happening in ASL poetry in the future, my own feelings on it, is first of all, I think deaf poets will influence deaf people in the deaf community more and more as time goes on. I think the deaf community will see the deaf poets out, playing with the rules and being more creative with poetry and adding. And I think at that time, probably more rules as far as the ASL language will be developed or will be discovered. I also feel, so I feel that will be one event that will happen in the future. Now, the authorship. At this time ASL does not have a written system. Deaf people will present it in a visual way, but oftentimes when it's being used with a voice interpreter, we wonder, well, what words are the interpreters using and there's a real struggle going on and a real conflict sometimes between the two languages. So it seems that hearing people have a hard time watching deaf poetry in ASL and then finding appropriate English words to use, what goes on in their minds and able to be able to do that because poets themselves often might not be clear so there's a real struggle with interpreting and what to do. So really what we need to have is a written system for ASL or a written system that can be used with English. So then if hearing people like such as linguists or interpreters watch a deaf poet present, they're able to do an analysis, write that down, show that to the deaf poet, and then the deaf poet can give their approval for their translation or they can try and make a translation themselves in a second language, which would be ASL for them. So really I think this requires deaf and hearing people both working together to come up with a written system. Thirdly, videotaping needs to become more widespread. I think as more and more videotapes are in use and become widespread, it will really help the proliferation of ASL poetry as we have a file or a library of ASL poems and ASL stories. I think videotaping is really a blessing for the development of ASL and I think as videotapes are developed more and more ASL poetry will be able to be kept in files. In 1985, I think it was in 1985, or actually 1885, or in 1985 there was the first ASL poetry conference was held here. It was an ASL lit conference that recently happened this past October. So I think as more and more conferences related to ASL poetry happens, information and ideas will be able to be shared and I think that will really spread and influence people and also I think it will influence more coursework to be established for people to study poetry and study ASL. I think it will help in interpreter training for those students to be able to learn the language and I think it will help linguists themselves to better analyze ASL as a language. Also, teachers of ASL will be able to use ASL poetry to show ASL its meaning, its purpose and so forth. Well, I think that's the end of my formal presentation. If anyone would like to ask me some questions at this point, I will try my best to answer them. Are there any questions that you have for me? Well, I really have about five or six, five or six minutes left. How long have you been studying poetry before you actually began translation into ASL? So you're asking me how long was it that I studied poetry, English poetry before I was, or how long it takes me to study an English poem before I can translate it? Well, I started as a small boy actually. Now, I came from a family of seven children, five of them were hearing, wait, wait a minute, five of them were deaf and two were hearing. The two middle children were hearing. My parents were both hearing. And when I was born, my two older sisters were teenagers at the time, so they really taught me a lot as far as translating things. So I feel that I've really developed my skill in translation over the years starting from a small boy. There was a question way in the back? Okay, he asked me a question about how I feel about having voice interpreters speaking while I'm presenting my poetry, how I feel about that. To be honest, I feel awkward with it. I feel a little uncomfortable. Have I had any really problems that haven't been able to be solved? No, but it's a really new feel that's been going on about ten years or so, I think. So I really think we need to have more conferences just to discuss that issue of incorporating the voice interpreting with the deaf poets and I really think that will solve the problems. I think probably that the interpreters themselves feel a little bit awkward in fitting in what they're doing with what the deaf poets are presenting. So I think again, the more conferences we have, the more exchange of ideas that problem will be solved. Question here. If a person is aware of ASL, of its rules, do you think that person, just because they're familiar with the language and the rules, can teach deaf poetry and ASL poetry? The question was, if a person knows ASL, has learned it, so is aware of the rules, but doesn't have any experience in the deaf world, should they be teaching ASL poetry? That's not an easy question to answer. First of all, the topic itself about teaching ASL is a course. First of all, I think the person needs to know ASL or needs to know the content very well and they also, to be a good teacher and they also have to experience it. I think the experience, I think a deaf person really is best to teach it because they know the language and they have the experience of being deaf. They have that gut feeling of knowing what it's like to be deaf, so I think those are the best people to teach courses in ASL. Now there are a number of, there aren't that many deaf poets. So as a second choice, I think maybe team teaching between a deaf and a hearing person would be best as a second choice. Maybe one person might be very knowledgeable and skilled in translating poems such as French to English or so forth, the hearing person. If the hearing person were to teach deaf people themselves on how to actually read and translate and I don't think a hearing person can do that 100% himself, he would need to have someone deaf to be able to team teach it to be the most effective way. Are there any more questions? I have experience with theatre myself and I've seen sometimes the comment was made that this person feels that a poet really uses a lot less facial expression and she disagrees with that. She's seen many poets that she thinks they tend to overdo their facial expression in the presentation of their poem as well. That's your opinion and I have to respect your opinion and I myself feel that the facial expression is really reduced greatly compared with everyday conversational ASL. Poets tend to be more formal in their presentations. Are you familiar with the term register, the registers of ASL? Now the one register intimate means you use it with a very casual friend and there's a lot of facial expression is not necessary and then in the more informal, casual you use a little more and then with the consultative register maybe you might go to see a lawyer or a teacher or a principal have a meeting with someone that type of dialogue it's a little more formal, it's more formal than casual then the formal register is used for maybe formal presentations in church and so forth and then the last register is called frozen such as established prayers or for example Robert's rules of order something that's very set the appletch to the flag a frozen style so you can see the difference from formal down to consultative as you move in the registers to the more formal there is less facial expression but as you move down to the more intimate levels there is a real change of how much or how little facial expression is used so I think itself the deaf poets present in a more formal style so they would use less facial expression question in the back how does poetic license apply to ASL poetry you were talking about playing on signs is that the same thing as poetic license she was talking about an English term which is called poetic license that means they might be able to change and bend the rules a little bit that's permitted now she's asking about deaf poets how they play with the language really it's the same thing you could call it poetic license and ASL poetry being able to bend and change the rules it's a very similar thing related to the English I have time for one more question where do you mean the American library there are two questions here that I just been asked from a man that doesn't know American sign language but we have interpreters here that I just saw the question he'd like to sit down and talk with me and please see me after this presentation and I will give you my phone number and you can call and make an appointment with me and we can get an interpreter for that time and the three of us can sit down and talk together second you had a question about the American poetic library and there's wonderful library with videotapes and recordings with English poetry and he was asking if there are deaf poets included in that library and I really doubt that at this time sign media incorporated in Washington DC is videotaping deaf poets and has been doing that and they can certainly send a copy of those videotapes to the American poetic library I think that would be a good idea I think I'd like to contact my friend that's involved in that company and suggest that thank you for your suggestion it's two o'clock now I'd like to wrap up and thank you for coming we can continue this discussion in another room I believe first of all this is a wonderful lecture thank you very much I just enjoy this very much thank you very much for coming if you have any more questions or want to discuss more with Patrick we can have this opportunity and now let me see I've forgotten the room number Susan Fisher where are you in the alumni room is where we're going to be meeting you can have more time to talk with Patrick for about an hour there's also some pop and cookies there for a reception so I'll see you there bye


The theme of this year's event is the show must go on and you guys have heard it, you see it every single day in our business that there's challenges, right? Somebody hangs up on us, somebody slams a door in our face, we're going to transition from doorknock into phone sales, whatever, right? But at the end of the day, the show must go on.  Who wants to leave thinking a little bigger after this weekend? I know I do, which is why I told our team months ago, I said we will throw a live event in 2020, I promise, I guarantee it, it will happen and it's happening. Thank you for being here. This is, well Lauren's really my baby, but this conference is my baby. I absolutely love it. It will continue to grow. I'm blessed and honored that each and every one of you chose to take time out of your schedule, travel from, I mean we get people from Oregon and Idaho here, you know, right Josh Lustig? So I appreciate you guys being here very much, okay? In our business, you're probably, you've probably seen and what I've noticed is when something gets tough or when I get challenged and I get on the other side of it and I push through and I execute and I do it, something amazing starts to happen.  I get bored very easy. I have times where I'll like, I was talking about life a few, like a month ago when we moved into our new house, I said babe, I got to change it up, I'm getting bored, I got to like, I got to add something, I got to do something, right? Most people when they get like, when they get busy, they start like taking stuff off their plate. When I get busy, the team gets busy, I'm like add something, do something more, we can do more than we're doing right now. So about a month ago, I decided to run a half marathon in a week. I looked up how to train for it Pete, I said okay, how do you train to run 13.1 miles when you've never run more than a mile since you got married? And it said over the next eight to 12 weeks, you need to do this, this, this, and this. I'm like, I'm doing it seven days Brad, finished it, completed it, hit my goal. That was something I've always wanted to do, challenged me. I'm going to do an Ironman in November in Alveston, Texas, just south of here. Why? Because I've never done it before.   Okay, I'm in. For me, 30, I looked at my wife, I'm like, we can take it up a notch. We're not doing enough. We're not thinking big enough. We're not challenging ourselves enough. So I want to challenge you this weekend while you're here to think outside the box, to think a little bigger, to think a little more creatively, and to think what are some things I've never done that I don't think I can do that I absolutely can do? What are some things you don't think you can do that you've never done before that I promise you you can actually do? It's amazing. You know what starts to happen when you do you know crazy stuff like that? Like planning an event in 90 days we never planned a birthday party before back in 2018? I start to get some confidence, Doug. I start to get some of these small wins. I start to like, things start to happen. I start to notice things where I'm like, once you do that, you start to believe you can do anything. Who wants to come to a point where you believe you can do anything in your life? Okay, just a couple of us, maybe a few more. Okay, good, good. Here's three things really quick to start out today that I've started doing differently since 2018.  Should have a pad, we handed out a couple hundred notebooks. I think we ran out, but number one, I'm always willing to learn constantly, to be coachable, to realize I don't know everything, right? That's why I love hanging out with people like JB and Pete, man, because they always teach me something. There's always a next level of knowledge. The second thing, once I started to invest in my business and actually invest, some of you are like, dude, I bought $20 worth of aged leaves last week, man. I mean, really invest. Things started to take off. And there was a lot of moments where when I was investing, I didn't have the money to be investing. But guess what? When something scares me, when I've got that fear, when I get bored, when I know I need to add something, right? We talked about it earlier. I add it. I do it, right? We just talked about it on the opening video of how I spent 15 grand to go to the 10X conference in 2018, which is where I met Tim Story, who is speaking later. I never spent that kind of money on tickets before. But at some point, Andrew, when you do something like that, when you push the envelope, you get outside of your comfort zone. Oh my gosh, it's a freaking amazing feeling. And it forces me to really wake up, level up, and to do stuff that I've never done before, that I didn't think I could do, that I promise you you can do. And the third piece is I started to get around people that were miles ahead of me. I don't care if I had to pay. I don't care if I had to drive 13 hours. I don't care if I had to fly somewhere. It didn't matter. I was committed that no matter what, when an opportunity presents itself, I'm going. I'm showing up. No matter what. We just had a power players networking retreat in Springfield, Missouri a month ago. Let me hear you if you were there. Come on now. It was 23 in Springfield for an intimate retreat. Unbelievable event. Crazy. And you really wouldn't even believe how amazing it was, unless you're actually there. But for me, it was life changing. I don't know if everybody was there, but for me, it was life changing. Why? Because when I get in a room with other people doing big stuff or even bigger things than me, it motivates me. It challenges me. And the biggest reason people come to events like this is what? To get motivated, to get challenged, to learn, to network. When you get an opportunity to surround yourself with successful people, I promise you it will help you take your own personal next level of success. Now this year's event is all about the experience, which means we're going to do some things that we've never done before. That we maybe didn't think we could do. But once we do them, then we've done them, right? We got a surprise to kick off the event. Who likes surprises? Come on now. Who likes surprises? Is that it? Come on now. Let's go. Who likes surprises? All right. I'm not even bringing him out with that energy. I'm telling you, I truly believe the dude I'm about to bring out is literally one of the best motivational speakers in the world. Incredible story. You will want to pay attention, take notes, unfreaking, believable on stage. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? I'm not going to say his name. What I am going to do is give you a little closer look to who it actually is. Hey, if you love this, you'll love how to do a presentation for insurance agents. There's a couple pieces of this video that I've never talked about before. It's right here. Click on it. You'll love. Hey, almost every insurance agent I know struggles with objections, specifically what to do and how to improve your closing abilities. I'm going to talk through several different things. Okay. I always talk about


So certain players go on to the combine and they just put on a show. There could be a projected second rounder, third rounder. And if they do well at the NFL combine, they increase their stock to being a top 12 pick. This has actually happened in the past with Don Terry Poe, defensive tackle was a potential second rounder, third rounder when he was drafted. But because of his NFL combine performance, which was one of the best in NFL history, he catapulted and shot his way up inside of the top 11, drafted number 11 by the Kansas City Chiefs overall. So there are some players out there that need to have a Don Terry Poe like combine to increase the draft stock. And obviously when I talk about the most approved, obviously those late rounders, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh rounders, of course, obviously without question, I'm talking about the first rounders, the second rounders, like how can they improve their draft stock? So I'm going to talk about certain players that need to do well at the NFL combine to increase their draft stock and solidify themselves as a first round draft pick. The first player I'm going to be talking about, or I should say players, all quarterbacks, I know it's a cop out because there's not once particular quarterback that I can lean in and say, listen, this guy needs to prove himself way more than the other quarterback. It's all quarterbacks. We heard about when we talked about Mitch Trebisky just earlier in the show, how NFL teams at the combine, what reporters are hearing is that Mitch Trebisky, a veteran quarterback who's said to be a free agent, 27 years old, is talked about amongst the teams way more than the quarterbacks in the 2022 draft class. I mean, this is one of the weaker quarterback draft classes according to many in a long time. So if you want to talk about who has the most to prove, it's all of the quarterbacks. This is Kenny Pickett, this is Malik Willis, this is a Desmond Ritter, Sam Howell, all those guys. The nature of the position is going to make them a first rounder. It's bound to happen. People are going to draft up. They're going to overdraft for the quarterback of their future. Just because by the time you get around to the second round, one of the quarterbacks that they wanted could be gone. Whatever their strategy is, they're going to overdraft. It's going to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if Kenny Pickett is a top 10 pick. Player number two, that is the most approved at the NFL Combine. Kay Von Tibido, defensive end from Oregon. What a beast of a man this guy is. Incredible. Incredible talent, athletic ability, raw, pure talent at defensive end. The thing with him is I've seen many mock drafts. And again, I'm not an NFL scout. I don't watch a lot of college football. So I am just basing my information off of what the college football experts are saying. And what the draft experts are saying is that Tibido could be as early as a top three pick, but he could drop as low as a mid first round pick. But I mean, because of that, because of the wide range on how teams view him, I'd say that he is up there as one of the players that has the most to prove at the 2022 scout and combine. We talked about raw talents and not really fitting into the defensive end position or having a grasp on it too well at this point, at least playing at the elite level at the NFL. Well, let me give you another example of a player that had the raw talent, but was kind of iffy at first. That player was Josh Allen, who Mel Kuiper, which was a good call by the way, stated that is going to be the best quarterback in that 2018 draft class. He was right. A little more Jackson is up there as well. Like, yeah, you can debate that. But so far, he's knocked that prediction out of the park. Raw talent, but teams were iffy on him. Cave on Tepido. Raw talent, but teams are iffy on him. So yeah, I mean, the NFL combine is the place where you put on a show. You showcase your physical raw ability in Cave on Tepido without a doubt. He's going to impress a lot of teams. And I think this is just a prediction. I don't think he falls outside of the top five. The next player. How about Derek Stingley, Jr. Cornerback, LSU. And the reason I say that he has the most proof that the scouting combine is because he had a great freshman season. Fantastic. And it was regarded as one of the better cornerbacks in college football. And people were like, man, if only he was going in the NFL draft after his freshman year, like he'd be one of the better defensive backs in the NFL. Like he was so good. Talked amongst the NFL community for a long time that when he goes into the NFL, when he goes into the NFL, he's going to be great. Well, then after his freshman season, he wasn't bad, but like it didn't go back to being the Derek Stingley, Jr. that we saw his freshman year. And now he enters the NFL combine and NFL draft. And teams are like, okay, well, here's a player that could have been a top three, top five pick. And now people are saying, I'd be surprised if he gets inside of the top 10. Maybe he's like a late top 10 pick, maybe like a nine or a 10. But I don't see him as a top five pick anymore. So Derek Stingley needs to go out there, have a great combine performance in front of these teams, improve that he's still talented as he once was to his freshman year at LSU. So Stingley is one of those players that has the most approved. And then the last player that's the most approved.  Hear me out. Jameson Williams, Alabama. And it's not because of the physical attributes. It's because of the mental aspects and the interviews that the NFL combine conducts that teams conduct with these players. The New England Patriots are a confirmed team that already have an interview scheduled with Jameson Williams at the NFL combine. And there's going to be many more teams out there. Williams with his ACL tear is regarded as maybe a top 20, top 25, top 30 pick. That's perfectly fine. He's going to be drafted in the first round. He's going to miss the first few weeks of the season. But the NFL combine is so important as far as the interview process goes. There's players that don't get drafted because of how poorly they do in the interview process. To give you guys an example, we actually came out with a video. We had the opportunity to interview and follow the combine preparation of when Hakima Denigy, who's the starting offensive guard, I want to say, for the Cincinnati Bengals, played in the Super Bowl, started in the Super Bowl. When he was being drafted, his agents conducted a whole NFL combine mock simulation, like mock interviews, how you should interview. If you guys want to go back and watch that video, I'll go ahead and put it up top. Click on that if you want to watch it. But just a couple of years ago was when he went through that combine prep and just through sitting through that, experiencing it myself on how a combine interview goes and how it's processed and how it works. It's very intense, very intense. So for James and Williams, this is the time for him to prove during these combine interviews, listen, I know that I have an ACL injury. I'm going to be out for the first few weeks of the season. That's okay. Look at me as a person. Look at me as a leader. I'll be a good asset to this team, even off the field. So James and Williams has a lot to prove in the NFL scouting combine. But those are players that I say that has a lot to prove in this NFL scouting combine. If you guys think differently, please leave your comments and your thoughts down below. Love to hear your thoughts. Love to interact with the guys.


Alrighty, so you guys are not gonna want to miss yesterday's podcast. I highly suggest watching the podcast, which I then tease that I would be talking about something in today's video, which I will in just a sec. Front gate is looking great. Leviathan's new welding is looking awesome. I actually like it.  No other signs outside of that. Now I do want to stress that, especially with construction going on over here, you're gonna notice that the footage has gotten exceptionally grainy, where we normally can see even like orange spray paint on the ground. You're not gonna be able to see that in anything that we cover on this side of the mountain. Unfortunately, just because the drone is actually a lot farther back than you realize, this is zoomed in to 28 times and then zoomed in on my screen. So we're not gonna be able to see any markings, unfortunately, which would have helped us figure some stuff out, but this is better than nothing. So we were able to find like a little park in the little townhouse suburbs. And we're flying from there, but it's not the best in terms of closeness, unfortunately. But yes, outside of that, this is the new launch tunnel. And as you looked around, I wanted you to pay attention to a lot of the work going on. So Alpin is receiving a facelift by some contractors over by Thunder Run. And then over by the tunnel, they're digging out downwards. And if you look really closely, you can see that they're cutting into the cement wall now. So they're removing the actual basement wall. So the decal of the mountain comes down almost like a skirt and it's covering the actual cement formation of the basement of the mountain. So they were cutting into that. So over here at our supposed in quotations maintenance tunnel, this is where they're essentially just working on reinforcing the existing maintenance tunnel, which is a little confusing in practice. So it is a little weird that they were putting so much work into a maintenance tunnel. But I do wanna stress that we have heard some pretty trusting birdies that have suggested that the new tunnel is the one that we should be paying attention to and that this was actually just reinforcement work going on. So we're not gonna rule out this tunnel being used for a roller coaster fully yet, but we are gonna definitely focus a little more on the other tunnel. It's just so sad because this tunnel we could actually get some really close up shots filmed from a pond and from our pond across the street from Wonderland as well. So two ponds worked in our favor for that spot. I wish I had this close of a shot of the other tunnel but that is not gonna happen. With that being said, definitely paying attention to Alpin. There is a lot of work that started. Again, Wonderland's construction site office has moved over there. There's a lot of trades people gutting the buildings, the existing buildings there. So I definitely think there's gonna be a lot of work there. And then y'all know that from the ACE event this year they confirmed that they were gonna upgrade some of the effects inside Thunder Run. So it'll be cool to see what that means. But yeah, essentially that's it, really exciting news. No matter how you look at it, construction has started. It's funny if this does end up just being a maintenance tunnel that we watched for the last two, three months. But again, they're probably working on it because they're gonna be using it a lot more. But with that said, super excited. Definitely go check out yesterday's podcast. And yeah, see you in our next video. Have a good one guys, bye.


Becker asks, downloading the blockchain is a beginner's question. Very good. Thank you for asking beginner's questions. That's really, really useful. A lot of people who need the basic information of beginner's questions are perfect for this Q&A. Becker asks, why does it take so long to download the blockchain? I do have a fast internet connection, and I could download 200 gigabytes in less than an hour. What Becker is talking about is what's called the initial blockchain download, or IBD, which is the first synchronization of a Bitcoin node or any kind of blockchain node to its blockchain. The answer is that while the amount of data you need to download in order to get the full blockchain is about 200 gigs or so, you're not simply downloading that and storing it on disk. One of the fundamental functions of a Bitcoin node is to validate all of the rules of consensus, and your node does that. It does that even if you're not trying to do a full sync of the blockchain. Every node validates every rule. When you start from the Genesis block, you download the block zero, block one, block two, etc., and you start building the blockchain to get to today's complete blockchain and sync fully with the rest of the network, every block you download, you download all of the transactions in that block, and then your node goes through and it validates everything, all of the signatures, all of the spends, all of the amounts, all of the Coinbase reports, all of the fees. It recreates and reconstructs every soft fork and upgrade and change in the code, replicating the entire history from January 3rd 2009. It behaves like a node in 2009 for the first period of downloading the blockchain, and then as the rules change, it counts the votes in a soft fork and changes the rules in real time, and then evaluates the next block based on the new rules. It recalculates the difficulty and sees if the miners are missing the target for blocks that were mined in 2010. It evaluates every rule as if it is at that time downloading it for the first time. So, it simulates living in 2009 and then in 2010, etc., etc., all the way up to today, every bug, every fork, every change, and that takes more than just bandwidth. It takes CPU, it also takes a big amount of disk indexing, because if you think about it, in order to validate whether a transaction isn't double-spending or properly spending, it has to keep a UTXO set in memory. This UTXO set is going to use in order to validate if that amount was available for spending. It is called to index all of the UTXO. Transaction IDs, when your transaction refers to a previous transaction, it has to look it up by hash. It has to reconstruct the merkle roots of all of the blocks and keep all of the blockchain, the hash from the previous block, listed, and all of that. That's a lot of database indexing, so that's what's happening with your node. I would guess that your real problem here is not bandwidth on the network, but it's probably bandwidth to the hard drive, so capacity through to the hard drive, performance of the hard drive, as well as available memory. A recommended minimum configuration involves 4GB of RAM, and that's only if you have a relatively fast solid-state disk, like an SSD disk, because of all of the indexing and reading and writing from the database on the disk that will be happening. If you don't have a solid-state disk, then you need to do a lot more caching in RAM in order to compensate for the performance of an old mechanical hard drive. In that case, you might need 8GB or 16GB of RAM to compensate for that. I would guess that your bottleneck is disk.io, perhaps CPU, although that's less likely. If you're running it on a four-core modern processor, it shouldn't be a problem. If you're doing all of this on a Raspberry Pi with only 2GB of RAM, then I can see what your problem is. That's going to be all of the bottlenecks within the system, rather than your bandwidth.


Welcome to Digital Asset News, I get top stories in cryptocurrencies assets and break them down to bite-sized pieces today. Another interesting day to say the least. First up, banks are now asking if Bitcoin can help them stay relevant. And this is the same thing that we've been predicting on this channel for quite some time. The banks are starting to FOMO in because of all the different things that are happening in cryptocurrencies assets. And it really comes down to these three ladies. Also, we still don't have a president. And if anything is a marker, history shows presidential elections often mark a turning point for Bitcoin. And if you're into Bitcoin, which I think you are, you're going to really like this article also. Alex Mishinsky has stolen the title from Charles Hoskinson as the CEO with the most amount of confidence ever in his project. And I'm going to show you why, but in all actuality, he's got a good reason to be. And finally, we'll round it all out with Q of the day where MEDIC asked a pretty good question about the disappearing ink that we can use on the SHIELD folio or stonebook and how long it actually lasts. So again, all of that, but first take a look at what's going on in the market. So a little turbulence, a little uncertainty, I can only imagine why. It is Wednesday, November 4th, about 4 p.m. Texas time. And a lot of things are going on. And the big thing for me, maybe for you too, is Bitcoin is at 14,000. So congratulations. If you were holding this whole time, you did it. You're at 14k and not too long ago. I remember when it was just March, not too long ago, it was below 4,000. So if you bought down then congratulations, because you've got ice in your veins and you're reaping the rewards. Bitcoin is up 2.5% for 24 hours and 2.6 for the week. So not too shabby. Ethereum bust through the 400 mark. And I can tell you, I think I can only assume actually, I can assume that Ethereum will keep above this level, but it seems to be a very precarious situation that Ethereum is in. And it seems to kind of like bounce around. But with the newest addition to PayPal, as they roll out Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin, this could be a catalyst. But again, who knows? I'd like to stay above 400, but every time I say it, it goes back down. So I think I'm jinxing it. Tether is sitting around almost 17 billion market caps and not too bad. XRP keeps study, I suppose, around 23 cents. Bitcoin Cash is down, weird. Chainlink is up almost 2%. So it's almost $11. But I was hoping it would be on the move, but it's down 12% for the week. That is never good news. Binance coin also down, but she's 16% for the week. That's a big hit. Polkadot, still around 4 bucks, not too bad. Litecoin's up, great. Cardano up 2.8%. But again, it's still around that 10-cent mark. It really doesn't really go too far up or too far below, but we will see. I mean, it's got a lot of great things happening. I mean, just yesterday, they talked about how on their network, all the different stake pools now have more than IOG. So that's good. It means it's more or it is decentralized now because it's over 50%. As of Friday, it's going to be 49.51. And on top of that, they have that fantastic ERC-20 converter, which if you have any kind of project or any kind of coin that's ERC-20, you can just transfer it over right to the Cardano network. So that to me is huge, but we'll see that all works out. USD coins, stable coin only cares. And let's see what else. Rapidcoin same thing. Hazos, 1.4, great. OKB, sure. And then anything big down here? Of course, it's big. It's Celsius Network. Up 14.5%. Man, I gotta tell you, I can pick them. So Celsius Network, not that I'm kind of bummed out because I was really ramping up my DCA. I still put money in. I'm glad I put it in, you know, the last week, every day. So I'm pretty happy about that. But kind of open to accumulate a little bit more. But hey, here we are. But it's up 14.5 and 22 for the week. So if you're holding Celsius, which I know a lot of you are, congratulations. And I can only tell you, I'm thinking it's going to go much higher. And I'll explain why in a little bit. But let's break into today's top story. So first up, if banks aren't completely 100% fomoing in, they're getting ready to do because they're asking questions on a whole another level, which two or three years ago would have seemed ridiculous. But here we are. It's amazing how fast cryptocurrency moves. We've got the old style bankers in their old world asking people who are in this space going, hey, how do we stay relevant? Swear that's what they're saying. Can we stay relevant in this day and age? And that question is being asked by Avanti. It's also being asked by Kraken, the bank that both of those are now special depositories in Wyoming. And it's only going to get worse for them. And even if those CBDCs come into play and we have the central banks, we're just issuing the CBDCs directly to the consumers or to the citizens, there is no real reason for a commercial bank other than just to be a node, because you're not going to be hanging around and giving out money. That's not your main purpose anymore. So I'm not going to get ahead of myself. So this was pretty interesting and just kind of what I thought was going on. So a pair of investment strategists say banks are now taking a closer look at whether Bitcoin can help them stay relevant. In a new interview on the Unchained podcast, Coinchair's chief strategy officer, Meltem De Mirers says she's now fielding crypto questions from banking execs on a regular basis. So it was hosted by Laura Shin. She is a pretty great journalist. I always recommend checking out her channel. Got a lot of great guests. Meltem here, De Mirers, hope I said her name right. She's Chief Strategy Officer, Coinchair's then Lynn Alden. She's the founder of Investment Strategy, Lynn Alden Group. So they've got a couple of great stories and it's about an hour and a half long. If you want to listen to it, sure, that's great. But I'm just going to give you the highlights. So to quote Meltem Mirers, she states, we've been talking to banks and asset managers who are asking, what do we do? Is Bitcoin maybe part of the answer to how we stay relevant? How do we keep AOM or assets under management and actually deliver a product that our clients will pay for? And she's like, it's not rocket science. Just give them what they want.  Just say, yes, we will do cryptocurrency assets. I mean, I think that's one of the problems with a lot of industries or businesses out there or even YouTube channels.  You don't know what people want. You've got to ask them. That's why I like, I mean, just for example, in this channel, I'm always pretty active in the comment section.  I don't do those things again. I mean, if it's just one person, I'm like, wow, maybe, but if I keep hearing again and again and again, then I stopped doing that because that's not what people want. So it's the same thing with the banks right now. Just all they have to do is take a look at PayPal. When PayPal opened up everything and they said, hey, we're going to offer crypto and digital assets. Do you guys want something? Well, they had a 3x demand from their waitlist and they said, wow, this is way bigger than we thought. So instead of just having $10,000 per day, we're going to offer the $15,000 and then we're going to roll it out even faster. So they have the pulse on what people want. Banks, again, are not good at innovation. So that's going to take a little bit of time. But the time that it takes for them to catch up, I think that everything's going to get passing them by and they're going to get blockbustered. Anyhow, Lynn Alden, founder of Lynn Alden Strategy, says she's having similar conversations, which is odd because they're all talking these banks and they're all saying the same things to them. She states, for example, the other day I gave a presentation to a bank board of directors and Bitcoin wasn't one of my presentation points. I was just talking about fiscal monetary policy and then one of the first things they asked when I was done was, what do I think about Bitcoin? So she goes over all this fiscal policy, pretty dry, pretty nice and individualized language for the banks. They're like, hey, that was great. Well, what about Bitcoin? And the reason or part of the reason why these banks are actually asking about it is because she says right here, because they had noticed, for example, the Michael Saylor investment. And of course, that is the whole micro strategy thing. And she goes into the whole story, but I have to, I got to tell you, I got to tell you. I mean, it's very simple.  Or if you're a corporation, how can we make money? Well, it's pretty simple. Just take a look at what Michael Saylor did with micro strategy. And they plumped down 425 million about a couple months ago, and now it's worth 537 million. So again, not rocket science. So if you put money into an asset that is climbing up and has a tremendous upside, as opposed to any type of stock or bond or any kind of gold or precious metals right now, I don't see, I don't see gold or silver going up 10X in the next year or so. But I used to see Bitcoin doing that. This is an asymmetrical investment. And of course, banks are going to look at that and go, wow, people want this, we can offer it to them. And also, it's the price is going through the roof, because it is so valuable.  And then she says, so the board's like, so how real is this? Is this like still an asset class for the crazies? Or is it, you know, an actual thing? And that's how they phrase it, still to this day. Or is it an actual like, do you treat it like a commodity?  So she says, I gave my five minute bullish overview for Bitcoin, which is why I'm always talking about the Bitcoin elevator pitch. Check out that video. It's very simple. All you got to say is, look, Bitcoin is digital gold. Unlike gold, it is finite at 21 million. Whereas with gold, you're going to keep buying that stuff. It is the best performing asset class ever used to cost a nickel. And now it's cost about $14,000. And it's why I'm heavily invested not to mention the fact that I can send it to anyone, anyone in the world in less than 30 minutes. That's my elevator pitch. And if you can just give them something like that, I mean, to your friends and family, pretty simple, I'm sure she had to go a little bit more deeper than that. But let me know what you think in the comments section. But again, I think the banks are going to be left behind. They're not very nimble. They can't pivot and move and do things that a small company can. And they're just out of it. That's just how it is. Now, nothing wrong with the bank employees. I mean, I got a lot of people listen to this channel who work for the bank. It's not you. It's just the upper management is holding everything back. And I think you can agree with me. Let me know what you think in the comments section. Let's move on. Next up, well, we're still waiting for this presidential election to go through. So we don't know who's going to win. And volatility is great for you traders. But also volatility and uncertainty is great for us because people like to invest into something that is not a quantitative easing. That is a quantitative hardening that has an assurance and only locked in at 21 million or whatever the market cap or whatever the total supply actually is. So right now, enjoy it because it's great for us. So this little piece where it talks about how presidential elections mark a turning point for Bitcoin. And if you've already and first part's pretty boring, so I'm going to skip that. Anyhow, it talks about elections typically mark a pivoting point for Bitcoin. And it states Misari analyst Misari is a data analytics company. Ryan Watkins explained that presidential elections US have typically taken place at the start of all past bull runs, which you have to remember, presidential elections happen how often? Every four years. And how often is there a having every four years? So it's kind of like the chicken or the egg type of thing. I kind of think there is something to be said about that they're both kind of in that same time point. So we'll see. But he states not a lot of people know this, but US presidential elections are a leading indicator of Bitcoin bull runs. The 2008 election was a strong catalyst as it caused the launch of Bitcoin just two months later. The results speak for themselves. And so Obama was elected in 2008. And then in 2012 around towards the later part there, he was reelected. And then after that, he just saw a huge spike again. Also the happening probably had a little bit to do with that. Let me have a little bit of a slump right around there for 2015, 16 where I have to tell you, I feel like this is 2016. This 2020 feels like that's what it is because it's kind of like a lull and we're starting to kind of slowly take off and I kind of feel it's what it is on top of the fact that we have a presidential election. Same type of thing. So this was when Trump was elected 2016. And then in 2017, December, just about a year and a half later or roughly, we saw the massive parabolic bull run. So here we are over here. Same type of thing. Everything's playing out perfectly. We have a lot of confusion, a lot of uncertainty, so I can only see these things going up. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it. Anyhow, Watkins believes that reduced economic uncertainty provides fertile ground for Bitcoin and grow up. The reduced uncertainty falls elections provides fertile ground for Bitcoin bull runs. And he states presidential elections are greater than having. So slow your roll. I don't think it's that big of a thing. I mean, it is great to have uncertainty, but there's something to be said when you cut the production costs in half and almost say like, wait, wait, wait, you're telling me that it used to be 12 and a half Bitcoins every 10 minutes that the miners would produce. Now it's only 6.25. Then in former years, it's going to be 3.175, whatever it is. So, I mean, you have to look at that and go, that's a big thing as far as the finite supply. So again, to reiterate, from here on out, I think we're going to see it's still going to be turbulent. We're still going to have ups and downs, peaks and valleys, but 2021 is our year, I say it in every single video. Let me just think of the comment section. Let's move on. So next up, and this is a quick piece. If you don't follow Alex Machinsky on Twitter, what are you doing? This guy's gold. I mean, he's got so many good pieces and just just rails in the banks and just rails on these different projects and just really, he's an entertaining guy, but he's got a great product. And if you don't know, I'm a big believer in Celsius, and it's where I store 30% of my entire portfolio on the Celsius platform. So the lion's share, of course, is an allege, which I kind of feels like my vault, but Celsius has a big chunk. And I believe in, I think it's going to do good things just like we saw with the price of the Celsius tokens. Why is that? Well, it could be because 98% of their employees have committed to a three-year lock on their $1.50. They're going to lock it up and $1.50 of all their cell tokens that they have accumulated. So all their employees go, you know what, we believe in it so much that we're going to have you lock it up for three years so we can't touch it. And of course, what happens when those go out of circulation? More demand potentially. It looks like that's what's going on. And then also the price goes up. So that is just one of the things that is going on on top of the fact that they do so many loans. And of course, I am not oblivious to the elephant in the room, or excuse me, the rhino pooping all over the place for this little piece here. I just thought it was hilarious to put it in. And that is the beauty of cryptocurrency, digital assets, and especially on social media. You got a great point, and you got someone just posting just insanity. So anyway, on top of that, I mean, if you just want to follow Alex and just see what he's talking about, there's a lot of good things about what he talks about the Celsius flywheel and how it correlates to the actual price, because you can get paid in Celsius outside the United States, because I have been putting a lot of my assets into Celsius. Unfortunately, if you're an American citizen, you cannot earn in Celsius, which is a bummer. However, they do have great rates. And whatever you are into, that's fine. But Celsius is for me, I just like it. And there was this little piece here I thought was pretty interesting from crypto night writer says, and if you invested your $1,200 stimulus check on April 13, purchasing 15,000 cell tokens, it would now be worth 21,000. That was on November 1.  So just food for thought. And then also, Alex is going to talk about DeFi and how Celsius has outperformed all the DeFi projects. So I'll let you look into it. Anyhow, at Machinsky, following pretty good interesting stuff. So that is it for this piece. Let's jump into Q of the day. So Q of the day comes to us from my man, medic. I do like medic. He's kind of like me. It was a medic. Obviously, I was the same thing, but both got gray in our beards. And that's just how it is. But he has a good point here. And I had talked about this in another video, but I want to make it crystal clear is that he says, Hey, Dan, well, you had another safe gimmick. And he's talking about the ink that is being produced by this ghost pen. So let's jump in the office. This was prerecorded a while ago, but I think it's good to note right now. So let's jump in and welcome back to Q of the day. And actually, it's it's not so much really a question, but it is a comment. And it's a pretty good one. So this was actually after we did a video, and we talked about the stone book or the shield folio. And you know, I like it. I like to use it. It seems to save me a lot of heartache because I don't want to lose all my cryptocurrency. There's a lot of different things out there, but it's a low tech option. I like it. So this is from a man medic, RVN medic.  He's an old medic and got a lot of good things to say. So medic, thanks so much for this comment. It really put things into into lightning states. He goes yet another safe gimmick. Does the manufacturer have an estimate of the like expectancy of the disappearing ink? It might be gone in one year. Who knows. And before we move on, what he's talking about is that the shield folio product is it's just a it's a lightweight pocketbook that is terrazins, terrazins, water resistant, tamper resistant. And you put in all your seed phrases and mnemonic phrases and passwords. And it has two forms you can do it in. You can write on it. And then also there's this thing called the ghost 10, which has a specialty ink, which when you run it under black light, you can see the actual thing that you're writing on. So that's exactly what he is. And he has a good point here, which is, Hey, how do we know this won't just disappear in like six months a year, two years. So it is a good point. And then he says, I hope you got this gratis or free the test, but it seems every time the safe law comes out, you have one medic that is true. People send me stuff all the time. And I gotta tell you, I show you guys a quarter of what I get actually gets sent. He says, I'll pass on this one, just like the money I spent on a ledger nano. I said, well, medic, where do you, where do you store your, your passwords? And he says, Hey, in our, in our home is safe on a seed card. So it comes onto this. Everybody's different. And they have their own little styles of way to do things. Medic has a rock solid way to do it.  Some people do something else, but this is what I do. And maybe this is for you. So I reached out to the founder and CEO of Shield Foley or Stonebook. And I asked him that question and he is on today. Freddie, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it. He's going. Glad to be here. Hey, everyone. Great. All right, Freddie. So that's the question. We have this Inc. We have to trust it. How long is it going to last? And how is the whole process? How did you test it all out? So walk us through. Okay. So the Inc. is, is a UV Inc. Transparent Inc. For us and Inc. It has built in it. It's permanent. It's waterproof. And it has a super glue solution in it that binds the stone paper to make sure it actually could last a lifetime. Not multiple lifetimes. Like, like a strength style. Yeah, like a strength style. It's, it's, it's one of the strongest glue out there. So it's, it's, it doesn't come off. It's waterproof. It's something that's not out there in the market. It's like possibly the strongest invisible ink you could find. And it works perfect with the Stonebook. Great. Now you were talking about working with, with a chemist before we talked because that was the big thing. So how did that all come out? Yes, we were just working with the chemist, trying to get the solution right, making sure the ink doesn't dry out after a certain amount of time because we're using super glue. And we actually came up with this super strength solution. And it's, like I said, the strongest. I believe it's strongest out there. And right now that's, you know, Gotcha.  With an alcohol wipe.  Actually, you could wipe most of it off compared to the ghost ink inside the ghost pen. So that's how strong this, because it has that glue solution inside it. It really doesn't rub off. And it stays fluorescent. I mean, like I said, for a lifetime. Awesome. Yeah, because that's the big thing. If it can last, I mean, everybody's, we'd like to use it. So I am, I'm still old school. I'll do it. I played around with it like James Bondish, very cool. But yeah, I like it. So I see it. But there was another technique that you were talking about, and I had never heard before. So tell us about this. This, what was it called? It's called, I think it's called squirreling with your wallet. So what it is, is you actually have, like in the notebook, if you use the stonebook, for instance, you can actually write the real mnemonic phrase, the high-valued wallet mnemonic phrase with the ghost pen inside, you know, inside the page, right?  So that way you're ready with a ballpoint pen that's noticeable, that scene. So that way if somebody steals your book, they can actually, the first thing they're going to do is unload that wallet. And that's going to send you a notification. If you sign up for notifications with ether scans, create an account, you could attach the address to get notifications. Is there any time the transaction goes in or out? So right away, once you get that transaction, once the transaction goes through, you know somebody grabbed your notebook, because that's probably the first thing they're going to do.  So yeah, yeah. So when I was wrapping my head around, I go, I've never heard of that technique. I mean, for safety, it makes a lot of sense. So on the one page, we're going to write an ink, regular ink, one of the wallets that you have, a low-value wallet, maybe with $30 worth of tomato coin or whatever it is. And then on the back page, you're going to write in the ghost ink, which is the one we're just talking about with the grill. And then of course, people see that if they ever take your wallet and they actually know what the heck is going on, they're going to say, oh, okay. So this is it. They're going to get that wallet. They're going to download it and like, okay, and that's it. You're saying we do something like that. And then we actually, on my ether scan, is it my ether scan? Like you said, ether scan. Oh, sorry, it's ether scan.io. It is going to, we can actually put the wallet ID in there and track it. And we can see all the transactions. So here's a great, I'm going to show you something right here. So this is just a quick example, but like, let's say it's filled up with the whole mnemonic phrase, but in the back, you're able, I don't know if you can see, you're able to write it behind it. Ah, that's crazy.  And on the front, it's just a decoy. And that's what, yeah, because someone in the comment section, I'm glad I actually read the comments, they said, hey, I've got, I've got two books, one I keep it home for it, because I want to do these things. But if that one gets destroyed, lost, or something like that, I have a second one at my bank in my safety deposit box. And I was like, that's a pretty good idea. That's why I actually ordered the second one from you. So, okay, I get it. So walk us, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to share my screen so people know what the heck we're talking about. Walk us through the whole ether scan thing. So let me share my screen. Okay. So my man, here we are. So we're on ether scan. And you have to have an account, if you don't have an account, just click right there for sign in.  You sign up. I've already signed up. I'm going to log in. Yes. Okay. Hey, there I am. The end of the lesson. Okay. Freddie, walk us through.  You're going to go to address watch list. It's in the middle. You're going to click the magnifying glass. Yeah. Then from there, you're going to add your wallet. And that's going to be the decoy wallet that's written with the normal ballpoint pen that's going to be seen. So you're going to add that address in there. Got it. So what I'm going to do to show you like here is my, this is my brave browser wallet. I've got a pretty hefty amount almost. So what I'm going to need to do is find this is the address that you want, right? So I'm going to copy this to the clipboard. And for you watching the video, this is whatever your address is. So you're going to put it right there. Okay. And then description, I'm just going to put brave browser. Whoops. Wallet. Okay. And then for here, you're going to go ahead and click notify incoming actions. Okay. And that's, oh, it's, it's the one on top of it actually. So you can get, yeah. Oh, it coming out going. Okay. Yeah. And then also track. Yeah. Okay. And then continue and the alerts will come through your email. So you successfully added that to your watch list.  And that's where that's the address. You use the deco address behind that actual deco address. You're writing down in the page with the ghost pen. It's a good tip to have out there just to stay secure. So if you watch this, just know that you can go right to shieldfolio.com and find it or you can what I always do is I sometimes I forget I put in stonebook and cryptocurrency. However, if you go in the description, you can get 15 of every one of my videos. It'll look something like this. And then when you click on that link, it'll give you 50% off. All right. Well, Freddie, we really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Product is great. And yeah. So thanks so much. And that is it for tonight. Thanks. Thanks again for being on the show and we'll talk soon. All right, I'll see you. All right, that's it. So thanks for sticking with me through the whole thing. Again, you can find the link in the description below, along many others. If you're interested in those types of things, I again, I've got a couple of those books. So I totally believe in them. Also, if you don't know, I have a second channel. And the reason I created Dan clips was for two reasons. One is because some of they talk a little bit too much. So I like to break things down into clips so you can just see like little six minutes, seven minute clips that are going through the whole 30 minutes to find what you're looking for. Second reason was it's like a backup channel because you YouTube at any time, just go, you know what, Dan, we don't like your channel. Get out. And they could shut me down. So have to have some kind of backup. And this is one on top of my theta channel, which I really need to get back into. We just came over from El Paso to Houston. We'll be in Houston for the next three to four weeks and I'll go back. So a lot of things going on. But that is it. So again, thanks for sticking with me. Really appreciate it. And I will see you on the next one.