Welcome to Digital Asset News to get top stories and crypto current digital assets and bring them down to bite-sized pieces today. We've got a lot of stuff to go over so let's just get going. So first up, why didn't MicroStrategy's $423 million investment move the Bitcoin's price? And it's actually pretty simple. It's because it did thousands of transactions over three days and they didn't move the market much at all. The big story though is the other companies that saw what just happened and they have trillions of dollars also. Capital Bank Revolut taps Fireblocks to support new crypto-based services and I actually have a business account with Revolut. It is a banking institution and what this could actually mean is we have another bank that is going to host, sell, and buy cryptocurrencies. Just like the newly formed financial services Kraken. And a follow up to yesterday's story where we talked about Hedgi's CEO selling all his Bitcoin, this is going to pretty much lay it out why he did it and the question really is asked, did he sell too soon? The DeFi market cap drops a quarter or 25% in one day and another question is asked is, is this the right time to start to buy essentialized finance? And finally Google Cloud bets on EOS blockchain venturing further into crypto and this really isn't the story. The story is how Google is getting its tentacles into every type of business and I think what's going on is Google is trying to corner some of the market. So we'll go over all that but first take a look at what's going on in the market so it is 6 p.m. in the dot. Texas time it is October 8th and let's see what we got. So Bitcoin is up today, thankfully, almost reaching that 11,000 is up 2% or 1% for a 7 day period. Pretty good. Ethereum just sitting at 350. I'll take it. Tether's tether with its 15 billion dollar market cap. XRP which is pegged to the quarters at a quarter just kidding it's XRP. Bitcoin cash is up 4.5%. Let's see what else? Everything's pretty much up I think 6.5 for Polkadot sitting at the right back where it was 4.10, Chainlink 9.50, right below 10, 1.2 for Lyco and I think really fantastic that really strikes or jumps out too much. Ooh, Uniswap up 11% but down 20% for the week. So yesterday if you sold maybe that wasn't a good choice but today looks like it could be a little bit better and maybe if you bought yesterday then it was actually a great move. It financed up 11% even though the all time high was around 40,000 or somewhere around there. 8.7 for Uma. Hey, good job. And that's really the most miraculous, fantastic stuff. Ooh, Ave up 13.6%. I'm actually going to be on Alex Masioli's show tomorrow and we're going to talk with Stanley Kulichov who's the founder. I've got a couple questions for him so if you've got some questions that you want me to ask him just go ahead and put that in the comment section and I'll put it out there but it should be a pretty good show. Alright, let's jump into today's stories because we've got a lot to go over. First up, White & Micro strategy is almost half a billion dollar investment with Bitcoin's price. So really it's not much of a surprise. I mean, I'm not going to go with this whole article because we already talked about it. I mean, it's pretty much laid out right here by the CEO, Michael Saylor. He says, look, to acquire almost 17,000 Bitcoin we traded continuously for 74 hours executing almost 90,000 trades which is 0.19 Bitcoin each three seconds. So that's about 40,000 in Bitcoin per minute but all times we were ready to purchase 30 to 50 in a few seconds if we got lucky with one or two percent downward spike. So I cannot imagine the team you have to put together and the patients that you have to have to do that continuously or the program or the bots or whatever else that they use but it didn't really move too much. Of course, they did some OTC. Of course, they didn't just use one exchange. They probably, you know, spread it all out with the top five or top six exchanges and that's pretty much it. This is a, it's a well-written article. I'm not going to be putting anything away from it and talks about, you know, this is the formulas and whatever else and at this point I almost fell asleep but really what it comes down to is this, the story for me was the second to last paragraph and it states right here, Saylor CEO also mentioned that there are 35,000 publicly traded companies carrying a total of five trillion in spare cash getting negative real returns due to the pandemic. This is where it goes off the rails because let's do some quick math, but it says even if one to 2% of this capital and it says five trillion flows into Bitcoin, this would easily push its market cap to two trillion and beyond. So I was reading this and I'm like, I just don't see it, but it doesn't matter. So they're talking here about there's a total of five trillion in spare cash getting negative real returns. So that is true. There is a ton of companies right now and they're sitting on what Saylor called a melting iceberg or melting ice. All that cash is just depreciating in value or you have inflation at 2% and actually they think it's way more than that. So what you're doing is you're just looking at your cash going, well, goodbye, because it doesn't really do too much just like the purchasing power of the nine saints dollar ever since 1913, but it has been accelerated especially with the quantitative easing. You cannot print this much money and not expect to have some kind of repercussion. So this is what Saylor has seen. This is what some other CEOs have seen. This is what big players in the game who are smart have seen. And this is what is going to be seen by these CEOs, by these businesses, by these CFOs and not only them. It's going to be looked at and scrutinized by the stockholders, the company going, what are you guys doing? We need some that actually will appreciate, doesn't depreciate. Get yourself into Bitcoin and if you can't do that, just like skating the gold or something like that. So I think that big companies that are sitting on cash right now are probably looking at Michael Saylor going, you know what? Makes a lot of sense. And I think this is one of those pushes that will happen for Bitcoin. Now, this part right here, even if one or two percent of the capital flows into Bitcoin, he'll be pushes market to two trillion. I'm not going to get into that, but I will just say this. There's if you have five trillion sitting around, what do you think these companies are going to do? Do you think there's going to sit there and just watch the cash depreciate? Or are they going to take a look at, oh, well, Michael Saylor did it. Oh, well, Paul Teeter Jones did something like that. Oh, there's other players coming into it. Oh, we've got other people. And before you know it, it's a domino effect. And all of a sudden everybody's like, huh, he's doing it. He's doing it. She's doing it. I got to do it. And before you know it, there is a tipping point. And that tipping point is coming a lot faster than what people think. Let me just think of the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, this is a quick one. Revolut taps Fireblocks to support new crypto based services. So I have Revolut. I have Revolut as my business account because I thought it was going to be better. I thought it was going to be better than the local banks that I have, or even the nationwide banks. And it's not that great. I'll just be honest with you. They came over from Europe. They have their Metropolitan Bank here in New York, and they're using that to do everything with their banking services.  And they don't allow that. And then when I tried to verify my PayPal account, they rejected those payments, which is PayPal will put in like a couple of cents. You have to verify the transactions. Well, they denied those transactions and then it screwed up everything with PayPal. So besides that, those two things happening, it's been not a bad experience. Everything's online and not so bad, but they really need to kind of shore up some things because they really need to be interoperable with different types of formats, especially in the States.  Well, it's true. It's what I want. So putting that aside, there is some good news. And that is that Revolut will use Fireblocks Wallet and now we're infrastructure when it offers new crypto services for its 13 million global retail customers. So this is right on the heels of crack and financial coming out and saying, Hey, we have a charter in Wyoming and we're going to have special depository services. And essentially they're becoming a banking license. But unlike a bank, they will not be able to do fraction and reserve lending because everything that they have in there, they have to have it backed up.  And they just loan it all out to somebody else. And then when someone comes and goes, Hey, is my money still there? Oh, yes, sir. It still is. No, it's not. It's gone. It's gone. It's being lent out.  It's all there. Don't look behind the curtain of what the wizard's doing. But in reality, the money that you put in, it's lent out of somebody else. And that person deposit something, that money is lent out. So cracking can't do that. And the same is going to be done with Revolute. And what's great about Revolute is that they have the banking license and now they're going to have digital currencies and cryptocurrencies. And it's just one more domino effect to fall. So it's statement or Revolute statement said using fire blocks. Crypto management solution would help Revolute streamline liquidity settlements and help guarantee the best price to customers while also reducing counterparty risk to fire blocks or fire blocks, use a patented MPC technology for its wallet and said that so far, it's helped the transfer of 70 billion worth of digital assets. So that got me wondering, what the heck is fire blocks? And I took a look at their website and they have some pretty big players. They have players like its stamp. And let's take a look at the exchanges. Aha, LGO, coin flex, Voyager, coin square. So these guys have been in the game for a little bit of time and they're going to offer their services to Revolute to offer cryptocurrency assets. I don't know exactly where this is going to go, but I like to see options and I like it when the other traditional banks had to sit back and go, hmm, are we blockbuster? Because in the distance, that looks like Netflix. Now, who knows? Is anybody's guess? But let me know what you think in the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, this is a good article. Talks about here's why Hedgeye CEO sold all his Bitcoin. And this was a story we did yesterday or a couple of days ago where we talked about a risk management CEO selling all his Bitcoin. So actually, no, so this is actually two days ago. And it was right when the market was pretty much had a big dip. And so he had that. You had also another piece of information where the President of the United States had tweeted out that he was not going to be negotiating any type of stimulus package. And then 24 hours later, he reversed that decision. And now he's in negotiations. And magically, the market came back up. So the question was then is why did this gentleman sell his Bitcoin? So it's actually answered in this article. So it starts right here. It says it's not personal, he said, which is CEO Keith McCullough. It's just ROC empirics. And I was like, what the heck is that? Next question. Next sentence says, the ROC means return on capital. Empirics means math, which I'm like, who writes like that? Who writes this? So like, who wrote this? And look at it's Robert Stevens. I'm like, who's that? And the Robert Stevens is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Guardian, AP, New York Times, gradually Oxford Internet Institute and could reach on telegram. So I'm like, that's a pretty good sentence. Just I appreciate people who put a little bit of humor into their article. All right. So going down, he said it's a combination of who knows. McCullough's answer as the Y claims to have sold his Bitcoin. How much is unclear? It's difficult to parse and appears as vague as any YouTube crypto trader who searches for Bart Simpson, haircuts and golden triangles in price charts. That's another good sentence. I actually got a kick out of this whole article when I was reading it, McCullough's firm, however, claims to advise risk managers with over one trillion of assets under management. And I read that too.  And he's like, yeah, probably got about a trillion. It is unclear in what capacity and whether they simply refer to subscribers of his new letter. So I know people really like this guy. McCullough, I guess he's very entertaining.  So moving on, it says he sold, he says he sold his Bitcoin for a combination of a bearish at Hedge-Eye trade breakdown and rising prop probability of quad four and Q4. And I was like, well, I don't know what that is either. And they say a breakdown is an explanation and quad four is a term invented, invented by Hedge-Eye. It means that economic growth and inflation are slowing down. Well, that makes sense, right? I mean, we know there's going to be a dip coming up these presidential elections here in the United States. We know it's going to be very tumultuous. It's going to be very hectic and erratic. So we're going to see dips. We're going to see peaks and valleys and all that stuff. This is going to be one of those times when people could actually make a lot of money. I mean, if you start to really think about buying the dips and selling at the tops or at the tops of, you know, that those different channels, I'm not those guys. I'm not a trader, but I will be buying those dips and I will be increasing my position by, you know, maybe five or 10 percent as it starts to take a dip. So moving, moving down and finish up, McCulloch continues, if that empirical fact or my decision to de-groce and or sell affects you emotionally, you should really consider why that's happening to you. When I sell something for a big gain, the only feeling I have is that I am going to pay taxes and the author writes, this means that if McCulloch has upset you, it's your fault and he's rich and doesn't care. So, yes, it's kind of funny. But I mean, really, in honesty, you shouldn't really care if somebody sells, if they sell and they want to get out, sure, you know, go ahead and get out. We should have no emotion. When you put emotion into trading or into investing, that's when mistakes are made. So just kick back, relax. We all know where this is going, right? This whole market is going to go up dramatically. I mean, all the different videos that you watch from just from me, I mean, you can just see where all the businesses that are getting in, the different industries, the institutional investors, the mom and pop shops. I mean, everything is going in the right direction. So we have a little bit of dip. Who cares? I don't care. That's just a Thursday. Anyhow, he states of goal and Bitcoin continue to correct in price. They're already in motion on that since I made my sales. These are no rules on my full cycle investing accounts that says I can't buy them back. And that's just it. He's going to, he probably saw the writing on the wall and he looked at, you know, maybe the different things that, you know, the more the traditional market is happening to it. Maybe, you know, the Fed talking about slowing down that quantitative easing, maybe with the president of the United States sending out that tweet going, Hey, I'm not going to give any kind of stimulus package to the American people until you vote me back in. Unbelievable. So he, if I look at that and goes, this is a good time to sell and maybe he's right. But again, in the last two days, 48 hours or so, we've had a pretty good big rally and maybe he's thinking about this, maybe it wasn't a good time, but only time will tell. Maybe in a week it crashes to 5,000. No, it's cryptocurrency. I don't care what's going to happen in the next month or six or even a year really, honestly, I mean, I know what's going to go as time goes on. I live through the whole dot com bubble and how the internet came to be and what it was. I remember when there was no internet kids. And let me tell you, it was a strange time. People actually got out of the house, didn't stare at screens all day, get off my lawn. So just like Alex Machinsky talks about from Celsius, he says, look, Cryptocurrency assets or what he calls moip money over internet protocol is going to swallow up the internet and it's going to take over everything 10x wise.  Wait till this market gets going. Let me know what you think of the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, DeFi market cap drops 25% a day. And this is another quick article, but this is a blog post by Santamit and they estimated that the DeFi token trade volumes have fallen by 30% combined. Place tokens like Sushi, Uniswap and Urine Finance are among the hardest hit. Weakly losses of 51% to 31%, which that's a bummer, that sucks, right? Let me just be clear before we go on. There's a big place for decentralized finance. I think it's going to be enormous. I just don't I just think it's just too early and these projects are just too immature. I think they will grow. I think it'll be great just not right now. Santamit claims to identify whale accumulation activity, taking place around several DeFi assets, including synthetic. So whenever that I'm like, maybe I should get new synthetics. Maybe I should actually look at it a little bit harder if whales are accumulating or maybe not. Maybe just want to accumulate and pump the price so people can jump in. They can dump it all on the bag holders. Who knows? Santamit also noted that the combined value of DeFi assets at the time they last moved on the MRMVRV blockchain has dropped an all-time low indicating undervaluation at current price levels.  Lastly, DeFi index is slumped to record lows this past week. Binance did one. They did a DeFi composite index and it crashed one fifth or 20% yesterday. And then overall it's fallen 63% from late August. So that's not a good one to get into right now or maybe it is. I mean, it's fallen so much but if you started out there, woof. So always be careful with the shiny objects. And I always talk about don't FOMO in. When I say don't FOMO in, I don't mean like don't get into it. What I'm saying is, do your research, take a real hard look and then when you want to buy in, dollar cost average. If you got a thousand bucks, don't on Tuesday go, you know what, boom, here we go, synthetics, take it all. No, it's not the way to do it. Just dollar cost, whatever you thinking for. So let's say you have a thousand, let's say you put in 20 bucks. Super conservative, right? Super conservative, 20 bucks in. Maybe you buy another 20 in 40 hours or 72 or a week later. I don't know. But the whole point is that you don't feel that tightness in your chest when you dump a thousand in and then it drops 30%. You're like, shoot, I just lost 300 bucks. I can't just like that.  That's not the way to do it. You just put a little bit in and have it drops a little bit. You're like, great. I could put a little bit of money in. If it goes up a little bit, you're like, awesome. I made some money. That's the whole secret. It's not super tough. I know the trader's out there.  And this actually leads me to my next point, which I did a little, this was a forward. Somebody had posted this about the overall percentage drop for decentralized finance. You can just take a look. I mean, curve as far as like, here's what's all-time high and then today, and then sushi swap and da-da-da-da-da, right? So the median is about 60%, average 61. So pretty big drop. And then I just posted this and some good replies and everybody's got pretty good stuff. I mean, I got some smart people to follow me. Thank God. And this one was really good. DeFi dummy, he says, hey, no worries. I'm all diversified and DCA'd in early. DeFi will replace part of the traditional finance system. True. I totally believe that. Sure, most projects will disappear. True. But some will become leaders in the industry and I expect 80% of my portfolio to go to zero. I expect, I can't believe you said it perfectly. I expect 80% of my portfolio to go to zero if 5% moons, I'm a happy camper. And that's the big thing. This is the big thing about these big money institutional players getting in the game. They know if they put money in, well, their downside is, this is just like what Rell Paul said yesterday. He's like, well, I can lose 50%, 70%, 80%. I mean, the downside, that sucks, you know, but it's an asymmetrical investment because I know that this and these projects, specifically he's talking about Bitcoin, can go dramatically higher. So yeah, I might lose 80%, but it could go up 1,000, 2,000, 10,000%. I don't know. I mean, it could really go up and this is what investors always salivate over, asymmetrical investments. And that's why I'm in this space. All right, let's move on to our last article. Last up, Google Cloud bets on EOS blockchain venturing for the new crypto. Couple of days ago, I'd actually talked about how everything was sliding down, you know, two days ago was awful. And then the only one that was going up was EOS. I'm like, what the heck? I mean, I own EOS and EOS hasn't done Jack for like years it seems like. And I was like, what the heck happened there? This is what happened. And everybody told me in the comment section. So thanks everybody, I appreciate it. But this article isn't about that. I don't really care about that. What I care about is the bulk of it where it talks about how many projects Google has actually gotten into. And this first sentence kind of lays out exactly how the article is gonna be gonna go. It states blockchain is undergoing a critical turning point shifting from an emerging technology into a useful business tool that enterprises want to incorporate into existing IT stacks. You know how good an article is gonna go by the first sentence. So I had to look up like, who wrote this? Rachel Wilson. So I looked up her and she's a journalist, public speaker and podcast host, tenure's experience about technology, has been covering blockchain and crypto since 2017. She's writing a whole book on enterprise blockchain. So pretty smart lady looks like she knows exactly what she's talking about. And it's gonna be pretty much disseminated right around now. So let's take a look at what she says. So she states, Google Cloud recently became a network block producer by joining EOS blockchain community. Now just to be clear, EOS blockchain producers, there's only 21 of them and you had to vote them in. So it's not like they are instantly in but they are a big player and if they get voted in, hint, hint, that probably will be. I think it'll be pretty good to bring some notoriety to EOS. And it states, Alan Day, developer advocate at Google Cloud Goldcoin Telegraph that Google is broadly interested in open source protocols and DLT, our distributed ledger technology. And that's big. When Google Cloud or just Google, the company itself goes, hey, distributed ledger technology, that looks pretty good. That's good, but what's better is that they invest into digital asset or cryptocurrency like EOS. DLT is the overarching technology that deals with blockchain. China talks about how great distributed ledger technology is. They do not talk about Bitcoin. They talk about DLT and these companies are going to start talking about blockchain and distributed ledger technology, but they're not going to say cryptocurrency specifically in digital assets. So when Google comes out and says, yeah, you know what, we like this and we like EOS and we like Hedera hashgraph and we like theta, that's big. So moving on earlier this year, Google Cloud also joined Hedera hashgraph, governing council, enabling Google Cloud to operate a Hedera network node. In addition, Google Cloud supports for DLT, Amazon Web Services listed as a cloud service provider for China's blockchain based service network. And moving down, they explained that Google Cloud will leverage advanced security measures on EOS and is building security through progressive layers. Lastly, Kevin Rose, the senior VP of blockchain, public blockchain engagement at Block One, which is a company behind EOS, told Cointelegraph that Google's participation on EOS will enable new business models for both parties to drive the digital economy. I'm going to read you something right now and it's from Alistar Rennie. And Alistar is the GM of IBM blockchain. And I want you to realize that IBM blockchain is a, not a decentralized, it is a centralized, not permission list, but permissioned blockchain that is collected inside IBM. And it is only contained in there and it is made for corporations. It is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve. However, it has had some success because businesses tend to trust big corporations. However, I do not think they will be overall successful because IBM is a monstrous corporation and they will never be as nimble or as quick or able to pivot and make moves like a smaller company can and that's where innovation comes into. However, this is what he states, blockchain delivers the missing element of trust that cloud technology alone can provide. Cloud providers are growing increasingly interested in blockchain as a means to enable greater trust and seamless collaboration among disparate stakeholders. So again, he's saying, blockchain, not a specific project, just blockchain. So when you ever hear IBM blockchain, don't get excited. It's not way that big of a deal.  And to finish up, it states will major firms bring centralization to blockchains. That's the big question. What these big corporations moving in is now everything gonna become centralized. Well, it's just all summed up right here. So Google Cloud Service is moving into EOS and they want to become a block producer. But just like I talked about, but since the network, EOS network relies on 21 block producers only that must be voted in by token holders. It seems that concerns over one block producer or node, validator, failing to carry out governance duties should not result in network failure. That's one of those things just because Google's there and they're a big entity does not mean that they will hog tie and run everything to the ground. They're just one. However, we have to be a little bit vigilant when these big corporations move into our space. Me personally, my final thoughts are this, EOS needed this. They needed this win because they haven't been doing anything for the longest time. I mean, they've done things with voice and that's supposed to launch as some kind of social network but I don't hear anything about it. I don't know if you have. And I don't really hear anything about EOS. The only thing I hear about EOS is when I get some notification of some random airdrop of some random different token that does absolutely nothing. So I hope this actually leads to a catalyst and it does good things because EOS could need bigger wins. So interesting the comment section and that is it for today. Lastly, I'll say this, if you're looking for a alternative to Coinbase or looking for some type of wallet or some decentralized finance or whatever else you're looking for, here is my exchange of wallet fees and it's a spreadsheet that I put together and it goes over everything from Coinbase and all their different fees that they have to my one, two, three punch which is Kraken Celsius Voyager.  And just so you know, Celsius is my personal favorite and I have 30% of my entire portfolio and growing actually and it's over there right now getting these types of interest rates. And actually this is wrong. I need to update this. The interest rates on some of these are way higher especially with Bitcoin, I think it's like 6.7% and USDC is like, I don't know, 12, 14% somewhere on there. Anyhow, so everything from Voyager, Gemini, Binance, Uphold, SwiftX, CashApp, eToro, I don't recommend them, Crypto.com. And these are all the ones that I've actually used and recommend or do not recommend. To find the spreadsheet, just look in the description of every one of my videos is going to be a link. It's going to look like this and it'll send you over to the exchange fees spreadsheet. So take a look at that and then just decide if you've been around for a while, you know what it was like in 2017. You could not get into an exchange to offload some of your tokens or your cryptocurrencies because there was so much volume they weren't letting anybody in and they were crashing. So I recommend Highly for the next bull run which I think is next year to sign up for as many different exchanges and wallets as you possibly can so you can fill out or complete your exit strategy. Now you can go to Kraken or Voyager or Gemini or any of these places, directly to them and sign up, that's fine. But if you use my affiliate link, get between 10 and $25 and that is totally up to you. So that is it for today. Thanks again for sticking with me. If you like these types of videos, you'll be too much going to pop up in your left and right. YouTube kind of controls some of that and that is it for today. So thanks again, really appreciate it. See you on the next one.


Good morning, Hank. It's Monday, August 3rd. It's Esther Day, and I love you. My friend Ransom recently sent me some pictures he took of me when we were in college together. I've been feeling more aware of time lately, feeling more acutely that time is the longest distance between two places, as Tennessee Williams put it. It was just over 10 years ago that I got a text message from Esther Earl saying that she wanted the holiday nerd Phytaria was celebrating on her birthday, August 3rd, to be about love, specifically the kinds of non-romantic love that often don't get celebrated in our culture. She wanted her birthday to be a day when we stop and say, I love you, to friends and family members and the other people in our lives who we love, but often that love goes unacknowledged. Esther died just a few weeks later at the age of 16. She would be in her mid-20s now, and I think about Esther a lot and I miss her a lot. Esther's family started a charity in her memory called This Star Won't Go Out, which provides direct relief to families with sick kids, and also gives grants to young creative people to help them bring lovely things into the world. And through that charity, and her family, and her friends, I do still feel Esther's presence. Esther's friends from those days of Nerd Phytaria have remained close. They most recently gathered when one of them got married, and seeing those decade-plus friendships flourish is one of the great joys of being part of this little online community. But still, I wish Esther had been at Katie's wedding. I wish she had been at last year's VidCon. And she isn't. But the love that she shared with her family and friends still is here. So right, 10 years ago today, we celebrated the first Esther Day. 10 years before that, or thereabouts, this picture was taken. We were on a trip to the Grand Canyon. We were young and full of hope and strong opinions. This me, who was 20, could not know the joys or indeed the sorrows of current me. And I find it helpful to look at these pictures if only because they remind me that current me cannot see the bad times that are coming, but also cannot see the moments of light-soaked joy that are in my future. To see old pictures is for me anyway to be reminded that now feels permanent, but isn't. And that mere despair never tells the whole story. Back when those pictures were taken, Hank, I didn't know you well. I mean, obviously, we grew up inside the same house, but I left for boarding school when you were 11, and I didn't do a good job of keeping close to you. I felt like my job as a big brother was to protect and watch out for you, and I often felt tremendous guilt because I wasn't good at those jobs. And as time went on, telling you I love you became harder and harder, partly because I hadn't said it in so long, and partly because I felt like I wasn't a good brother. Working together, not just on stuff the world sees as work, but also unlike our project with Partners in Health, has been a way back into deep connection, but the work itself is also an expression of our shared love for each other, and I really value that. I love hanging out with you, I love our long rambling phone conversations, I love being on stage with you because you are unpredictable and fearless and funny without ever being cruel, and your love for me helps hold me together. Ten years ago, our lives were so different, and ten years before that, we were just kids. Now more than ever, it feels impossible to accurately imagine the future or accurately remember the past. Neither feels fixed or fixable. But Esther was right that the constant is love. So much from 2010 feels dated now, but not Esther Day. So I hope you'll take a moment to tell friends and family that you love them, and how grateful you are for their love. Hank, I love you, and I will see you on Friday.


Okay. The recording is on and welcome everyone to our lecture on BC 308, Revelation and Daniel. Thank you for joining the class today. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will get started. May I ask somebody to please lead us in prayer and then we will start. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you under the name of Jesus. I thank you for this day. Thank you for the class we are about to have. And God, I thank you for being a God who speaks and who reveals things to Jesus. And as Pastor Asha teaches the truth, God, God, I pray that Jesus will help us to open our mind and heart and listen to it and to be fully convinced in the truth and to prepare ourselves for the greater calling and purpose that we have placed in our life, Jesus. Be with us, hold the spirit you teach us. We declare complete strength over Pastor Asha. We thank you that you are healing him through the process, Jesus. And God, I pray for all my classmates. Bless them all in the name of Jesus. Be with us throughout the session. Help us to have a good wife connection as well. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. So we had just started our study on Revelation.  So I will start by answering the questions that Jeff had put in the Google classroom based on Revelation chapter one. We will answer these questions first and then we will move forward. And of course, if there are any other questions, please feel free to ask. So Revelation chapter one, the question is from verse four. Maybe I'll just copy paste what Jeffino has shared in the chat so others can see it. The questions and it's of course, it's on the, oh wait a minute, it's being cut. Okay, I can't paste the whole thing. Anyway, let me just share my screen then. All right. I'm just sharing the question that's from the class from Google classroom. So you can see the questions. Everyone can see the questions here. Yes, you can see but it's too small. It's too small. Okay. Let me just increase this then. It's too small. I have to increase the size. Hopefully it looks a little better now and I can make it a little bigger. All right. It's better. And now it's clear. All right. So these are the questions from the Google class from the sharing. It will quickly go through it and then we will continue. So first one is on chapter four, who are before his throne is that literal in heaven are there literally seven thrones for the spirit. So this is chapter four and he says there are seven spirits who are before his throne. So what we know is the throne of God. Now that's a little throne. So God is seated on the throne, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. But people have visions of heaven. They see heaven. They see the Father seated on the throne. They see the eternal Word or the Son of God seated on the throne at his right hand or standing before the throne and so on. So that aspect is literal because we're seeing it in many places throughout scripture. But in verse four, what it says, the seven spirits who are before his throne. That's where we said that seven spirits, we have to take it as prophetic words, meaning seven, meaning perfection, completeness. Spirit, there's only one Holy Spirit. So it's talking about the Holy Spirit, Spirit of God before the throne, but he is seven, meaning he's complete. He's perfect. So the throne is literal and the language to describe the perfection of the Holy Spirit, the seven spirits. So that's what we read in verse four. So one Holy Spirit, but he's completely perfect. Next question. That was the first question now. Next verse six. It says, and it's made as kings and priests to his God and Father, meaning can you give more explanation on this phrase? Kings and priests to his God and Father. So things and priests. Now that's a very interesting phrase in both the Old and New Testament. There are certain phrases or certain pictures that God uses about his people. For example, in the Old Testament, God says, you know, that in the Old Testament, we have the understanding of priests, but of course only selected people for priests. In the New Testament, all of God's people are priests.  That means they're there to serve, they're there to worship God. The same thing carries over in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God often refers to his people as his bride, God being the bridegroom. The same thing is in the New Testament.  So there are these parallel pictures in the Old and the New. And these are pictures of words that God is using to describe certain characteristics of his people. So here, very specifically, the Lord Jesus, John is speaking and telling us that the Lord Jesus has made us were six kings and priests to God his Father. So you'll also see in some places, it's as a kingdom of priests. So there is this king aspect and there's a priest aspect. A king aspect or a kingdom aspect represents dominion, authority, the rulership of God being expressed through his people. The priest aspect expresses us here to serve God, worship Him, pray, intercede. So as kings and priests, we are involved in two roles or two purposes. To administer his kingdom, to be a part of carrying out the kingdom purposes of God, the rule of God. And as priests, we're here to represent people before God. We're here to serve God through worship and prayer and spending time in His presence. So both these aspects are highlighted, kings and priests, kingdom priesthood. And that's what it means. And we see this in other places in the New Testament for Spirit chapter 2. It is a royal priesthood, kingship priesthood. Then next question of Versaite. So Jesus is saying in Versaite, I'm Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. It says the Lord who was and is and is to come. So the end, the one who said this verse, how are we saying it's Jesus who is speaking? So the terms Alpha, Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who was who is to come. We see both God the Father and the Lord Jesus using this even in the Old Testament. God says I'm the beginning and the end. So the reason we are saying it's the Lord Jesus is because the same thing is repeated in verse 11. In verse 11, when he says I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, what you see, you write in this book. So we just keep in mind that the same person is continuing to speak. And in verse 11, he's saying the same thing. And it is very clear that the one who is speaking is the son of man. Verse 11, 12, 13. So therefore we can infer that the person who was speaking in verse 8 is the same person. So that's how we can say it's the Lord Jesus speaking. But the title Alpha, Omega, beginning and end is used both by God the Father and God the Son. And then there's another question. What is the third heaven? Does that mean there are first and second heaven as well? So the answer is yes. In the New Testament you find the term third heaven to refer to the place where God dwells. So which obviously implies there's a first heaven and the second heaven as we understand it. So the word heaven or heavens is used many times in the Bible. But depending on the context, we should understand which heaven is being referred to. So there is a first heaven, which we generally call the atmospheric heaven. That is the heavens that are surrounding the earth. We call it the physical heaven or the celestial heaven. And the psalmist would say, when I look at the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, what is man? That you're mindful of him. So that's the first heaven. It's the atmospheric heaven. If you want to use the word the universe in which we dwell. That's the first heaven. There is a second heaven, which is the spiritual side to the heavenlies. So the first heaven is a physical heaven. The second heaven is a parallel spiritual heaven. It's the realm in which we have, for instance, principalities and powers, demonic powers operating the second heaven. So sometimes we picture it like layered. First layer around the earth is the physical heaven, the atmospheric heaven. Then another layer around it is the second heaven. Now it doesn't necessarily have to be like that. And it's not like that. It's just a picture, the second heaven. But actually, the second heaven actually touches the earth, meaning it's the spiritual realm that encompasses the world in which demon powers operate. Spirits of wickedness, darkness operate. But angels also operate. God sends his angels to operate. So it's a parallel world. That's the second heaven. The third heaven is beyond the first and the second heaven. So if you want to picture it, we would put it outside, you know, beyond the second heaven. But the third heaven literally is the realm in which God lives. It is very far and it is also very near. So what do you mean? It's very far because it's beyond what we can understand.  It's so far, but it's very near because there is no distance in the realm of the spirit. So the Lord is here. He's in heaven, but He's also here. Heaven is a throne. The earth is a footstool. So He's like, He's never away from the earth. So it's far in the sense that, you know, it's not something we just step into and out. But it's also very near. That's the third on the realm in which God lives. Okay. So I hope I answered those questions. Any follow-up? Is it clear? Sure. It's clear. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions from Revelation chapter one? Okay. So now we are going to step into Revelation chapter, let me just pick up in the end of chapter two, sorry, end of chapter one, and then we will move into chapter two. So in Revelation end of chapter one, we see Jesus, and we said, you know, the last class, the week before last, that He is walking among the candlesticks, and each of these candlesticks are representing one of the seven churches. So again, candlestick, very interesting because it's an Old Testament picture in the Tabernacle. And that picture of the Old Testament is being carried over into the New Testament, and it is being used to represent the local church. Very interesting. In the Old Testament, what we said was in the holy place, which is from the outer court, you come into the holy place. In the holy place, there is a candlestick, which gives light because there is no other source of light in the holy place. It gives light. And that is where the priest would, he had two things to do. He had to change the bread, the special bread, it's called the show bread. He had to change that, replace that. He had also to the altar of incense, the incense that is burnt up. He had to keep the fire going. And it was a candlestick that gave light in the holy place for the priest to be able to do these two things, which symbolizes for us the word of God and prayer and worship. So revelation being given so that God's word, prayer and worship can happen in the holy place. So that candlestick is now used as a picture of the church. And it says here that in verse 20 says that the mystery of the seven stars, which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamsters, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And the seven lampstands, which you saw are the seven churches, Revelation 1 verse 20. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And the seven lampstands are the seven churches. So lampstands, each lampstand representing one of the church in the presence of the Lord. And the seven stars, each star representing the angel of each of those churches. And we also had mentioned the word angel in the Greek simply means messenger. And depending on the context, we would say, is it an angelic messenger? Is it a demon, Satan's messenger? Or is it a human messenger, a preacher, the Gospel, or a human person? So we said that these seven stars had to represent the leader of each of the local churches, whom the Lord Jesus is having in his hand. It means two things. Of course it means protection. He's protecting the leader of each of the church. But it also means accountability. It means the Lord Jesus is holding the leader of each of the local church accountable. He's holding them accountable, holding them in his hand. So it's a very serious thing. Many times we say, I want to be a pastor. I want to lead the local church. Very nice. Of course it's a calling, but we must understand the seriousness of it. He is holding us in his hand. He's protecting us, thank God. But he's holding us accountable. And he is walking in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. And he's walking verse 13. He's in the midst of the seven lampstands. He's in the midst of his local church. He's examining, he's seeing what's happening. So with that picture, of course we see Jesus having described himself as the resurrected one. The one was conquered.  He has the keys of hate and death. And he has authority. He's conquered it. And he has complete authority. He has complete dominion over hades and death. And this Lord is now speaking to each of these seven churches. Now the question we have to ask is today, of course he spoke to only seven churches. At that time, when revelation was being given to John, there were many hundreds of churches all across that region. So it's not that there were only seven churches. There were hundreds of churches planted. The apostles had gone. The disciples had gone all across Asia Minor. They had even started traveling to other places, planted many churches. So obviously there were hundreds of churches. But here we have a record of the Lord's message to the seven churches. It is very interesting, as we will get into chapter 2 and 3, that to each of the seven churches, it begins by saying, it begins by the Lord Jesus addressing the church. But it ends by saying, let him who has ears to hear. Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. It's very interesting. So for each of the seven churches, you see this pattern. The Lord begins to speak and he introduces himself in a very specific way to each church. And each message ends by saying, this is what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Interesting. Because the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what Jesus is saying and speaks to us. Jesus mentioned that in John chapter 16, verses 13, 14, 15. He said, I will send the Spirit of truth. When he's come, he will lead you into all truth. He will show you things to come. He will take what I am saying and he will speak it to you. So today, the Holy Spirit is speaking to each of us. What the Lord is saying. Now, we understand it as true for every believer. But in this context, as leader of a local church, the Holy Spirit is speaking to you what the Lord Jesus is saying about the church, about the local church. Where are you? What is happening? What is good? What is not good? Where do you need to repent? Where do you need to make correction? The assessment of the Lord concerning that local church. The Holy Spirit is speaking to the leader of that church. Every church. The other interesting thing is the plural. He says, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The Holy Spirit is speaking to the leader of every church and to the congregation through the leader. He is speaking to every church. Each one has to listen. Sometimes we fail to listen. We fail to go before God and say, Lord, what are you saying? Where are we as a church? Are we walking right before you? Are we doing the things you want us to do? Oh God, where do you want to connect us? Where are we missing things? So if we go and ask the Holy Spirit, he's going to speak. He's going to tell us. And I just want to present that to us, those of us who maybe are in leadership today. Or maybe you will be in leadership someday soon. When God gives you responsibility in your church, in your congregation, or over a community of people. However God gives you. The Holy Spirit is speaking to you and me. What the Lord is saying to each of us, to each community. And we have to listen. So let's read portion by portion from Revelation chapter 2 and 3. And this is very, very, very interesting, very powerful. To look at what he has to say to each church. And for us to take some lessons from it and begin to apply it in our own lives, in our own ministries. So let's, somebody could read Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 through 7 please. Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 through 7. To the angel of the church of Ephesus, write these things. These things say, he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lifestyles.  And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not. And have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember, therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works. Or else, I'll come to you quickly and remove your lamestan from its place, unless you repent. But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let me, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I'll give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Amen. There's a lot here that we can look at. Revelation chapter two was one to seven, the first of the seven churches. The Lord is addressing the church in Ephesus to the angel. So we said angel, messenger, human person in this context. Because spiritual angels are not pastoring the church or leading the church. It's a human person who's leading the church to the messenger of the church. That is the spiritual leader there, give a message. So the Lord is speaking to the leaders. People are in authority or responsibility. This is what I want to say to you. And through the church in Ephesus, the Lord identifies himself like this. As the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand. And as the one who's walking in the midst of the seven golden lamestans. So in other words, he's saying, if you just touch the leader, I want you to know this. I'm the one. I've got every leader in my hands, which we explained earlier.  And I'm also walking in the midst of the star. That means I am observing. I am paying attention to everything that's happening in the local church.  No, no, this is the one who's speaking. The Lord is the one. He's holding every leader accountable. And he's observing what's happening in every local church. So that's the one who's speaking. Revelation two was one. So what does the Lord have to say in the church of Ephesus? Now, keep in mind, what is this church in Ephesus? It was founded or let's say it was established by the Apostle Paul. Who was the one who established the church in Ephesus? Paul, Acts 19 in his third missionary journey. The Apostle Paul had come to Ephesus. He spent three years, maybe even a little more than three years in Ephesus. There were great signs and wonders and many people turned to the Lord. And while Paul was at Ephesus during those three years, he trained many young people. Their names are listed in Acts chapter 20, the first four verses. You read at least about 12 different young men, maybe more whom he trained. While he was in Ephesus and these people would have gone and planted more churches in Asia. So we're talking about a church, a local church that could say the Apostle Paul was the one who started this community. So it's not a, you know, I mean, I'm speaking in human terms. It's not a, you know, we don't know how the judge said it. No, the great Apostle Paul was the one who came, who preached here, who established this church. And then we also know that, you know, after Paul was in prison in Rome, around AD 64 or AD 66, when he was released, he came, the Apostle Paul came, and he appointed Timothy to be the leader of the church in Ephesus. So the church in Ephesus could also say not only did the Apostle Paul was the person who started the church, but excuse me, but Timothy, somebody trained by the Apostle Paul, somebody whom Paul said is my beloved son, he was our next pastor, our next bishop. So this was not an ordinary church. This was a wonderful, you know, they had wonderful leadership. So from AD, around 66 approximately, we don't know the date for sure, but estimated from AD 66 to now it is AD 96, 30 years later. Timothy has been, Timothy has been, was the next pastor. Now we don't know in AD 96 who exactly was the leader of the church in Ephesus, whether it was Timothy or somebody else. The transition would have happened and somebody else may be in leadership. We don't know for sure. The name is not given, but what I wanted to point out is, as a local church, Ephesus has had a history of true, true wonderful leaders, maybe now they have transitioned there in a third generation of leadership at this point. But, you know, it's not an ordinary congregation. So that's the church the Lord is speaking to. And what's he telling them? He says, Pashto, I know your works, I know what you're doing, your ministry. I know your labor, that means you're working very hard. I know your endurance, that means you're, you have a lot of patience and you're tough. You don't give up easily. And you're also very discern, you know, you are also a church that holds on to the truth. So you cannot bear those who are evil. So it's a very righteous church. It's a very diligent church, very fervent church, very righteous church. Very discerning. You've tested those who say they're apostles. You found them liars. You know, if anything is needed in today's church, the modern day church, it is this, the discernment. Sometimes the discernment is so lacking in our modern day church. You know, I feel so bad when I see some of the things happening. But this Ephesian church was very discerning. So somebody could say, I'm an apostle. I'm a prophet, whatever. But these people are very discerning.  Meaning you just don't, you're not very gullible. You don't just believe anything. You don't fall for anything. You are. This is a very discerning church. Right? So they are, they're very fervent. They're very diligent in their work. They are very enduring, very strong. They hold on to righteousness. They are very discerning. And verse three, they are untiring. They persevere. They live without tiring. So if you look at the Ephesian church today, verses two and three, you know, by our understanding, this is a very good church, very good church, local church. Very healthy because they are serving. They are righteous. They are discerning. They are persevering. They are untiring. I'm very, very good church. Very good local church. I mean, it has like, people probably give 100 on 100. This is a very good church. But the Lord is looking for something. And he finds something lacking. And that's the touching part. Then such a good church, such a good church. You know, we would recommend, oh, this is the best church in the city. Maybe, I don't know. Oh, this is a wonderful church. But God, the Lord is finding something lacking. What is it? And it's not a small thing. It's a very serious thing. That's verse four.  But there is something against you. There's something. You have left your first love. You have left your first love. Only God can see that. Only the Lord can see it. Because when people look at the church, they say, wow, this church really loved Jesus. I mean, look at all that they're doing. They're working hard. They have a fervent for his name. They are holding on to the truth. They are discerning. They are enduring. They are untiring. Oh, they really love Jesus. But something is wrong. It's only the Lord can see. What is it? It's not that they don't have the love for the Lord. But so notice, he didn't say you have left or you have stopped loving. But you've left your first love. That means you've departed from that place of keeping him first. So if you ask the leader of the church or you ask the congregation, do you love Jesus? Yes, we love Jesus. So it's not that they have stopped loving the Lord. They still love the Lord. True. But what has happened? The love for the Lord comes down the line. Maybe I don't know, third or fourth or fifth or something like that. You have left your first love. That means my love for God for the Lord is not fast. It's not that I don't have love for God. The church has love for God. They still love the Lord. Just that they don't love him first. Maybe second, maybe third, maybe fifth, I don't know. The inference we can make is that maybe all these good things that they were doing, the works, the ministry, the holding on to the truth and discerning of false apostles and the untiring work for God, maybe those things became more important. And then number five, number six, I love the Lord. Do you still love the Lord? Yes, yes, we love the Lord. But he's not the first love. And that is what the Lord found. So has something against you. There's a problem. Now, is this a serious problem? It's a very serious problem in the eyes of the Lord. How serious it is? Is it? Because he says, verse five, Remember from where you have fallen, that means when I leave my first love, there is no chance for me to go up. When I leave my first love for God, the only trajectory is down. Remember from where you have fallen means you've gone down. You were here. You're a very good church. You're doing all the busy, busy things, but gone down. So spiritually, you're actually on a downward trajectory. But like I said earlier, you know, when people come and see the church, that's a very good church. Look at all that's happening.  Very good church. But spiritually, the church is actually going down. So the Lord, it's a very serious thing. That's why the Lord is alerting them. Remember from where you have fallen, what is the solution? He says, verse five, repent and do the first works. The word repent literally means to have a change in my thinking. Many times we hear the definition of the word repent as, you know, to make a hundred and 180 or 360 degree turn. You know, you're going one way.  You start going the other way. That's true. That's repentance. But what causes that kind of a change? It's not changing. It would change your thinking. That means I have to pause and say, hey, the Lord has to be my first love. All these things are good. All these ministry is good. But the Lord has to be my first love. That has to change. That is repentance. I have to change my thinking and accept that and say, yeah, that is true. And that's the way I want to live by keeping the Lord as my first love. Repent and do the first works. So it's not enough to say it in my mind and say, yeah, Lord, you're number one in my life. The way the Lord is going to see that he is number one in my life is when I do the first works. What are the first works? It's the works that express my first love. I mean, it's the things that I do towards the Lord. And what I would do as a Lord being my first love, which really, if you put it in simple terms, it means you seek God first. You love him first. You worship him. You spend time with him. You spend time in his word. These are simple things. But these are the first works, expressing our first love. Because this church was good. It was doing everything else. It was not tolerating evil. It was very discerning, all very good church, but the first works. And this was so serious because he says in verse five, if you don't make a change, if you don't make a change, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place. That's verse five. Very serious. If you don't do the first works, I'll remove your lampstand from its place. You have to think about that. What does it mean for the Lord to remove the lampstand from his presence? So the church is going on on the earth. The church on the earth is represented by a lampstand in the presence of the Lord. And he's speaking to the church in Ephesians, which is on the earth, saying you need to repent. You need to do your first works. And if you don't, if you don't change, I'll remove your lampstand from its place. I mean, there's going to be no, this church on earth is going to have no representation, no connection to the very presence of the Lord who is the head of the church. Which means the activity of the church can go on here on earth. It will keep running, of course. It will keep running on the earth. But its lampstand is not before the presence of the Lord. It has no representation and has no connection whatsoever in the presence of the Lord. That is very serious. It's very serious. Okay? I know our time is almost up. We haven't finished this, so we will review this again next week. I see there's a question in the chat. John says, So the local church can serve people at different spiritual levels. How should we understand this as a general word of correction? Even now, for example, we intentionally keep time at prayer, worship more God's word even during the week to focus on spending more time with God, to love God more, not everyone tends. So how do we address this? Not everyone is interested to. Yeah, I think one is at a personal level. At a personal level. So remember that this first works is not something we, not only the corporate, but also the personal. So we encourage people to maintain your first love. That means your first thing to do, even before you come and be involved in ministry and church and all of that, is to do your first works, which is, hey, you take time to seek God. You take time to pray. You take time to keep God as the first love in your life. So basically every individual, we encourage them to keep God as the first love in your life. Love the Lord, your God with all your heart. So that's the first thing. Personally that everyone from the leader on to everyone in the congregation, put the Lord God first in your life. And then we invite the church to focus on that through simple things. Of course, practically things will be varying because of, you know, from place to place, city to city, but whatever is practical to get people focused, keep the focus of the people on the Lord, on his word, on loving him, worshiping him. And then what we do coming out from that place, of keeping him as our first love. So even if you're meeting once a week, that's fine. It's okay. But as long as in that gathering, our focus is on him, loving him first. So we will pick up on this more next week. I haven't finished, but these are good questions. These are good questions, practical questions we have to ask. How do we apply what the Lord spoke in Ephesians, through the church in Ephesians? How do we apply that in our lives? We will continue this discussion next week. Okay. All right. So I would request somebody to please close on the prayer. I'm sorry. I'm doing only one class today. I will be fully better next year, next week, and we will pick up speed and we will cover revelation. Okay. So could somebody lead us in prayer and we will dismiss. That's great. Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you under the name of Jesus. I thank you for the state. Thank you for the class that we had, and God help us to get back to our first love, the ways that you first always hold on to, into the place of love. We stand in all of you, Jesus. And God, I pray that Jesus, even we, as we are the keeping asset to be the ministers of God, will keep all these things in our mind. And as we are in your hands, God will be accountable in everything that we do, Jesus. And God, once again, I declare complete healing and strength over our structures. And we thank you for everything that you're doing and it's like, and we thank you for the class that we have. We give you all the glory and honor and Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you everyone. We'll connect again next week. Have a good rest of the day. See you soon. God bless you. Bye.


Good morning. My name's Gail Thackeray and I was at DEF CON 1. I was the only prosecutor they invited to come who would. And my assignment then was to debate the issues of hacking. And initially when Dead Attic called me, I told him I don't attend conventions of car thieves either. And later on we had some discussions and I did go. It was very interesting for all of us. I got up in front of a very tiny group of people in a very tiny conference room in the old sands and I said there's no debate. You've already lost. Hacking is illegal in 50 states, the federal government and a lot of other countries. And it went downhill from there. So let's go back. Where were we at DEF CON 1? First of all, I am thrilled to see how many women are in the audience. At DEF CON 7, Kevin Mitnick was still on the lamb. And the FBI sent an agent to try and capture him if he showed up.  You know why? She was a girl.  Cops were not using computers then. Then we had a bunch of hackers, some of whom were doing exploratory, interesting stuff, some of whom were doing very expensive, destructive stuff, which is what led to the prosecutions of the late 80s and early 90s that got all the press attention and that started the debate and led to DEF CON, led to the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And I want to add, for those of you who think that we were always divided communities, I was an early card-caring dues-paying member of the EFF. At the point when DEF CON 1 happened, we had a huge national debate going on. A lot of it was being played out and distorted in the press because we had cops who didn't understand the technology. We had hackers who didn't understand why other people were mad at them. And we had the press who couldn't talk to either of those groups. I remember there was a conversation going on on the well. Some of you may remember the well. There was no internet then, so you had to be paying very large long-distance bills if you were commuting to the well. And some of the best educated press people in America were asking things like, in Operation Sun Devil, you did 19 simultaneous search warrants across the country. Nobody got arrested. That's why we call them a search warrant. The arrest warrant is when you used the information from your search warrant to arrest the guy who did the bad stuff. We had different factions who could not communicate at DEF CON 1. And that's kind of what led to DEF CON 1, right? We were all really nervous. The hackers weren't necessarily cool with being in the room with a prosecutor.  And the cops were not at that time comfortable with being on the stage with a hacker or even in the same room unless they were interviewing said hacker. I want to say that 20 years later, we've come a long way in our ability to communicate. This is proof of that. We don't agree on a lot of things. It's 9-11. We agree on a lot of things. The fact that this many people here want to hear what the general will have to say in a few minutes is proof that you've changed. The fact that so many law enforcement and security people are here is proof of the fact that we've changed. What we had at the time of DEF CON 1 was mass confusion. The issues weren't all that clear. The factions didn't share a language. Today, we have cops using computers. It was actually law enforcement that pretty much invented the field of computer forensics. I know those early guys, and they were writing code because they were desperate. They needed help. They went to Peter Norton, and they got some tweaks to Norton utilities. And that was kind of the beginning of computer forensics, the stuff they were writing and what Peter Norton did to assist us. Now, some of you are in the position of protecting the systems that we all rely on. And I think everybody in this room can agree that whatever we think about the exploratory form of hacking, there is a reliability factor that we all depend on in a civil society. And that means that you don't take risks and endanger my stuff. And that was the fundamental divide we had at DEF CON 1. We're still debating it now. As Americans, I don't think most of you who are here are Americans, but we have a lot of foreign guests. As Americans, I don't think most of you would take kindly to a group of hackers from some other country shutting down any of our infrastructure, especially if it affects you. We have evolved in our attitudes towards privacy over 20 years. We're still arguing about it. I know some of you are pretty mad at Facebook about every six months. Privacy is where you feel you're invaded. Hackers didn't, at that time, from my point of view, respect other people's property and other people's privacy. There's a lot of misinformation about those early prosecutions. A couple of the high-profile ones that led to DEF CON and the EFF were actually fraud investigations. Huge financial losses were being suffered as a result of some people's behavior. So cops didn't sit around and say, gee, whose civil liberties can we go trample on today? Oh, let's pick hackers. The cops are responsive to a need, a demand from their constituents, which is at some point in our lives, all of us. And that's what happened. We were trying to solve huge financial losses. You know why we don't have as many hacker cases today? Because you all have internet access for free. You're not running up other people's phone bills. And you're not robbing other people off their credit cards. As much. We also have better educated cops. We have spent a lot of time training them. They're still not where they need to be. They're light years behind most of you. But we have officers. The Arizona Computer Forensics Lab at the Anti-Terrorism Center, where I know work, is a marvelous resource. And we have people who specialize in things that weren't even invented when DEF CON 1 was happening. Phone forensics. That's an oxymoron. There's no forensics with phones. You can't do, for most phones, you can't do a true forensic examination. So we're doing with phones now, and with GPS, and all the other widgets, what we were doing in a very primitive way at the time of DEF CON 1. One of the legends of the Computer Investigation Early Committee, which was a federal loose group that was trying to teach each other, what is this stuff? How are we dealing with it? What's the law? There's no law. This is a bad thing. We were involved in all those early issues in law enforcement. We had some contact with members of the hacker community. Some of them educated us, not always as volunteers. Their interviews were extremely educational. And I'm proud to say that, as far as I know, as of four years ago, all of my alumni are really respectable citizens, and most of them working in the computer security field. So the hacker community has evolved to become part of the solution, and not just the problem. When we look at the evolution, and that's a common theme that Attic and I were talking about last night, the evolution of the whole community, not just DEF CON community, but the whole society around us, as the general will talk about, we have more stuff in common than we have disagreements about. You don't want me, or any of my alumni, shutting down the electricity when you're working on an important project. We don't want other countries taking our stuff, giving it away so that our brilliant minds, and some of you in this audience actually make money from your skills, when you're not at DEF CON, you don't want people stealing your stuff. You don't want people data mining your stuff and misusing it. Those are all areas we have in common. And I think DEF CON and EFF have contributed greatly to the shared understanding that brings us all here to listen to the general. So I'm gonna turn this over to Eli, and, oh, sorry, dead Eli. Dead Eli. And let him give you the other side of the perspective of DEF CON 1. Just think, when we were here the first time, half of you weren't born, nobody had a computer except the people in the room who were not cops. We didn't have the internet, and we didn't have a conversation going. Look how far we've come in 20 years. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank Jason Scott. If anyone's looked at your DVD, there's a good amount of material, including the tap issues of tap from way back when scammed in, and all those came from textfiles.com. So if you like the sort of thing you found on the DVD, visit textfiles.com, and the community owes him, he's our historian. So thanks, Jason Scott. So I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the motivations DEF CON 1, and why we brought people and groups together that hadn't been brought together before. And as far as I know, DEF CON was the first hacker conference to actually invite law enforcement. This was something new. And at the time, I'll be honest, it wasn't, at least for myself, it wasn't to try to get some understanding of the two sides and to bring everyone together or anything like that. We knew they were gonna come anyways.  So we thought we just to invite them, and then all the hackers would know, hey, the cops are here. Let's have a weekend free from blatant felonies all over the place. And it's worked out. The only arrests that I am aware of that have occurred at DEF CON over the years have been alcohol-induced party-related offenses for the most part. So you get 15,000 drunk people together and that will happen occasionally. So we brought in Gail Thacker, the most terrifying conversation I ever had. When I invited her, she was actively prosecuting two or three very good friends of mine, including one of the DEF CON one speakers who wisely changed his talk from security-related to car repair. It was an awful train wreck of a speech, but he stayed out of jail. So that was probably wise. Also, we invited the press. That was a relatively new thing too. I don't think hacker conferences had done that in the past either. So that was something new. And I sort of, I had this idea of a checks and balances system that was sort of what was going through our minds. And it was just me and Jeff planning DEF CON one. So the idea was, okay, we'll bring the feds because they're coming anyways. We'll invite them. And then in case they do anything ridiculous that we think maybe it'll violate someone's civil liberties, we'll bring the press there so they can report on that. And that hasn't happened. Although all these various stakeholders have behaved relatively well, except for a single undercover reporter a number of years ago. If you Google her name, you'll find the first hits and probably for the rest of that poor woman's life, the DEF CON related poor judgment. I blame her employer. So we brought the press in. And at the time the press coverage on security issues and hacking issues was abysmal. It was, they were ignorant. The stories in the most mainstream publications were truly awful. So in addition to that, we thought, well, so bring the prosecutor because they're gonna come anyways. Bring the press to cover anything. We should bring some civil liberties lawyers in in case anything bad happens. So we have lawyers on site. And while there hasn't been any law enforcement action over the years, thankfully at DEF CON, having civil liberty lawyers around has been a wonderful thing for DEF CON speakers because companies often don't like it when we reveal the flaws and they like to keep that a secret. And we're not very good at keeping those sorts of secrets which is why we rock. And so the civil liberties folks came and it turns out that we need protection from the corporations and not from the feds which was a surprise. And I'm thankful they're here. And this year, we had the CPSR originally computer professionals for social responsibility. Later the EFF came. And this year the ACLU is here as well as the National Lawyers Guild. So there's a wide variety of civil liberties groups. And we've been called in years ago. One of our DEF CON stickers was cut up and rearranged to FedCon because frankly, there's a lot of feds here. And a lot of the feds that are here are hackers just straight up. So that's okay. That wasn't necessarily the case when they first started coming but it's certainly the case now and there's a lot of folks that work for the government that are really truly part of our community. They're not the other they are us. And I think that's helped. I think that's helped a lot. And instead of viewing the government as the enemy we just need to infiltrate them and make the government the one we want. So the idea was a whole huge set of checks and balances and it might have been a silly theory and it turned out we didn't actually have to fear law enforcement as much as we thought we did but also I think letting everyone know, hey, this is a weekend to party and have fun and exchange information and rampant obvious criminal activity and multiple felonies and do that on Tuesday, you know? So the initial motivation was that was a checks and balances. What ended up happening was something better and different than was imagined. And that was a greater understanding of all the various parties and all of these groups understood the motivations of the others and feared the others less. And now we kind of get along to a very large extent. Also helpful I think, back 20 years ago there wasn't serious mafia criminal organized crime making millions and millions of dollars off of cyber crime. And frankly the cops have much better things to do than to deal with occasional trespass explorations. And again, I remember when I could pay $20 a month and quit being a felon, that was awesome. I slapped down that $20 for an ISP moment I could do that. And it's, you know, for those that weren't there back in the day, it's kind of an odd idea. What do you mean you were a felon to get on the internet? Well, there was no dot com. There were no ISPs.  So the press I think is interesting. I'm on the press team. So I'll talk a little bit about that. They've gotten a lot better over the years. Robert X. Cringley was at DEF CON one and wrote a couple of blurbs about us. But over the years, the press presence has grown and grown and grown and we're over a hundred different media organizations are at DEF CON, including every major television network, et cetera, et cetera. I'll tell you who's not allowed though. There is one segment of press that tried to get into DEF CON one and has tried over the years to get into DEF CON, local press. So Las Vegas, anything. I have nothing against the Las Vegas press.  So they don't need to come in and we don't want an understanding with them. So I'm sorry if anyone hears with some local press somewhere. I'm sure you do a good job. Activists have changed over the years, the nature of activism. EFF is more of a mainstream organization. If you look at what they do, if you look at the contents of their activities, their lobbying, their lawsuits, all of this, it spans a huge, wide range of activities. And I thank everyone here for supporting them. And I found out yesterday that Gail was a member of the EFF and I liked her even more when I found that out. So thank you Gail. And what I really appreciate that actually is having people within the government and within the law enforcement have a deep understanding for the need of civil liberties and that's important and I'm really happy about that. Also, I wanna mention something about government in general. People often refer to it as a single monolithic entity and in fact there's a ton of different pieces of government and they have kind of competing agendas, conflicting agendas. For example, the Federal Trade Commission, which is what does that have to do with anything? Well, they actually hired one of us and a privacy advocate and a technologist and I think he's speaking right now, Christopher Soygan. And so there are federal agencies that have the same passion for activism and protecting consumers that some of us do. So then there's also the FBI, which like I said, they're busy with actual real scary cybercrimes in the nation states and whatnot. The NSA, and I'll briefly mention this, I was gonna talk about how our interests are overlapping and yes, many of us fear the NSA in some ways. We're, there's secrecy and things unknown about both their surveillance capabilities and their offensive capabilities. So in some ways, we have interest in offensive capabilities too, so there's an interest we share in common. But more than that, they have a leadership role in protecting our infrastructure and everyone wants an internet so they can play on it and they've supported Linux SE, they've supported various hardening guides and want our overall infrastructure to be secure and wanna share knowledge to help short vulnerabilities. And so in that way, and I'm very happy, the more public they are with this and the more open they are with that, I think the better defensive posture everyone has. So I think I'm running out of time. Thank you all and enjoy your DEF CON.