We're going to kick off today. We're talking D web, real world innovation. This event and series is supported by an award from the Filecoin Foundation for the decentralized web. And so we thank them for their support. I'm going to, uh, my name is Billy Bicket and I will be your event host. Uh, before we get into today's content, I just want to give you a little context about who we are. We're TechSoup. We're building a dynamic bridge that connects and innovative connections that sort of enables connections and innovative solutions for a more equitable planet. We have an office in San Francisco. We started in 1987. We also have offices in London and Warsaw and partners in about 50 countries around the world. And we're all about serving civil society stakeholders. That's nonprofits, foundations, community groups, networks, et cetera. Okay. That's enough about us. And now it's time to talk about what we're here to talk about with Shannon. So let me introduce Shannon and then I'm going to pass the mic. Um, so Shannon's on the board of stewards at East Denver. And after spending a decade in the field implementing humanitarian aid projects, Shannon entered the blockchain space seeking ways that technology can be employed to create resources in developing countries. Very relevant to our interests here. She's worked at USAID and Doctors Without Borders and now helps big projects and blockchain to build cohesion and catalyze this decentralized movement. She's dedicated to leveraging peer to peer decentralized systems to awaken capital, unlock capital and help pull our global neighbors out of poverty. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Shannon and Ann Connolly, our subject matter expert will facilitate questions and answers at the end of Shannon's talk. Thanks, Billy. I appreciate it and I'm excited to be here today. It seems like we've got a lot of kindred spirits in the audience, which is awesome nonprofit workers. People are already working on decentralized voting and other fun systems. Yeah, you've got good resources here. My sidekick Ann, who is helping to coordinate all of this also worked with Doctors Without Borders and has done amazing nonprofit work across the blockchain space. So hopefully she'll kick in some knowledge as we go here today. We're going to keep this super casual. Please ask questions as we go. This is going to be really informal. I much rather chat with you as we go through the topics and hear if you have questions along the way. So please don't hesitate and don't wait till the end. So just to kick us off a little quick, who am I and why are we here? Again, I spent a decade in the field. So I was working for small grassroots organizations trying to bring different kinds of technology into emerging markets to try to awaken different resources. So I worked on projects like working in Sri Lanka with kids to get them on computers. I was working across the Balkans trying to bring in like remote workforces and ways that people are to earn money online before Upwork was a thing. I worked in West Africa getting students micro stipends by working online and then I did humanitarian projects like Haiti after the earthquake. I worked there for the cholera epidemic and I also did a COVID-19 relief work. Yeah, I'm super excited jumped into crypto and work in a lot of impact space, but do want to just caveat this conversation today as much as we're super passionate about blockchain for impact. We've got some work to do. We're still really early. There's still a lot of experimenting going on a lot of spaghetti being thrown against the wall and we don't totally know where some of these experiences are going to lead. One of the things that we've seen is it's really hard to work with some of these populations because they're not they're not as resilient. A lot of refugee populations are already vulnerable and that creates all sorts of different caveats and different stags along the way. So we'll address some of those in the in the presentation. I will say I'm very optimistic. I am a positive thinking person about where the space is going and I want to be realistic with you guys that it's not all roses. So today we are going to cover a couple of different topics. There's a bunch of things that we could talk about in terms of what what blockchain and different technologies are creating in terms of impact around the world. But the four areas that we're going to get into today are fundraising, governance and government, humanitarian aid and traceability and out of those there is one that is far and away the biggest in the industry in terms of traction and attention and that's fundraising. Crypto currencies themselves being very much a financial vehicle and a way that we can decrease the barriers to move the movement of money and value around the world. It's not totally surprising that fundraising is going to be a big leader here. There's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of benefits to it, but most of what's happening in the impact space has to do with how people are bringing money in how that's being overseen and how it's being deployed. One of the biggest examples that we have in terms of the crypto community itself for fundraising was called the pineapple fund. This is an anonymous individual who came out in the early days of crypto. It's still at 2017 and said that he was going to donate a very massive amount of personal Bitcoin. We think it's a he he named it the pineapple fund because he was completely obsessed with pineapple and really wanted to do well in the world based on how well he had done himself. So according to this anonymous donor, he donated almost all of his holdings and held a really big open call for applications. There were hundreds, if not thousands of different organizations that applied, including me. I had a nonprofit at the time and put my name in the hat and he ended up awarding 60 different organizations, something like between 50 and 80 million dollars, depending on what time you you estimated the worth of the Bitcoin, but it was one of the biggest fund raises and one of the biggest donations we've ever seen in the space. A little bit more mainstream. We have UNICEF who is a really big mover. They got into crypto and blockchain quite early. They came in 2019. They said that they really wanted to get a jump on this innovative technology, not only raising in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also then deploying it. So they have what's called a crypto fund. They have invested in a number of startups over the years. They've said they wanted to raise about 25 million dollars. I don't know where that stands today, but they've been very vocal about the benefits of blockchain and what that can do for people and nonprofits, particularly especially when it comes to, again, the movement of money, we can move assets around the world in less than 10 minutes and typically for a point 1% of the typical transfer fees. So they've been big proponents over the years and we'll touch a little bit more on their work as we go. Another really big organization that you all probably already be aware of if you're out, if you're looking at blockchain fundraising at all is called the giving block. This is a couple of guys that started a little scrappy startup back in 2018 and are now some of the biggest in the space in terms of helping on board nonprofits. So they've got a couple of options in terms of just being advisors or they've got a whole back-end toolkit that will help the nonprofit organization figure out their strategies. Do they want to hold the Bitcoin in the Ethereum or other currencies that they're raising? Do they want to settle at the end of each day so that the board doesn't have to worry about the volatility of the value of those tokens? They set them up with exchanges so that they can go ahead and sell into fiat. There's a whole back-end tool set that these guys provide. And as you can see by the numbers, they're making a pretty big impact.  If 26,000 is just the average. Next, we are going to touch on governance unless there's anything that people have questions about in terms of fundraising. I love seeing that Nick is working with voting on blockchain and here, which probably have him come up and chat with us a little bit on it. But there's a bunch of different ways that we're looking at how this technology is going to add more transparency and more visibility into governance systems and governments around the world. For voting particularly, there's some really interesting things happening and there's some implications here. So blockchain voting was one of the biggest topics that came out in 2017-2018. People were really talking about how this was going to change systems. There was a bunch of pilot projects getting launched. And as with anything in politics and with technology, it's a little bit sticky. There's something that you might have discussed in the last session that has to do with the security in blockchain itself. It's called a 51% or a civil attack. And that has to do with what happens if a system isn't thoroughly decentralized and you end up with the ability to take over just over half of that system and then you can change the results. So that has to do with the strength of the system itself. Scalability is always going to be a concern about what happens when we're picking the wrong systems again and we outgrow them. Interoperability, a lot of people here are from the US and you can think of it as when you have all of these different municipalities, but they pick different systems and now you're trying to get them to interweave across different counties within a state, across different states. Regulation within technology and touching government is always going to be tricky again across different regions within a country. And then we worry about what happens if we leave anybody behind. Many of you have already had conversations with loved ones who struggle to use text messaging or like the first emails were a little bit clunky. So we have to be really careful that everyone gets included regardless of text avianess if it's going to come down to something as important as like civil engagement. On the plus side, blockchain is really wonderful because it adds so much ability to see what's going on across systems. So the fact that we could basically preclude the ability to alter the results of an election ever again, the ability for anybody to look at it, think about how much happens in your local area when a vote takes place. All of that tallying everything happens behind closed doors and we don't have very much information about what's going on, how accurate it was, how well it was managed. This would mean that all of us were able to audit and see exactly what happened and see what those numbers were in real time. That when you include it along with geographical implications, I think it's really exciting. There's a lot of times I was just spending time in Paris and they had a vote about the little scooters that you can rent around the city. And it was joked that it was really political because the vote about whether they were safe and should be kept was only held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. So basically only the retirees were able to vote on it because everybody else was at work. So of course they outlawed them and then the entire city was stuck with that. They had an 8% voter turnout. So blockchain voting and this kind of digital access would also open up a lot of opportunities for people as well. In terms of pilot projects, just to give you a quick overview, this is probably just scratching the surface, especially if we have people in Taiwan that are being represented in different kinds of projects that are emerging today. The ones that I'm familiar with, this is a quick overview of what's going on around the world. Estonia has an e-residency program that's pretty well known where you can be a digital resident based anywhere in the world and still have access to medical inclusion, still have access to voting within their systems. In the U.S., West Virginia and Colorado have already piloted some projects both specifically towards overseas military personnel to be able to vote in municipal elections. These were both very small pilot projects and as far as I know, both very successful. And then I'm not sure what happened afterwards. So hopefully that continues to spread across the country. Russia has deployed municipal voting in Moscow. So they've been playing around with that since 2019. Switzerland as well. ZUG is a very well-known crypto hub and they've been voting on blockchain systems since 2018. South Korea since 2020. And Sierra Leone was a little bit of a surprise to me, but they even started looking around national election, blockchain voting as early as 2018. Japan is also doing municipal voting and Dubai is really coming up to be a leader in the blockchain space as well. They're super keen to do what they can to continue to stay relevant. And so they're talking about also doing national voting. Another thing that we talk on a lot in terms of governance in decentralized technology is this thing, it's a little bit of a mouthful, but a decentralized autonomous organization is also lovingly called a DAO in this space. It's a new way to bring people together and have them coordinate. And because it's full of humans, they are incredibly messy topics.  So the latter is the one that we're most common, we're most familiar with. Obviously organizations have a leader, that leader makes decisions. We often have middle management and then many of us exist on the employee kind of contract role. So that very much kind of top down structure, it's streamlined, it usually works well unless you've got bad management and then it creates a big mess. These decentralized systems, the idea is that it's very flat and that everyone gets to coordinate together. You would have, if we were to use something like Microsoft, for example, you would have people coordinating around the topics that they work on or that they care the most about. So maybe you would have a group of the DAO be focused on Microsoft Word and another group would be focused on PowerPoint and then they would come together at the end and that creates the office suite rather than having all of those things be coordinated from above. And this is a little bit of a sticky explanation, so please feel free to fire away comments or questions if you have them. What are people doing with DAO's? Because this is a weird idea. In many ways, they're similar to the clubs that we've seen across the years in different ways that people have formed co-ops and brought communities together for any sort of group coordination. Within decentralized technology, we have some of these are protocol DAOs. So MakerDAOs is a very big example where they come together and they create the technology and then the groups that's created that and bought in early gets to say on how that's governed and how it's managed together. People are doing collector DAOs for art, investment DAOs. Those are pretty straightforward where you can pool funds and then move the needle in terms of buying big pieces of art or buying significant. Some people are buying cars and other collector items. Some people are creating VC DAOs. So there's a lot that you can do when you pool those funds. And pardon me really fast. I didn't quite work in here. It's not a drill. And then there's also grant DAOs. If you wanted to do something along the nonprofit link, there's a good way for people to come together and to make a difference. So there's a lot of that happening in the impact space. One of the things that I think is really exciting is what happens with media. So right now we've got a lot of independent filmmakers who are really struggling to get their projects funded. And when you can bring a group of people together, imagine that you were part of the next Netflix series that you really cared about before it got paid. Imagine that you got to help create the next music studio that put out an album that you really loved. There's ways that people can come together around things that they're passionate about and really make a difference. And then social DAOs are also a really big topic, which we're going to talk about in just a second. And I'm so sorry, I can't put it in the light so it should not be me. The ways that as these are clubs and very much a group of people coming together in order to maybe there's token gating, there's different ways that you can unlock different benefits based on how you buy in, how much you are participating, et cetera. I just wanted to pop in with a question from Susan. She's saying, is a social DAO the correct type for the org I'm starting for all entrepreneur center to meet other international entrepreneurs? So maybe a good time to chat through that piece. That's a great question, Susan. It would probably depend a lot on what the goals of your group was going to be. One of the things that we talk a lot about in blockchain these days is that just as you don't need a company for everything, you don't really need a DAO for everything. So it would depend on what your goals are. And if you really needed a natural organization or if it was just going to be an informal introductory network. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. One example of a social DAO is called friends with benefits. They were one of the first to come out in the space. They were mainly paid attention to you because a lot of the early members and some of the governors were really well known in entertainment circles. So they got a lot of traction as being one of the first token gated DAOs. So you would buy some of their tokens as like your dues to enter into the DAO and then they threw really great parties which was the for benefit, the with benefit part of it. At one point, a membership with the amount of tokens that you needed to buy to attend these parties was something like $5,000. So that was an interesting case study and they're still going and continuing to change the way that they govern themselves which is interesting. People might have heard of Constitution DAO. This made CNBC and some pretty mainstream headlines in 2021. They started as a joke on Twitter and pretty quickly became a force of nature and under a week, this group of humans raised $47 million in an attempt to buy one of the original presses of the U.S. Constitution. It was all happening really publicly because it was on chain. It was auditable and because they were new and didn't totally know what they were doing, they announced how much they were going to bid in the auction at Sotheby's. So not terribly surprising to find out that they lost the bid because it's not really helpful to announce how much you're going to bid in advance when the investor Ken Griffin came in and outbid them by like a million dollars or something like that. So they again tried to do that in 2022 and try to do a repeat and actually went at this time but they lost a lot of the steam after the first time around and it didn't get very far but pretty well known. And then within the blockchain space, the most notable doubt is the Hadao, which the original group before there were any other organizations like this and now today there are thousands of them, the original group came together with the intention of creating what they call the universal sharing economy. So what they wanted to do was come together, do a fund raise. The original goal was to raise five or $10 million across Ethereum users and to deploy that in positive manners. What ended up happening is there was a hacker who found a vulnerability in the technology in the contract very quickly drained $60 million. People noticed that this was a big problem. They put all hands on the deck. That was like 5% of the ether that was circulating at the time and the funds just kept getting drained and ultimately the hacker drained almost all $150 million that was group shared into this massive account, if you will. And what ended up happening changed the course of Ethereum forever. We won't get too far into this, but just so you have got the cocktail party knowledge, what happened was basically became this decision of either we essentially rewind the technology and go backwards and recoup the $150 million from this bad actor or we let it happen because this is the way the blockchain is supposed to be immutable. If it doesn't change, that's the end of it. And Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin put the proposal out to go ahead and rewind and change the code and let the community decide and let them vote on it. And ultimately the community decided to recoup the funds and pull them back from the hacker. And in that case, because there was a dissent because it wasn't a complete agreement, what happened was the code ended up forking. So just the fork in the road. Part of the Ethereum community went with the rewind and a whole new set of a blockchain spawned off of that and part said we refuse to accept this and kept the old chain with the old data on it and all of those funds gone. And now we have two chains and very much the one that voted to pull the funds back as the winner. But it's just a weird part of crypto and that you can have communities that ultimately decide for themselves what's going to happen and how to vote among these things. So that's a deeper topic for another time, but something to know as you dive into this. So next up, we're going to talk a little bit about humanitarian aid. There's again, there's a bunch of different ways that people are utilizing this, but we're just going to touch on a bit because obviously you guys are mostly do-gooders here and care about a lot of these topics. So feel free to ask questions. But before we can talk about what happens in the field and helping people, we just need to do a really quick brush on identity, which is a much larger topic and really goes into a rabbit hole. But just starting to think about what is currency when we talk about blockchain and cryptocurrencies themselves and how is that different from a fiat dollar that I can hold or for a euro that I can exchange with somebody in real life. Identity when it's in real life versus online and digital also poses a bunch of questions and we have to rethink what this is and how we engage with it, especially when it comes to dealing with people around the world and people who are vulnerable. So the World Bank estimates that there's 150 million people around the world who don't have an official identity and official is also a really interesting term who issues it. Where does it come from? Do we have control over these kinds of things? Is it mutable? Can I add to it? My driver's license in the U.S. is pretty static, but there's all sorts of ways that my resume can be a living document. And do we have ways to meld those kinds of identities so that you can see a little bit more of my history? There's all sorts of ways that we can pull apart the threads here. Today, we're just going to really focus on what happens with digital identity and how we can make that immutable and trustworthy, but there's a lot more in here. Like who controls the chain that they exist on? What wallets they exist in? Do you have an Apple app store or a Google store? There's all these different ways where that even just that basic platform alone would really change your identity out in the world. Topic for another time, but just wanted to bring it up because it affects so much when it comes to humanitarian aid. There's what I thought was like a make-believe metaphor for a long time that I've been using when we talk about these kinds of things is if you think about somebody in Syria who was a lawyer and had to leave their country because their house was set on fire, they were displaced during the war. They didn't have certificates. They didn't have access to university records. And very often you see things like they're driving a cab in New York. Like as a refugee, they don't get that continuity of life because there's so much about certification and proof that didn't come with them. And I found Ferris along the way who was exactly that. Now he is a barber. And what could happen if we have these self-sovereign identities? This is a topic that I care a lot about in terms of what happens if I'm in charge of my identity and I can decide what is on there. That my university also adds to the fact that I am a U of S citizen that I prove to drive, that I have this degree from this university like this becomes this whole picture of who I am that I get to choose where it unlocks and how I build it so that it comes with me if for some reason I have to leave home and I don't have access to the regular documentation. In terms of, sorry, that was a little bit heavy. Hopefully not too much and we're moving along to again the UNICEF projects that we talked about earlier. Building Blocks is a really well-known program that's been running for quite some time. Obviously, these are really big numbers in terms of how many people around the world they've touched. What this looks like, this picture specifically is their program in Syria. What happens is that they take biometrics. In this case, an iris scan so that they set up kind of grocery store-like systems. Rather than doing the traditional analog, we're doing food aid. We will just hand out a bag of rice to everybody who queues up in line. This is a big store where you get to go in and choose the items that you want and these blockchain-based identity systems help them make sure that there's no redundancy and there's no fraud. Because you've scanned my IRS, you've seen that I've already been here. I can't keep coming back in and taking more food out. So this has allowed them, obviously they're doing cash transfers so that refugees can decide for themselves what kind of supplies they're buying and obviously they're saving a lot of money in the process. So really big program that's been going on across numerous countries. There's a lot to be said for how this helps. Obviously, security is a really big factor. What you can do to make sure these databases don't get exploited in cases of corruption, making sure that the transfers are happening quickly, seamlessly for almost nothing. This is obviously much cheaper than a wired transfer, especially when you're dealing with millions of people across millions of recipients across numerous countries, the ability to go back and see where the funds are going so that you have much more auditability and you don't have so much wastage as we've often seen in international development projects. And then something that I'm super interested in is what happens when we start experimenting with something called staking. And I don't know if you guys talked about this on the last session, but this is essentially, you can think about it, a high yield savings account. So if you were to take a bunch of funds that were raised for a nonprofit organization and stake them on a platform, those staking that gets rewarded depending on the platform, the rates vary, but you get rewarded for that. And so in some cases you can start to see how staking would then create its own income stream. So you would leave the original amount staked as you would leave the funds in a savings account and just work off of the interest accrued. So in some ways this ends up being its own revenue stream for an organization, which I think is super exciting. There are also big problems. Obviously in the case of iris scans and biometric data for where people are vulnerable, do they understand the implications of that? This is not a password that I can reset after I get out of the refugee camp. You have my biometrics until I die. Like that data never changes. It's not something that I can then revoke from you. What's happening to that data? How is it being used? How is it being leveraged? Do we have insight into if they're doing anything else with it? Who else are they working with? Unfortunately, some of these programs are working with. There's a number of providers and they're working with programs that I personally think aren't completely benevolent. And so then what happens on the other side of that? Are we feeding more data and more resources into things that are actually worrisome, depending on who's yielding those platforms? And then the questions of what happens when I'm a refugee and I need the food handout and maybe I do understand what happens if I give you my iris scan. Maybe I don't want to hand over my biometrics, but I need to feed my family and now I don't have a choice. So it becomes a little bit of a quagmire there when you start thinking about, do I have the right to say no? Can I opt out? How do I get that back? How can I reclaim that if possible at all? Finally, our last topic today is traceability. This has implications across impact projects, across all sorts of different supply chains and global movement of goods and all this is like one of the deepest project topics we could probably get into. We'll just lightly touch on it today, but obviously the implications for blockchain here are really wonderful when it comes to the visibility that it offers. Regarding impact in terms of helping humans, again, we're touching on the identity issue. How can we make sure that people are helping to stay safe for this? Unfortunately, modern day slavery is still a really big problem across the world and a lot of it has to do with not being able to verify the identity of the person involved. There's a lot of cases of forced labor in Arab countries where people would fold then say that it's a domestic worker and they will withhold the passport while the domestic worker is in the house and then it makes big problems for that person to be able to leave. Having a digital version of this would then keep that person in charge of their own identity rather than it being something that's external to me and can be taken away from me. The same with not knowing who is crossing a border. Aldova has been an example of this over the years for a long time. They were one of the most trafficked people in the world because they didn't have a good identity system for children, especially. So there have been a lot of hackathons focused on this, a lot of different consortiums coming together. There's a big company called Consensus that hosted this kind of idea fest a few years ago and I think it was in 2018. And a bunch of good projects came up with ideas on ways that the Moldovan government can help issue stronger and more secure identity systems so that it was mostly women and children were getting trafficked. Then now because of all of that attention and because of the collaborations with the Moldovan government, they've actually implemented laws that say things like you need to have this kind of identity. It needs to be verifiable. You need two sets of people to make sure before any minor crosses any borders. So it's having a big impact and the numbers cited here are way down now which is encouraging. But it's still a little bit tricky. So they do have a big orphan problem in the country and there are organizations that are working with them on it to help create these databases so that the kids do you have a way to, they've got people looking and they've got fallback systems to make sure they're being verified so that it makes it much harder for them to move in ways that could create any sort of vulnerability or them being taken advantage of. So this organization win systems was the winner of the consortium with consensus in 2018 and they've gone on to create more programs and offer more templates for people around the world to start adopting this. I followed up with the Rohingya project. So quick background, I almost worked on a project in 2019 that was going to bring decentralized and self-sovereign identity to the Rohingya refugees in the Bangladeshi camps. And for me, this was going to be a dream come true because it meant that I got to take my in-field international development and combine it with my work in the crypto sphere and go implement one of the projects that's nearest and dearest to my heart and I got really scared looking into it further to realize that the technology was still and it's testing stages and it wasn't totally tried and true that we know that this is going to work without a doubt and for me and hopefully many of you working in these kinds of projects unintended consequences are really concerning in terms of are we going to end up doing more harm than good or is there going to be something that we didn't see coming that we ended up causing problems to the people we were trying to help? And for me, I had to step away from this project that was my dream mission because I just wasn't willing to take the risk and I was worried about the technology getting hacked and having the Burmese government or the Myanmar government have access to these people who are really vulnerable and being persecuted and what ended up happening in reality was UNICEF shared the data with Bangladesh because it had to do with identity and how many people Bangladesh were hosting just completely understandable but the tragedy happens when the Bangladesh government then just turns and hands it over to the Myanmar government and now they've got all of this movement happening of Myanmar trying to repatriate the people who left being persecuted and pulled back into to for slavery. Again, not trying to be too heavy but we just really need to make sure that we're paying attention and that we are thinking these things through because any tool blockchain can be wielded for good and it can be wielded for really questionable and often harmful uses. We just really have to to hammer at home that this is serious stuff that we're working with and and we don't know yet. These are early days on a lighter note. Sorry about that. There are still really great things that are being done in terms of of aid and traceability and all of these wonderful impacts that are coming out of some of these case studies. So this organization Aggie Unity was another kind of hackathon winner hat tip to Singularity University that our friend Ann is associated with. This hackathon happened in 2018 posing the question of how we can help bring more transparency to the last mile of farming. So that means the people on really small family farms who are often excluded from global markets they don't totally know what the prices are going for they often get taken advantage of by middlemen who come in and have lied to them or cheated them a little bit out of what's happening on the other side so that they can swing a profit in the middle and this adds transparency across the full spectrum. Just a quick overview of how these guys work. It's the hardware of a resilient smartphone the app that they've built which also works on Android if you don't have the phone itself along with a digital identity component basically validates that the crops are there that the farm exists that the farmer has what she says she has and then is facilitating the trades and the financial transactions so that everything is on chain and very verifiable in between the two. This kind of stuff I think is super exciting it starts out small you guys are in countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia Trinidad and Tobago they've got a few different projects around the world but they're really getting traction and it seems to me making a huge difference for sesame farmers for bean and cereal farmers people who are doing vanilla crops around the world like getting if you want to talk about fair trade this is one of the best ways that we can create that for people and making sure that they have the the visibility that they need. This is a topic that is wonderful and is gigantic so I didn't get into specific case studies here because there's so many people that have added to the especially the carbon trading markets but climate action is a huge huge space for blockchain these days in terms of how we can add accountability how we can make sure that the transparency is growing and that people are doing actually what they say that they're doing we're all facing a lot of this kind of SDG and like the corporate responsibility greenwashing in certain firms these days and blockchain is a really wonderful tool for making sure that you're doing what you're saying you're doing that the carbon trade the credits are actually there or the impact has actually occurred that you're really making sure that we are not messing around with anything and brushing things under the rug and doing some of the kind of shady environmental protection that we've seen at least in the US in the past that actually wasn't the truth so there's a lot that this can do in terms of breaking those transactions down making sure that you and I can then participate in some of these things because I think you talked about this last time about you have Bitcoin visible by eight eight decimal points we can do that across so many things now that we can make these micro transactions really matter and start to to add up so again there's a million ways that we can talk about what environment and different actions and different organizations can be impacted but just go do the research on your own because there's so much going on here if you're a climate activist this is one area I'm super excited about especially when it comes to being able to trade credits peer-to-peer as well so big implications here and I just want to say thank you to all of you guys for listening this is a lot of kind of high level topics without digging too far into the weeds and completely boring you with slides for the full hour but it's something that I'm super excited about I think the internet was the first way that we were really able to democratize information for each other rather than having to be a published author or a journalist we can now share information across the world in a matter of seconds this is going to do exactly the same thing for value and the ways that we can now interact directly with the rice farmer in Uganda or the fisherman in Bali this is going to change everything for financial inclusion and the way that we can help really help the people that need it most thanks for all the good work that you guys are doing because you're helping from the ground up which is exactly what we need and I'm totally happy to be here thanks to the guys from TechSoup for having me and for inviting me in and having to answer any questions and give you some time back in your day we have one question from John that's come through what about HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR or data privacy regulations do these acts currently interplay with or address blockchain traceability? That is a great question, John and one that I would love to see movement on a few years ago I met a college football player who had gotten really excited about blockchain because while he was traveling interstate in the US he got injured and he had he happened to have a condition where he really couldn't have some sort of medication and because he was out of state when he got injured they didn't have access to his medical records and then gave him the medication that he wasn't supposed to have and he got really sick and it ended his college football career so he had created a system that would allow we have something in crypto that you guys probably haven't touched on yet it's a little bit of an advanced topic but it's called a zero knowledge proof which would essentially mean in this instance that the doctors in Chicago or wherever he was were able to then ping his medical records and access is this a thumbs up or a thumbs down without having access to things that maybe they weren't supposed to see across HIPAA lines or across state lines it basically means that there's ways that we can keep people safe without having to share all of the information so there's a lot that is possible when it comes to using blockchain for this kind of thing really in a lot of these ways where you know when it comes to voting when it comes to identity when it comes to health records all of this stuff like stands to benefit from implementing a blockchain based system it has to do with adoption and the desire of the systems that control them to make these kinds of changes the implications are great the adoption so far has been very small if that answers your question and you maybe also talk about what are the challenges for implementing blockchain like why have lower nonprofits not gotten on board yet what are the barriers that we're seeing sure personally I think a lot of it just has to do with fear there was a lot of narrative around silk road around this is what happens with criminals there is a lot of concern especially with people who are in nonprofits we have to so take care of our fundraising abilities and our reputations that we don't want to be seen as associating anything that could be risky or potentially risking our donor's funds there's a lot to that unfortunately people do way more questionable things with US dollars or euros or any other fiat currency than they can do with a digital currency so that is also a larger topic but I think a lot of it has to do with just concerns about changing systems as well there's a number of organizations that are accepting crypto donations on the side and not really enhancing it just to experiment there are fewer like like UNICEF that are being very straightforward about it and saying here's what we're working on Mercy Corps is another really big organization that has a big crypto fund that's really come out and staked their claim but and you're a great resource on this you've helped a number of organizations on board explore are the different options can you tell us a little about what you're hearing as well? Yeah absolutely my experience is usually that the people in the lower levels of the organization are very excited it's the leadership that is hesitant for the reasons that you talked about looking at protecting reputation and just fear and so my best experiences have really been around like massive levels of education across the organization before really rolling out any projects and then when you roll out do it slow show traction show benefits and the best way to do that is as you mentioned like the fundraising so to set up a crypto donation program it's an easier sell because it's going to bring in money it's easy to show right away if it's working if it's if you're getting funds in the door and then from there it's a little bit easier to say okay this worked what can we do next? and then let's explore the different possibilities and strategies that might work for the organization now that we've already dipped our toe in the water


This is the most common question I get, and I think people have the completely wrong intuition about this. Being free to imagine whatever I see is the easy solution, while deciding what to draw first is hard. So for instance, if I decide to draw a dragon and then make an ink blot, I need to be really lucky to get a random ink blot that suits making a dragon from. I can make it even harder for myself by making it more specific, and say for instance that the ink blot will be Sean Connery, and it almost certainly will become a bad Sean Connery. Or I can define it very loose like I do, and say I'm going to draw an ink monster. Then I have endless possibility, all in that one ink blot. So no, I don't decide what I draw before I make the ink blot, because I'd rather take the easy solution.


What's good Josh your boy Ross back again with another video and we're about to check out every stone cold stunning to the rock now before We get into this video. I want to talk about something real quick. Now. I'm not sure if you guys remember, but I Uploaded a video. I want to say a few weeks back talking about one of my close friends at the time being stuck in the simp shadow realm and Talking about just you know, how he ended up there and you know, just that whole little situation I was kind of making light of it But at the same time it was it was it was it was it was definitely serious for what it was But you know, I just turned the negative into something light-hearted. Well, I want to give an update to that story Basically I was able to have a conversation with the individual and me and my friends we was able to Get him out the simp shadow realm It's it's a beautiful thing when you're able to help your homie out get out of that that darkness, you know, I'm saying on just aside me and him we just had a conversation and you know, we just we talked it out like men and We squashed the issues that we had and we good You know I'm saying and the only reason I'm bringing this up is because I want people to be able to You know Not be afraid to have a conversation with somebody make amends with people Don't be too prideful to not make amends because life is too short and you don't want to go through life Have an animosity with someone, you know Well, you can easily make amends with it with that person if it's there and of course at the time And is right, but never go through life Feeling like you can't you know make things right with people because you never know when your time may come And you don't want to have any type of animosity on your heart me personally I don't want to go through life knowing that I have an issue with someone and You know being in a situation where I may not be able to make that situation Better or make that situation right you feel me? That's just me personally Hopefully this you know something that you guys can take and learn from but enough of me rambling on about that We're about to check out this video man If there's anybody that can take a stone cold stunner, it's the rock He easily takes the best stunners and he always made the move looks so More impactful than it really was so looking forward to this video is gonna bring back so many memories of nostalgia Appreciate all the love and support.  He came back from Hollywood He was pretty much a heel at this time And yo, this was so funny because he got hit with the stunner and he's just Just standing there fucking.  You can't deny it Look at this Look at this And the crowd loves it.  Hope you guys enjoyed that reaction and I want to know I want to know comment down below What's your favorite stone cold versus the rock match? My favorite personally would have to be Their match they had at WrestleMania 17 all the hype to that match was in just in Intense not only because it was in Houston at the time But the fact that that match was built up so great You had arguably the two most over Individuals in the company at that time going at it. It was one of those things where It's not too many matches where you have a face versus a face They were both faces and it didn't matter like it was just enjoyable to watch I wouldn't the biggest fan of the outcome of stone cold turning heel I think they they made a mistake on that I don't think he should have turned to you because it didn't really work because People were still cheering him. He had to do a lot to get some booze like it didn't really work You know I'm saying but at the same time it's still It's the ending was still iconic the ending with him toasting beers with Vince McMahon at the end of the match and screwing over the rock That was iconic as hell because you never thought you would ever see that happen But ultimately still one of my favorite matches from them. So comment down below What's your favorite match from stone cold in the rock going against each other? Let me know what whether it was at a raw or a smackdown with pay-per-view Let me know I want to you know get your guys opinion on that But I appreciate all the love and support man wrote the 20k before I in this video Like I said at the beginning of this video man, if you have a chance to make amends with someone do it There's no point in going through life And not trying to make things right with certain individuals, you know I'm saying just do it It's nothing wrong with that man, but I appreciate a lot of love and support wrote to 20k once again Appreciate y'all kicking with me. See y'all next one. Peace


Hey everyone, you're about to watch a video that's going to get thousands of views. Very cool, but your ad needs to be right here. Give me a call. On Friday, July 28, the citizens of Prestonsburg rallied together for another protest regarding the ongoing Amber Sprablin investigation. As signs were carried throughout downtown Prestonsburg, many drivers were cheering on the peaceful protest. Mountaintop News spoke with Amber's aunt, Melissa Sammons, to hear her thoughts on the situation. It's been almost six weeks now, and we just want people to be aware that we're still here, that we're not going to quit, we're going to still be here until justice is served. And we've said before that we have complete confidence in Kentucky state troopers doing their job in Detective Wireman, who is the lead investigator at KSP. And so, you know, we know that they're doing their job, they're doing an excellent job, and we want them to continue doing their job. But we want to keep this out in the public's eye, to let them know that the murder is not solved yet, and that there is potentially a murderer walking around in our town. For the protesters, the most important thing they can do is keep Amber's memory alive. Her family and supporters will continue to look for the answers to their unsolved questions. We will continue to make our voices heard. We will continue to remind people that she was killed by someone from this community, and that it was very brutal, and that she did not deserve it. And we will continue to fight for justice for her until this person or persons is put away. We're not going to stop. We're not going to stop. There's nothing. There's nothing that could make us stop. Nothing. Reporting from Outantop News, I'm Nick Column.


But manas! But manas! But manas! Oh my gosh! But how? How did you think of saying a ring? And you knew it was not going to go through all the way. At the time of death you can't think of anything. Okay, okay, wait. So he was just telling me how, can I say that, how you shot that particular one? Yes. Yes, so he shot it with his phone and I'm very, very impressed because wow. Okay currently in studio there are very many big gadgets that I used to capture this moment right here. So is this a long time ago or do you just like the example? That was a long time ago and I used the phone because I wasn't in Lagos. I went to Assaba to shoot a movie and I wanted to create a content there. And even before these, I've always, when I started, I started shooting with my phone. I edit on my phone and it's, this video you just played now is my most viewed video on YouTube. It's 4.7 million views. So it's, sometimes it's your concept. You must have a good concept as a content creator. You must have a good concept aside your camera, you know. Here I'm saying your script is very important. So quality, is it over quantity? Yes, quality over quantity. And would you get your inspiration from like, do you just walk around and just say, oh that looks dumb, let's do that. Back in Nigeria I don't, I'm an introvert. So yeah, I know it's, I know you're doing. Imagine I do, it amazes me that people with such creativity, they're either they're shy or they keep to themselves. Okay, continue. It's just another thing. So I, the only thing I do at my leisure time is write. I love writing. So back in Lagos I just say at home, write. My inspiration comes from anywhere, from God, most especially. Whenever I write I make sure I take my time to see, to see it play out and know what it's going to look like when I shoot it. So I take my time to write, I take my time to edit during post-production. I make sure I stay with my team, then I direct all my stories myself. Okay, next time I want someone from your team to come here so I can ask them what it's like to work. Because you would probably give me a nice, nice answer what's like to work with you. Thank you. It's okay. Hashtag is Thursday. Do you know Emanuella? You see we don't like four people in Nigeria. Emanuella, Ophai and Maraji. Yeah, basically that's what I know. Emanuella is sweet. Manila is big in Nigeria. Yeah, she's big in Africa. She's doing so well. Why do you enter like do content together? I guess it's because of location. I don't think she's in Lagos. But I've spoken to Makenjo that whenever she's in Lagos, we should collaborate. I'm excited to mention of Makenjo. I used to watch him from a very, very long time ago. So I told him to bring his presents. I told him to make it. I've already made it just by being. There's a song called Karibu Kenna. So it's Welcome to Kenna by one guy called Major. A big guy. And one of the things about Kenyans is we know how to tell the weather. I'm translating the song. Guys in Mendochole have gone to school. So we look at the sun and we look at it and say, it's very, very hot. This heat is for the rain. Get it? No? He's not laughing. He's not nice. What would you like to tell your Kenyan fans? I'd love to say thank you. Thank you very much. The love I've received these few days has been overwhelming. And I never expected it from the airport down to the hotel, down to all these radio stations and TV stations. It's been fun all the way. I'm still here to try the Kenyan food. And I'm doing that today. What have you been eating? Oh, sorry. Once it's Kenyan food today. What are you going to start with? I'll be eating chicken and fries. Where is it going? Why don't you have something? You have to keep fit. If you want to, you have to keep fit. It's very important. Because you're also removing clothes. And I saw you talking about Sixpack coming. Did it finally come out? Confidence. It's out.  Please stay longer or go and come back. And please take a Kenyan wife. We are cool. Ask them, we are cool. Look at his face. Maybe I'll take some from this TV station. I can hear them laughing upstairs. You can hear. Come, come, come. Hashtag is good. Closing up. Give us your social media handles. It's official Brother Shaggy. Brother Shaggy has a B-R-O-D-A-S-H-A-W-G-I on YouTube. And on Instagram it's at Brother Shaggy. Same Brother Shaggy. B-R-O-D-A-S-H-A-W-G-I. On Facebook it's at Brother Shaggy. On Twitter it's at Brother Shaggy. B-R-O-D-A-S-H-A-W-G-I. Okay, I want two things from you now. I want you to teach me something in Pijin.  Since you sang for me, you might have something. Okay, something in Pijin. I want you to say, How are you doing now? How are you doing now? Do you know what it means? How are you doing? I actually didn't have thought of that. Okay, so let me tell you something else. How are you feeling? Huh? How am I to feel you? You understand me. You get what I'm saying. Yeah, you're close. It means I'm feeling you. Close enough. Okay, one more. No problem. No problem. No problem. I'm ready. What are you going back? Carrying your luggage. From Monday. Guys, from Monday? Alright, now it makes me all better. But I've been laughing the whole time. You tricked me. You know, I just had to pack it together. But I don't believe in Pijin. Mwanyane to myself. Okay, it's fine. I try to perform on Facebook, on Twitter. Hashtag is 35. Have you ever found yourself in a relationship by yourself? Yes. Baby, who is disturbing you now? What happened? Right now, I'm in a relationship with God, me and God. We are together. Forever. But there's been time where I found myself in a relationship by myself. It wasn't bad. I know one day, the right one will come. I'm not rushing. When God says it's time, it's time. The God of... Who do you want to pray to? Do you want to share your corner? Who do you want to ask to? Anyway, we've been going for a while now, so let's just actually go because we have more in store for you. Hashtag is 30. Thursday Vibes. Facebook, Twitter, on the square channel. We will be right back. Bye.


Ah, alright, let's get to the pretentious one. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys. Hey guys, this is my review for The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to the massive cult hit that was The Matrix. And before I actually start talking about the movie, I actually wanna talk about the year 2003 and just how it was literally the year of Matrix. Not only was Matrix Reloaded released at the beginning of the year, Matrix Revolutions was then released in, I believe, November of that same year. At the same time, we had also gotten technically a prequel slash anthology series being the Animatrix, which for the most part, I actually like a lot of the stories and it really builds the lore and the show. There are some that are kinda just kinda hit and miss and some of the visual styles is a little bit strange, but I'll always enjoy watching The Second Renaissance even if it is literally Nightmare Fuel. But as well as a anime anthology series, there was also Enter the Matrix. Remember that video game that was, oh right, I guess? I do remember playing through the game with cheat codes admittedly and I don't remember kind of a lick of bit of the story from it, but all of those live action scenes with Jada Pinkett Smith, they were also filmed by the Wachowskis. I can't imagine the absolute mind-numbing stress the Wachowskis were going through with all these production beings making two movies at the same time, overseeing an anime anthology as well as directing and kind of really overseeing a video game, that's a lot. And the fact that they were pulled in so many different directions at the same time, that probably contributes to the reason why revolutions and Reloaded are not looked upon with anywhere near as much praise as the original film. There's a lot of people who actually kind of think that maybe The Matrix should have just been a one-off and that's also possibly why the new movie that's coming out is supposedly set after the first one. While Reloaded does up on the action, the kung fu, the gunfights, the whole spectacle of it all, the story, the dialogue and really every single conversation is so convoluted in deep meaning pretentiousness that it almost takes away from the overall aspect of what this movie is supposed to be setting up. Reloaded follows Neo and Morpheus and Trinity as they continue to fight against the machines all the while trying to find the source of the Oracle and the Ones sort of prophecy before the machines are able to dig down to Zion and destroy the human race. All the while, Agent Smith no longer an agent has returned to The Matrix and is now essentially a super virus and he also has some of my favorite bits in the movie. You. Yes, me. Me too. But when I talk about pretentious level, just kind of look at all of the conversations in this show.  But do you? You think you do but you do not. Well, when you look at the dialogue with Mary Vingian especially with the architect, even with the Oracle and quite honestly, Morpheus who's really super wrong in this movie. You're devastated right now. The dude had this massive ego and really, really thought he had the answer to everything. Even on the eve of the destruction of Zion and the human race, this dude has no problem thinking that he is 100% vindicated in his thought that he has found a way to save Zion.  And it does lead me back into the parts that I do like about this movie, the twists that there have been multiple matrixes. There have been multiple ones that this has actually happened before and the human race is essentially in a loop with the machines who continue to allow them this false attitude of hope so that the matrix itself doesn't crash.  I love it. But there's a lot of bits in this movie that kind of just go absolutely nowhere and they're just more so setups for fight scenes. The entire Mary Vingian aspect of this movie might have been cool if he was just the central bit but then they're running into an issue with Neo and his God powers. He's essentially unbeatable except for the one major fight scene with all the Smiths which I actually still do very much enjoy.  I just remember thinking, what is this dude saying? Why doesn't Neo just kick him in the head? When you look at the first matrix movie every fight scene in that movie actually does have a purpose. It's not just there just for spectacle. Whereas in this one, when Smith just appears, how is he able to get to a room, an area, a courtyard that Neo had to get help from mystical dude? Who on a side note, I actually kind of like the backstory theories about this guy. Some people think that he actually was a previous one and that he is now connected to the Oracle. They don't really explain this guy at all. He's probably one of my favorite unknown characters about the matrix universe entirely. But yeah, Smith is just able to find this area and then all of a sudden all of his other hymns just appear. And this kind of correlates again into one of the other very big issues of this movie is there is way too much happening. You have Zion on the thread of being destroyed. You have them connecting with the mayor of Ingy to try and find a key guy. You have the architect explaining everything about the matrix and how everyone's fucked. You have Smith cloning himself and creating a virus-like aspect that is entirely overlapping everything that's going on. You have Neo getting visions of the future and the possibilities of what may happen to him. You have a human being that is assimilated by Smith and somehow able to go into the human world.  It just happens. There is so much that is happening in this movie that you actually are thankful for the fight scenes, not just because they're cool to look at because really they are for the most part, but also because you need some downtime from all of the dialogue and all of the filler exposition and truckload of lore that you are getting in this movie. Speaking of trucks actually, the highway sequence, that's amazing. The fact that they built a highway system themselves and did this and smashed over 300 GM vehicles is incredible. It's amazing how much trust and money WB put into this movie, into the Pachowsky's vision because while they were oversaturating them, they kept on giving them resources. Considering the track record that WB has had in the last 20 years, it's interesting to see just the directions the company has gone in terms of how they view creative individuals and whatnot. It's weird. But in the end, is Reloaded a decent movie? No, wrong. You could say that, but it's really an in-between. I would be very interested to have a conversation with someone who says that Reloaded is their favorite in the trilogy because it's not a full movie. It is an in-between. It's a very much connection to Revolutions, which is kind of, I guess, one of the main reasons why they released it in the same year. But I feel that you can watch the first movie by itself and I feel you can even watch the third movie by itself because it is the conclusion of the story. But I don't know anyone who looks at Reloaded with the same kind of praise and love that same movies like The Empire Strikes Back gets or The Rings of Two Towers. It's just not its own movie. It is a sequence of events that are building up to the conclusion of the trilogy. And that, one last bit, ties me into kind of the speculation about this movie. The Wachowskis went back and forth over the script of the first movie for something on 10 years. So when all of a sudden they were contracted to make two movies in less than five years after the first film, that's a lot. That's a lot to go through. It's kind of like what happened with the Pirates movies, to be honest. The first Pirates movie is fantastic because it took so long and so many rewrites, so many recreations to get there. But then the other two movies are kind of okay. They're pretty decent, but I definitely feel that is not the case with Reloaded and certainly not revolutions. It's almost kind of like on the same basis of the new Star Wars trilogy where they just kind of didn't really know what they were gonna do. However, that is a low bar to say because the Star Wars trilogy is so obviously deeply unorganized. Whereas at least Reloaded and Revolutions, you had the same creators and the same people coming up with the same narrative idea, but it's still kind of very much a miss. Overall, I say that the action sequences in Reloaded are very decent. I like the visual exploration of the lore and some of the building that gets put into this movie. But overall, I don't like Reloaded. I don't think it's a fun movie to just sit down and watch. I will sit and watch Revolutions over Reloaded almost any day. So in the end, I'm going to give Matrix Reloaded a three out of seven. I almost wanted to give it a four, but I just can't do that. I just don't enjoy this movie. In comparison to the first film, it just feels superfluous. It just feels like it's here because WB wanted them to make another movie and the Wachowskis were like, sure, we really don't have an idea, but we'll do what we think is cool. But anyways, that's my thoughts on Matrix Reloaded. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, if you guys liked the video, leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe and the review for Revolutions will be coming soon. I'm not going to lie though. I actually enjoy Revolutions a bit more than I probably should for very dumb reasons. Anyways guys, that's all from me. I'll see you guys next time.


No, because those guys approach, they do a great job of immersing themselves in the playbook and they're really, you know, active in meetings in terms of asking questions and both of them done a great job so far of really getting a grasp of What have you seen out of racing like that so far? He's turned a few heads, bravo and, you know, he's kind of high up here. Just what have you kind of seen from this brain and getting the keys out of him? Obviously he's got speed, he's got size, he's got play strength and all those things show up on tape. He does a good job of playing through the contact. He's made some plays for his downfield where you can showcase his speed and he shows a willingness to be assertive in the run game. I would say so. I think he's done a great job of really showing his versatility and doing all the things that we've asked him to do. So I would agree with that. You know, he does a great job of getting some of these young guys that really need to be immersed in the playbook and give them some extra time to try and gather some better understanding of what we're trying to do in terms of having a big picture mentality with our offense so they understand who, what, when, where and why and what we do.  Right. Oh, I think that one one that speaks to, you know, what a great job our Skyline department has done and really, you know, creating an environment where we got a lot of competition.  These guys understand that each and every day they come out here they got to compete because that next guy is on their heels and maybe may even be surpassing them at some point in time. So, you know, from that standpoint, you're only as good as your depth and I think we're working on that now. Yeah, it can, it's based on the performance. You all know this is a performance business and these players understand that as well. You know, I can't say I'm a guy that determines that. Coach Rable, he'll determine that and I'll just implement the plan. It's all fundamentals. Those guys are young players. Typically, with younger players, it's the fundamentals that need to be developed, you know, pad level, getting them to understand how to come out of breaks, you know, being consistent in how we catch the football, attacking the football. All the little things that go into making you a solid player, that's what we're working on right now with those guys. No, his mindset was to compete. He understood that, you know, that's what it was going to be about for him. I can't say that I'm surprised, but what I will say is, you know, I love the fact, I love his competitive spirit and his toughness. And I think whenever you have a big guy like that that plays fast, it shows up on film consistently. So much single hot because of the air. What's that allowin' people to stay in that? You know, we'll see. I think, you know, we're going to be in a situation where we do get singled up. We're going to have to take advantage of those opportunities. But we'll see how teams play. What I think for us is just about us executing and taking advantage of the opportunities we get.


Imagine you can walk into the blackjack table and not have to place a trade or a bet, not have to place a bet, but you get free cards and they just keep shoveling the cards to you. Yeah, 14. Nope. Fold. 17. Nope. Fold. 20. Okay.  If the deal draws 21, you lose. So nothing is 100%. You see what I'm saying? And so same thing with trading. So imagine if you were given the opportunity to sit at the blackjack table and not have to place a bet until the optimal hand comes up. Fuck, man.  That's insane. Same thing with trading, man. That's why I keep saying yesterday, the best traders are not the smartest traders. They're the most disciplined traders. They're able to sit at the casino, which is the stock market, but only play the high probability hands, the blackjack hands that has 18, 19, 20. They're disregarding all the marginal hands. I'm not even taking an 11, dude. I don't know how I'm going to double down an 11 because fuck, dude. My chance is not that good. I'm taking the guaranteed good probability hands. 18 in blackjack is pretty good, but it gets beat all the time with 20, right? But still, the cards are in your favor. So one takeaway from this driving with balance series is, dude, this is your opportunity to play at the casino, but you don't have to place a single bet until you see your cards. And that's exactly what waiting for your setup is. Does that make sense now, guys?


Hey, John Crisana here. Online marketer and tech entrepreneur. And I'm going to be going over why Apple is losing billions and billions of dollars off of their market capitalization because they've abandoned their core marketing strategy. And I'm going to be going over why this is happening, how this happens, and what you can do if you are an entrepreneur or online marketer or business owner to avoid the same sort of marketing mistakes that Apple has been making as well. Let's get into this. Hey, John Crisana here. And unless you've been living under a rock, you've noticed how Apple went from the first trillion-dollar company to losing hundreds of billions of dollars literally off of their share price. And the reason is as a marketing expert, I believe is because they've abandoned their core marketing strategy. Now, I just put up some of the headlines here. We see Apple loses 57 billion dollars. You know, Apple loses 7.9%. First trillion-dollar company lost over 200 billion of the share price. How poor iPhone sales erased 450 billion dollars of value for Apple. Now these headlines have been going on for a while now as Apple continues to lose money off of its share price. And the reason is because they've abandoned their core marketing strategy. And not many people are talking about this. There are a lot of reasons. Poor iPhone sales, poor Mac sales, whatever. But ultimately, the reasoning comes down to abandoning their core marketing strategy. Now, one big thing about Apple for years has been privacy. Privacy matters. Here we have an ad for Apple. Here's another talk from Apple's CEO, I believe. Apple will not see your data. And for years, Apple has been marketed as being easy to use. As being safe and secure for the user. And being just having incredible support through their genius bar. But lately, products. Their products such as the Mac Pro have not been supported by the genius bar. Apple was hacked, right? They... Hundreds of millions of users had their personal data exposed to the public. Another, Apple breaks silence on hacking campaigns. iPhone users are 167 times more likely to get hacked. Whereas this used to not be an issue because Apple when Steve Jobs was in Apple, he created a amazing culture of putting out products that were seamless to use, that were easy to use, that were well supported, that were privacy was of paramount concern. Yet after Steve Jobs unfortunately left this world, everything has gone to a mess. Now, as a marketer and as a marketing expert, I attribute this all to abandoning their core marketing. Apple became a trillion dollar company by creating a massive degree of trust from their core user base. By creating a rabid fan base because they stuck to their core values of easy to use, of privacy and of good support. Yet abandoning what your core marketing principles are or marketing those principles without being able to back them up has caused a disconnect between consumers and between the company themselves. So whenever you're marketing, one thing to really keep in mind is congruency and your company will not last very long if you don't back up your promises, okay? So the first marketing concept I'm going to kind of bring into this is the word I just said congruency. Now what does congruency mean? Simply what it means is that if you say you can do something, you do it. And ultimately that creates what we call a marketing flywheel. A flywheel is something that spins faster and faster and faster. As it goes around, the more customers Apple would get and back up their promises to. Those customers would say, dude, it's easy to use. Dude, it's private. I've never been hacked. Dude, the support at the genius bar. Whenever anything goes wrong, I go to the genius bar at the Apple store and they fix everything right away. But by getting away from their core marketing, people now go to the genius bar and say, I can't... They won't even fix it. They haven't been trained how to fix it. In the case the Mac pros. People will say, I've been hacked. People will say, this isn't no longer easy to use. There's bugs. Now as we see here, they're three core marketing principles easy to use. They have bugs now. Privacy, they've been hacked. Support, not for all products. This has caused a massive decline in their stock price. Now I know there may be other reasons but I ultimately believe that almost everything comes down to perception. And if once you lose the good will of your customer base, your company is going to go down. Now if you'd like to learn more about marketing, if marketing excites you then make sure you subscribe to my channel. There should be a link somewhere around my head where you can subscribe and enable all notifications. Every single day of the week, I am talking about marketing on this channel and how you can do it for yourself and start your own home-based business as well. Or you could just learn the concepts and apply it to your company or your job or what have you. I love marketing. I love explaining these concepts and I love looking at companies from the light of marketing. So make sure to subscribe and if you have any questions or comments for me, leave them down in the comments below. Love to see your interaction. We also have a few communities. If you want to discuss marketing with other people, we have a Discord chat channel, we have a Facebook group and we also have a subreddit if you'd like to interact with others. Thanks for dropping by my channel. I'm John Crestani and talk to you soon.