Great. Welcome everybody to Digital Asset News. My name is Rob and there's a lot of things we need to go over today, so let's just jump right in. First of all, we're going to say a quick look at the market and see exactly what's going on. It's pretty much sideways. Then we're going to talk about New World Order with El Salvador and what's going on over there. And then we're going to dive into the interview that I did with Alex Machinsky. This was pre-recorded, and I'm glad I did it because Alex's computer took a dump right in the middle of our interview. So we're going to talk about a ton of different things. And we're going to go over some recent FUD that have been spread potentially about Celsius and then getting bailed out from the Luna fiasco with over $500 million. Alex is going to talk about that. We're going to talk about fractional reserve lending if they're doing that. We're going to take a look at stablecoin regulation, what Alex believes. Then we're also going to talk about Alex's $100,000 Bitcoin price prediction at the end of this year, which, sure. And then after that, we'll do a little voyage or quick take, and then we're going to talk about Celsius liquidations, and we'll do the Q&A at the very end. So just so you know that this video is live right now. But the interview that we are going to show with Alex, five different questions, that was pre-recorded. So we'll go over all that. So let's just jump right in, shall we, and get into it. So first up, let's take a look at the market. Today is just one of those days.  But Bitcoin is above $30,000. That's great. They're above $2,000 fantastic. But you can see in 24 hours, pretty much see a red like we are used to now because we are in a bear market. And that is just what it is, except for chain up 10%. Congratulations chain holders or maker 2.6%. Great. And that's what's going on. And like we've been talking about here, I think the S&P is correlated. And you can see that it's down a little bit. Also NASDAQ is down as well. But I mean, that's just how it is moving forward. I'm not too optimistic in the short term, but the long term, sure, anything can happen. And that's what we have as far as the market itself. Now I just want to do a quick take. And this is a tweet from the president of Al Salvador, Naim Bukele. And he says this, tomorrow, 32 central banks and 12 financial authorities will meet in Al Salvador, discuss financial inclusion, digital economy, banking in the unbanked, the Bitcoin rollout and its benefits in our country. That is fantastic news. And I like to see these types of things. Over on Simon Dixon's channel, go check him out. He's always, there's a link in description. There's a couple of YouTubers that I watch. Simon's one of those guys. And he says it's the next Bretton Woods type of meeting. Could be true. But I will say this, when we talk, when we get excited about this, 32 central banks, 12 financial authorities, it sounds really good. And it is good. Here are the countries in the central banks that he's talking about. Banco central, Tomei Principi, Banco central, the Paraguay, Angola, Ghana, Namibia, Uganda, Guinea, Madagascar, Haiti, Burundi, Eswatini, Central Bank of Jordan, Legambia, Honduras, Madagascar, Rwanda, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria, Congo, Armenia, and Bangladesh. Well, the Bangladesh bank, that's pretty big. That's a lot of people. So I know like, when people are reading this, they're probably like, well, that's not like the superstar, all-time, great, huge, big central banks, but it doesn't matter. Really doesn't matter. If you take some of the GDP and the financial inclusion that is going through each of these different sectors, individually, some of these may not be the heavy weights that you would like to see. However, it's like, to me, it's kind of like a bundle of sticks. It's pretty easy to break one stick. But when you have 44 of those sticks bundled together, it's pretty hard to break. So when the IMF comes a call in, hopefully they can have this nice coalition move forward. And that's what's going on in the world news. So now I want to take a little bit forward into the Alex Mishinsky and Digital Asset News interview. And I got to tell you this one, it had it all because there is just, it's like a novella. And if you know what that is, it's like soap opera. And there's a lot of things that are going on. And Alex makes a good point about people just kind of attacking and going through the motions. And he's right. But he's got a lot of great answers. And a lot of people message me about this situation. And they wanted me to ask him some very specific questions, such as fractional reserve lending, such as the Terra bailout. And if they were investing themselves, the run on Celsius, and what is just happening behind the scenes. And of course, also, we also talked about institutional investors, and to be an accredited investor in what happened in the United States, and what they see is going on, and where they're going forward. This is just me rambling. Let's just listen to the video, and you can make your own decisions. And then after we talk about, after the video is done with the interview, then we'll do a quick Q&A. And I want to get, like Alex said, a quick take. And then we're going to talk about Celsius liquidations, and specifically, my loan. So we'll do that at the end, after the Mishinsky interview. So go ahead, Nance. You can answer any question you have in the comments, and I'll answer them as best of my abilities at the end of the show. So let's get into it, shall we? And go from here. But as promised, what I want to do is bring CEO of Celsius on Alex Mishinsky. Alex, thanks for coming back on the show. I think this is like your fourth or fifth time or something like that. So thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, Rob, I'm a regular. And the best part was you proved to everybody that's a real pull by throwing something in it. So maybe you should do that again, just for those who think it's a fake background. Yeah, so everybody's like, it's fake, it's fake. And it could be. But it's not. So I have to do that. And then everybody says, just of proof of work, you did proof of pull. Proof of pull. So listen, I mean, that's the good news. Let's jump into some uncomfortable stuff and let's talk about a little bit of fun. So there's like five things we want to go over today. First of all, let's tackle the fun, different things that are going on with run on the banks or run on Celsius and Terra Luna. I'm going to ask you about should stable coins be regulated. I think that's something that's important, especially after Terra. We're going to talk about how generate yield, how you guys do it. And we're going to take a look back at an interview we did two years ago, man, 2020, if you can believe that. And then I'm going to get your opinion on the economic outlook for 2022. And then just some quick advice, not investment advice, just investment opinions. So let's start with this, huh? First of all, let's tackle the fun. There's things going on. And it looks like this. This was a tweet that was sent to me. Actually, I had no idea this was actually even going on. This is Corey Clipston. Clipston, Clipston. I believe he's part of the swan, organization, Bitcoin, something. Anyhow, he's also a gentleman that said that Cardano was a Ponzi scheme. And he says this, there wasn't a bank run at Celsius Network this time because their management team was able to get 500 million out of the Luna UST Ponzi at the last second. Celcians, you're lucky. You're relying on luck and active management to keep your rehypothecated coins saffo. So a couple of questions, Alex. This begs the question. What is Corey here talking about? And was there any type of shenanigans going on with Luna? And before we even answer that, you did call him out and said, Hey, do a debate. We'll debunk your conspiracy theories. And he said 30% of all Bitcoin is lost because people listen to you on Bitcoin Maxi. So let's dive into it. Huh? What do we got? Yeah, I don't know how Corey has time for this, but look, we have USD and Luna listed in our wallets. And when people give us USD, we stake it to earn rewards, just like you would do yourself, right? So we do it on behalf of our community. The difference between doing it yourself and us doing it for you is that we monitor it 24 seven. And when we started seeing a DPEG, we pulled everything out and we did that on behalf of our community. Now that instead of instead of everybody in crypto celebrating that we have Bitcoin Maxi saying, No, you know, this is horrible.  Like not everybody can own their own keys. Not everybody can know knows how to manage their own keys. So for the 95% of the people that do not cannot do it well, Celsius is there to help them out for the 5% who are Bitcoin Maxis. We don't want you at Celsius. We're not here to fix your problem. We're here to fix the problem of the 7 billion people on the planet who cannot manage keys. So you stay in your lane, we're going to stay in our lane. There isn't we have enough fighting going on with regulators and banks and other people are trying to take us down. The last thing we need is for internal fighting to create problems for the crypto community. Yeah. And I think I think that I believe more people can cuss you their own Bitcoin if they really want to go through the process. But the problem is, and like I've given this example before, there's a difference between somebody like me, somebody like you, and somebody who's single mother, you know, three kids working two jobs and trying to go to school at night and going, You know what? I want to deal with that either. So I think there has to be a bigger tent and allow a little bit of inclusion. So I think that's what we're going here. Am I right? Yeah. And again, if you hold 20 different assets, are you going to monitor all 20 of them to make sure that nothing going on? There's no hacks, there's no scams, there's no this, there's no that. No, you're going to outsource all of that to somebody like Celsius. And again, we should get a badge of honor, a medal for my team, my security team, my risk team should get a medal for being one of the first to pull out all of that, all these coins out of those protocols. Yeah.  When did you guys just decide or look at and go, You know what? This doesn't look, this isn't good. We need to get out of here. So first, we never invested in Terra. Jump, three-arrow capital, Galaxy invested in Terra. Celsius has never invested in Terra. I posted several tweets, Celsius Network posted several tweets debunking the FUD that Celsius somehow gave loans to Terra or invested in Terra. We don't do that. That's not our business.   That's how much they hate Celsius, right? So stop listening to Corey, unfollow Corey. You want to deliver a message to Corey, unfollow him right now. When he sees, he's doing all of this just to get more followers, right?   So I just want to make sure that was crystal clear moving forward. But there is a bigger question, which is USD, which is the stablecoin. And the question that I have for you, which is what a question that I'd actually asked to my community, which was, do we need stablecoin regulation? And there is pros and cons for everything that we talked about. But so far with 2000 votes, we got people who say yes. And I can understand why people don't want regulation, because when we get regulations, and as we get over regulation as a problem. Alex, what do you see here? Do you think that stablecoins are okay? And we should just let, just let the market decide, let a couple people get burned, and then just move forward and then say, they'll learn at some point, do your own research, or should we have some sort of clarity in the market? What do you say? So first of all, it's important that everybody understands that just because somebody claims that they're a stablecoin, it does not mean that they're a stablecoin. Right. And we, the people that are using crypto have to understand the difference. Right. So there's stablecoin coming three different buckets. Right. One bucket is stablecoins that are issued in exchange for a dollar that is being deposited into a bank account. That's USDC, TUSD, USDP, and so on, right? These are Paxos, Circle, and TrueUSD. Those are the issuers, right? And they use banks like Silvergate Bank, where the dollar is actually held in that bank. So it doesn't matter what USDC trades at. You can always go to Silvergate and always get a dollar for your USDC. Right. So that's one category. And people have to understand that that category cannot be pegged because you can always go and get the dollar from the bank. Then there are coins that are overcollateralized. Die is overcollateralized, right? So it has Bitcoin or Ethereum, wrap Bitcoin or Ethereum.  Same thing with USDT. It's an overcollateralized token. And even when it traded, it never pegged because even when it traded at 95 cents, the people who bought it at 95 cents when you sold it to them went to Tether and got 100 cents. So just because it trades at a discount exchange does not mean it's depegs, right? When Tether stops paying out 100 cents in the dollar, you can say USDT depegged. The third category are people who just pretend to be stable coins. They call themselves stable coins. They're undercollateralized. And because of that, when everybody, when the music stops and everybody wants to run and get their coins back, there's not enough dollars for everybody. That is the third group. And those are the people we have to worry about. So yes, we need regulation. It's coming no matter what. Doesn't matter if we do a survey, we don't do a survey. Too many Americans lost billions of dollars and the regulators are already drafting laws. I bet you in the next two or three weeks, you will see draft laws being issued by regulators, by law makers, I mean lawmakers, not regulators. Yeah. And I got to agree here. I'm getting pretty tired of the things that are going on. And like, I know people don't like regulation, but it's coming whether we like it or not. And I think that is just how it's going to be. All right. So that takes care of a little bit of fun, a little bit of regulation. Let's move into just a little history. And what I want to talk to you about is how Celsius generates yield. And actually, I don't know if you remember this, but not too long ago, my man, you were on my show. It was in November 2020. I asked you this exact same question. And it was a long, it was a long interview. I mean, we're looking at about 45 minutes to, yeah, about 48 minutes or so. And I'm going to just play back exactly what you said so people can understand. So I'm not putting any words in your mouth. So just take a listen. It's like 45 seconds. So we create yield in a very simple way, right? We lend coins or dollars to institutions or individuals, and they pay us interest, right? And we have to worry about them returning the asset, the underlying what we lend them, and the interest that is accrued or accumulated on the asset. So the interest is yield, right? So if we, if I gave you $100 and I charge you $10 a year, that's a 10% yield. And if I earned 10%, I'm going to pay 8% to the community. It's as simple as that. There's no, there's nothing else complicated or like sophisticated computers doing algorithms or any of that stuff. It's very, very simple. It's hard to become an institution that borrows from Celsius. We reject over 50% of people that come to us and say, I want to borrow coins from you because we think that those counterparties are too risky. And in most of the cases, they are just small hedge funds or small institutions who don't have a balance sheet. And we just feel it's too risky to lend them coins. And the decisions we make every day are, should I lend to some of the more to the some of the largest institutions of Wall Street or my customers, or should I take a small customer instead? And the answer almost every day is I rather lend more to a billion dollar balance sheet company and take more risk with them than on board a $5 million or $10 million hedge fund. So that's kind of half of the equation. The other half is what we call margin lending. So if you give me one Bitcoin and it's worth $18,000 and you want to borrow money from me, I can lend you $9,000 or 50% LTV. Right? And I'm still going to charge you 9% interest or 10% interest. And again, in this case, I have an asset. I have a very liquid asset that I use as collateral.  This is not institutional. This is retail borrowing where you can borrow dollars or stable coins against your main assets. Yeah. And pretty much that's it. So same thing, Alex, has anything changed from the days that we just talked about a couple, about a year and a half ago or so? No, nothing has changed. And like I said before, for example, when Luna came to us asking for very large loans, we said, no, we said it's too risky, you don't have enough collateral and we're not going to do it. Also, retail customers that come can only, they cannot borrow Bitcoin or Ethereum from us. They can only borrow stable coins or dollars and only up to 50% LTV. So again, if you have $10,000 worth of Bitcoin, the max will ever give you is $5,000. Right. Yeah, because there's different levels, right? I mean, we're talking about loans here, correct? Yes. Yeah.  If you want a lower rate, give us triple. So 30,000. If you want a really low rate, I think it's like 1%, 2%, maybe it's changed, you got a 4x. So there's always a collateralization. The question that I have is when we put our crypto on Celsius and it's rehypothecated like you talked about there, when you give that to some type of industry or these large institutions, do they give you any kind of something kind of collateral in exchange for that? Yeah. So let's say, dig into it. So first, we do a lot of DeFi. So on DeFi, you have a lot of collateral on the other side, right? So we do a lot of, we borrow, we are a borrower as well, right? So sometimes we go and borrow dollars and we give these coins as collateral for dollars that are lent to us from different institutions, right? So, but when we work with large institutions, again, based on their balance sheet, they have different tiers, right? If you are a multi-billion dollar institution, we may require very little collateral from you compared to if you're a very small institution. So, but you have to understand, for example, if you take a loan against Cardano, okay? The rate we charge you is 0.1%. We charge you almost nothing. Why? Because we don't need to rehypothecate Cardano, we can just stake it. So we get the staking rewards and you get the dollars. So everybody wins and because of that, the rate is so low, right? So it's a win-win relationship and not everything is rehypothecated just because Corey or somebody else tells you it is doesn't mean it's true. And Celsius has invented this business. We created the yield business. We invented this whole idea that you can earn yield on Bitcoin and Ethereum and all these other stuff. And we're very proud that again, millions of people are now using these services and we have a lot of competition. We have a lot of, there's a lot of people are copying Celsius, but no one does it as well as Celsius. You can talk to us, 1-866-HODL now. You can call us at any time. If you have a question, you can book an appointment with a loan specialist. So no one does that in crypto. Try to call Coinbase. Let's see who is, if anyone is going to answer you. Very doubtful. Yeah. So that's good. So I just wanted to alleviate some fears because I know people, the questions that they would ask me was like, ask Alex about this. And of course, that's my job is to dig into it. Because the big thing they were asking is like, well, is it like fractionalized reserves? We're not doing fractional reserves. Anyone who thinks we can doesn't understand our business. Yeah. So like, and the big thing there is collateral, right? So if you look at something like this, John puts in a thousand, banks lend it out. There's no collateral there to Sue or John. And those are on the bank and that doesn't make much sense. But if you have collateral, depending on which these multi-billionaire organizations, you still have collateral. I think that's the big distinction there. And look, last week, you know, we announced our numbers every week, right? So last week, we had 1.1 billion in withdrawals, people withdrew to make sure that we can pay them back. And then they waited a few days and they put back like almost $400 million, right? So every winter, we went through five winters. And every winter, people test us in the drawdowns because they want to make sure that we have ample liquidity. We still right now have billions of dollars in liquidity. So anyone who wants their coins back, Celsius can always provide you all your coins back. We're not, fractional reserves is exactly what they can do. They give you a 30-year mortgage.  So banks operate very, very differently than Celsius. And that's why we're not a bank, right? We don't have, we don't create leverage by lending dollars that we don't have. Yeah. Perfect. Makes sense. Now, this is a two-parter and actually, because we're going to talk about the accredited investor, which this only pertains to U.S. citizens. If you're outside, this does not pertain to you whatsoever. So just remember, on April 15th, there was a change. And if you were not an accredited investor, you could not gain yield on anything that you deposited on April 15th or after. However, anything that you put in before, like myself and a bunch of other people, you would still gain that yield, even if you were or were not a accredited investor. And then, of course, you can go through the process of filling out paperwork. So the question that I have is a couple. First of all, what happened? How did those regulators come forth? And then how is that working out? Or how are you guys working with them to go someplace as far as like to make it happen later on? Well, again, this is not something special to Celsius. Every other company that provides yield basically agreed to do the same thing, agreed to not rehypothecate new transfers from non-accredited investors, which is what you just described. And we agreed to do this with all the different states and all the different regulators and so on and so on.  So we're all basically doing the same thing. The one thing that Celsius is doing differently is that first, all of our other services are still available. So you can do swaps, you can do loans, you can do on-ramps, which we launched now in 40 states. And on top of it, you'll be able to do staking. That means that you'll be able to stake end of July. We're launching a new version in which you, the retail non-accredited US user, can earn staking rewards on all the coins that are stakeable. Bitcoin is not stakeable, you will not be able to earn anything on Bitcoin. But for most others, you will be getting very good rewards and we're going back to where we were before. But again, those coins are not being rehypothecated, like I said before, right? Because they're just being staked. Yeah, I think it's an interesting situation. I know BlockFi and the other ones that you just mentioned, they're definitely not doing it season assist and all those things. And then with Voyager, I'm not for sure exactly how they're working out. I had Steve on the show about a week ago or so. And he talked about sending things out, rehypothecate, but they're not doing any kind of loans. So I'm not sure how that's working out for them. But I know with the other ones, not happening. And then just as a follow up, how is this looking as far as like working with the regulators? What do they want to see? What do they want to have you guys do so you can actually get this back into play? Well, the regulators are asking very specific questions. And they usually give you instructions to basically say, do this, don't do that. Right? And we are still thinking that we are a good actor, right? We are here to follow all the rules. We just want the rules to be clear, just like we talked about stablecoin. The rules on stablecoins are not clear. And that's why people come and claim that they're a stablecoin and they're not, right? So I think we're going to get much more clarity both on the federal level and on the state level. And every time such clarity appears, we go and we change our product or service to make sure we fully comply. Yeah, clarity. I keep talking about that. No one believes me. That's all we like to have. All right. So then let's move on a little quick, quickly. I know you're a busy guy. Economic outlook for 2022. And there was, you were on Kitco news not too long ago, and you had talked to the two hosts there and you said, this is what I see. And I, I agree with you on one part. The second part is a little bit, we'll discuss that real quick. But this is exactly what you said. This is a minute or so. Just take a listen. Put it into the market and taking liquid out of the market. All of that with us shutting down the ninth largest economy in the world, Russia, we basically shut it down. That's a huge recessionary pressure on our economy. So I do expect a recession next year, 2023. I don't think there's anything the Fed can do. We will have a recession next year. So to be clear, you believe that there will be a recession next year. Therefore, you've gotten out of equities, but you still think that this is good news for Bitcoin and the crypto markets? Yes. So I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are going to do very well in this recessionary environment. Into, so from now to the recession and during the recession, I think we definitely going to hit all time highs. All time highs are not that far from where we are at $67,000. And the question we don't know is what happens afterwards. How much resistance we're going to have at $70,000, $80,000, $90,000. I think we are going to break $100,000. I know I've said that last year, but we had a few macroeconomic events that basically kicked the can down the road. But we will see Bitcoin over $100,000 this year. Alex, come on. Come on. $100,000. So tell me the bull scenario. I got to hear it from you. So could we get there? Is it a possibility? Because man, I just don't see it. So let's think about what just happened. So basically on top of just the drawdown, on top of the Nasdaq markets crashing 25%, we had the Taraluna dump $3.5 billion in a few hours, not even a few days. And so we know what the bottom is. The bottom, under all circumstances, is $25,500 for Bitcoin and about $18.50 for Ethereum. And again, all these coins already moved from the weak hands to the strong hands. Anyone who was on margin got liquidated. Anyone who was a tourist bought a ticket and is flying back to fiat land. So now all these coins have moved to strong hands. And every day, new people, more than ever, are joining. You can look at the number of accounts being open. You can look at the users with large balances. They're all accumulating. So when you are going through a flash crash like this, you're basically taking out, there's no more sellers, right? There are very, very few sellers. And all that remains are buyers, right? So because of that, you're going to reach new all-time highs. Now, again, I might be wrong on 2022 and it might be 2023, but my point is that sooner or later, you're going to see the decoupling between what's happening in the stock market and between what's happening everywhere else. And again, we talked about it before, how the crypto market is watching the stock market. The stock market is watching the Fed. The Fed is watching inflation. And the minute we start seeing lower numbers on inflation, right? The next month, we just had a number. It was lower, 8.3 versus 8.5. We're already lower than the previous high bar, high water mark for inflation. The next number should be 8 or 8.1. Then it's going to be 7. something. The minute the Fed starts seeing that, they're going to be much more comfortable at pulling back, not doing as many rate hikes, not pressing on quantitative tightening, QT versus QE. And all of that is very good for Bitcoin. If you go back to March 2020 and you look at what was the first market to recover, it was not the stock market. It was not the commodities markets or the bond market. Crypto was the first market to recover after the drawdown. So because of all these things and the five winters that I went through in my career, crypto winters, that's what I'm predicting. Yeah. So we've been right in just that predicting. No, it sounds good. I hope you're right. I mean, I've been, I think we've had about, you've had like a couple more or one or two more crypto winners than I have, but we've been here and we know how it goes. But I got to tell you, man, I got to tell you, when we take a look at this, I mean, look, the CPI is going to come out every month, the PPI was the leading indicator. And then of course, the Fed's going to come out and here's the dates for all their different meetings. I just see these dates as, and I hope you're right. I hope it comes down because the CPI numbers weren't that there was a little bit elevated than what they thought. So if it is right and it comes down, yeah, maybe you can actually work out all of this is already priced in to the numbers. It's priced into the NASDAQ. It's already priced into Bitcoin. None of this stuff is new news, right? So again, we have the inflation monster. If think about it as a dragon, right? It's a dragon with three heads. And we just say the dragon. Every month it goes by. The rates are lower. That's us laying one head of the dragon. We just need three months, consistently three months of lower inflation numbers. Yeah. Well, I'll say, I mean, people, I've heard that too. It's all priced in. And I hope you're right. But I remember that when Jerome Powell came and spoke with the Volcker Institute, he talked about Volcker, the former Fed chairman, and he said, this is what we need to do. And it was a pretty, not like a soft landing they talked about. Once that happened, the prices did drop, but they recovered. And I think it comes out of this in the long run. Does it really, really matter? I think in the next three to five years, that's more of the investor, which is more the people that you're going for, more of the people that are on this channel. But I just, I hope that you're right. I just don't see it right now. And especially with like these crazy numbers, like the price to earnings ratios, you know, Apple in March, 17x, 30x, 23x, the Fed gets in there, they buy these ETFs, they print the money. I just don't think that these inflated prices, I agree with you that people are going to get out of equities like you did. And like, well, I don't really go into equities that much. But where is that money going to find a home? We can all say crypto, and I hope it is, but I just not for sure. And that's why I DCA every day and do some other large things every week. But that's what we got. Okay. So the last one, any advice or any investment opinion? We can't give advice here, right? Any investment opinion for the for the recent investors, especially the ones that got in 2022?  But the people in the last five drawdowns, last five winters, crypto winters felt exactly the same way. And yet each one of them is still above the prices that they paid. The high for the last market, the peak for the last market 2017 was 20,000.  But then it went to 65,000, right? So all you have to do is decide, okay, how much exposure do I have? Do I want to add to it? Or I'm just sticking with what I have and diversify, right? So if you have too much, then you need to sell. You need to reduce your exposure. If you're not sleeping at night, you need to sell right now and take the loss. Because it's more important that you have a piece of mind, then you try to become a millionaire or a billionaire just because you think it's going in this direction or that direction. Yeah. And if Alex is right, everything's going to be pretty good. And if I'm right, you're going to get some pretty great discounts. So in all honesty, if you just take a look at Alex's investment opinion there, which is if you're overstretched, maybe you shouldn't be so stretched. And then maybe you can just slowly get into it. I think it's a winner of a situation no matter which way or who's right in this situation. Alex, thanks so much for being on the show. I think the fifth time. Rob, thanks for educating everybody. I think you're doing God's work, taking your time and making sure that people are thoughtful, that they learn about the issues, and then they can go and make the best decisions for themselves. So I really appreciate the content that you create. And I watch it regularly. So thanks for having me back. All right. Thank you. All right, everybody, let's jump back. Great. So there it was. So that, of course, was the pre-recorded video. I want to say thanks again to Alex for stopping by. That was good. I like when he comes on and answers some questions. There's some things I looked at the chat. People have some more questions about, and we will go over that. But before we do that, I just want to do a Voyager quick take and talk about Celsius liquidations and whose fault those are. So there was a part in there when Alex was talking about BlockFi and Nexo, and they've all agreed that they're not going to lend out or rehypothecate. And he's right on those platforms. But I had on Steve Urlich, he's the CEO of Voyager. And when we were talking these things, I could have sworn he said a specific not overlay or what they were actually doing or what they were continuing doing. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to, this is a, it's less than a minute, and it's Steve talking about how they're actually still giving yield to customers. Now, mind you, Voyager is only in the United States right now, but this is what they are doing. This again was only, well that wasn't a week ago, it was probably about three big sales. This is before the European Europe trip. So just take a listen to this. But we differ from those guys in quite a few different ways. One, probably the most important way we think is what we do with the assets. We strictly lend the assets to major parties where others were actually prop trading and they were actually, you know, I think Block 5 might have had 5% of GBTC at one point in time. And people are doing things with derivatives on that. We haven't done any of that. And we believe they're customer assets. So the way to generate the rewards was to lend them out. To me, I think the differences are, as I said, how we do the assets, how we talk to customers, our information that we put out there. I think one of those parties didn't, you know, didn't properly disclose or said that they were fully collateralized when they weren't. You know, we lend it. That's what we do. And so we think there's significant differences. Yeah. So there you go. Again, I'll have Steve back on. As far as I understand, they're still getting yield as opposed to some other ones. But that's, that's what we have. And just want to do that little quick take. And lastly, I want to talk to you about Celsius liquidations and what's going on because people didn't get liquidated as things were, were going, were going down. Now, as you know, I haven't been here for a while. I've been over, took a trip over to Europe to go to talk at guys events and meet some people from Swissborg was excellent and do a little traveling throughout Italy and France. So during that time, I got margin called for my Celsius loan, which I took a loan out on Ethereum because if you'd watched the video where we had purchased a home in Puerto Rico, we had used that loan to fund the entire purchase of a home in Puerto Rico. And then, of course, we use that as an asset because we do short term rental. So it's not a for us, it's houses aren't really liabilities for us. They're actually a generating asset because we put them on Verbo and Airbnb and things like that. Anyhow, so we have, we've had multiple we've had multiple margin calls throughout the time because when I did that, it was around end of November early December, when I did the loan. And I think Ethereum was probably, correct me if I'm wrong, we're 3400, 3600. And of course, as the price goes down, you get margin calls. So you got to reallocate not funds, but more Ethereum for more collateral and more and more and more and more. And especially as it starts to drop down. And Celsius does a great job. They notify you like every single hour, like, hey, you are outside the margin. And you have to, you know, put more in. And I was doing that, I was doing that. And then as time went on, I thought I was fine. I didn't check some things. And over a span of 72 hours, I was traveling and really just not paying attention. I got liquidated my entire loan. And that happened to all of my Ethereum. And it is now liquidated and sold. And that's what happened to me. So I want to tell you whose fault is that? That's my fault. That's my fault for making that mistake and not being on top of it. A lot of people will blame somebody else. And it's nobody's fault on my own. That was just it. And I Alex is on the show and I could have just said, Hey, man, could you do me a solid and undo that? But why would I get any kind of special privilege? I didn't even bring it up. So I'm just telling you right now, just to show you that one, be responsible. And two, if you're going to do these things and you're going to take loans out. See, for me, to take that loan out and put that into a generating income asset like a home, it's not so big of a thing because we're still going to generate funds and it's all okay.  But that's not the thing. And also remember that when you get liquidated, some of those Ethereum were from after I actually moved to Puerto Rico. So those that I moved after Puerto Rico, those will not be taxed because that's Puerto Rican law for taxes. But the ones that I accumulated in the United States, I will have to pay a short term capital gains tax because I was liquidated. And that's exactly what happened.  Oh, they won't. No, they won't. Trust me, I'm pretty sure they knew exactly who I was.  My fault. So that's what we got. And that's what's happening in my world. Now let's go into a little Q&A and take it from there. Shall we? All right, that was fun. So I had some starred ones I want to show to everybody. These are pretty good. Guitar Noah says, Hey guys, just got back from vacation about ready to retire early. I'm going to cash in my 156,000 Luna. I haven't checked in about a week, but they ship me worth at least $1,000. Yeah, that's funny, man. And then I had put out a tweet that I had the interview with Alex on Twitter, following me at news asset. And someone said, and I said, I'm with Chewy. Chewy's fine. Chewy's my dog. I just got done with lymphoma treatment. Now he did a blood draw. He's just doing great. So here it gets into the more annuity gritty. So here's a great question from Palmic. How safe is it to earn yield on Bitcoin with Celsius? Well, first of all, if you're, like I said in the video, if you're not an accredited investor and you're in the United States, you're not going to earn squat because you're not an accredited investor. Now if you are an accredited investor in the United States, you can still earn yield. I still feel it's quite safe. The thing has happened so far. Hasn't been hacked. There hasn't been different issues. Well, we'll get to that in a second. So you'll be okay. And of course, globally, you can do whatever you want to. But I must stress, stress this enough. Nobody is 100% perfect. If you have any inclination or you smell anything wrong or you just don't feel like something is right and you trust your gut, then don't put it in Celsius. Just keep it on a cold storage wallet and then forget about it. And that's it. And that's, that's of course Bitcoin. On some coins, this is the problem with putting in cold storage and just forgetting about it. Sometimes there's like token swaps. And you're like, and if you don't pay attention, you miss the swap, like I did for zero token, I lost like a five to 10,000.  So just be aware of those types of things that could actually happen. Great. Rob, do you still trust Celsius for your funds? Yeah, but you know, after the, the Luna situation, I'm getting more and more risk aversive. So I be honest with you, I pulled some out. And I don't think that's, that's just me. Because I mean, I see the things that are happening. Even if we talk about do your own research and research, I guarantee a lot of people took a look at that at Luna and said, this looks pretty solid. And then some people out of Beck are black. What is the guy's name he's like, Nope, that's not a good project. And it is what it is. So I just want to be safer. It's not how much you make in investments. It's how much you keep. And then many says Cardano is the future. Hey, man, I gotta tell you, how many times has Cardano been down? How many times has Cardano been hacked? How many times has Cardano not meet their goals? Okay, you got me on that one. But you know, you see what I mean. All right, see, Molina says Alex is always available for the community. That is true. And I'm glad he came on because he's just like, Hey, I think there's a lot of problems and a lot of fun going on. And also people are scared because he we even talked after the show. And he's like, you know, the fear and greed index is nine. I was like, I had no idea. He said, I've never seen that nine and he's been crypto longer than I have. And I was like, Yeah, never have myself. So the fear and greed index is at nine. That if it's not capitulation, I don't know what is. And then Phantom says, I was swing trading off what wrapped Luna and Tara Luna, I feel so bad. They, you know, gonna be do the D gen play right ahead. And then someone else says, Mrs. Can you ask Alex, I have a pending soul transaction for five figures since Thursday, May 12th, I called Celsius three times email more, and they want to video my account, even the pending transaction on their side. So what I would do is if you have a Twitter account, put in that exact same message, tag me at news asset and I'll tag them and we'll see what we can do. Camera guy says, everything's a Ponzi. I do believe that's true. DJ says, I'm not accredited. Can I still comment? You can still comment. And then Dolph says, it makes a good point. Celsius security is built and proactively managed on military standards. So far has never been hacked. So far has never been hacked. That's true. Got to give it to him. Guitar. I realized this past week that I have a right to call myself a master genius level crypto expert compared to most crypto YouTuber and Twitter influencer. Probably true. Yeah, like I, my favorite saying these days is from Socrates. I know nothing the older I get. I realize I, how much I do not know how much is actually out there. Jason says no one accepts accredited investors need any yield except we're staking ETH somewhere like in Kraken. All of the yield accounts have been stopped for normal folks. Why is that? It's because first of all, that's, that's, that's America. That's not everywhere. Just so you know that. So the regulators were cracking down on the nexos, the block fight, and the Celsiuses and said, look, we don't like what you're doing. And when I look at these things, correct me if I'm wrong. Aren't they all doing loans? Celsius next nexo and block fight.  I don't know if that's something to it. Correct me if I'm wrong in the comment section. But yeah, it's regulators coming down and saying, stop doing that. And they want to see a bunch of stuff. Jackal says I'm sick of the s coins. Hopefully the regular is going to clean it up. Me too, man. Me too. And this market can truly grow. Look, a lot of things got to, got to fall to the wayside for us to get out of here. And that's what bear markets are for. Yeah. MS says, Rob, help me. I just keep seeing Rob help me. I don't know what exactly you want. Maybe you can put that in the comment section. And then when rock, when rock says, yeah, the government's going to clean things up. They do such a great job. So I will say this like regulation, I know a lot of people on my channel aren't like I talk about it. And it's like the most unpopular thing. And I still talk about it because I have a problem in my head that I just can't stop. And I will say this. Some regulation is pretty awful. Let's be honest, but there's some regulation.  Look, sometimes they do get it right. Like there's this thing called OSHA, Occupation, Self Safety and Health Act. This is the 1970 sign of law by Nixon. And it came into pass because in the 1960s, there was a two or no, five X increase in the amount of workplace deaths and illnesses, you know, things like asbestos and things that they shouldn't really be around. And of course, the corporations weren't going to help you because they're all about profit. Government did step in and go, look, you got to make this safe because people are dying way too much. And then of course, cancer rates went up and there was different problems with insurance, whatever. So with OSHA, I think they kind of got that right. Now, did they overstep at some point? Sure. Because who's who's really going to be perfect? But I think, I mean, just for stable coins, if they're going to say, look, show us what you're backed by and let's see the books, okay, good, you're good to go. That's it. It's like, it's like restaurants. Jesus. You know, like, I mean, there's the food inspectors, health and food inspectors. They're not going to be like, well, you're just going to leave that meat out for 10 days. Sounds good to me. Now they go in there and just make sure that it's okay so people don't get salmonella and puke their brains out. I'm just saying, Regulation Ken has his place. Anyhow. Hey, one mole, let's hear. I haven't seen you in a long time, buddy. What's up? Ain't the herb says, Rob, you said you dropped out of Celsius when they want accredited? No. Exactly what I said was, I wasn't going to put the paperwork in to be qualified as an accredited investor. Now I could, but to me, I'm like, what does that do for me? Because a lot of the people that watch this are not accredited investors. So like, I'm just going to gain the yield and let you guys just lay in a squalor. And then someone said, no, no, no, Rob, just get, be an accredited investor and then donate to charity. Like, no. So if I can't do it on a platform, right, I'm just going to take my money someplace else and just use someplace where I am.  And that's why I was asking Alex about the accredited investor status and what the regulators want to see. So that's it. And then for everybody who says there's a problem with Celsius as another person says, my Celsius transfers are fine. Moving parts to Cold Wall. I've been doing this for a while now. Yeah. But then on the flip side, hey, five days waiting for Solana and they're being difficult. Got you. And then Alex Kimmerle, who asked this question 20 times, I appreciate your tenacity says question, what's your strategy in a five sigma crypto moonshot? Do you have institutional borrowers include call options and collateral or hedge in Celsius? How to stop clients, rug, pull coins on you. So I asked a specific question to Alex because I'm like, are you doing a fractional reserve lending? Meaning when I give you my crypto and it just sits there, right? Are you lending it out just like what a bank would do and not ask for any collateral? He's like, no, we ask for collateral. But let's be honest, there's some multi-billion dollar institutions where we're not going to require as much collateral as say an institution that maybe has like only $500 million or whatever assets that are management that they do have. So he goes, yes, we're going to ask for collateral. And when those things come in, we're going to margin call you. And if you don't pay up, we're going to liquidate you. Happen to me, like I just talked about. So if you think there's like comes to kind of sweetheart deals, maybe I don't have the books. I don't know what's what's going on.  Another question, how much USC did Celsius have? I don't know if this is the thing, but I asked him that specific question. I want to make a crystal clear. I said, Alex, when you were in this situation, when did you figure out this was like like a bad deal for your investments for Tara? Now, I believe I said USD. And he says, no, no, you didn't hear me. We didn't do anything with them. We didn't invest in Tara. We didn't give him anything like that. We didn't have on the books. So if they were staking, I mean, that's that said, they'd be the same thing as if they had it. But he says, we didn't have it. We didn't get into it. We didn't loan out to it. So I can ask him again. But that's what it is. All right. And then Dutch says, Alex, talk about the mining EPO. This is one of those things that we talked off-camera, and we forgot to talk about, which is they are Celsius into the Bitcoin mining operation. So right now they were generating revenue from Bitcoin mining, which I think is a pretty good stance. And it's quite lucrative to do it the right way. So there was a news release just came out, they're going to do a mining IPO and generate a bunch of revenue and good for them. But Alex said he couldn't really talk about that because, of course, the SEC would be down his throat. So I'll just mention right there. Also, he did say, which I had no clue, that you can now buy crypto on Celsius in 40 states. And I think it's like super low for the rights. I don't know. I haven't done it yet. So I can't tell you what it is.  So I did that talk to him about that. And I could have him on again. Hopefully I answer your question. Tale says, ask him how it's USD. They added some of questions. Zero is gone. Again, I believe he said they didn't have any type of investment into it. They didn't loan anything out to Doquan and those other things. So what I miss. I'm okay, Rob. Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome, buddy. All right. In a three Sigma moonshot, the collateral won't cover the loan. So please explain to me what you're talking about. Exactly. So three Sigma moonshot. I'd like to know exactly this. You know what? So here's the thing. If you don't feel like it's for you, don't invest into it. So Alex, I think you've got, you've already made up your mind, essentially. Maybe you're in between. I have no idea. So don't invest into it and tell everybody to not invest in a Celsius if you think that is what it is. Okay. I think that's it. It was an expensive trip. But again, you know what? Who knows might be a good thing. We can actually go down. Maybe I'll pick it up for a little bit better or maybe, you know, honestly, still a pretty good deal. I was picking up, I was picking up Ethereum for like 100, 150 bucks back in 2018, 2019. So sure, whatever. And again, I like those assets that actually generate revenue like houses, which I would not, I would not advise to invest into now. All right, everybody. So we're coming up on the hour. I think that's pretty good. And that's all we got. So if you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up. If not, give it a thumbs down. Just let me know why and go from there. Subscribe, all that great stuff. And everybody, thanks for being positive in the comments. I appreciate it. I'll see you in the next one.


Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante from Wikibon and this is theCUBE. We come to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. We're here at the tug event, the seventh annual wine event. A lot of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, cool people hanging out. And we caught up with Phil Borgard, who's the CEO of a company called Objective Logistics. Wait until you hear what these guys do. Phil, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So tell us a little bit about the company. We were talking off camera. It's a great idea and I want to learn more about it. Thanks, I really appreciate that. So essentially what we do at Objective Logistics is we dig our hands into POS systems and restaurants and retail environments. They're really the computers that you see your waiters or waitresses typing your order into. And they house just an absolutely amazing amount of data on transactions, guests, and also the servers. So what we do is we rank every waiter, waitress or retail salesperson based on their performance and automatically reward the best performers with their choice of shifts, sections, non-monetary compensation. So we really try to create meritocracies in these work environments and these high turnover workforces because we see waiters and waitresses as some of the largest sales forces in the world when it comes down to it. And it's based off of commissions or tips. So in order to provide guests with the best experience possible, you got to make sure that no matter how, and I mean this is the restaurant industry, no matter how hungover anybody is or if they had a bad night the night before that they're at the top of their game that next day giving the customers the best experience. And our software figures out who those people are. So it's really kind of money ball and freakonomics of these different workforces. It's a phenomenal idea. I mean you're absolutely right. When you think about a good waiter or waitress that essentially upsells you or at least helps you understand their product and your needs and understand the customer. I mean it's a brilliant idea. Are you an economist or are you a geek? I guess I'm a little bit of both. I mean I worked in restaurants from the age of 14 and on until I was about 21. My parents really never believed in just giving me things. I was working to get a car at the age of 14 washing dishes. And then I went off to the Wharton School at U Penn to study applied math and microeconomics. So I guess I'm a little bit of both. But I took a very deep liking to game theory, Nash's work and microeconomic concepts of eliminating deadweight loss, maximizing efficiency and utility and ergo leaderboards and really creating meritocracies. The reason I love this idea so much is you're right. I mean essentially waitresses are a sales force and you talk that it's a non-monetary but it's commission based but it's non-monetary incentives. But the incentives that you're offering in some regards directly affect their compensation because you mentioned shifts for example. So if I understand it right, the winner can pick the choice shifts and that's where you're going to make the most money, right? So in most places, I mean, it's based off of tenure and complacency. Somebody's been there for a long time therefore they've earned Friday night shifts. We're saying that's wrong when it comes down to it. You don't want David Ortiz batting ninth in your lineup.  It's the same thing for servers. When you have a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new server coming in who really wants to work their butt off and earn the tips on a Friday night, which, by the way, can be the difference of about $900 in the city of Boston in cash. The difference between a Monday day shift and a Friday night shift at, say, a game on in Boston is $900 in cash. And far be it for me to say, but I'm not entirely sure that all of that's being claimed on taxes either. So I mean, it's a very lucrative business. So tell me more about the company, the funding, where you guys are at with Headtown, you know, where you're headed. So currently, we've raised a seed round and a super seed round. So we're funded by Atlas Venture, Jeff Fagnan and Dustin Dolgenau. And we're also funded by Google Ventures, Rich Miner, and Lee Howard over at NextView Ventures. We've raised about $2.3 million. And, yeah, so I mean, we're doing pretty well. We're at 15 employees right now, but by the end of the year, should be anywhere between 25 and 30. Now, when did you start? I'm sorry if you said that in here. I started the company when I left an investment bank at the end of 2008 and just kind of, and you know, it was really just a rough draft of a mess of an idea. But we really started in earnest coding the product after we did some customer development and found out that we weren't totally crazy in January of 2010. Okay, so you're shipping the product, right? And you got real customers? We believe in, we believe in shipping products, we believe in real customers, and we believe in revenue. So how does it work? You essentially super glue yourself to the POS system. Is that kind of how it goes? I don't really know much about that business. Is it going to the cloud? How's that all affecting things? So POS systems are very, very old legacy technologies. And what we do is we kind of send what is kind of like the Mars rover in to pick up moon rocks for us or data. So it sits halfway on the POS and halfway in our cloud. And it translates all of this information to us that we need. And then we have a very, very nice front-end software as a service web portal where waiters and waitresses and managers can log in and all of that data is being populated and that's where they see it. On their mobile phone or on their, you know, home computer or anything else along those lines. And the users can, or the buyers can customize the incentives and there's some level of customization involved. Talk about that a little bit.  You know, because there's certain things that certain customers won't want to use. For instance, you know, different parts of the ranking. You know, you could have a customer satisfaction element like tips go into the coefficient algorithm that rates waiters and waitresses or it could just be per person average sales or it could be survey results. So we try to make sure that we make it as flexible as possible but with also, you know, you don't want to build too much software. So, you know, the simplest software in the world is the software that is the most amazing. And a good example of that is Google. It's literally, and always has been, a search bar and it populates the world for you. So if I could build one big red button that somebody could push and everything would be great in their restaurant, that's what I do. But unfortunately, it's not that easy. Now, is there a developer play here? Are you sort of interacting with the developer community or is it pretty much, you know, you guys are developing the code and working directly with the customers? Is there an ecosystem play? I don't know.  But that's a little bit of a longer pull in the tent. You know, you've got to maintain focus, especially in a small company. So we're very, very focused on our own ecosystem right now, but we'll sure as hell open source things in the future. Well, potentially there's a data play there as well, I would think. I don't know. We've had almost every major player that you can imagine in the payment space and elsewhere contacting us, asking us for access to our ability to communicate bidirectionally with the POS system. Awesome. Well, stay focused. I love the idea. Best of luck and we'll be watching. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on. Okay, this is Dave Vellante and this is theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest.


Hi, everyone. Today I'm here with a very special guest. I'm here with Lea Wall. She is the CEO of Valkyrie Investments. Valkyrie Investment is a digital asset investment firm and one of the very few funds to have launched a US Bitcoin Futures Fund. In today's interview with Lea, we will be discussing what Valkyrie Investments has in store for the future, along with the fact that the firm now has over $1 billion in assets under management and why it's so important to have green energy mining in place right now. Hi, Lea. How's it going? Good. Rachel, thanks so much for having me on. So, first question. What are the goals behind Valkyrie Investments? What problems is the company solving and kind of just go into details there for us, please? So, Valkyrie, and I guess with my shirt especially today, we're very focused on making digital assets accessible to mainstream investors through funds. So, we have our family of Bitcoin and Bitcoin adjacent ETFs, protocol trust, SESMAs, and the DeFi hedge fund. So, we're really again highly focused on taking the mystery out of investing in Bitcoin for investors that maybe are new coiners or no coiners and other digital assets to ensure that everybody's able to participate in the ecosystem. I guess it would also be useful for you to kind of explain the importance of a Bitcoin ETF and why that's important, especially now. You know, I think that a Bitcoin ETF is exceedingly important. It's definitely been a conversation that we've had since the Winklevoss first filed, right? And we've been all following this industry of when do we finally get to the holy grail of spot? I think that we can't hold our breath right now on when the Bitcoin spot ETF will be approved, although it definitely is our mission to ensure that we finally get there one day and we're fighting hard and working hard with the regulators to get there. But in the interim, you do have a variety of ETFs. You have the futures base with us, ProShares, and VanEck. You have the thematics, and there's a good amount of thematics in the space. And I think what's interesting about that is again, an ETF is a very efficient vehicle and a very familiar vehicle for a lot of institutional investors. And that's also because they slot very specifically on platforms. So they're easy to invest in for a lot of institutional investors. So there was large barriers to buy digital assets beyond just a knowledge gap. And that very much was just based on the ability to buy it within their platforms and therefore allocate for their discretionary accounts. So I think the importance of the Bitcoin ETFs from the variety, futures, equities, et cetera, being approved this year is again, just there now is access to this asset class for many folks that there simply wasn't before. So what does this year look? What does the next five years look? And when we finally get spot, I think we're not, at least I'm not a soothsayer. But I think the good opportunity is that there already are opportunities that are available to these investors. And hopefully we'll see those different ETFs morph in ways that just become more efficient, more accessible, and more optimized as new regulation passes. Can you just comment on those challenges when it comes to Bitcoin ETFs? I think that the lack of clear regulation has been one of the biggest challenges. But I do think we have an opportunity to help shape that regulation through conversations with the SEC. And they have shown a willingness to adopt the rules that foster innovation rather than stifle it. So I think that, albeit the authorities are definitely being curious and deliberate, they are making a genuine effort. So for us in the industry that love it, like us on the call, we are building the financial system of the future. We believe in this powerful asset that has so much opportunities and it's barely a decade old. If you think about just historicity, it took hundreds of years to build traditional financial markets. So this isn't going to happen overnight, but I think we just have to remain patient and assist with education. Right, definitely. In terms of things specific that Valkyrie is doing with education, and maybe I don't know if you're even working with the regulators, can you kind of discuss some of those initiatives that you may have in place right now? We have been in conversations with the regulators. We filed our Bitcoin spot ETF way back in January 22 of last year. So we've been in the race a good deal at this point. And they've been very receptive. So from simply conversations to some of the more formal education that we provided Valkyrie, we do webinars for financial advisors. That's weekly. We do content pieces from our CIO. We have two different podcasts. We do as much as we possibly can. And that really spans both granular looks at various technology pieces of the ecosystem. And we call that our spotlight series to also financial trading and markets. And we do our analysis from Josh, our head of research to again, more of the high level macroeconomic from the seat of the CIO. And then again, these these webinar series that are specifically targeted and for financial advisors and RA's. And they're an interesting format because the financial advisor and RA is asking our CIO all the questions that they have that are barring them from buying Bitcoin right now. So I think it provides a unique lens specifically for our industry of a lot of the larger pools of wealth that haven't yet bought in of to really ask, you know, the questions that they really have can voice their concerns. And that's maybe some of the more impactful education that we try to provide. Right. And that's so important. Leah, I don't know if you can kind of maybe just give an example of what some of those questions are just on a very basic general level. But I'd be curious to know because, you know, it's always good to know what the traditional world of finance is thinking when it comes to buying Bitcoin and other digital assets. Absolutely. Well, you know, the common question is still around volatility. And how do you allocate accordingly? An interesting aspect of where we are right now in portfolio management is that the typical structure of a portfolio is definitely seen as bunk. So there is this opportunity where financial advisors, RA's and other money managers understand that especially given the fixed income state that we're in right now, that we need to create a new paradigm and really a paradigm shift for what portfolios look like. So the questions really do get granular of how do I even think about this from a 60-40 perspective? Is it, you know, really classified as an alternative investment? And if so, how should I even think about it within that strata of an asset class? Is it akin to venture capital with liquidity as an example? So from how to buy it to how do I allocate to it to some of the more basic questions of simply what is Bitcoin? And I've heard the question, is Ethereum also Bitcoin? So there's also just some very basic questions that still need to be answered. And I think sometimes in our industry, we believe and expect a lot of individuals to be as far down the rabbit hole as we may be. But really, some of the conversations are still at the very basic level. I also recently read, I think it was on your Twitter, that Valkyrie recently announced that it passed $1 billion in assets under management. So what does that mean for the crypto space in general? I think simply put, the crypto space is growing. You know, I think that again, since we are an asset manager, it shows that institutional interest is absolutely growing. It was definitely a stark difference from when Stephen and I co-founded Valkyrie and were desperately pitching various platforms to speak to us about our funds last year to what the end of the year looked like and the various conversations that we were able to have with legacy institutional players who were legitimately trying to figure out their crypto strategy and they still are. So I think as a whole for the crypto industry, it's a huge sign and a huge signal that again, large pools of wealth that have been on the sidelines are definitely either buying or really very seriously looking to allocate. And as many do know, institutional investors often dip their toes in first. So I think we need to remember that it's still a marathon, not a sprint. And we do have a downturn in the market, but that doesn't mean that there aren't very large money managers who have already started their allocations and are just seeing how it works out. So if we think from a long-term perspective, I think it's very bullish indeed. Now, I've also been reading a few things about Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin mining ETFs. Can you kind of discuss that point as well? Yeah, absolutely. And ours is a little interesting because we are trying to highly focus on green energy. So specifically what we want to focus on and bring home is really battling against that negative narrative that so many media outlets and people believe that miners are using up way too much electricity. So just as an example, Bitcoin miners use more energy from renewable sources than the broader US electric grid. Not that many people outside our universe know that. It's 58% green energy versus the US grid is only 31%. As we know, they've relocated to locations where green energy sources are including wind, solar, hydroelectric. So that's Texas, Wyoming, Washington state. And really in total, Bitcoin miners are only using 0.05% of the global energy consumption. So you're absolutely right. Bitcoin miners, ETFs, there's a few, we were very excited to throw our hat in the ring. And we definitely wanted to focus on educating the public through this ETF on the renewable sources that Bitcoin miners are focused on as well. I have heard though that infrastructure and all of that can be challenging when it comes to mining. I don't know if you have any thoughts on the challenges there, but if you do feel free to shed some insights on that. There definitely are challenges, but I think what's interesting about especially our industry and miners is just how nimble they've shown themselves to be, whether it's moving from full nation states such as China, or again, moving very quickly to other sources of cheaper electricity, whether it's a hydroelectric plant in upstate New York, et cetera. So I think that there definitely are challenges. And again, I think that's also related to us having a nascent industry with who knows what miners will look like in five to 10 years. But I am still bullish because I think that miners especially have shown their elasticity to move to places that are more favorable to their operations. We're also seeing a trend right now of Bitcoin mining companies going public. Do you have any thoughts on that? I think that the trend is going to continue and I think it's a very interesting play. Obviously, going public provides a great opportunity for liquidity. And as we know, these companies are expanding exponentially. So I think that at least from a Valkyrie perspective, we are taking a very close look at who may be going public this year and how, of course, the companies that are currently listed are doing. But it does make sense again in such a high growth market with large op costs to take advantage of that opportunity. Of course, I have to ask you about your thoughts on NFTs and Web3 because that's the trend that we're seeing right now. So what are your thoughts on the NFT space? I think that there's a lot of potential in this space, but also a lot of misunderstanding. So artists, musicians, writers, athletes, sports teams, and others can use NFTs to monetize their work through new revenue streams previously unavailable. They can connect directly with their fans and potentially provide unique content and experiences. But really, we're only at the very beginning of NFTs and there's a long way to go. And we think, I definitely think so, that the potential is limitless. I just think that there's sometimes a lot of confusion around NFTs versus Web3, which is obviously very different and the metaverse. And a lot of that is being lumped into one, which again, as we know from being in the crypto ecosystem, that often can happen. And it definitely takes a little time to start to differentiate the various projects and how they are different. Can you just explain how they are different? Because for instance, when we think of NFTs, or a lot of the times, we think of NFTs, we see some of these metaverse platforms incorporating those NFTs into those platforms. So for instance, wearables or swords with different types of powers. So how can we differentiate between NFTs in the Web3 space, in your opinion? I think that Web3 is a decentralized internet. And I think the metaverse is a series of virtual worlds. So if I try to distill it down, a lot of investment has gone into Web3 platforms. I think that the metaverse is actually much more important. So I think that many people do confuse those two and often associate them with each other, but they are different. And a fully decentralized internet will definitely take quite a while to recognize and realize from a technological standpoint. But the metaverse already exists and has already become quite lucrative. If you look at J.P. Morgan opening a branch in the metaverse to the Bahamas, open to virtual embassy, and obviously Facebook pivoted entirely to becoming a metaverse company. I think that those use cases are already here. I mean, I think, though, we also have to consider, because it's interesting, you mentioned about J.P. Morgan, and there will be, I believe, more banks, traditional banks, coming into the metaverse and opening branches there. But it's still, there's this lack of regulation, which I think would make it very difficult for these traditional financial players to enter the metaverse. What are your thoughts on that? I think that that's probably true. And I think that probably goes back to our previous conversation about lack of regulatory clarity. So definitely interesting point and something we'll be watching as well. I think that more and more legacy players will attempt to utilize this opportunity of people being very interested in the metaverse and wanting to engage in the metaverse. So it will be interesting when more regulations come down the bike. I know that one question all of us may be wondering is now that institutions are getting involved with crypto, is centralization kind of being exposed or is crypto still decentralized? What are your thoughts on that? I think that that's a tough question and the right question. I think that Bitcoin will always be decentralized, no and ifs or buts. And I think that that's what we love about it. I think, though, that as more institutions start to get involved and as more regulation starts to be crafted, I think that there will be a tendency for centralization across a couple of the projects for sure that I think will understand that they can find more opportunities by being more centralized. But in regards to Bitcoin, I'm not so concerned, even if they're put in a regulated wrapper. Of course, I have to ask you, what is your Bitcoin price prediction for 2022? Always a good question. We are thinking that around 70K by the end of the year, we are bullish. However, right now the environment is just not great. We're very much watching traditional equities and Bitcoin is still a risk off and altcoins typically perform even worse than Bitcoin as we've seen in the past. So we're very much watching for more March 12th types of events, but we are very bullish for the second half of the year and especially Q4. So sounds like we should just hold tight, but we're shooting for 70K by the end of the year. Guys, thanks so much for having me on and have a great day and thanks again.


Sun do not let attention seeking women into your life don't get into an LTR with women that seek attention for men fellas if her social media accounts aren't private and she isn't using it to run a business sell a product or service then she is seeking external attention and validation.  Don't let these women into your lives they're not LTR material they're a plate to spin at best and that is all you will save a lot of time aggravation staying away from these sorts of women. This is kind of how women and men differ when it comes to using cameras guys pointed out to the world women pointed to themselves all you got to do is go to Instagram and search hashtag selfie that's over 300 million posts and they're all the same.


From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Conga Connect West 2018. Brought to you by Conga. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're coming to the end of a long day here at the Conga Connect West event. It's at the Thirsty Bear, just a couple doors down from Moscone South. And as you can see behind me, the silent disco has begun. You can't hear it, but they're all dancing. So we're excited to have our next guest. He's Steve DiMarco, the Chief Revenue Officer of Conga. Steve, great to see you. Great to be here, Jeff, thanks. So how about your first week of the job you get to come on theCUBE? Not a bad deal. It's fantastic. No, I'm a big fan of you guys, and it's great to be here. Thank you, and they're spending all your money on this big expensive party. I know, I better go sell something. You better sell something. Yeah, absolutely. You just started, I'm teasing you, but what attracted you? You've been in the Valley for a long time. You've seen a lot of opportunities. What attracted you to Conga? Well, so I've known these guys for a while. I know Matt Schiltz, our CEO, and Bob DeSantis. Those guys are veterans, and I've known them for a while. I've known of Conga for a while. I know what they do. I know how they help customers. And when the opportunity came up to join them, I mean, I jumped at it. It's kind of my dream job, to be honest with you. Oh, that's awesome. You know what they sell, helping customers be more productive. They have a great customer base, fantastic products, great reputation. I mean, I don't want to oversell it, but it was an easy decision. Yeah, well, there's a lot of good stuff going on. Like you say, they're attached to this rocket ship that's got a 65-story building just down the street. That's right. So that's a good one, too, to attach to, and really playing in a good space. Yeah, that's it. I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem and with one company or another for about 13 years now. And so I'm really familiar with Salesforce and the partner opportunities here. So, yeah, it was a perfect fit for me. Good. So I want to take it up a notch and talk about something I think that's pretty special and under-reported. And that's really when you've got an ongoing relationship and like a SaaS relationship. When you're paying monthly or annually or whatever your payment rate is, it's a very different kind of a conversation, customer-vendor relationship. And if I ship you some software, I send it off and then I'll see you in 12 months for the 15%. Fundamentally different way of being kind of associated with a customer. Yeah, well, me, like a lot of other veterans in the technology started out selling software products as a perpetual license, right? And we would go and try and get a big check upfront and then whether the customer used the software or not, we didn't care. We got all our money upfront. Salesforce is one of the pioneers of the cloud solution or delivering it as a SaaS solution. And it really, SaaS really puts the power in the customer's hands because you don't get all that money upfront. They pay for it as a subscription.  That's a very powerful concept. So vendors like Conga have to continuously improve our product and make our customers happy period after period after period in order to keep them renewing. And so it's a great concept, puts the power in the customer's hands and it really pushes us to be better for our customers. You know, we heard that a story earlier today with one of your customers was talking about successful implementation they had on the document creation system, but then they wanted to get into a new product which you guys, I think the contract system was so early, hadn't even delivered it. But she said to her boss, hey, listen, I trust these guys. They're not going to let me hang. So I'm willing to take that bet. We need this and this is a partner that I feel comfortable in making this investment. I mean, that Jeff, that's just a testament to Conga's place in the market. They've been doing this for many years. They have thousands and thousands of extremely happy customers. Customers trust us. Customers trust Conga. That was another big attraction to me. You know, and so for a customer to be able to take that kind of a leap with a vendor, it's a very special thing, but Conga's reputation precedes itself and that's how our customers feel about us. Right, and also Salesforce knew you were coming so they baked a couple of your core products into their core products. That's right. That worked out pretty well. That's huge. Salesforce, I've known them for now for 12, 15 years. They don't do that. They do not do that very often. I mean, you can count on one hand how many partners they've actually baked into their product set and so it's a special relationship we have with Salesforce. We're proud of it, but it's going to be a really good thing for them and their customers working with Conga in that capacity. So the last question, like I said, I think you've been here a week, you said. You're just getting going. So what are some of your priorities you're coming in, fresh breath of air? You know, a lot of enthusiasm as you look forward. What are some of the stuff that you're itching to get to work on? We're going to expand our partnerships with our ISI partners, our systems integrator partners. We're going to continue to work really closely with Salesforce. I mean, it's all about growth. Grow, grow, grow. You know, we have a great sales team today. We're going to really attack the market. We've got some great competition out there. So we're going to face them and it's going to be a lot of fun. All right. Well, Steve, thanks for taking a few minutes of your time. I'll let you get back to the customers, the party, get some headphones on and start dancing. All right, thank you. I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Conga Connect West at Salesforce. Thanks for watching. See you next time.


Hello students, welcome to Centrum Academy YouTube channel. So today we have brought for you a very very good question a very very nice question on coordinate geometry topic So let's first read the question and then attempt to solve it So the question says from an external point P pair of tangent lines are drawn to the parabola y square is equal to 4x if theta 1 and theta 2 be the inclination of these tangents with the axis of x Such that theta 1 plus theta 2 is equal to pi by 4 Then which of the following options represents the locus of the point P? So essentially it's a question where the idea of pair of tangents is involved and we have also been provided with the concept of angle of inclinations So let us first quickly recap these two concepts for Eric Koenig The pair of tangents is given by a general equation t square is equal to s s 1 I'm assuming all my viewers are only aware of what T s and s 1 stands for Now we have also been given the angle of inclination of these two Pair of tangents or the two tangents which basically constitute the pair So we know that m 1 is equal to tan of theta 1 and m 2 is equal to tan of theta 2 Right, so now theta 1 and theta 2 are related to each other by the fact that theta 1 plus theta 2 is equal to pi by 4 Okay, so can I say one thing that if this is true then tan of theta 1 plus theta 2 would actually be tan of pi by 4 Which is 1 and this further expands as per the compound angle identity of tan theta 1 plus theta 2 as this tan theta 1 plus tan theta 2 divided by 1 minus tan theta 1 tan theta 2 right So in short what is given to you as the locus condition that m 1 plus m 2 Divided by 1 minus m 1 m 2 is equal to 1 Let's call this locus condition to be c because this will be of great use to us while finding the locus Alright, now let's move on to get the pair of tangents equation by using our General equation which I am showing you with this cloud So let us first assume the point let the point P be h comma k because without this We will not be able to write our t and s 1 So what is t when I'm assuming the point P to be h comma k? So t expression will be y y 1 in this case our y 1 is k minus 2 x plus x 1 in this case it is h So this is our expression for t. What is s s is y square minus 4x?  How let's see So I have to first write down this equation that you see on your screen circle with a box in terms of our x square x y y square and of course the last three terms are Insignificant for me. So I will not be wasting time finding that out So let's find out the coefficient of x square from here. So coefficient of x square will be for Okay, what will be the coefficient of x y so please note that x y will be formed from only the left-hand side term over here Which I'm showing with a square basis in the base. So this will give you the coefficient of x y as minus 4k Right and what about coefficient of y square coefficient of y square will come from k square on the left side and On the right side you have negative of k square minus 4h Okay, rest of the terms we need not write because they will not contribute to our solving of the problem So now from here we end up getting the equation of the pair of tangents as 4x square minus 4k x y plus 4h y square plus some terms which are of no significance to us So m1 plus m2 from here would be negative 2h which is negative of negative 4k by b which in this case is 4h and this becomes k by h on simplification and m1 into m2 m1 into m2 would be a by b which is 4 by 4h which is nothing but 1 by h Now, let us use these in our condition number C Right, so I hope you all of you remember the condition number C which we have on the top here m1 plus m2 by 1 minus m1 m2 equal to 1. So let us use it there. So m1 plus m2 is So let me rewrite that down first Yeah, so in this condition we are going to put this so put this in this condition So we end up getting k by h divided by 1 minus 1 by h equal to 1 Which on simplification becomes k by h minus 1 equal to 1 Which means k is equal to h minus 1 or further you can write it as h minus k minus 1 equal to 0 Now time to generalize let us generalize here because we are looking for the locus So on generalization, we end up getting the equation to be x minus y minus 1 equal to 0 So this is my locus my dear friends. Let us see which option matches with this That's clearly option number C. That's clearly option number C So I hope you learned a lot of concepts to this simple problem solving Please do like subscribe and comment and press on the bell icon to get further notifications. Thank you so much