Welcome to Jalassette News, the top stories in cryptocurrency and Jalassette's and break them down to bite-sized pieces. Today, we've got some thought-provoking articles. First up, Bitcoin could surge to $3 million within five years, says Crypto Hedge Fund Manager and here's why. And I have to tell you, the reasoning he gives behind it is weak and we talked about how Bitcoin could potentially reach $500K and at first I was against it, but then we ran the numbers and made sense. But this is just plain irresponsible. Also, Brian Brooks, the acting director of the OCCO, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, states that he is against government-issued digital dollar but supports regulation of privately-issued stablecoins. This is going to go hand-in-hand with our first article and I have to tell you, this makes a ton of sense what he is talking about. And bad news for goldbugs, central banks dump gold for the first time in 10 years as precious metal drops 9% since August high. We're going to talk about what's going on with this, the whole issue behind scarcity and how I believe Bitcoin is going to massively eat into the market share of gold. It's only a matter of time. And finally, more good news for Cardano. As they reach a major milestone as far as decentralization, this Friday is going to mark the first time that they're going to have over 50% of independent mining pools. Mining the network, which means Cardano is fully decentralized. So we get to all that. Let's take a look at what's going on in the market. So today it is November 2nd. It is 1.30.  So what do we got today? So Bitcoin is down almost 2%. But up 3.8 for the 7-day average. And we're just teetering around that 13.5. Look, the presidential election is tomorrow. It's going to come out. It's going to not be resolved tomorrow. It's not going to be resolved in 24 hours after that or 40 hours. And it could take up more like a week, maybe a month. We will see. But I am expecting severe instability in this nation. I saw a report that a lot of businesses are closing up shop. They are boarding up because of the potential protests that are about to go down. And it's about to get out of it. So of course, when you have this, investors don't like this instability. And that's okay. If you want to put it into cash, if they think cash is really good for you, then that's fine. But I'm just telling you right now, this is fantastic news for me and you, because the price will go down, because of the instability. And we can pick it up for cheap. It's just one of those things. Anyhow, Ethereum also is going down. I can only tell you this. I can only see the prices going down over the next week, unless some miracle happens where one person is like a clear cut winner as far as who's going to be the president. But that's not going to happen. So Ethereum down 0.8%. Still at $3.5, not too bad. Tether is sitting around $16 billion market cap XRP, which was pegged the quarter, is now slipping. And now they're looking around $0.23. But hopefully, they make it up to that $0.25 range. Who knows? Bitcoin cash on 4%. Chain link down. You know what we should do? Let's just talk about what's up. That's probably an easier one. CDI and Leo token. Wow. NEO is up 3%. I used to own NEO a long time ago. NEM is up almost a percentage. Watch out. What else we got? Absolutely nothing. So yeah, all UMA is up 1.7%. So congratulations, UMA holders. You're up almost 2%. So again, it's going to get a little hairy around here for a while. But remember, me and you are used to this stuff, right? We've been in the game for a while. There is no uncertainties as far as what we know is going to happen. Of course, it's going to go down. Of course, it's going to be unstable. And that's okay. Because when these things happen, it's just like a little sale. Could be a little sale, could be a big sale. Don't know. But I can tell you, just watch out because there's going to be fireworks the next 48 to 72 hours. All right, let's get some good news. So Bitcoin could surge at 3 million within five years. So we did a video about Bitcoin hitting 500K. And I was like, that is just ridiculous. But then when we ran the numbers, you know, market cap calculator, we came out like, okay, you know, if Bitcoin hits to 500,000, that means that it has a $9 trillion market cap, which seems kind of ridiculous right now. But if you look at how much money there is in the world, which there is this great graphic that I show, which there is, you know, a quadrillion dollars out there that just waiting to have help from something, probably Bitcoin. And I mean, just gold alone has 11 trillion. I mean, come on, gold, how great is that?  If you created gold 20 years ago, and someone said, I said, here, you can have gold, which is 20 years old, or you can have Bitcoin about what it all does. Super portable, censorship resistance, decentralized, it's completely scarce at 21 million gold, well, you might find some more and portable, that's kind of heavy and get out. And, you know, if there's some kind of riot, well, good luck getting that out of there. And then, as far as transparent, no. So I think it, of course, it would lose. However, that's the great thing about gold. It's been around for thousands of years. Now, I personally believe everybody should have gold, silver, Bitcoin.  That's all, that's all I'm going with. But when we talk about this three million dollar price tag, I just, sometimes I just, I hate these types of articles because it gives people false hope.  So first of all, don't foam away and dollar cost average. Second of all, if it's going to, it's not going to three million. Okay. I mean, if it does, I'll be happily wrong. I'll be the first person like, Hey, you know what I was wrong, but I'm on my yacht. So I don't care. So again, I don't think it's going to happen. It does great, but I don't see it. Anyhow, stick in the article. So Morgan creep digital assets co-founder Jason Williams says Bitcoin could meteorically rise a ton. He states Bitcoin could hit one to three million dollars in the next five years. All right, sure. And his reason is is because people have no idea what it will look like when large banks and countries start holding Bitcoin in their treasury. And I'm thinking to myself, first of all, that is assuming that that will actually happen.  That is the real question because I just don't see it. I don't see it. Now I can be wrong. Let me know in the comment section, but I'm just saying it's what I see. Do I think Bitcoin could hit 500K? Yes, I do. Do I think it's probable? I'm not saying it's going to, like 100%, but it could happen. Me, personally, I'm very conservative. I see it at 150K. That's where I'm going with, and it only makes sense. It can go that high in the very near term. I'm talking like 2021. So when I'm talking about three million, I'm like, come on, come on, don't put that out. Anyhow, the crypto hedge fund manager highlights Bitcoin scarcity as a key characteristic that will attract more institutional players and continue to drive the value of the king cryptocurrency.  And of course it is very, it's not even scarce. It's finite. There's a big difference between scarcity. Gold is scarce. I mean, really, you want to think about it. It's kind of hard to find, but when you do find a lot of it, I mean, these different minds that were just discovered just this last two weeks. So sure. But I mean, it is finite. 21 million, hard cap, never going to find any more. That's it. So on that point, yeah, I totally give it away and I can see that. And that's pretty much the whole article. And I'm like, well, that's lame. So I'm like, where did they get this information? So they got this, this is from a medium article, and they had interviewed a bunch of different power players in the space. And there was a lot of good information here, and it's super long. And someone's kind of boring. Someone's going to summarize it because I don't want you to fall asleep. So this was good. This was Jeff Booth, author of Price of Tomorrow, and he states, and we know this, but the way he puts it was really good. He says, if I depict just one advantage, and there are many, it would be its portability, which will allow it to serve. He's talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin's portability will allow it to serve as a lifeboat to the coming economic storms. By portability, I mean that when governments confiscate your money, and they will, through inflation, capital controls, taxes otherwise, most people won't see it coming because of their wealth is concentrated in one currency. And you have to remember, you know, people say, well, that's only third world countries. But guess what? It happened in the United States. They came around, they took people's gold, and they said it was illegal to hold gold, and that happened in the US of A, the land of the free, the home of the brave. So if you think it can't happen, or did, and if you think it won't happen again, well, potentially it will because history likes to repeat itself. Again, I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow. I'm just saying be prepared. It is why, and then continue on, it says, it is why people get stuck as a revolution caused by failing economic conditions.  With Bitcoin, if you can remember 12 words, you can move your wealth anywhere in the world. So that's the thing about gold. If you have gold, and you're in some type of economic collapse, you're in some kind of a country where things are just going super sideways, good luck getting that gold out. Because it's not just you and the government. It's you, the government, and everybody else around you who was an economic collapse that wants exactly what you want.  So that was a great one. And I really liked that piece. And then of course, Raul Powell, he just came out with a pretty good video called the Bitcoin Life Wrap, Bretton Woods Tupano. I've watched some pieces of it. It's very interesting. You can check it out. Just Google Raul Powell, Bretton Woods, it'll come up. But what he says is what's going to come into play in our very next article. And this is interesting. It says to truly stop a recession from becoming a widespread economic collapse. It is likely that as the International Monetary Fund or IMF has already proposed, the world will become underpinned by central bank digital currencies or CBDCs. With this thesis in mind, Powell goes on a contemplate that this is because central banks want to be able to give people money directly, but they can't do that right now. And that is a scary prospect. Can you imagine a central bank that says, you know what? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to give everybody an app and we're going to send them the money over. And guess what we can do? We can track everybody and it's no big deal. It's not even like we don't even need a warrant because we can just have all the information there. Of course we can say we're not going to do it, but you know they're going to do it. Come on. Come on. So that is a non-starter for me. I just don't see it. Now, I have nothing to hide like everybody likes to say or maybe I do. Whatever. It's nobody's business of the government to look into my finances. Unless of course they're auditing me then. I can't say much because I've been through one of those. So if central banks were able to create and distribute CBDCs en masse, they would be able to theoretically expand their balance sheets forever since they would then be in charge of both creating and distributing money that governments give value to. So essentially they are the judge, jury, and executioner and they can do whatever they want. The government could step in but at that point it's kind of like a moot point because they're like, oh no, sorry. You know, we're running the show. Grab some bench. We'll call you when we need you. And of course, Raul says we would all be stuck in a new monetary system in which nothing is anonymous and behavioral economics rule the day. So this is happening right now in China. So imagine this.  CBDCs are getting issued. You're excited to get an app, but then something happens where for whatever reason you want to protest against the government. They don't like that. And what do they do? They go, well, let's take a look at Jane Smith and maybe we should shut down her account or maybe we should reduce the amount that's in there because if we can bring it to you, we can take it right back. Or what would be probably even smarter is they just do a complete audit of what you purchased and then they drag you in through the IRS or whatever agency that it is and goes, hey, we want to take a look at these trends actually doing because they look a little suspicious. They almost look like money laundering. And do you know anybody as far as like with terrorist ties? I mean, look, it's a slippery slope and it can happen real fast. That's all I'm saying. So lastly, this is the only ray of light in this whole article. He concludes is that Bitcoin is a way out of that future due to its digital scarcity and the fact that it can never be manipulated by the IMF, which is true. That is the great thing about Bitcoin. You cannot manipulate it. It is open source. There's only 21 million. You cannot create more. But with CBDCs, you can really create as much as you want to. It's only limited by your imagination. And that is a scary thing. And when I read this, I know Lagarde, whatever her name is from the IMF, they are actually going to trial a CBDC. It is all over the globe. Europe is looking into it. Australia is looking into it. Russia is looking into it. So kind of depressing. However, here's a silver lining, Brian Brooks. So Brian Brooks comes out. And if you don't know, he is the acting head of the OCC, which, you know, they just pretty much control the currency. And he says, hey, I'm against all government interference. We should stick to what the government does well, which is regulation. So we don't want to create this. And I'm like, whoa, thank God. But it's pretty interesting. Let's take a look. So Brooks says the creation of the US digital dollar is a terrible one because the government is not good at building things. I think we can all agree on that. They are too bloated. They are just too big. They're not nimble. And they can't really pivot. So why would they start to get into the innovation game?  Brooks believes tech companies, which already possess the know how to be in a much better position to issue stable digital currencies. He says the US government needs to focus on doing what it does best. What is regulation? That's debatable. But in all honesty, I mean, they're all pretty good at regulation because that's all they do. Anyhow, Brooks makes it clear that the allowing private companies to be the issuers of stablecoins does not diminish the effectiveness of the monetary policy sense and such token issued is backed by dollars that are in circulation. So he's saying, hey, we can still do it. It's just that we don't want the central banks to do it. Now, if private companies do it, that's fine. We can regulate that and it's backed by a dollar to a dollar. That's good. And maybe moving forward, maybe there is a basket of currencies and they can have some type of global CBDC. Regardless, I mean, it's a better option than just the central banks doing everything. Although the best option would be none of the above. But just like Circle and Coinbase have issued a stablecoin and not the Federal Reserve, still that stablecoin is issued with the promise that is redeemable for a dollar, all dollars in circulation are issued by the US Federal Reserve. And this was my thinking because I'm like, well, if the central banks do it and they go, okay, here's your app, Jane, and we're going to give you $1,000 or whatever it is. And that's it. So here it is, off you go. So my question is, why do we need commercial banks? Why do we need Wells Fargo? Why do we need JP Morgan? It makes no sense. Why do we need Chase? Because they're worthless at this point. So he answers this question. So when asked about the role of commercial banks, Brooke says he envisioned the financial institutions being nodes on these blockchains or themselves be issuers of stablecoins at some point. And that's interesting because that would only make sense. They could be independent nodes, just like we have nodes for Bitcoin, all these different banks throughout the country, address nodes, and they are part of the whole network of whatever CBDC it is. And what's also interesting is it talks about, they could be starting to issue stablecoins at some point. So now you're going to start to look at mergers and acquisitions, are these banks going to start to partner up or just trade out by these companies or these networks that issue Tether, USDC, name your stablecoin? I think if that's the case, you're going to see a lot of people make a lot of money. Well, I mean, companies that actually do that, but it's an interesting prospect and quite honestly, a little bit scary. And scrolling down, he makes another good point because they start to talk about the CBDCs that are being distributed right now by China and the European Union doing a stablecoin framework, which means they're going to actually distribute at some point. And he said, hey, the question is, where's the US in all this? Because all they've said is that, you know, we're really worried about any money laundering, we're really worried about terrorism, we're really worried about the illicit activities that these CBDCs play. And that's it. That's not getting into the fray. And he's, I mean, when he says right here is totally correct. Brooke explains that other countries are seeing crypto and stablecoins in particular as a strategic advantage and the US has not figured that out yet. I don't know how in the world they cannot figure this out, because there are already countries who are using stablecoins who are using Bitcoin to totally bypass sanctions that America has put on. Look, Russia and China are the same thing right now. Do you think they really want to use the US dollar and they don't want to bypass any kind of sanctions? They're like, you know what, we're okay with that. No, of course they want to do it. Of course they want to get out of it. And if the government can't see that, they are ridiculously slow and behind the times. I could be wrong, but let me know what you think in the comments section. Let's move on. Next up, this is a quick one, bad news for gold bugs, but central banks dumb gold for the first time since 2010. So what's happened? Well, a few central banks have started selling tons of gold for the first time since 2010. And of course, this is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now 1875 per ounce. Gold price are down almost 10% since it hit 2075. My man, Peter Schiff comes out and he's just like, gotta roll this guy out every time there's some kind of bad news with gold and good news of Bitcoin. But he says, if you measure the size of asset bubbles based on the level of conviction buyers have in their trade, the Bitcoin bubble is the biggest I've seen. You know what? It doesn't matter if Bitcoin goes up to $10 million per Bitcoin. Peter Schiff will come out and go, you know what? It went up too fast. Gold won't do that. Gold's super stable. It's not going to go up a million percentage points or whatever it is. He just has to say these things. And honestly, I don't know why I even talk about it anymore. He's totally irrelevant. I'm going to stop doing this. There's no point to talk about it. Anyhow, according to a report from Bloomberg, a few central banks are starting to sell gold in order to offset the disastrous economy driven by central planners and bureaucrats. And this was interesting. The World Gold Council notes that year over year, gold demand has dropped 19%. And I wonder to myself, this is the graphic I'm always talking about all the world's money. So, you know, gold is 11 trillion, right? So I wonder myself year over year it's been decreasing the amount or the demand for gold. And I think to myself, how much has I wonder how much Bitcoin has actually dug into the market cap of gold? Because, I mean, think about micro strategy. They were concerned about all the money that was on fire. And they're like, hey, we're on a melting ice cube. So if there was no Bitcoin, what would they have gone to? If they would a lot of like, well, you know, the safest other asset store of value would probably be gold. So they would probably buy in a gold square, the same thing. All the different companies that did it, same type of thing. I mean, just check these out. All these companies would have probably gone to gold. And how much do they have in total? So you're looking around 10 billion. So 10 billion, just going to gold or something else, I don't know what it is. But and this is the ones that we know about who knows who's really trading OTC and really just slowly accumulating and not saying anything. So I want the price to go up because they want to mass accumulate. That's the interesting question. So I think in the grand scheme of things, this is just bad news for gold bugs in general. Now again, gold silver Bitcoin is a pretty good play. I just don't see the massive upside potential of gold versus Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a much massive more potential. I do not think that gold is going to go from 2000 and then 10X to 20,000. However, for Bitcoin to go to 13,000 to 130,000, yeah, I can see that happening. That's 10X. Anyway, I'm moving down. So it just talks about how Russia sold their gold reserves for the first time in 13 years. Other countries include Turkey and Uzbekistan. They've also sold a ton of gold. And then this was one of the things that concerned me. It says, in fact, last year, central banks worldwide purchased the most tonnage of gold in more than 50 years. So maybe that's the whole, that's obviously the whole reason why gold went up is because the central banks go, you know what, we need that because of these economic crisis that we know was going to happen. So that number, just like the stock market, was artificially inflated by the central banks who bought up stocks, options, gold, debt, I mean, everything. And that's why I always talk about after this presidential election, doesn't matter who gets elected, the stock market will crash. I don't know if it's going to be a big dip or a little dip, but it's not going to look good. That's all I can tell you. And it states a few gold investors stressed they were terrified that central banks might dump bullion during the economic crisis. So you better believe it. It's definitely going to happen. And I don't know how far gold's going to fall. But again, still not a bad story of value. And Louis Street, the lead analyst at the WGC explained virtually all the selling is from banks who buy from domestic sources, taking advantage of the high gold price at a time when they are fiscally stretched. And the report by WGC dubbed gold demand trends for Q3 states at a greater date, demand is 10% below the same period of 2019, 10% in one year. The total supply of gold fell 3% year over year in Q3 to 1223. Just a weird comment, the total supply of gold fell. I'm guessing that is just either hoarded up or lost or something where you could not get this gold, but it already fell. So you think that if the total supply of gold fell, well, if you have less supply and there's more demand, of course, your price goes up. Unfortunately, demand is down 10%. So that's the problem. And again, to me, the big question is how much has Bitcoin crypto currency assets really eaten into the market cap of gold? I think it's more than what we believe it is, but only time will tell when people start to come out and go, yep, we're going for Bitcoin. Anyhow, let me know what you think in the comment section. Let's go to our last article. So next up, this is quick, but it's big. Cardano reaches a major decentralized milestone. And what it all comes down to is this, over 50% of all blocks in the Cardano network are now being validated by public stake pools according to announcements shared by IOHK. So before this, when they launched Shelly back in July, it was all pretty much done by IOHK. And then when they got the stake pools going, and it actually was a lot of fashion, what they thought it was going to be. And now, as of today, they're around 50%. And then as a Friday, they state it's going to be stake pools will be 51% IOHK or IOG, whatever you want to call it, will only be mining 49% of the block. So very interesting. And this is one of those criteria or criticisms I should say that people have been talking about Cardano, it's not decentralized, not decentralized, not really great. Takes too long, so on and so forth. But here we are, and we have proof that yeah, doing pretty good. And lastly, IOHK's technology manager Kevin Hammond claimed this, the end goal is to have all blocks produced by stake pools, all of them, which will make governance completely decentralized. And he says IOG, or input output global, instead of IOHK input output Hong Kong, will continue to run its own stake pools that will produce blocks in line with the stake they attract, just like any other pools. But these will no longer have any special role in maintaining the Crown Network. It will also, of course, delegate a substantial amount of stake of its stake to community pools. Simultaneously, the voting mechanism will be enabled and it will no longer be possible to increase and recentralize Cardano. And it talks about this actually, they wanted around 1000, they thought it'd be great, and they already have 1208 stake pools. So this is a great news. If you are Cardano on top of the news that we talked about last week, where the Gogan timeline is going to be completed in four months by February 2021, which will create Cardano into a smart contracts platform on also on top of the fact that you can do an ERC 20 converter. So you can take, if something's built in Ethereum, you can very easily just take it, take that ERC 20 and just convert it over to the Cardano network. And we saw the actual example, it took them like 10 seconds, it was awesome. So this could be a game changer, we will see. Anyhow, that is it for today. So thanks for sticking with me, I really appreciate it. Also, before we take off, want to give a random shout outs to people who signed up for Digital Asset News, really appreciate it. And these are the new ones. So Raymond Tanal, thanks, Eric Mitko, Crow 24-7, Franz Braun, Friolve, Ignacio, Frank, P-Dub, that's a good one, Dad Bean, Mark Reese, Bill Ennis, and Iran Rodriguez. So everybody, I appreciate you signing up. I'm going to reward everybody very soon. As soon as I'm able to verbally confirm that I can launch the actual website, it'll be free. That's going to be a lot of great information. It'll be very easy. All will have video and just a very easy place to own everything you really want to know, instead of having to hunt for it all through YouTube or even my videos. So I'll let everybody know hopefully this week if I can get everything moving. But that is it. So thanks for sticking with me, I appreciate it. And I will see you on the next one.


Today we're here at the Baths of Diocletian. This is Museo Nacional Romano, Museo de la Terme. And this is a location that's perfect for a new exhibition called Roads of Arabia. Roads of Arabia, the archeological treasures of Saudi Arabia, is organized by the Saudi Tourism and National Heritage Commission. And what it does is introduce to the world the vast, rich heritage of Saudi Arabia over thousands and thousands of years. Through this exhibit that's traveling the world, you get insight into the rich tapestry of the heritage of Saudi Arabia. We're really at the crossroads of civilizations that flourished over millennia. Ten thousand years ago, the environment in Saudi Arabia was radically different. It was much more humid, it was green, and you had the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period. And there's great discovery of a series of animals represented in stone. And here you have a horse that dates back to 8,810 BCE. Tart Island is a vast, date palm oasis. And it became very rich and a very important center for trade, particularly with Persia. And one of the results of the flourishing of the Dillum civilization are these chloride vessels, beautifully rendered. In southern Arabia, there exists a tree that produces a resin which became a very precious commodity in antiquity, frankincense. And then it became very important to control the caravan routes from southern Arabia up to the north to the east, then going to Persia, all the way to China, and up in the north and to the west, going to the Mediterranean. And a lot of the civilizations that developed and flourished in Arabia control those caravan routes. One example is Dadan, which is today's modern Halula. And this city became quite wealthy and developed a number of sanctuaries. And in those sanctuaries, they built colossal figures dedicating to their gods. Bayer Alfal is another city along the caravan route that flourishes in the Greco-Roman period. And you see here many examples of the influence of the Greco-Roman civilizations. So you find a city that mixed with other cultures that it traded and exchanged with. You have bronze figures of Hercules and Harpocrates. You have frescoes decorating the residential quarter. The Nabataeans will control the caravan routes from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE. In the northern part of their kingdom, they have the capital city of Petra in modern-day Jordan. But 300 miles south, they created the city of Hegra, how heirs, which is in modern Halula, Madae and Soleil. And they surrounded their city with tombs. Almost 100 of them are carved right into the sandstone rock cut tombs that are beautiful and evoke the grandeur of the Nabataean civilization. And then it's taken over by the Roman Empire in 106 under the Emperor Trajan. And this precious inscription from Hegra shows us the presence of Rome. This dates to the 170s CE. In these grand surroundings of the Bazidiocletian, the exhibit focuses on the rise of Islam and the idea of pilgrimage. Now the grand caravan routes are being replaced by the presence of pilgrims going to Medina, going to Mecca. And you have many important artifacts that underline the presence of the pilgrims as they make their way through the Arabian Peninsula. Here you have 10th century tombstones outside of Mecca. And this impressive door is a dedication from the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century CE and it once stood at the entrance to the interior of the Qaba. The last room is dedicated to the Saudi state. And what you have is a display of the past 200 years of the richness of the craftsmanship and artistry of Saudi Arabia.


I wanted pyrotechnics for this introduction, but they said no. Both the hotel and DEF CON and the Monero Village. So I got three noes. But we're here to talk about the UI UX of Monero. For those of you who don't know what that stands for, that stands for user interface and user experience. My name is Diego Salazar. I'm known in the Monero community by my handle. R-R-R-E-H-R-A-R. So actually let's go and go to the next slide so you can go and see that. Oh no. Okay, here we go. Well, you know, I'm just going to hide this cursor over here so it's not so much seen. So this is me, Diego Salazar. This is all my business card. Human, go-getter, friend, you know. I'm here for you, whatever you need. I am a UI UX designer. I do own a small design firm, which I am not representing here officially. But I do a lot of things within the Monero community. I work on the Monero website. That design up there is mine. You know, doing some application work for Monero to try to make it a cryptocurrency that is easy to use, that is a pleasure to use. And even though the name of my talk is very aggressive, that's really just to get you guys in the seat so you can see how mad I am. Really, I'm a little nicer to Monero than it might seem on the surface. But Monero does have its pain points in terms of in some places it is ugly and in some places it is very difficult to use. So this talk is actually, we're going to walk you through a little bit of UI UX in general, kind of some general theories so we can kind of get some common ground, be all on the same page. So let's go ahead and get started on that. What are some of these definitions here? For a lot of people, this phrase UI UX because they kind of go together, the interface and the experience are kind of interchangeable and they're really not. The idea of interfaces is something that anything that the user interacts with, so when you click on a button, when you type something into a field, this is all a part of the interface. But the user experience does not just depend on the interface. And let me give a very easy example as to one of the, it's the easiest example as to one of the ways that this is true. If the interface is beautiful, glorious, everything makes sense, but you click on a button and you see a loading circle and you see a loading circle and you see a loading circle and it takes 30 seconds in order for your command to kind of get registered. That's not really a part of the interface. The button was okay, the loading circle is okay, but the fact is that it takes 30 seconds for that command to go, right? So that is going to lessen your experience when you are using that application or using that product. I'm also going to be using the word intuitive a lot. And so let's go ahead and define what that means kind of in UI UX circles. The word intuitive kind of has some various definitions, but one of the ones that I found that I really agree with is this idea that there is a trial and error period of one time.  So if I ask you, can you do this thing? Can you accomplish this goal? You look at it and the interface, whether it's through text or through pictures or symbols, you automatically know what it is that you need to do. So it is still trial and error because you don't know for sure that the button that says go will actually make you go and not stop, but it's intuitive enough that when you click on it, it works. So a trial and error period of one, if it takes you two tries, meaning you click another button and it doesn't work, and then you click on the correct button and it does work, then it's not intuitive. And I found this to be a very easy metric. It's very objective and that's something else that we're going to really start to dig down into. A lot of people view UIUX as kind of this very subjective thing. It's very artsy, designary. Everyone has an opinion and no opinion is more valid than others, almost as much as what kind of wallpaper are we putting on the wall. It's very subjective, but that's not true. Actually UIUX is a very objective field. It's very scientific because if a simple change of color on a button will help a user accomplish something faster and with less confusion, if it helps them accomplish their goals in a better way, then it is objectively better design. So we go about this usually by like A-B testing, right? Okay, what if we switch this color? What if we move this button to the side of the screen? How fast do users accomplish their goals? So these are kind of terms I'm going to be using all throughout and this is kind of the framework in which I'm going to be talking about interfaces and the user experience and we're going to kind of move into Monero from there. So actually we just did through the crash course.  You guys can walk around saying I know exactly what interfaces are and the differences between user experience. You'd be surprised how many people don't know this. So it's really hard to have conversations with people about interfaces, about user experience because they just start mixing terms up and you start not talking about the same thing. So now that we've established this common ground, let's go ahead and jump right into it. So actually before we move into cryptocurrencies, I want to say that UI UX is not just a digital thing. It's not just a thing for applications. This is something that is all around us. Every single thing, every object that we use has a user experience associated with it. We might not think about it, but it does. Let's take these doors for example. These doors, if you look either on the left here or there's the ones in the back, you can imagine that if it's a push door, we like that push bar to be there, right? Because it tells us what it is.  But then you see the sign that says push or maybe there is no sign. And you're like, okay, and then you push it and it works. That's really annoying. And in the same way, if you were to put this push bar on a pull door, that would actually be even worse because it'd be really difficult to kind of get a grip on it, right? So this is part of the interface of the door, right? It's something that the human interacts with. And your experience using that door is going to depend on how quickly, how intuitive that is. So once again, moving back to that definition of intuitive, the trial and error period of one time, if you go to that door and it's got that handle and you pull, okay, you have just trial and error once and failed. Now you have to try the other time. So that's how you know it's not intuitive. So everything around us has kind of an interface and has an experience associated with it. Actually here at DefCon, I had a really funny experience. So over in the restrooms, they have the ones that are right over here, they have the handles that are just circular, right? So not the bars, they're just circular. But it's almost like binary. As soon as you turn it even just a little bit, it's like water in full force. And then if you continue turning it all the way, like the water pressure doesn't get any bigger. And they actually rotate in very unintuitive ways. So I turn on the heat which goes in one direction and the cold which kind of goes in another direction and as I was washing my hands, I forgot which direction it goes. And there's no feedback in terms of, okay, well let's try to lessen this to see if that goes more towards the off direction because it's just binary, it's just full force. So I'm here just twisting for like a minute, trying to find the right configuration to turn off the water. So really poor interface, really poor experience. Now let's jump into the cryptocurrency aspect of it. Now that we've kind of established all of these things. Cryptocurrencies in some ways have better UX than the traditional finance system and in some ways have worse UX. So how many people are really annoyed that banks are really open from nine until four or five, right?  This is all part of the experience of using the traditional finance system. With cryptocurrencies, one of the pros of cryptocurrencies is that you don't need anyone's permission to send any money. You can do it at midnight at 3 a.m. You can send it across the globe. So the traditional finance system fails in some areas. But cryptocurrencies also have some cons. Anyone that's trying to kind of sell up cryptocurrencies as a be all end all, they have no idea what they're talking about. In terms of user experience, there are some cons with using cryptocurrencies. When we say you are your own bank, Monero allows you to be your own bank. We mean it.  If you lose your money, that's on you and nobody can help you, right? And so a lot of people, the reality is they're just not ready to be their own banks. They don't have the resources or knowledge necessary to be their own banks. And this is not helped by the fact by the fact that many of the apps and wallets are very confusing. They may not tell you, hey, you need to write down your seed. It just shows you a word list.  And so you don't end up writing it down. If your computer goes away, you know, it breaks or anything like, now all of a sudden you've lost your money. This is real people's funds that we're dealing with here and they're just gone, right? So these things are actually very important on the application level to have write the first time. Before we start getting a flood of tickets in, hey, what happened?  And then only after that we go, oh, we should have done this, of course. No, no, no. This is people's money that we're dealing with. Like we need to make sure this is right the first time and it's really, really difficult. And typically there is a spectrum on which whenever you move towards security, you're moving away from good interfaces and easier user experience. If you just think of passwords, the longer passwords are more secure, but they're also much harder to remember, much harder to type correctly. The better passwords are the ones that are more random. They're not really words, they're not really any of this song lyrics or whatever. They're just long alpha numeric, sometimes symbol strings, but they're much harder to remember and much harder to input properly. So poor user experience is on the, good user experience, sorry, is on the opposite spectrum of good security. So what we typically try to do is maximize security and then optimize the interface as best we can without compromising on that security because the only way to move back across that spectrum, oops, the only way to move back across that spectrum is if we compromise. And we're not really willing to do that. So kind of we've been talking about bitcoin, you know, cryptocurrencies in general, some of the pros and cons of using that. Where does Monero lie in this? And this is kind of where we're going to dig into the meat. Of this, because in comparison to other traditional cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, Monero has very specific pros and cons even to that, not just to the traditional finance system, but we make other trade-offs as well. And so if you saw the title of my talk, Monero is ugly and it is difficult to use. There are many places where that is actually the case. When compared to bitcoin, Monero has some really big pain points. One of them, which is pretty easy to see right off the bat, is bitcoin addresses are pretty small in comparison to Monero addresses, which are absolutely massive. And we do that because we wanted an increased entropy set, which means that we need longer addresses. And so it's, if it was already impossible to type in a bitcoin address by hand, it is absolutely nightmarish to even begin to think about typing in a Monero address. If you haven't already, you can download a Monero wallet, you can generate a dress, and you just see how long this thing is. And you can imagine taking out your phone. All right, grandma. So tell me your address so I can send you some money. She's like, okay, it's x, y, seven. Okay, is that a capital X? Is that a lowercase x? This stuff matters. And she's telling you for 20 minutes, you got to verify it, right? So Monero addresses are much longer than bitcoin addresses. It was potentially feasible, like 2% chance of being feasible in bitcoin. It's just not even an option in Monero, which means that we had to come up with really interesting technology to kind of circumvent that fact. So we actually, Monero worked on something called open alias, which is this idea that we take advantage of the already existing DNS infrastructure, which allows for text records, right? And so we can say that Diego dot Monero dot com, if I own Monero dot com, and I can set the text record for that, equals this address, similar to the way that DNS will put an IP address to a domain name.  So some of these things do have really clever ways to get around them to increase the user experience without lessening the security, which in this case is the entropy and the long addresses that Monero has. But some of the other stuff that Monero does wrong, that is not quite so, I mean, like nobody was going to try to type in a bitcoin address anyway, let's be real. But Monero does have other pain points, and some of them are actually really, really large. As an example, Monero has four keys, a public key, a public view key, a private view key, a public spend key, a private spend key. And it's just, as we start to layer this privacy technology on top of Monero, it gets increasingly difficult for users to use. So we have, because, so with bitcoin, if I'm a merchant and I'm accepting, because the whole blockchain is transparent, I can see when somebody sends me money. Right, and I know where it came from. And I could, but with Monero, because everything is so hidden, if I receive money, I don't know where it's coming from. Right, so we had to make these things called payment IDs, which is an alphanumeric string that says, hey, this came from me. So as a merchant, I said, okay, if you want to purchase this, send me this, send it to me with this payment ID.  And if it's confusing to describe, it's confusing to use. And it's another field to fill out. And then we kind of saw this problem, we kind of didn't solve this problem. We implemented something called sub addresses, which if this is all going over your head because I don't have slides, that's exactly the point. I'm not trying to show you the slides and tell you how this stuff works. I'm trying to explain this verbally and everyone's kind of getting okay, I'm not really following. And that's exactly the user experience of this stuff. People don't track with it. You try to, no, no, no, Monero works because you could do this and this. Listen, grandma, this is all you have to do. Right, and she's not gonna, she's like, okay, what is a mouse again? Right, and the reality is that a lot of the people out there are gonna be like that. Not everyone is like at DEFCON, where we have a baseline level of computer literacy, which typically is much greater than the general population. So when we're trying to tell grandma, because we wanna send her some Monero, that okay, generate a sub address and send it to me so we can do this securely, like it's not gonna work. Let's go ahead and move on. So those are some of the things that we get very, very wrong. And I wouldn't say wrong in the sense that there's nothing that can be done. So one of the other points that I'm gonna really delve into a little bit later in the talk is that foundations cannot really be changed so easily, but UIUX can be tweaked. So this is one of our, I would say this is one of our weaknesses currently. This is something that is going to be improved upon, but Monero also does get, what do you think's coming next? Right, with green, right? Monero also does some things very, very right. So in comparison to Bitcoin, this is a really big point to make, okay? In comparison to Bitcoin, Monero's privacy works out of the box, which means if I send a transaction to you, the privacy just works, and you didn't have to do anything. Whereas with Bitcoin, if you listen to a lot of the people, typically Bitcoin maximalists or others that are like, okay, Bitcoin is the way to be, they're like, okay, so here's how you get privacy with Bitcoin. You gotta obtain your funds from a non KYC AML exchange because otherwise they know which address is yours. You have to mix your funds, send it to a good mixer, but mixers are a trusted third party, so choose the correct one, otherwise they can leave with your coins, right? And you have to choose one in a region, state or nation that is not adherent to, like let's say the five I's, right? Because otherwise they're just going to hand over all the metadata that they have. So you have to choose the correct one, and it has to have a good number of other people using it, otherwise you're mixing with an X, too small of an anonymity set, and even then there's some attacks that can be done if you send small amounts of Monero, I mean not Monero, small amounts of Bitcoin to those mixers, you can still potentially follow funds through it. So there's this just laundry list of things that you have to do to be private with Bitcoin. And honestly, like it gets actually absurd when these people are like, no, no, no, privacy in Bitcoin is easy. This is all you have to do. And if you mess up on any of these things, your privacy is shot. Whereas with Monero, right?  We didn't have to do anything. We didn't have to toggle anything. We didn't have to use a third party. It's just the way that it works, which really defaults and mandatory things are extraordinarily powerful in UIUX. The reality is that when something is the default, if it's a default setting in an application, then it's just gonna be used probably 95% of the time. Most people, they'll just install the thing and use it. They won't mess around with the settings. They won't do, they won't kind of see what's available, what options are available. They're just gonna do what's the easiest. That may not be how we think here, because this is DEF CON kind of hacker mentality. So it's kind of may be hard to kind of get in the heads of those people. But the reality is that's actually the majority of the people that exist, right? They're just gonna use the default settings. Defaults are very, very powerful. And if something is not the default, then it's just not going to be used. So when people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, see Bitcoin, it's not really private right now, but all you gotta do is, even if it was just one step, all you have to do is this, one step, that would drop the amount of people using it by a massive amount. But the fact that it's a laundry list of steps just means that honestly, nobody but the nerds are gonna be using the privacy on Bitcoin. And even then, their privacy is not very robust when you start digging really deep down into it. So Monero's privacy is not just a default, it's mandatory. You cannot turn it off, meaning if you are a hacker type and you kind of go in, look through the settings, okay, I don't want this privacy, you cannot do that. This is for everybody's safety. You cannot turn off the privacy. And this is actually the next step beyond defaults being powerful. Mandatory things are absolutely, incredibly, incredibly powerful. Because some people are not financially motivated. Some people, in the words of the Joker from the Dark Knight, they just wanna see the world burn, right? So if you have somebody that can figure out an attack, how to hurt Monero, and these attacks still do exist despite having good defaults and mandatory stuff. These attacks still do exist, and if you go type in Breaking Monero on YouTube, you can see just like the Monero Research Lab has outlined several attacks that you can do on Monero, even with all of the steps we have taken on a protocol level and a user interface and experience level, these things do still exist. But if there are other attack vectors, some people will use them simply because they want to attack Monero or because they want to, you know, chill their coin or whatever, and this stuff happens. So I said we were gonna get to this portion and now we have arrived. The reality is that user interface, interfaces, can be tweaked. Fundamentals cannot be tweaked. I mean they can, but it takes a lot longer. And so the example that I like to give is picture a toilet. They picture a toilet. There's two components to the toilet. The front end, the interface, the actual toilet that you're using, and the back end. The back end, no, the back end, meaning the pipes that take all your stuff away, right? If the back end is not working, you can have the most beautiful golden, soft toilet in existence, and it can be an absolute pleasure to use. But when you go to flush the toilet, if the back end, if these pipes are not working, if the plumbing's not working, you're left with crap, right? Whereas, whereas, if you have plumbing that is working correctly, you may not be using the best toilet in the meantime, but at least it works, and you're not left with a toilet full of crap, right? So the reality is that a toilet is easy to change. I mean maybe you haven't changed a toilet, I've changed a toilet, but a toilet is fairly easy to change. You take off the bolts, you can put on the new one, right? Whereas the plumbing underneath it, if it's really screwed up or it doesn't work, you may have to dig down into the concrete, you're gonna have to do something. If the plumbing underneath it does not work, that is much more difficult to change. And this is the reality, like when we're talking about Bitcoin and Monero and other cryptocurrencies that are not transparent, Monero gets these fundamentals really, really solid. The plumbing works. Right now, the toilets are kind of so-so, depending on which application you're using and stuff, but that can be improved upon. Whereas with Bitcoin, which is very radically transparent from the get-go, trying to add on little privacy layers on top isn't really gonna be helpful for the underlying plumbing, which is not very private. It's like trying to, inside of the toilet, this is where my analogy begins to break down, by the way, inside the toilet, like install some pipes that circumvent the pipes that are supposed to go down into, and then we're not gonna go further down that road. Monero gets these fundamentals correct, and it's one of the reasons why this project is very exciting, because interfaces and experiences evolve with time, and they evolve much faster. Whereas with Bitcoin, you would really have to gut a lot of the things that make it what it is, which by the way, it's not gonna be that easy because there will be a lot of people that stand in the way and say, nope, you cannot do this. This is what makes Bitcoin what it is. We don't want this. And they do have some legitimate reasons why Bitcoin should be transparent, but here in Monero, we definitely think that the cons really heavily outweigh the pros. And so as a UI UX designer, actually, it is much more exciting for me to work on something like Monero where the fundamentals are really solid, because I can take the designs in very exciting directions. Whereas with something like Bitcoin, which has, in my opinion, a very inefficient and not working foundation, these fundamentals, this plumbing, I have to kind of work super hard to go all around these things that don't work. And the design ends up being skewed and weird and twisted and like non-functional and confusing to use and non-intuitive.  So despite all this negativity, not just that I put on Monero but on Bitcoin and even on the water faucets in the bathrooms, the future is very bright. And this is what keeps me coming back again and again and again. It gets tiring sometimes. I'll be honest, the hacker community, the open source community, is not always the easiest community to work with. Sometimes the hackers take a great pride in an interface being very annoying to use. They take great pride in having these gigantic wikis because the reason they need these gigantic wikis to use their application is because their application is not intuitive. So if you want to use it, you have to read through this massive wiki just to understand what you're doing and to accomplish your goals. And they can take pride in that because it's like a little badge of honor. It shows that you went through the work in order to get to that, right? And as a designer coming in here and like, guys, let's not do this. An example is the Monero website. I came in and I'm like, okay, I want to redo this. It was absolutely awful. I want to redo this. And some people are like, I kind of like it the way it is. It's kind of the better. I like it the way it is. It shows we're an open source software project. I'm like, you know, the funny thing is if I change the website, we will still be an open source software project. I promise you, changing the website is not going to make the license go changed, right? So it's not the easiest to work with, but little by little, especially as people are talking about mass adoption, mass adoption, right? People are understanding. People are really looking towards these interfaces and starting to say, okay, okay, let's see how we can improve on this because as people realize that Monero is actually a very exciting technology, as people look at Monero and realize it can really change the world. We realize we want to give this to as many people as possible. We want this power, this power to take back your privacy, this power to take back your freedom in the hands of as many people as possible. It's not just for nerds. It shouldn't just be for hackers. It shouldn't just be for the people that attend this conference and people like us. It should be for everyone. But for it to be for everyone, it needs to be much better than it currently is. That's why I do what I do. And I am so thrilled. There is an increasing number of people, of designers that are coming, not just into Monero, but to open source in general. I've never been more excited for open source. I love open source. The idea of it is so gracious and giving just empowering people. As an example, there was a scammer on Telegram who was trying to scam Monero out of me. But I basically talked him down and I figured out where he was from. He was from this place in Africa and we started talking video chats and stuff. And he was in a really hard way. And I said, look, man, I'm a designer. I will teach you how to design. And I will start paying you for designs if you're willing to do that work. And he said, yes. I mean, long story short, it didn't end up working out. He got a nice little windfall and so he wanted to go to college, so I'm more power to him. But he doesn't have to download or pirate Photoshop because GIMP is available. And even though it's not in the best place, in my opinion, UI UX-wise, it's still available. And it empowers him to be able to start on this work and potentially look at leaving scamming behind so that he can start a legit good life and get paid for work. So in open source in general, just this idea that if we make these interfaces good, the open source software core is so solid, we can just give it to everyone. And if it's a beautiful thing to use and it's a pleasure to use, then we can really empower more and more and more and more people as we continue along this spectrum. That's why I'm here. That's where my heart is in this. I want to see people in power. That kind of stuff excites me. This is a very exciting place to be. So the future is very bright. For Monero, for open source in general, I've kind of gone off on tangents, but you guys understand. That's the end of my presentation. So I still have some time left. If there's any questions about kind of design in general or kind of what we're looking towards in the future, some optimizations that we want to make, or just say, hey, Diego, your wallet sucks. That's totally fine. Is there any questions? No, I explained everything really well. Yes. Sure. So actually, the question was, for those on the stream who didn't get to hear that, what is my opinion on familiarity versus good design? And I do have another example, actually. It is widely known or thought in designer circles that the hamburger menu, you know those little three lines that you tap and then the menu pops out, that that's bad design. Because it hides relevant information. Not everyone's going to click on it. But the reality is it's become so ubiquitous. It's used absolutely everywhere that it has almost brute-forced its way into being good design. Because now enough people know that it exists, they know what it does. Before that, nobody knew what it did. Right? Same thing with those little three dots or whatever way of hiding information so that way somebody can click on it. It's generally thought in design circles to be bad design. I am, this may, I'm not trying to be political here, but I am largely neutral on this. I think something like Monero is already confusing enough to try to also reinvent new ways of doing design. I do see great benefit to trying to do design better. So staying away from hamburger menus and trying to do something better to try to brute-force a new better way of doing things. Right? Because that's what Monero's trying to do anyway. We're trying to reinvent a financial system, which is much harder. So I'm all about kind of reinventing something if it means having a better product at the end. But some, like I said, something like Monero is already so difficult and abstract and it's hard to wrap your head around that trying to do that at the same time, we're trying to reinvent design and reinvent but the financial system all in one application, it can be a bit much. We're trying to onboard as many people as possible, which is already difficult enough. So I would say adhere to familiarity. And, you know, so in my design work, as I'm designing a new application for Monero from scratch, I'm looking at traditional banking applications, mobile, desktop, just what are people used to and trying to make Monero familiar in that sense. So people are like, oh okay, so Monero's basically just money, right? And the answer is yes, it is. So if it flows, it's very similar to a banking application, then a lot of these things will just come naturally to these people. But some of the things in Monero, like the private keys of bank, doesn't make you do a private key, right? They don't make you write down a C. Some of those things will need to be unfamiliar and so you do have to really optimize to try to make those as nice as possible. Any other questions? No. Well, thank you so much for your time, guys. I'm very grateful to have gotten on the stage and talking to you guys about this. Hopefully you walk away from this, not just with better knowledge about Monero and kind of the way that we do things, but interfaces in general, which is something that is sorely lacking in communities like these. We have a lot more content coming up. We have in about an hour, no, in about like half an hour, we have Artic Mein, who is a Monero Core Team member, who's going to be coming up here and talking with you guys about scaling on Monero. I know we've gotten a lot of talks, like, hey, questions, what are you guys going to do about scaling? Come here, listen to that. It's definitely worth a listen. Thank you guys so much. It's been a pleasure.