So with that disclaimer being said, let's get into it. So what is web three? So in back in the heyday, like 80s, 90s, we had web 1.0, it was very much, it was decentralized to a certain extent because people were trying to figure out what is the internet? What is the World Wide Web? And a lot of content was just, you could, it was put up by companies or people or like official governments and whatnot, and it was like read only. So there wasn't really content rich internet at the time. And then eventually we moved into web 2.0, which is where we are right now, which is very participatory, meaning it's content rich, you got like social media and blogs and vlogs and all this kind of stuff, people creating tons of content, but it became very, very centralized. A handful of big conglomerates and corporations essentially control the internet or control the data flowing around the internet. So web three is this talked about next evolution from web two. And the entire concept is about going back to the kind of a more decentralized nature where all your data isn't being controlled by specific companies to try to get rid of intermediaries and give more data power back to people, let them control how the internet is using the data essentially. But there are a lot of aspects of web three which we're gonna get into. So one of the aspects of web three are dApps. So dApps are basically decentralized apps. And the importance of dApps is like right now, for example, if I create a mobile app, I have really only have two places I can submit to, maybe three if you count Microsoft, but you have Google's Play Store, you have the Apple App Store and Google and Apple, I guess Microsoft too, they have their ecosystem but it's not as prevalent. They control the ecosystems. They take a certain amount of fees from the app developers. They are like, they control the entire experience and act as gatekeepers. Decentralized applications don't are great because you don't have to go through the gatekeepers, you can create apps on your own and formulate them and publish them on various blockchains that aren't being kept by specific gatekeepers. You can create apps that don't control people's data necessarily, like for example, if I create a mobile app on the Apple App Store, I'm essentially giving data over to Apple and also to the app developers themselves. And you don't really always know how they're using that data, right? They say one thing, they don't always do it correctly. Decentralized applications are meant to give people who use apps and also app developers a more anonymous way of using people or not using people's data, but more like you have the ability to let people know what you want them to let them know, right? It's not just like, here's a terms and service agreement, click agree and you're giving everything away. You just don't have any legal leeway there. So those are dapps in a nutshell. And then another part, like I mentioned, is that you can probably monetize your own data through Web 3, which is really important. Like I said, we're in Web 2.0 right now and places like Meta or Google or Microsoft or Amazon, Uber, Lyft, all these companies basically they ingest all your data. They use it in their own way according to their terms and services agreements. And those are all kind of ambiguous and hard of the cipher. So they may say, oh yeah, your data's private, but you take a company like Meta, for example, who has had a history of bad data practices. It's like, really can you take them at their work? I don't know, some companies you can, some you can't. I'm not here to pass judgment on any company, but it's kind of a Wild West landscape in terms of trust, right? So, and also like with Web 2.0, you can't monetize your own data. You can't say to any company and say, hey, you're gonna collect my data. I wanna charge you like a dollar to do that. So with Web 3, there's this kind of floating idea of maybe we can create a collective data bargaining agreements or something like that, basically unionizing your data. It's an interesting idea. Hasn't really been implemented yet, really. So we'll see, it's an interesting concept. NFTs are also a big part of Web 3 ecosystem. NFTs are really interesting. I'm an artist myself. I've been in the music industry for like 20 years. I'm also a writer, also created NFTs myself. So NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens and non-fungible simply means you can't corrupt the nature of the ownership and the rights of the digital rights of any art that's created. So I'm fumbling a little over and words here. So you might have heard like a back, maybe a few years back, a couple of years through three years back or something like that, like NyonCat, that GIF was sold for like $580,000 as an NFT, which is pretty crazy if you think about it. It's been other NFTs sold like Jack Dorsey's first tweet was like $1 million or something like that.  The other, one thing to understand about NFTs, if you don't know already is that when I buy an NFT, I'm suddenly buying the rights behind the art. I'm not necessarily buying the artwork itself. So like, let's say I bought NyonCat. Now, if NyonCat itself, if I didn't download it for myself or if it's not published online anywhere, I do have the digital rights, meaning I can control how it's published. I can control if anybody else wants to publish it, they have to probably go through me and pay me some rights to do that. But if the creative NyonCat art failed to actually publish the art anywhere, I wouldn't actually be able to see the art. I just have the rights to it, but I won't have any access unless I reach out to the artist say, hey, can you actually give me a copy of this, of the actual original art so that I can have it in my own possession? So NFTs in a nutshell are basically the rights behind an art. Don't mistake that for the art itself. And NFTs can be created for many different things. You have trading cards, you have music, you have in-game economies. And like I mentioned, you have tweets. So you can basically anything that can be digitized can be turned into an NFT. And it's really exciting for independent artists like myself who can kind of circumvent big publishing houses and sell our art on our own terms. So that's one of the big benefits to NFTs for independent artists. Another big aspect of Web3 is AR and VR, basically the metaverse, mix the reality stuff. And you see, I mentioned earlier, they're trying to make this big push into the metaverse. I have my own feelings about Mark Zuckerberg, which I want to get into here. But I think the general concept is basically to create virtual worlds based on blockchain technologies that are interoperable, which we'll talk about in a second. So imagine like if Meta created their own metaverse, if another company created another metaverse, maybe you can jump in and out of different worlds through the interoperable blockchain technologies. We're still a long ways from a true metaverse. In fact, I would say even like the constant metaverse has been around for a long time in gaming, any like big open world of role-playing game is essentially like a regenerator of metaverses. So they've been around for a while and now it's just about getting us actually there. So another part of the Web3 will be permissionless blockchains. This is more of a technical aspect, meaning that I don't necessarily need to get permission from anybody to publish something on the blockchain. There are private blockchains and they're permissionless blockchains. I say majority of the blockchain is public and so therefore it's permissionless. Anytime you see like a permissioned blockchain, it's usually like a private enterprise, like internal company blockchain that somebody's developing. So you don't want the public using it, it's just for like internal company use. But generally I say like 90% plus of the blockchain now there's all permissionless. And that means it's decentralized, it's transparent, there's a digital ledger. I'm gonna get into all that kind of stuff in a bit. Generally it's anonymous.  And the blockchains they run on token currencies which we'll get to in a little bit too. So also a huge, huge aspect of Web3 that's gonna be really important is AI and machine learning. With blockchain scaling, it's gonna be really important to have AI and machine learning integrated to help us scale even bigger and faster. Right now it's, I'd say it's blockchains it's been around for like a little over a decade but it's still really in its infancy. And to really scale it out we're gonna need the help of AI and machine learning. But there's also other really interesting uses for machine learning and NFTs for example, like you've probably heard of the board apes, right? Like all of these apes were created by a machine learning algorithm they're not actually done by hand. Like the very first one was done by hand and then it was programmed to create all these different kinds of board apes which were then sold for crazy sums of money back in the when NFTs were just being started. So, you know, machine learning AI technologies they're gonna be really important to Web3 and scaling. There are also a lot of fun uses in terms of different things like NFTs. Now interoperability, this is the big one we don't really get to Web3 unless we have interoperability. And the reason why it's important is essentially oh, sorry, let me go back. Right now there's all sorts of different blockchain protocols. There's like Bitcoin, there's Ethereum, there's Cardano, there's Solana. There's all these like different blockchain protocols that work on their own way but they don't necessarily talk to each other. So you have to create all these like bridging technologies like Polygon, the Matic, which is like a layer two Ethereum protocol. So for example, you know, if I have, there's like a bunch of Ethereum tokens out there instead of trading directly and paying large Ethereum fees, you get these bridge technologies like Matic that act as a secondary layer built on Ethereum protocols that make trading tokens, Ethereum tokens, based tokens a lot cheaper. It's like a flat fee usually but if they don't necessarily talk to non Ethereum tokens so you have to have different bridge technology like exchanges, for example, you know, like Coinbase or whatnot, you know, they create these kind of bridges for different coins and tokens to be interchanged and traded amongst each other. So interoperability is gonna be huge for Web3. Currently we are not there yet. So here people say Web3 is here, it's not here yet until we get interoperability. That is the fundamental, hugest thing that will make Web3 exist. So I don't know how many years out we are but there are a lot of smart people working on interoperability issues. So, you know, I'm incredibly optimistic we'll get there pretty fast. So that's Web3 in a nutshell. Now we're gonna talk about, you know all the different layers of like, what's decentralization? What's the distributive ledger? What's cryptocurrencies? Basically what's all the fuss, right? You may have seen this meme just hodl it, you know, over the pandemic. It's just somebody, when cryptocurrencies were starting to gain steam in terms of value, somebody tweeted just hodl it when they meant just hold it. It was a mistype and it just basically took on, you know, life of its own on the internet as all things do on the internet. So if you hear people just saying just hodl it, it just means just hold it, hold on to your cryptocurrencies. And it's usually for people who are just tracking the investment side of things. So the centralized cryptographic currency, you know, what is all that means, right? What does all that mean? So I'm gonna help demystify some of this stuff. The pillars of crypto in basically decentralization is that there's no central authority, meaning there's no central bank or government that can control the entire ecosystem. So imagine, for example, like, you know, I have like a banking transaction through let's say Bank of America or whatever, Wells Fargo, you know, whatever the bank is. And I basically have to trust this bank to do everything it says it's gonna do. I have to trust that every single employee there is ethical, not corrupt, not doing any shady things on the side. Or I have to trust like any single government to be trustworthy with their fiat currency and not be doing any shady business. Now we all know that there are a lot of corrupt governments out there and we also know that shady stuff does happen at banks. So without a central authority at cryptocurrency, you don't have these like conglomerates or one government that can control an entire ecosystem which can impact you at a lot of different levels. For example, like if an economy is going sideways, you may see banks freeze accounts and now all of a sudden you don't have access to any of your money. They did that for various reasons, which I'm not gonna get into, but for cryptocurrencies because it's no central authority, you always have access to your coins or tokens. Nobody can just like freeze your accounts. Now that being said, if you use exchanges like Coinbase or Gemini or you probably heard about FTX recently which basically just blew up, they can freeze trading on accounts but it doesn't mean that you don't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't have access to your coins and tokens outside of the exchanges. You can still create transactions like peer to peer outside of exchanges. You just need exchanges to convert all those coins and tokens to actual dollars and whatnot. So secure global access. So blockchains are incredibly secure. They're based on cryptography. And you may hear once in a while like such and such got hacked. It's usually not the blockchain technology itself that got hacked. It's usually like an exchange that bad security layers or somebody working at a company shared some kind of security protocol. But it's not usually the technology itself that gets hacked is usually like all these different corporate layers, corporate layer technology that gets hacked through negligence or whatnot. It doesn't mean that there aren't large ramifications of hacks, there are, but the technology itself is very sound and secure and the security layers are getting better and better as we go. People are learning a lot from all these previous hacks. And in fact, it's just a cycle that we all have to go through. Like, if you think about the internet and heydays in the nation days, there was a lot of hacks going on there too and still are really in the current internet ecosystem. So blockchain technology is meant to actually mitigate a lot of this and hopefully we'll see less and less issues going forward as we move into Web 3 eventually. Full transparency is a massive part of the pillar of cryptocurrency and that is the distributed ledger. So what is the distributed ledger? Essentially getting back to like not having a single authority. So imagine, instead of all your transactions residing on like a bank's internal servers where you have no insight, no transparency, there's no accountability really at a public level. Blockchains, public blockchains are distributed amongst thousands upon thousands of computers globally. That the ledger is copied in its entirety across each computer and it exists in its entirety. So not one single entity or person can control the entire ledger. It's always transparent and accountable and it's shared amongst everybody who's taken part in this ecosystem. So that's called the distributed ledger which makes it fundamentally decentralized. There's a ton of benefits to this which I've already talked about in terms of dealing with potentially corrupt governments or corrupt banking systems. But just being able to see where a transaction originated from, the entire history of a transaction really. So like it's applicable to things like supply chains. So let's say I have a chair before that chair, a wooden chair, before that wooden chair was made, it was manufactured, it was created by somebody. Like all those, the wood came from a tree and then the tree was, you know, had to go through a lumber distribution and whatnot. Like on a blockchain, you could be able to see that entire supply chain and how that came to be to become this chair. And that can really help in probably tamping down on like corruption in supply chains, a lot of transparency there. So there's a lot of possibilities with decentralization. The other part that I'm gonna get into right now is the cryptographic part of blockchain technologies. You know, blockchain is probably, the technology is probably a little bit harder to understand for a lot of people. Like how does it actually work, right? So the first block was, blockchain was created by this person or entity called Satoshi Nakamoto. People think they find out who this person is or persons are, but really it still kind of remains a mystery of who the inventor of the blockchain was. They just go by this moniker Satoshi Nakamoto. If you wanna go down that rabbit hole, feel free. I stay away from it because it'll just basically take up all your life. But essentially, how does a blockchain work? It's basically a chain of blocks of data, chain together, and it's all encrypted data. It's pretty much self-explanatory in this thing, the blockchain. But how it works is, I'm gonna give you a very, very elementary description. This is not how it technically works. So I'm not gonna get into how things are encrypted and whatnot. But let's say I wanna create my own blockchain. I have to create my first block of data. So that block of data has a, what is called a hash, which is like a random string of numbers of indeterminate size. So it could be 16 numbers, it could be 32, it could be 64, it could be 128, who knows? And then it's encrypted into a different set of numbers that needs to be decrypted in order to verify it. And then in order to add additional blocks of data, you go through that kind of the same process. There's a hash on the block that gets encrypted. And then these verifiers have to decrypt it and verify the hash behind the block. But to give you a really, really simplistic example, let's say block number one has the number one. It wouldn't ever do that because that's ridiculous. But that number one would get encrypted into whatever other number, some verifier would have to decrypt the encrypted layer and verify, oh, this block is actually number one. So you add that to the blockchain. It's block number one. Now let's say there's another transaction that happens and you need to add block number two. So maybe block number two becomes one two. Again, it's not gonna follow sequential numbers like this, but just for this example, it will. So that number gets encrypted. Then a verifier and needs to decrypt it or a bunch of verifiers actually are usually competing to decrypt this. Then they'd look at the hash and go, is it one two? Oh, it is, great. Is there consensus on that? Great, everybody agrees. It's one two, let's add it to the block. So now you have one, one two, and so on and so forth. You just keep adding blocks and you keep adding numbers to the blockchain which need to be encrypted, decrypted, verified, all that kind of stuff. The blockchain essentially works like that. I'm not gonna get into, like I said, the full technical details of how it really, really works, but at a very, very surface level, that's how it is. So right now, blockchains like take Bitcoin or Ethereum, for example, it's huge.  And they take a lot of energy to go through and decrypt and verify it. So what does the future hodl? Well, you have to start thinking about different blockchains, like which is better. There are ramifications to different kind of blockchain protocols. Take Bitcoin versus Ethereum, the two, the top two, right? At an energy level, or actually, before I get the energy part of it, Bitcoin works off of a protocol called proof of work. Ethereum just move over to something called proof of stake. Proof of work, the way that works is like, as mentioned, when you need to verify blocks that are being added to the blockchain, it's usually all these single computers around the world using insane amounts of energy to run mathematical equation to do the decryptions and the verifications of each data block. And they're competing against each other. So the proof of work is really like, if one single computer does it faster than anybody else, they submit the work. The other computers actually need to verify that work. Once it's verified, that person or that computer that did the work gets a reward, usually Bitcoin in this case. And then the block of data is added to the blockchain. Proof of stake works a little bit different. It's usually off of a staking consensus. So for example, let's say instead of one single computer competing against all the other single computers around the world, you have a staker who creates a pool. And so to contribute to a pool, let's say Tom or Diane or whoever creates, wants to become a staker. She'll say, hey, contribute to my pool. I've put in, let's say my X amount of coins or tokens into this pool, you put in your stake, whatever you own. Let's say it's Ethereum in this case. So I put in my Ethereum and everybody else does. So that pool starts competing against other pools. It's not just single computers, competing against single computers. So I don't need to necessarily contribute my computing power to the staking pool. I'm just contributing my coins, contributing my coins in order to have a larger pool to compete with other pools. And then the validator who runs the pool, they're the ones competing doing the work, they're computers doing the work and doing the actual competing to run the proof. The benefit of this is that there's a massive difference in energy consumption between proof of work and proof of stake. So you can see here, the yellow line here is over the last five years or so, how much energy Bitcoin has consumed in terms of proof of work. You can see that Ethereum, before it became proof of stake, Ethereum used to actually be on proof of work until last year. Before that, it was probably about two and a half times last two and a third times less than Bitcoin in terms of energy use. But since it's moved over to proof of stake, that energy use has plummeted. And you can see it's almost like 14 times less than Bitcoin power consumption. So proof of stake has massive ramifications in terms of energy usage. And there's a lot of push right now to hold Bitcoin accountable for its energy consumption. But Bitcoin still is the primary blockchain that people trust in our doing trades and whatnot on top of. So we have a long ways to go in terms of bringing down the energy costs because there are a lot of blockchains out there and not just Bitcoin and Ethereum, a lot of different protocols. You might even hear things of like proof of time or proof of space. There's all just people working on different proof to see to bring down the energy consumption. But proof of stake right now is probably the second trusted way of doing things. So which is better? I think if you're looking at energy, I think it's clear that proof of stake is better. For me, that's like a big primary concern in terms of climate and global warming and whatnot. So for me, proof of stake is better, but there's people argue the other way around too. Another thing that Ethereum has right now is smart contracts. Bitcoin doesn't have smart contracts. So what are smart contracts all about? Let's talk about traditional contracts. So you got two parties or maybe various parties, right up a contract and then you have a third party, maybe like lawyers or like in terms of real estate, you have escrow officers who are trusted to help you execute upon the contract and make sure all parties do what they're supposed to be doing. Usually those are done pretty well. Usually you can trust your lawyers or the escrow officers and whatnot or the banking intermediaries. And usually things get executed as per the terms of contract, but sometimes things get misinterpreted or sometimes you get in the various people who are conducting themselves as intermediaries for the contracts. So things can go wrong. Now a smart contract gets rid of the third party intermediaries and basically it's hard-coded contracts on the blockchain so it's transparent. You can see what's in the contract, you can see how it's gonna be executed and essentially a program executes on the contract. And unless somebody wrote a program that is nefarious that is meant to not conduct itself correctly, you can like 99% of the time trust that this program is gonna run the contract correctly as long as each party does what they say. So for example, in a real estate contract, the buyer puts up the money, the contract basically goes, oh, okay, all the money's there, the seller has done all the reports, the program goes, oh yeah, the seller has done all the reports correctly, they're all signed off and signed. We can execute on this transaction and do the exchange, the buyer gets to the house, seller gets the money, yay, and we go on our ways. Now I was in the real estate industry for 10 years, I was an escrow officer and I've seen things go wrong when you have people, errors do occur, not through any like nefarious reasons, just mistakes happen. If a contract is programmed, you would think theoretically is that there shouldn't be those kind of huge percentage of human mistakes that can happen. So smart contracts are really, really awesome to give you kind of a real world, bit of a silly example of how smart contract might work.   Even if you wrote up a contract, would you trust this person necessarily to give you $10,000? That's kind of an extreme, ridiculous scenario, but ridiculous scenarios do happen in the real world and you have to have a very, very strong layer of trust in order for that transaction, for you to believe that transaction will actually occur. So if I'm gonna give this vending machine a dollar, I need to have a lot of trust that it won't break down, eat my dollar up, or just not do what it's gonna say it's gonna do. Now with smart contracts, the theory here is that that vending machine is 100% trustworthy. It is gonna do what it's gonna say, even though this agreement is completely absurd. So if I give it a dollar, it's going to give me $10,000 and I can trust that it's gonna do that because you just got a coded layer, a coded contract and a program's gonna run on it and that's it. It's not corruptible. So that's a bit of a ridiculous example, but it gives you an idea of the difference between the smart contract and the typical contracts, which is basically the trust layer is pretty exponential and you should theoretically be able to trust smart contracts very much. So one kind of another silly thing that I hear bandied around, you might have seen this online is like if I buy something with the cryptocurrencies and those valuations are going up and down, there's all of a sudden the thing I bought follow the value of the crypto that I bought it with. No, it doesn't. So just to nip that part in the button and help you understand, if I bought a t-shirt, if I have a t-shirt for it's worth $10, like a target or whatever. And I sold it to you for back in the day when Bitcoin was worth $10. And now Bitcoin is worth, I think last time I checked it was like around $17,000. Is my shirt, assuming I didn't wear it, it's still brand new. Does that shirt that you bought for me, is that shirt now worth $17,000? No, of course not. It's probably worth about $10, maybe $12 with inflation. It's really based on a market value, has nothing to do with how much the crypto is actually valued at. Same thing, if I sold you a shirt for one Bitcoin that was worth $10 at a time, and let's say Bitcoin plummeted down to $1, is your t-shirt all of a sudden worth $1? No, it's still probably $10, as long you didn't use it, and it's brand new. So if you have people online saying silly things, like I bought something, or somebody sold me something for one Bitcoin, now this something's worth $17,000 or whatever, just don't believe that, it's super silly. Now, we're gonna get into cryptocurrencies and trading and investing and all that kind of stuff, but I iterate from the beginning that I'm not gonna give any investment advice, so I'm just gonna know that going forward. Now, what if you don't have thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars to get to buy Bitcoin, or I think Ethereum's worth like $1,300 a coin right now. What if you don't have that kind of money? Okay, so if fractions are your friend, you can actually buy cryptocurrency in fractional amounts. I could buy 0.0001% of a Bitcoin if I wanted to. So like I could put up like a hundred bucks and own Bitcoin. I don't need to have $17,000, or even when it was worth like $60,000 or whatever. So you even see right now, like in the regular stock market, some exchanges like Robinhood or whatnot, they're trying to sell stocks at a fraction. So it's a unique investment strategy and you don't need to be rich to get into this. Now, in order to trade or invest in crypto, you do need to have a crypto wallet. There's different types of wallets. There's custodial versus non-custodial. A custodial wallet is something that is held by an exchange. For example, let's go use Coinbase as an example. If I deposit US dollars into Coinbase with the intent of buying Bitcoin, for example, when I do that exchange and I own the Bitcoin, I'm holding it within a custodial wallet with Coinbase, they're actually controlling my wallet. In a sense, it's a little bit centralized because now you're trusting the exchange to keep access to your wallet open at all times. So it's custodial.  So we're gonna talk about different types of non-custodial wallets. Non-custodial also means that you have control over your wallet.  So non-custodial part simply means it's non-custodial by a centralized organization and it's in your power. So there are hot wallets, which are basically apps on your phones. Hot wallets are great because you can kind of trade on the fly and just pop open the app, do your thing, and it's always connected to the internet and you have really high access ability to your funds. Now, they are vulnerable to phishing and hacking. Typically the security vulnerabilities is if you accidentally share your wallet address with a bad actor, and then they use that wallet address to conduct transactions without you knowing. So, or you give away your secret keys to your wallet, which you should really never ever 100% ever do, no matter who's asking it. No exchange is ever gonna ask you for your secret key or recovery phrase. No person you're doing a transaction should ever ask you for it either. It's essentially like giving away your password to any login site on the internet or whatnot. Just don't do it, okay? Cold wallets are like basically another secure layer. So instead of just using your app on your phone, you can use a device like Ledger USB stick, something which I own and you can basically dump all your crypto onto a cold wallet or you use a cold wallet to do another secure verification layer before you can transmit anything on a hot wallet. So cold wallets are incredibly secure. You can't hack them because their physical device is not connected to the internet. They just sit in a drawer somewhere or a safe. Hopefully you're keeping them in a safe somewhere until you need them. Now the downsides of it is that they're not connected to the internet. You do have to go through a few more steps in order to conduct transactions. So if the currency is fluctuating rapidly on any given day and you're trying to lock in a price, you may not be able to do so as fast as you wanted to but it's usually not that bad. But the trade-off is super secure and it's again, it's in your control. It's not custodial. So my suggestion here in terms of hot wallet versus cold wallet is if you're dabbling into crypto for the first time and you're not spending a lot of money, it's okay, use a hot wallet, that's fine. If you decide you want to get into further and own more cryptocurrency like a lot a lot, I highly recommend using cold wallets for these secure factors. So the other thing to consider when you're dealing with wallets is that not every wallet supports every single coin. It's getting better, but back in the heyday, like different wallets supported specific coins and whatnot, but you're seeing like exchanges and different wallets supporting more and more coins. Becoming less and less of an issue. Same thing with cold wallets. Back in the day, they supported very specific coins like Leisure is one company, Trezor is another company and they supported different coins. So you had to make a big choice between which device you were gonna own but now they're starting to bring on more blockchain protocols and support different more and more coins. So I think in the future, you're gonna see less of this as a problem but it is a consideration when you want to use a wallet. So usually for beginners, usually dabbling like Bitcoin or Ethereum or any like major coins, most wallets support all the major coins. So there shouldn't be an issue for you but if you wanna start going to more obscure coins, then yeah, you gotta look into your wallet and see if it supports it. So I mentioned your wallet keys or your recovery phrase earlier. Do not ever, I'm gonna say this again, do not ever 1,000% ever give it away because once you give it away, you will lose your wallet forever. There is no way to recover your wallet.  So it's not like an internet website where if my password gets hacked, I can actually just reset the password and still have access to my internet account. It doesn't work like that.  Okay, so just do not ever do it. And when I say a secret recovery phrase, you might see when you get a wallet for the first time, it'll probably ask you to memorize or jot down like a 12 word recovery phrase. There are different ways to keep that recovery phrase safe. I recommend getting these hardware repositories where you basically just keep a record of your recovery phrase on a physical thing that is safe from like if your place goes up and smokes in a fire, you still can get your recovery phrase off of this device. So like if you write it on a piece of paper, keep it in safe, but then like your place goes up in flames and that paper burns, guess what? You just lost your recovery phrase and you lost complete access to your wallet. So use some kind of a hardware recovery phrase keeper. I forget the name of the one I use but I can share that in the chat once I think about it. So your secret recovery phrase, I'm gonna iterate one last time, 1,000%, keep it safe, do not ever share it and yeah, that's it. So should you or shouldn't you get into crypto? I leave that up to you. Based on all this information that I've given you and armed you with, you should be able to do your own research, think about whether or not it's right for you to participate in the ecosystem. Maybe you don't wanna trade on cryptocurrencies, you just wanna create NFTs. Sure, do that, but you're still gonna have to understand how to do that. You still need to own cryptocurrency to do that to mint an NFT. So anything that any transaction you wanna do on the blockchain is gonna require you to own some amount of cryptocurrency. So should you or shouldn't you? Look, I just encourage you to look into it. I do, you don't have to follow me and do your own research on it, but just make sure that, you're not just following what everybody, all the hype is, really think about whether or not you wanna participate. I personally think from a technology standpoint it is the future of the internet in terms of Web3. I think we will get there eventually, probably sooner than later. So it's really exciting. So if we are talking about a Web3 ecosystem in the future it's gonna be real important for you to learn about how to participate in it. So, but right now it's a should you or shouldn't you? I think in the future it might be you have to. So just take that into consideration going forward. And that's my talk, thanks for listening. And I think we're gonna go into the many, many questions that I see popping up here. I think we have a few questions in the chat here. I could go in order. Oh, actually before you do that I do see Donica's hand is up. So let's do that first. Oh, okay. Donica, you wanna take her? Yes, yes. No, I just got him here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the talk. I learned the basics so to speak. I'm curious about one thing. So you mentioned, so there's a couple of, I guess things that I'm trying to differentiate in my head. So one is the future of the internet, which, you know, we have an idea where it's headed. And then, but in terms of the Bitcoin as an investment, I guess that's my biggest kind of, because you mentioned like if you bought the t-shirt for $10 and someone tells you, oh nuts in value this much, well, it's not really. Like, so then what is it like, what would it be for me? What kind of usage will I have other than participating in this new web that we're going into? Like, I mean, is it worth investing, like buying a Bitcoin if the value of the, you know, it's not considered the same as any regular, quote unquote regular investment, you know, like stocks and bonds and with real estate, of course it's different because it's, you know, so yeah, that's what I guess I'm trying to differentiate. Yeah, I hear a couple of questions within your question. So I think the easy one I'm gonna answer first is, is it worth it to invest? This is not an answer I can give you. This is something that you need to determine for yourself whether or not you should participate in. And we're just talking about Bitcoin, we're not talking about all the other coins, okay? Bitcoin itself is fundamentally, right now it's very speculative, there isn't a lot of real-world usage for it. So not you determine this is something you wanna take part in, that's up to you. Highly volatile currency, you know, you can see it's had swung from like, you know, zero up to 60,000 at some point now, it's like it's 17,000 and it goes up and down very, very quickly. So it's up to you if you can deal with the hard burn of investing in something like Bitcoin. Now, the utility of coins, you know, right now, like I said, Bitcoin doesn't really have a lot of utility. There's a lot of energy costs to just doing a transaction with it. Like, you know, I probably wouldn't buy something like as silly as a t-shirt with Bitcoin.  But I would probably buy a t-shirt with like a different coin, you know, like an Ethereum based coin, like, or even something like Cardano, which is like another protocol. I may buy something, you know, with different coins that are lower value that are a little bit more stable in terms of their valuation. In fact, there are coins out there that are actually tied to the US dollar. So they basically follow the value of the US dollar. And there's a lot of potential utility there for exchanging of actual real goods down the line. Right now, the reason why we don't see a lot of exchange of real goods is because of the energy costs involved. But there are people solving that right now. And you are seeing companies like PayPal or I think even Amazon is accepting cryptocurrency at some level. I could be wrong about that but there are companies who are accepting cryptocurrencies in exchange for goods or services. So we're starting to see a fundamental change and shift in that. But for Bitcoin itself, just talking about Bitcoin, it really doesn't have much transactional utility right now unless it's like a huge transaction. Gotcha. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks. Ramon, how do you wanna do this? You wanna curate the questions or should we just go through this one by one? Yes, I could begin with the first question I saw pop up in the chat and this is asked by Wendy. So it's kind of a comment question. So that sounds like the central government has been replaced by platforms like Coinbase, et cetera. No, no, yeah, it has not been replaced. It's an alternative. Nobody has all of a sudden miraculously supplanted any central government or central bank, transfer bank, the NGC. In fact, I think at least for me, this is just my opinion, is that we're gonna see them work in partnership into the given future. Maybe central banks move on to blockchain. Maybe central governments move on to blockchain. Maybe they don't. In fact, we see a lot of tension and friction there right now because blockchain technology is challenging the status quo of how things can be done. So I think in the near future, we're gonna start seeing more partnership develop. I don't think blockchain technology is gonna go away, but it hasn't supplanted any centralized finance system yet. And kind of goes into what Sue asks. She still would like to know why we need cryptocurrency when we have a perfectly good monetary system. I think it's debatable whether or not we have a good monetary system. I'm not gonna get into the philosophical issues of all that right now, but I wanna give you an example of how to imagine how a decentralized platform can help somebody. Now in the US, it's probably like an afterthought. There's a lot of trust in institutions and whatnot, but let's say you're in a corrupt region of the world where you cannot trust the government to hold your money correctly or any central financial banking system. You just can't trust them. There are many reasons in the world that are like this. Now in this decentralized system, if I can have access to currency on my own terms and it is hard-coded in the ledger, you cannot forge the ledger. You don't have any bad actors that can go in there and basically forge transactional history. It's all there. So when I'm trading currency amongst my peers, it's completely trustworthy. I don't have to deal with whether or not this corrupt system will magically make my money disappear. And then I can maybe exchange the cryptocurrency that I use with a more trusted centralized finance system. So let's say I'm in, I don't know, somewhere in South Africa or South America or something like that. Some weird region. There are even corrupt regions in the US. Let's admit it.  And then, but you still need to put those US dollars into a bank that you trust. So whether or not you have access to a US bank or a safer bank, that's a whole nother layer. Another really good reason for decentralized currency is that let's say in private and stricken regions where it's really, really hard for people to get access to banks. Let's say I've, you know, I'm living on the streets. I don't have ID. How could I ever open a bank account? How could I ever participate in a financial system? It's almost impossible because of all these bureaucratic layers I have to jump through. I mean, that has nothing to do with corruption. It's just red tape. Now with cryptocurrency, I can have immediate access to a financial system that I can participate in in a decentralized manner that isn't controlled by all this red tape. So there are a lot of benefits into decentralization and it can benefit a lot of people who have been underprivileged or disenfranchised. Okay, and we have another question. I think it's Stevi or Stevie. So was FTX custodial account, did holders lose their money? Yes. So there's nothing to laugh about. It's really, really sad what happened. But yes, a lot of people lost a lot of money. And it's probably unrecoverable. Okay, so then we have a few comments or clarifications, but then Seth asks, what is the difference between short-term and long-term crypto trading? I guess that's the difference between like a day trader and a long-term investor on the stock market. Short-term is you're dealing with quick rapid trades dealing with a lot of volatility with the market. Long-term is just, you buy something, you hold on to it maybe for a few years and then hopefully it goes up and then you sell it. And Tom has an interesting comment, especially about this FTX fraud and maybe it's effects on creating fear among people that I think we've heard a lot of. He says widespread adoption of Web 3.0, especially crypto seems far off or never given recent FTX financial fraud. Okay, we're getting into the realm of opinion here, which I don't mind talking about, but the first thing to clarify is that Web 3, Web 3.0 are actually very, very different things. You're gonna see people mix those terms up quite often. Web 3.0 is usually like the technological protocols that people are talking about. Web 3.0 is more of like ecosystem that we're talking about. So I was talking about Web 3.0, not Web 3.0. So there's a distinction there. Adoption and fear. Look, this is like I said, it's still a very, very new ecosystem. It's been around a little over a decade. You know, imagine the modern banking system or the modern stock exchange. It went through the same trials and tribulations in the early days. Don't think what we have right now just manifested perfectly, you know, and even still in many aspects is not perfect. There are still corruption problems and whatnot. So what we're seeing right now, yeah, it's these things cause fear, but they also cause people to make really rapid improvements. And that's, I think the beauty of modern technologies that we can course credit very, very fast. It's not like back in the heyday where a course correction is like moving to the Titanic.  But it does, I think, yes, the negative part of this is that we were trusting a lot of unethical entrepreneurs who started exchanges and did nefarious things and did things that were not transparent and just basically lost people a lot of money. The positive side of this is that it definitely drives home the point of using non-custodial wallets, which we have been talking about for a decade now. We've been talking about this from the beginning. Do not use custodial wallets once those exchanges came into play. It doesn't mean that you should never trust an exchange. There are exchanges out there that are trustworthy. Coinbase is pretty trustworthy. Gemini is pretty trustworthy. There's some trust issues there with Binance, but for the most part it's pretty solid. There are other exchanges out there and as more exchanges come into play and as more government regulation comes into play, I think we're gonna see more stability in the exchange ecosystem. So it's really unfortunate what happened with FTX and yes, it's kind of a step back in ways, but the ecosystem is still moving forward. Development on blockchain and interest in blockchain didn't just stop, it's still there. So it's up to you on how you wanna react to things like that. Next question we have is, Edith asks, what's your take on Solana? Thank you. My take on Solana, it's just another blockchain protocol. It seems pretty secure. I personally don't know a whole lot about Solana, so forgive me, because there are so many blockchain protocols out there at this point. I don't know about every single one of them, but from what I hear, it's pretty stable. Or it might, or actually let me correct that. I've heard that there are maybe some stability issues compared to like Ethereum or Bitcoin, but I haven't heard any major problems with it. So yeah, that's my take. Sorry, I can't give you more information on Solana. And then this seems like it's a comment, kind of like advice maybe, I don't know. So it's pretty long. Z says big companies like Meta, Amazon, Tesla may have more swings down to up 70% too, but fluctuations to me are okay, as long as it's eventually has a good chance of going up. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not the same thing. Number one reason most cryptos have a CO or CO like authority and are pre-mined initially. Bitcoin wasn't, I recommend folks to differentiate between them and not consider everything that has the name crypto, same as Bitcoin, at least in my view. I guess I'm trying to understand it. That comment is meant to be investment advice. I take all investment advice with a grain of salt. Everybody should formulate their own opinions based on as much good information as they can. I think the comment here, I'm looking at it again. Most cryptos have a CO or CO like authority and pre-mined initially, Bitcoin wasn't. Sure, I guess that's correct. I guess I'm trying to understand this sentence. Do not consider everything that has a name crypto the same as Bitcoin. Could Zewoo, could you expand a little bit on what you're thinking is there? Or are you just saying, like when people say like, quantum this, quantum that, not everything is like quantum, is that basically what you're saying? Or maybe Zewoo's not here? I'm just gonna take that comment as that. So yeah, there's people who are like bending around the word crypto. Be careful, not everything is a solid or fundamental cryptocurrency or based on blockchain technologies. There are different layers and there are different protocols being created that aren't necessarily blockchain technologies themselves but that they utilize blockchain technologies. They're just acting as a different layer on top of it. Those are still crypto in the sense of, they're part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, but yeah, there are definitely people out there are just using the word crypto, just like people use the word quantum, they're really understanding what it means. Okay, again, we have some recommendations in the chat, but let me go to the next question. What causes the volatility of crypto? That's by John. It's simple, economics, supply and demand. That's the nut of it. Yeah, just like the stock market, essentially. I mean, definitely more complexity to it, but at the very fundamental layer, it's just the point of meant. And Jing asks, under what kind of situation will you mistakenly give away the key? Oh, like there's all sorts of phishing scams out there. Let's say a company, actually I saw this recently in my email, a random email got through my spam filter and said, hey, we're dropping rare NFTs and you were chosen to take part in this NFT drop, give us your wallet address and we'll do that. So the wallet address itself, it's still pretty innocuous. I may go, oh, this is cool. I'm gonna give him a wallet address, but part of this phishing scam is then they go, oh, but we need your recovery key to fully do the transactions.  That is purely a scam. And I think a lot of ways to actually recognize scams also is like, if you see an email from a company that doesn't actually do NFTs, like the email I saw came from some cooking website. And I was like, what is this? So people are getting scammed out of their wallet holdings through phishing scams like this. So just be careful when you get people reaching out to you randomly saying, hey, give us your wallet address. We got some cool stuff or we wanna give you some cryptocurrency because you were chosen to do this. Do some digging, see where the source came from just like any other email these days. You gotta look at where it came from and if they ever ask for your passphrase or recovery phrase, don't give it away. This is not to say that there aren't legitimate transactions that happen. Like sometimes there are companies that do give away free currency just to onboard people into their ecosystem. So there are legitimate reasons to participate in that. But just be careful. Those people who are doing legitimately will never ask you for your recovery phrase ever. And Edith seems to have a comment here. I don't know if I missed the first part of the question here, but it's something about not being the most environmentally friendly. I think we've heard how much, I think generally the public has heard that it affects the environment a lot crypto. Yeah, Bitcoin is a pretty energy dependent on average annual average. It uses the same amount of energy as probably like Argentina or maybe even a bigger country at this point. But Ethereum at the time before they emerged to proof of stake is probably using on par with like the energy consumption of all of Australia. But now with its move off of proof work to proof of stake, that energy usage has dropped significantly. It's still a lot, but the technologies are getting better. There are different protocols being created different consensus protocols that are addressing the energy usage. People are very, very aware of the energy consumption and the environmental impact in the crypto space. We talk about all the time and most of us who are in the space want that into improve and it is improving. In fact, I would say it's improving a lot faster than most things. Like if you look at the car industry, how long that's been around and how long it took them to start changing things around. You know, blockchain technology and the crypto spaces, like I said, only been around a little bit over a decade and we're already making leaps and bounds within a decade on how to address environmental concern. So, you know, take all of that with a grain of salt. You know, look at the entire bigger picture of what's going on. You know, there are going to be detractors to the crypto space. Primarily they use the environmental argument a lot, but there are a lot of balanced counter arguments to this.  Actually, I love journalism. I love the media to a certain degree, but they're also a lot of modern media. They are using sound bites and not really understanding they're not experts in any particular field and latching on the specific arguments just to generate controversy on subject matter, to generate clicks and whatnot. So, you know, do your research, look at arguments, look at counter arguments, you know, figure out where the balance is. Any issues that are cropping up in the space are being addressed, are being talked about. They're not being ignored.  And I don't, there's just aren't any more questions in the chat, but this is probably wanted to clear up something that he mentioned earlier. And he says, yes, FTX is an example, the one that crushed, that crushed recently who was owned by one guy from South Korea as another. Yeah, it looks like- Who didn't know what's the name? Yeah. Let's see. We're good friendsy. FTX, the crash, Luna crashed as a currency. There's been other crashes, you know, in the past. Honestly, this is gonna happen in any kind of percolating ecosystem. I mean, it's not like we don't see stocks crash and burn. Obviously they work on different fundamentals, but, you know, nothing, this is what I tell people a lot is like nothing is absolute in the world, you know? Even with physical products, one moment they're here and the next moment they're obsolete because technology's changed. Or, you know, something happens at a market level or economic level that causes something to crash. Usually the things, the coins and currencies or exchanges that are crashing are because they're built on really, really bad fundamentals. So it's really important to understand what you're investing in or an exchange you're participating in. If there are a lot of like dark layers to it, my recommendation is to stay clear. Sometimes it's hard to understand whether or not there are dark layers there. So there is a lot of a buyer beware right now in terms of, you know, new tokens that are spun up, but I'm optimistic that as the blockchain protocols become more mature, they become more secure. And again, like I said, governments are starting to get into the regulation space. And I'm not anti-regulation in the crypto space. In fact, I think there needs to be some kind of account, another accountability layer there. That's just my opinion. There are gonna be people who argue against that with me, but I think in order to fundamentally have trust in this ecosystem, we do need to participate in partnership with governments at some level. So yeah, just be careful in what you're investing in or participating in and just research, research, research. And Wendy actually asks, where would that research be done? Freakonomics as an example. It looks like somebody mentioned Freakonomics as a podcast. I don't have less than that podcast, so I couldn't give you anything, you know, on that. For me, I believe in balanced research. Research is like everything I do. I'm a product designer. So when I'm doing research, I have to look at a lot of different sources, not just one or two sources. I'm usually looking at like five to 10 sources of information just to make sure I'm looking at balanced, you know, balanced informational landscape. You know, given, you know, the crypto space, there's a lot of good, great information out there online. There's also a lot of misinformation. You know, exchanges generally give some good beginner learning material on things. You should definitely go to like, take Cardano for example, they have a site. You can go to Cardano and learn about it and learn what they're doing. I would, if you know people who work in the crypto space, you know, they're probably good people to talk to, you know, people like myself also. I don't actually build blockchain technologies or anything like that, but I am creating my own NFT. So I do participate in the ecosystem and I've been participating for many years. So I'm very familiar with what's going on. But like I said, there are so many tokens out there right now that even people have been in this space for a very, very long time, aren't gonna be able to have a handle on every single token out there. So, you know, you're gonna have to go to the source of every token, learn about the team, look at what they've done in the past, who's on their board even. Are they conducting themselves with full transparency at a organizational level? Those are all important things to consider. If you really, really wanna dig into organizations and tokens, there's ways to do it. Yeah, there's a lot of resources to be done. Okay, I think we have another, we have a raised hand. Wendy, I'll ask them to unmute.  How would a beginner, you know, find sources of information that could be trusted?  What authorities do you trust to, you know, considering that it's decentralized?  But if we're talking about the crypto space itself, yeah, who do I trust? So can I interject? The library has a lot of books on cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. So if you're a beginner, you can learn about it that way. And those are trusted authoritative sources. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, they're written by people who probably built the technologies themselves. So, you know, there's a lot of, like Leah mentioned, a lot of books out there. I'll give you anecdotally speaking, I jumped into this, I think just being a technologist, I kind of have a fundamental understanding on how things work technologically. So what I did was, I didn't just look at the currency or the token, you know, I wasn't really interested in the investment portion of it. I was really interested in the technology portion of it and how it could benefit society. You know, there's been a lot of questions, you know, in the chat today, and in like my past talks, a lot of people kind of just narrowly focus on this investment part of it and whether or not I could buy or sell or whatever. Back up from that question, back out of it. Really think about is the technology gonna benefit society or are there potentials there? What do I need to know about the technology fundamentally to feel secure in my knowledge about getting into the investment side of it or getting into the participatory side of it? So, you know, I did read a lot on how blockchain works and there are a lot of technical papers out there. So I had to read up on, you know, how does the cryptographic layer work on the chain? You know, what is proof of work? What is proof of state? And I don't expect everybody here to get in there and read all these technical papers. So that's why I do these talks to give more of a layperson's overview of how they work. But I created trust based on my technical understanding of what's going on. But that's just me. I'm one person and that's how I approach things. I like to really understand the fundamental foundational layers of anything I get into. And I think that's how, and from there, you're gonna be able to spin off and find those books and find those trusted technologies who built those technologies, who are writing books or those people who are founding trustworthy companies who are writing about it in their blogs or papers they published. For example, Buterin, the guy who created Ethereum. I actually have a lot of trust in him as an entrepreneur. He also philosophically aligns with myself because, you know, he cares about the environment and he talks about things that are impacting the energy consumption all the time. It's just why he moved Ethereum into a proof of stake. So as an authority figure, I trust him generally. He hasn't given me a reason not to trust anybody. So if we're talking about the big philosophical layer, again, this is just my own personal opinion. You may or may not agree with me, is that I give trust until you give me a reason not to trust, or unless I find something that is untrustworthy foundationally with something. So, yeah, we just live in a weird world right now where there's a lot of misinformation flying around. And, you know, I'll tell you this, to bring things out of the abstract, Wendy, if you ever run across something and you have questions, whether or not it's trustworthy source, feel free to email me. Run and buy me. I'll take a look at it. Oh, I guess the next question is a concern by Matt, who asks, how about the use of cryptocurrency for ransom by criminal terrorist organizations? That's an interesting question. I'm not a terrorist, so I don't think like them. I mean, there is a lot of anonymity in, you know, in trading crypto and stuff like that. However, there's this kind of misconception that, you know, any, that you can never find out who is creating transaction, you know, on the blockchain. Here's the thing. If somebody wants to cash out their cryptocurrency, at some point, they have to exchange it. And that has to go through different financial governmental layers and regulations and red tape and bureaucratic layers. Now, it may be that, I'm just speculating here from based on things I've heard is that, you know, maybe I ransomed a big chunk of crypto from somebody and then I distributed that big chunk amongst many, many different wallets, hundreds of thousands of wallets and then those are gone through exchanges.  So there's a lot of complexity to, if I was to be a bad actor on how to stay anonymous, but you're never truly 100% anonymous. That's like a misconception. You know, like I said, because every transaction is recorded on the block, blockchain, you can actually see where all these transactions came from and lead to. And eventually they do touch exchanges at some point, unless somebody is literally just keeping their transactions in the crypto ecosystem permanently. Yeah, there's always, there's a reason why government law enforcement organizations are able to track down these people. It's not 100% anonymous. Okay, next question we have is by Suzy, which crypto is most trusted and stable by big corpse that use crypto? Most trusted? You know, I, well, I trust Cardano. I trust, you know, the people behind the Ethereum protocols, but you know, here's the thing, if because it's decentralized at this point, so decentralized, I guess you'd have to talk about which exchanges you trust, that thing I guess you should focus on. And I guess there is, there's like certain trust things to be talked about, like in terms of whether or not a token will collapse. I trust a lot of the tokens and currencies that have been around now for about 10 years. You know, there's a lot of stability there.  But there are, yeah, in terms of exchanges, I generally trust Coinbase and generally trust Gemini. Binance a little, is a little touch and go right now. You may wanna be careful with that one because it's actually banned in the US. You can't use Binance in the US. You have to use offshore means of using Binance. FTX obviously had problems. Yeah, I guess I would need to know specifically what you're wanting to know about. Then I can tell you if I know anything about it.  The next question is from Anvita. What are some legit sources, forums to learn and look at that transparent information? I think this is essentially the same question as what Wendy asked, right, in terms of like which trusted sources. So yeah, I've already answered that question. Oh yeah, thanks for sharing my email there, Leah. Yes, if anybody wants to reach out to me for any additional questions, I think we're a little bit over time here. I feel free. Also the slides, if you want copies of the slides, I can share a link or share the actual slides. I think Leah, you have the link for that. Yeah, I'll be sending the slides and the recording after the program. Okay. Yeah, and I saw so many mentioned real quick that my presentation is much more objective. I appreciate that, that's something I aim for. I'm not a talking head. I, the whole purpose of this issue is to arm you with as much information going forward can make your own objective decisions on whether or not you should participate or not. So I actually appreciate that comment. And thank you all for being here. And if there are no further questions, thank you again, Ebb, for your great presentation, getting some good comments in the chat, saying, you know, engaging talk, and you know, well-researched, you're super knowledgeable and we really appreciate your spending time with us today. So eloquent, eloquent speaker, thank you for the great presentation. So again, thank you for educating us on cryptocurrency and we hope to see you again soon. All right, everybody, this was fun. Thank you. Bye-bye.


Digital Holographic Microscopy, DHM, can be used to objectively measure the degree of inflammation in tissue samples from patients with ulcerative colitis, UC, providing a more accurate assessment of the severity of the condition compared to traditional histology methods. This article was authored by Arne Bocmeyer, Joost Buskemolan, Steffi Kettlehead, and others.


Okay, now that we have, the business now begins, now we know where he's here. We gathered today with our candidates for Bear County Commissioner of Precinct One, and Texas State Representative District 118, to learn from them on where they stand, on the issues that directly impact our community and our lives. Our future, safety, and quality of life will surely be impacted by how they choose to represent our area. We are here tonight to show our candidates for office that this community is extremely concerned about what happens in the south part of the city and of the county. We are fed up with taking a back seat to our neighbors to the north. We want a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We want to partner with our elected officials to build parks, community centers, and recreational facilities to promote healthy living for our citizens. We want them to stop the abuse created by greedy financial institutions who are eager to take advantage of our friends through deceitful payday loans. We need them to help us improve our educational system by increasing the funding of our schools and stop placing the burden on our local school districts. Young people hold the key to our future, and they deserve better schools and a better education. We need their support on workforce training to provide meaningful opportunities to our citizens so they can break the cycle of poverty that unfortunately can extend from generation to generation. We want to show our political candidates that we need to work together and begin a dialogue so that we can improve the quality of life in the south side. We stand together as a community to be heard and to get your commitments to work with us. Thank you, Mr. Martinez. Thank you for explaining why we're here tonight. Now we will hear stories from individuals in our communities regarding the issues we are presenting to these candidates and for which we are asking for their support. The first story we will hear will be on the Payday Lending and Father Frank Macias will be speaking about Payday Lending. When I was a pastor, we had a lady that cooked for us, she was 85 years old and she had Alzheimer's. And actually, we actually did cooking for her. We actually had her come into the rectory to take care of her because she had Alzheimer's. Cada viernes se iba a ella y caminaba por el centro y el centro era González de Caspar. Entonces estaba lloviendo un viernes, it was raining on a Friday and I followed her. I said, I wonder where Selma is going? Her house is the other direction. La seguí entre una ofesina donde era un lugar de prestamos. It was a lending place. And I said, ¿Qué está haciendo ahí en el pleio? I entered there and I said, excuse me, but what are you doing here, yourself, dijo. Pues me demandaron una carta y me dijeron que tenían 100 dólares para mí. They sent her a letter and said, you have 100 dollars here, this office. Pues vienen y me dieron los 100 dólares. So I came here and they gave me the 100 dollars. And I said, how long ago was that Selma?  Pues yo siempre vengo, I always come here, that was about three years ago and I give them 30 dollars a week por 100 dólares. Entre yo le dije yo, let me see that folder that you have on this lady here. She said she has Alzheimer's and the manager gave me the folder. And I saw that she had paid over $2,000, los míos dólares, on a $100 loan because she would pay late. She would receive letters that would say that if she doesn't go there and pay there, they were going to give the information to the sheriff. Y estaba tormentada. And she was sick. And I took the folder from him, I said, I'm going to take this folder. And you can call the sheriff, you can call anybody that you want to call. But I'm taking her and she's never going to come in here again. And their face were white. And I guess maybe he could have shot me. But my brothers and sisters, I thought that was just one case. Yo estaba con la impresión que no más era mi selma, but it's not. It is a lot of people. And here in San Antonio, every time I pass by these places that you leave your car title there and then you end up paying all that money, it's screaming, it's a crime. So hopefully we'll have people that will support the honesty and the goodness of the south side because you know, most of them are located in this area. No, my focus was on this because we were poor. But we pray then that our eyes are open to that reality. Amen. The next story we will hear will be concerning the Highland Oaks issue. And for that, we have Saneth Gutierrez and she's from El Carmen. And from the Highland Oaks area. The newest member of Cops Metro. In the last 15 years, I have been a homeowner in the Highland Oaks subdivision. They're committed in the forest outside of Berkeley, outside city limits. That has no pastries, no sidewalks, no lights, no street signs. The roads are so bad that school buses don't go in. And we just lost trash collection services because vehicles get stuck in the sand. In the past February, my six-year-old daughter was making hot cocoa at home and stowed it all over herself. She suffered second-degree burns, tear abdomen, and right thigh. I quickly realized her injuries were serious, so I called 911. The dispatcher was on the phone with me as I held my daughter who was screaming and shaking in pain. He was getting the instructions on what to do. At the same time, was asking me what my streets looked like, what was my cross-street, what was near my house, and asking me if someone can stand outside my house because the emergency responders could not find my house. As a nurse, I know that ambulances are expected to arrive in less than nine minutes from the time they are dispatched. In my daughter's case, it took over 25 minutes. Why? Because the things have not changed in Highland Oaks in the last 15 years. Somewhere we started to learn from cops Metro how to organize ourselves. We still don't have our paid roads, but last month, the county approved a plan to invest 4.4 million over two years to pay all of Highland Oaks. Then our streets are paved. Project Quest, and we have Sonia Serna present. Good evening everybody. My name is Sonia Serna. I am a participant of Project Quest and a nursing student at San Antonio College. I'm a Level 4 student, pending graduation December 2016. First job within RN, I will be earning about $52,000 having gone from $25,000 to $52,000. About why Project Quest is important to this community. At this time, I would like to share a quote that I have in my room. I see it and read it every day. If one were sufficiently trained and self-confident, if one were willing to labor with one's hands and one's mind, one could have what has come today to be called the American Dream. I believe that quote was written by Benjamin Franklin. Having lost both parents at a young age, that dream has been kind of hard for me to reach. But with the help of Project Quest, it has been much easier for me to find that dream. They have been a great blessing. They have helped me purchase books, which they're not cheap. They're about over $1,000. They've helped me pay for uniforms, medical equipment. They've even given us gas cards sometimes. Because of Project Quest, I've been able to concentrate on my schoolwork, rather than worry about how to pay for tuition and books. I'm here to tell you that the students of Project Quest are willing to labor with their hands and their mind. We ask for your support. We need Project Quest. Project Quest needs you. We will have now Mr. Martinez is going to be introducing candidates and going over the candidates for the rules for the candidates questions. Before we move on to the next part, I'd like to go ahead and introduce the candidates we have with us tonight. For State Representative District 118, we have Representative John Lujan and Tomas Uresti. For County Commissioner Precinct 1, we have John V. Lara and Gabriel, excuse me, John V. Garza and Gabriel Lara. I would like to just reiterate that all the candidates met with COPS Metro leaders beforehand, and they have all agreed to follow the rules. Now, I want to invite Mr. Cruz and Mrs. Martinez, who will be asking the questions. My name is Robert Cruz, a leader with COPS and Metro and a member of San Diego the Great Catholic Church. The issues and questions that will be asking the candidates and the representative have emerged from meetings and conversations within our community. And they're here the first question. He deals with education. This year, the Texas State Supreme Court ruled that the funding formula is unequal, but that it is not unconstitutional. The state legislature, instead of acting to improve education funding in the state, it has cut funds for education. Most recently, they are proposing restricting money for a special education. We are here to change that. Do you commit to raise additional state revenue for public schools, especially those that have large populations of students or economically disadvantaged and English language learners? Or to move us toward universal pre-K education in Texas and to cover the expense of the SAT or ACT for every high school student? On payday lending, every day, unscrupulous lenders rob families of their foreign-earned wages through payday and title loans. They make families poorer, yet say they offer a much needed service to deal with this issue. If elected, will you support a law that explicitly makes threats of criminal changes for non-payment of payday or auto title illegal? Will you support a law mandating Spanish language disclosure on all payday and title loan contracts and paperwork? Will you support urging the state to adopt the unified ordinance on payday lending that many cities have passed and to respect the right of municipalities to enact those consumer protections? If elected, will you support a law that will prevent the industry's attempt to raise the rates that can be changed for consumer loans to lengthen the loan term allowable from the current 180 days to a longer term and to add secondary products such as life insurance to loan transactions? Another issue, so far with the state doing nothing on payday lending, cities like San Antonio have bravely stepped forward to protect their residents. But now Texas wants to change that even, take that away from us and return to the wild west of usurious lending. Will you support the right of all cities and counties to raise tax revenue without interference? Will you support upholding cities' right to regulate their local issues by passing ordinances? On Project Quest, for 25 years Project Quest has proven to be one of the nation's leading workforce development programs. In fact, last Monday the executive director, Sister Pearl Cesar Cesar was invited again to the White House to meet with the Secretary of Labor to showcase its success in developing a well-trained workforce to return living wages with economically disadvantaged populations. This is a program worth fighting for. Do you support maintaining the current level of state funding through the Adult Career Education, or ACE, fund to continue? Supporting the successful work of Project Quest here in San Antonio and throughout the state. On Medicaid, we hear stories about citizens being turned away from emergency room because they don't have health insurance. That people continue suffering without care is a moral stance that the state has taken. But it does not have to be that way. We have an option. Do you support expanding Medicaid in Texas? On the first issue on education, do you answer yes or no? Representative Grinnell? Answer yes. On Bay Day Lending, what is your answer yes or no? 100%. On local controls in the city, do you answer yes or no? Yes. On Project Quest, yes or no? Oh, definitely yes. And finally, on Medicaid, yes or no? Yes. You don't have to repeat the questions. That's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. You're right. Any response to any of the issues that we covered? Okay. Give me a couple here. Okay, first of all, thank you for inviting us here. I'm the state representative right now, and I'm just blessed to be here. And I want to tell you, this is very, very important. The Bay Day Lending one really bothers me because it's predatory, especially on the minorities, especially in our community. That really bothers me. What bothers me the most is because it's affecting, and it's not, I can't believe that we don't have it in Spanish also. That has to be in there. We need to put laws in there to protect our citizens. That's 100%. Second one, and I do want to comment on what Mr. La Fuente was talking about at Highland Oaks. I've been there before. I drove with them and we went through the Highland Oaks. I drove there and I made them stop. It was raining, we had these four wheels. I wouldn't take my car there, I'd get stuck.  I'm a retired firefighter. I was a firefighter for 25 years. I was a police officer for six years. I said, how does a police come here? How does a fire truck, and they said they don't come here. They just can't. That's a shame. This is America, this is the United States. That should not happen. Why our leadership has allowed that to happen really, really shocks me. That should not happen. Another one is Project Quest. I'm going to be honest with you, I didn't know much about Project Quest until you enlightened me and we looked at it. Then I was reading all the success stories and that's what I'm about. That's what prompted me to run for office because I know we can break cycles of poverty by teaching technology. The high paying jobs of tomorrow. I started a company in 1999, the three of us, and today we're a little over 400 employees. We're breaking cycles of poverty. We've done that through my company, helping kids in our community, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. These things are very important. Am I done with my time? Okay. Okay, and then the last one is the education. That's what prompted me to run. Because of the education, we need to fund it better. I don't like us being disadvantaged out here. Everything goes wrong in education. Who wants to bring companies in here if you don't have a good school board and a good system? You know, we have phasing schools. We've got to fix that. We have to fix that. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Well, I think most of you know that I've been sitting in the hard of the school board for right at 13 years. And education has been key. It's been my life. I've given bloodshed and tears into education. We have, we are sitting in the number one school district. I was right. As the number one school district in the entire state of Texas, we have right now what is going, of course, the funding is there and there's more funding needed. And yes, I will definitely support it. We have a STEM high school here in Harderville that me and my colleagues were able to put together. That when you graduate from Harderville STEM high school, you will lead with a high school diploma in one hand and an associate's degree in the other. We have cosmetology certificates. We have health careers high schools here in Harderville. We have the highest technology and automotive, technology here in Harderville. We have the best of the best. So we are breaking the cycles of poverty right here in Harderville, right here. And we're bringing people from SouthSan and from Southside from the entire, all the different missions want to come to Harderville. That's where everybody wants to be here. So yes, I'm definitely going to push for more monies forward to the public system. Because right now we're receiving the least amount of money in the average school district. We're in the lower and lower ranking. We receive about $7,500 per child versus other school districts that receive $12,500 per child. And that's not right. And so the legislatures to make that change once and for all. Payday lending is a joke. They need to be shut down. They don't need to be regulated. They need to be just totally shut down. The average payday loan takes 800% to pay back. But it's not just the payday loan conflicts. There are markets here. There are other companies here in San Antonio and throughout the state of Texas that will charge you, that will sell you life insurance, health insurance, disability insurance. Would you believe they say unemployment insurance when you buy a piece of furniture from them? It's not just the payday loan companies. Those are one of them. But there's a lot more than that. Project Quest. Good afternoon. My name is Bali Martinez. I am from Orlando, Moncarno in Bogas. Let me tell you what Bogas is all about. As community areas sell. And that is la voz de la gente. Commissioner Rodriguez was invited. He was invited by cops Metro. But he's not here. And we don't know why. Okay. So I thank Mr. John Garza. Mr. Geklu Lara. Thank you so much for being here with us. And so this is the questions. This year, Bear County Commissioners Court approved 750,000 to begin the study for Highland Oaks. However, this is just the beginning. Do you commit to support over the next two years the 4.4 plus million dollars necessary to pay the Highland Oaks subdivision? Many of our residents do not have a place to bring their children for educational enrichment classes such as Boys and Girls Club or other extracurricular activities. We need a space for our families, our community in South Bear County. Do you commit to support and fund a community center at the Mission Software Complex for South Bear County next year? This year, the Commissioners Court left the way again in fighting for paying his workers a dignified wage by passing a new budget with a minimum wage of $13.75 an hour. Leaving out the conviction that public money should not be used to pay poverty wages. They even went a step further and raised the minimum wage for contract workers to $9.50 an hour. My sister was part of that. She was getting $7.25, $7.25. And I know how much she had to work two jobs for that. We applaud them for their effort, but our work is not finished. This upcoming year, do you commit with COPS Metro Leaders next year to raise the minimum wage to county employees to $14.50 an hour and to raise the wage force set for contract workers to $10 an hour? Also, this year, the county raised their investment in Project Quest to $80,000 up from $50,000. Their work has continued to set the bar for quality workforce development. Will you work with COPS Metro Leaders to raise the county's investment Project Quest to $150,000 next year? Mr. Garza. Yes, Mr. Garza. We've been wages. Yes. Project Quest. Yes. Thank you, sir. Wages. Yes. Project Quest. Yes. Thank you, sir. Mr. Garza. And I do have to point out that COPS Metro brought up the minimum wage. Okay, so that's one of the important things that we're doing here. Mr. Garza, you have two minutes. Thank you for inviting me out. I want to talk first about the Highland Oaks. My record as State Representative of District 117 is providing basic services and improving services to the outlying county areas. So that would, of course, include roads, basic sewer systems, water. So I commit to expand those services, not only to Highland Oaks, but many of the areas of the cost, Sandy Oaks, as many outlying areas that need basic services. The second as far as facilities for the children, I believe, yes, that mission facility is there. It needs to be funded, but we also need the schools and other public entities to share in opening their facilities to the children in the outlying areas for sports, exercise, and other activities for the community. Also, as far as committing to you as a commissioner to make sure that there's efficiencies in every department, and those people that are working and working hard get that wage that can help them support their family. And last of all, Project Quest met with me in my office in Austin, being here in San Antonio Bayer County. I do commit to work with them and other organizations to increase higher education and training programs through Project Quest, but also other organizations and the school districts and other public entities. There's plenty of money out there. And with all the legacy projects that the county is involved in, spending millions and millions of dollars in parks and things that they can name after their names, we need basic services. We need roads. We need sewer. We need medical and transportation in the outer county area to bring students to college classes, to emergency medical services out in the outlying county areas for emergencies like what happened to your daughter. There should be a clinic around the corner, just like there is in the city. So these are commitments I've made in the past, and I will continue to represent you in the county commissioners' court. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me back. I was here in the early 60s with Father E. Bishop, C.C.D. and Sister Agnes for a bit of a while. On the Hundred Oaks subdivision, Mom and I have traveled that neighborhood. She said a reminder of the real problem which she used to live in Mexico. So it's just horrendous. It's a public safety issue, not just an issue about convenience. When you can't, I spent 34 years with the bar department. So if you can't get into a scene, it's an issue. So I definitely support getting that fixed. The community center, yes, but with some stipulations. And it's not just a community center that it's also be used for perhaps looking after our kids or after school care programs or education for diabetic training and other issues as such. Cops Metro, the rate, the minimum wage. It's not just a matter of dignity. It's just not just about getting out of government subsidizing. It's about keeping good employees. They're having an issue with their county where their turnover rate is just really high, especially in the detention center where they're spending thousands of dollars to train their detention officers just for them to go and find another job. So that's definitely an issue. And the last one with Cops Metro, I visited with Sister Pearl about two months ago. I've seen the return of investment that they offer. It's phenomenal. So I definitely support Cops Metro with Project Quest and other programs. I remember back in high school, Sarnia was the part we were back in. That's the other kind of programs I'd like to promote. That's where we need to be focusing on our children, not just projects in the downtown area. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lara. Mrs. Mora? Thank the candidates for being here tonight. I appreciate your presence. But I have one more question to ask you. Will you commit, if you're elected, will you meet with Cops Metro within the two weeks after being elected and then quarterly thereafter? Do you have your commitment to meet with us? We do that when we have new candidates. We'll sleep for two weeks. I'll do the day after. We'll give you time to rest. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Cruz and Ms. Martinez, will escort you all out of the hall as we move to the next part of our agenda. Thank you very much and good night. If you've been watching the news regarding the candidates who are to lead our nation, this election is different than any other election we have seen in our lifetime. Like never before, it is important that we all exercise our right to vote. We need to get our own families and our neighbors to go vote. It's up to us, the voters, to decide who will lead their nation. We do not tell you who to vote for. You make up your own mind as to who you want to vote for, but go vote.  Suvoto es su voz. Early voting began today, as you know, October 24th. And it's going to run through November the 4th. So it is best to vote early. By voting early, you will avoid the long lines that are expected to form on November the 8th, the actual election date. If the lines are long now, now for early voting, I heard today, can you imagine how it's going to be on November the 8th? So but if you vote early, you can vote at any of the voting places listed on the schedule. You all have picked up a schedule of the voting places. Does everybody have one? Does everybody have one of these sheets that tells you where to go to vote? You can go to the mall, to the library, and here in the south side of the Lovation Library, well, some of these are located. You can go to La Spalma's Library. On the Testerville Road, Collins Garden Library, South Park Mall, that's where I go to the regular shopping. South Sand ISD Administrative Building, Precinct One Satellite Office. It's the one where you pay your taxes, I believe on Pleasant Road. Palo Alto College, Southside Administrative Building. So if you can get one of these papers, we have them up there on the table to take with you. Don't wait too long. You have stars today and they'll run through November the 4th. Remember, when you go vote, we encourage you to not vote a party line. Don't just say, whatever party you want to choose because there are many important elections like the San Antonio ISD and the South Sand ISD elections if you're belonging to those school districts. You will miss out on them if you go the party line. So you need to go race by race and make your choice all the way through. Your duty as a citizen does not stop at the party or the president instead. It requires us to vote all the way through the ballot. Father, the son of a loving father, we thank you for bringing us together and keeping us together as your children as a community. We ask you to guide our leaders, help them know to bring us justice, to bring fairness to your community. We ask you to send your angels to watch over us and keep us safe as we leave here and go home. We ask this in the name of your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you for being here.