So, thing one, I'm not just going to talk about brain implants, initially I was going to do that and then I realized it would be really boring because there are so many other cool brain things I can talk about. Thing two, I am only just getting into the whole security side of the hacking thing, so I mostly know how to play with brains and I'm hoping I just give you all a bunch of really terrible ideas for how you can hack brain things as well. So as a few caveats, I'm going to be mostly focused on consumer devices in no small part because medical devices are much more complicated in terms of regulation and I don't want to accidentally give you terrible ideas for how to hack medical devices without having gone through any appropriate channels for doing so. In the interest of time, I'm just going to talk about electrical brain signals because they are the most portable, so for instance I have an electrical brain signal scanner here called an EEG device. You can't really do that with MRIs at the moment. If anyone here is working on room temperature superconductors, maybe you can do that, but I cannot. I'm only going to be focusing on really big picture security issues, so I'm not going to be talking about any level, low level code things or any specific chip sets. Just going to be focusing on like what happens if you happen to intercept someone's brain signals coming from one of these devices and my talk is going to be extremely neurocentric, but know that most of the issues I'm talking about apply to most wearable bio devices and a lot of them just apply to computer devices in general. I'm sure a lot of the actual security component of this will be very familiar to you from other systems. Okay, so in order to orient you a little bit into the world of neuroscience, I'm going to be talking about neuro technology. This usually starts at the level of brain signals. Some kind of signal processing has to go into it.  And there are two main things that are going to come up throughout this presentation. One of them is physical safety. So keeping in mind what sorts of things can actually compromise your safety if you have electrodes implanted in your brain and connected to the internet. And sorry, the other major one is privacy.  And it is not to say that there is any kind of direct mind reading technology, there is still lots of very useful, very personal information that you could accidentally divulge while wearing one of these devices. All right.  How many people have heard of neurons? Assuming the rest of you have mostly spoken in French and don't know the specific word. So neurons, individual cells of the brain, they work on something called chemo-electric coupling. So you have electrical impulses that lead to the release of neurotransmitters, things like dopamine or adrenaline, that control most of the aspects of how your brain works. These are oriented in what are called cortical columns. And the reason this is important is because when you get lots and lots of these tiny electrical impulses summing together, they create a larger electrical potential that you can then measure from the surface of your head instead of having to go directly into the brain in order to detect the signal. And then these cortical columns are all arranged into the rest of your brain. And the actual electrical component is called an action potential. This is what it looks like. This is just to give you an idea of the types of voltages that you're working with. So each individual action potential goes to about plus 30 millivolts.  The reason that's important, as we will get to later, is because if you then run a current into your brain, you can change this resting potential, which then kind of changes the way that your brain works. And different parts of the brain obviously do very different things. So where you have electrodes placed is going to make a big difference. Got kind of here. This is a brain looked at from the left-hand side.  Some of the more important ones here in blue, you've got what's called primary motor cortex.  If you stimulate them, you can do things like make your hands twitch or behind it. You've got primary somatosensory cortex. So if you stimulate the hand area of that, you could feel things in your hands, even though nothing's actually touching your hands. Back here, you've got primary visual cortex. If you were to stick an electrode in there and start stimulating, you can make people see flashing lights. You don't even really need to stick an electrode in there. If you run a stimulation externally, you can also see flashing orbs. It's good.  These are the ones that are controlling things that are more like emotions or memory, those are found lower into your brain. And to affect those, you need to have devices that are much more invasive. Okay, so I'm going to start with the technologies that let you read from the brain. And then we'll have a separate section for the ones that what I'm calling right to the brain or affect the brain using electrical potentials. And these vary in degrees of invasiveness. So you can have the fully external EEG devices. Again, you can carry them around with you, plaster them on your forehead. Super, super non-invasive. There really aren't many safety concerns in using those, unless the circuit is very poorly constructed. I have made that mistake before, accidentally running a current back through the electrode still really hurts. Yes, then you have electrocorticography.  As a warning, if anyone has a problem with images of blood or things like that, I do at some point have a picture of an exposed brain. Just to be aware. And then you can go even deeper into the brain and have electrodes implanted directly into the cortex and get very, very specific information from very small populations of neurons. And the signals that you get look very similar.  So you have all of these billions of neurons generating very small electrical potentials, which are then being obscured by the brain tissues and by this fluid that is constantly moving around. And then a few different layers of tissue plus your skull plus your hair. The signals get very messy. Electrocorticography lets you bypass some of that. But the scale of the signal that you can collect is much smaller because you don't want to take off someone's entire skull. Just to record clean brain signals, I hope. And then the individual electrodes are even more invasive, so you usually get information from an even smaller population. So to sum up about EEG, electrical activity sums together. These are what some of the fancier caps look like in a research setting that is a 128 electrode device. As contrasted with the one electrode device that I have here with me today. But you get everything in between in terms of sophistication. You can detect stuff from the scalp. It's difficult to localize because of all this mirroring from different tissues. But you get super, super precise timing. And this is what a lot of the really interesting things hinge on. So you get millisecond precision in terms of recording something and relating it to what's actually happening in the real world. And for the wireless devices, signals are usually transmitted one of three ways. They usually go through Bluetooth, radio frequency, or Wi-Fi. It varies depending on what the use case is. The trend is towards using Bluetooth low energy for the newer devices since power consumption for something that's recording that much data, it's usually like 10 kilohertz or so. So having something that has a very, very long battery life and minimal power consumption is very important. So what are some of the cool signals you can get if you do happen to have some kind of way to intercept these Bluetooth low energy signals? This is called the P300. And the P300 is a signal that carries information about what you are attending to. So what you see on the right is what's called a P300 speller. If you had no way to spell something other than your brain signals, which is often the case in clinical contexts with patients that have something called lockdown syndrome, where you can't move absolutely anything, even like eye blinks or eye trackers are out of the question. What you can do is just fixate on one of those letters and you scan your brain signals. And whenever the one that you are focusing on comes up, you're gonna get this characteristic P300 response. Which is extremely useful in a clinical context. It also means that you can do things like if you present an array of faces, you can figure out which of them people are looking at the most. Or in like a visual scene, if you get enough information, you can tell what thing in that visual scene people were looking at. Which is why you might want to be extra careful about what information you are storing and what databases while you are looking at things. The thing about this though is that it is very important to have synchronized data. So you would have to go through some effort to get a camera that is fully synchronized with the recording device. You can also get something called an N400. And this one is more an index of familiarity than it is an index of attention. Which gets extra interesting. So here this is one of the classical studies that you can do to elicit the N400 response where you present someone a sentence. The pizza was too hot too and then they get a series of words and you look at their brain response to each of the words to figure out which of them makes the most sense. Which also means that you can use it as something like a biometric password. So a lot of the brain based password systems are trying to use the N400 response because if you flash someone like ten words and one of those words is their password, you'll be able to tell which of it is, which of them is their password from their brain response to it. And then be able to use that as a form of authentication, which is very neat. The other interesting implication of something like the N400 is, again, if you were to flash someone a series of faces say at an airport and then see which of the faces seemed the most familiar to them. You could also try to use this as some kind of like extra security measure to see who is most familiar with whose faces. Which is a bit of an issue because people can be familiar with faces for a variety of reasons. And one of the themes that comes up continually in brain computer interfaces is that you need to understand your data if you want to make very strong claims about what you're measuring. So if you want to make a claim that someone is more familiar with someone's face because they're friends with them, you should make sure that they're not responding to their face because they've seen it over and over again in the news or the like. You can also do a different type of analysis just looking at the frequencies carried in the signals. And this is the one that's probably the more relevant if you're looking at like intercepting the signals and trying to figure out what's going on with them without having this very highly synchronized time stamping of like what they were looking at compared to what their brain is saying. So these you just do like a Fourier transform on the raw signal and you're going to get all of these different energies and different frequency bands and those carry information about like drowsiness or how alert you are, how concentrated you are, how stressed you are. You can also get neat things about like facial movements. So you can tell if someone's jaw was clenched. You can tell like what rate they were blinking at. You can very easily tell if they were asleep. That's the clearest one. And the use cases for these range from like the super, super fun to the kind of sketchy in my opinion. So the super fun is like you can use these and connect them to a pair of cat ears.  It's really neat. If you stop paying attention, your ears start drooping. But also one of the more common avenues of research for future applications is for employee monitoring, making sure people are alert while they're doing their jobs. This is a picture of a safety helmet that actually has EG implanted. If you look like behind his ear, you can see the tail bit of an EG device that's connecting. And so this is an experiment going on in a factory in China where they're actually looking to see if they can improve factory productivity by moving people around when they're bored, which is potentially a very good use case, but is also generating a lot of data that might not necessarily be useful enough to outweigh some of the privacy concerns inherent in continually scanning all of your employees' brainwaves while they do their work. So to summarize the risks and consequences of this type of thing, safety risks, again, if the devices are built properly, the risks should be extremely low. Privacy risks are actually a little bit on the high side, especially if you are piping it through something like your phone. So you do have really synchronized GPS data along with potentially whether you're walking where you are, all of that. It's not directly mind reading, so we're not going to be able to intercept what words people are thinking directly, although if they do happen to be typing a lot of things and all of a sudden type their password, you might be able to figure out that they just typed their password. So yeah, you might accidentally divulge what information is actually important to you. And then there's also the issue of potential disclosure of medical conditions. So epilepsy obviously carries a very characteristic type of brain activity that goes with it, even if it's not directly causing a seizure at that particular time. And if your employer is monitoring your brainwaves all of the time, you might run into some issues where you're accidentally disclosing medical conditions that you didn't necessarily want to. And then you can get even more invasive, which for the time being is only being done in a medical context. But there has been a weird amount of press about the future of cognitive enhancement lately, which is one of the reasons I wanted to give this talk and trying to figure out how we can use invasive brain implants to merge with artificial intelligence. So that's where we are. So these look kind of like Velcro and they stick in kind of like Velcro onto the surface of your brain. They're very, very small. This is a specific type of measuring device called the Utah Array. If you want to look it up afterwards, they're difficult to keep in for a long time. Brains, as it turns out, do not like having metal shoved into them. So they start scarring pretty much immediately and it limits the lifespan that you can keep them in for. But again, the signal transmission types are fairly consistent across these devices. So again, Bluetooth low energy is one of the ones that is seemingly more common for some of the new wireless systems that are coming out. And you can get really cool stuff from this, too. Because it is closer to the brain, you can get information that is much more detailed. So in this study, they had someone who was already implanted with these devices for medical reasons. And this was part of, I think, the BCI Olympics last year. And they were trying to get a measure of which finger the person with the implants was flexing. So you can see here with some feature extraction and just like the raw signals, you have fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And you can get a nice measure of which finger they were thinking of flexing. And then use that to control robotic devices. This is another type of use case where, in this case, what they were doing was using these electrocorticography electrodes to measure while people with traumatic brain injuries were reading a series of words. And in this case, the goal was to predict which of those words they were going to forget and which they were going to remember. And so they could actually end up classifying which of the words they were going to remember and which of the words they were going to forget. So that's one of the really cool use cases for implanted electrodes. But of course, these come with more safety risks. So again, the circuits really, really should have some type of current limiting, hard built in. If you are ever involved in the design of these devices in any capacity, please make sure they do. Because the risks of heating up your brain are much higher than the risks of accidentally heating up your skin. If it's for cognitive enhancement purposes, I say the risk is low because it is unlikely that in the current state it will go ahead with actually like implanting these for cognitive enhancement purposes since the benefits in no way really outweigh any of the risks you'd be taking on by implanting electrodes into your brain. But the privacy risks are again even potentially a little bit higher than with EEG devices because the signal is so much cleaner. You get much more specific information about where it's happening in the brain since it's directly on the surface. You can do things like tell what things people are going to remember, what things people are going to forget. And then there's the whole issue of anonymizing this data. Because your brain data is so closely linked to you and because it's unique enough that you can do things like use it as a form of authentication or as a form of identification. It also means that when you generate all of this data, it's very difficult to actually keep it anonymous because if at any point part of your data gets de-anonymized, the rest of it is very easy to de-anonymize afterwards. So if you are storing lots of sensitive data, making sure it doesn't have things like meta-information about where you were when it was collected and at what time and at what research institute is quite important, and especially for some of the more portable ones, they are more useful if you have information about what time of day you were using it and where specifically you were using it. But that might also make it much more difficult to store securely. There's a very strong parallel with DNA where it's really difficult to actually keep DNA data anonymous because you continue to generate data sources that are not anonymous all the time since it is actually just little bits of you that are being left places. It was a horrifying way to say that, I'm sorry. So now we're gonna move on to reading from the brain, summarizing the key takeaways from this. Signal transmission is really similar to other wearable devices. So there's nothing that is super, super unique about neuro-technology signal transmission that isn't true of like Fitbits or in the medical context that isn't true of like pacemakers. But the signals that they carry do carry information that is very unique compared to these other wearables or other medical devices, and that information is occasionally quite sensitive or things that could be used maliciously. All right, now we're gonna move on to brain stimulation where the concerns are a little bit flipped where most of the concerns are about things like safety. So you also get all kinds of degrees of invasiveness when it comes to the brain stimulating devices. The least invasive is something called transcranial electrical stimulation where you take basically fancy saline soaked sponges or occasionally literally just saltwater soaked sponges, strap them to your head, connect them to some kind of current generator, usually about like two milliamps. And you run the current between the sponges, turns out the path of least resistance is often directly through your brain. Or you have the super invasive deep brain stimulators, which are electrodes implanted directly into deep brain structures, again, for now for clinical purposes. So the reason that running a current through your brain changes things is because of these action potentials. They need to reach a critical threshold before one of these all or nothing events actually happens. And so if you are running a current into an area, you can make it either easier or more difficult for these action potentials to occur. Or you can, depending on where you place the electrodes, make it easier for different brain regions to work in synchrony or more difficult. This is only true for the transcranial direct current stimulation. There are also all types of different stimulating pulses that you can send. So you can send like alternating current pulses as well, which have different effects. Those are mostly for synchronization. So if you, for instance, wanted to promote one of the frequencies that is characteristic of like sleepiness, you could send an electrical current at that frequency and just make it easier for your brain to go into the sleepy state or the more awake state, whichever you prefer. Again, the signals are usually sent over Bluetooth. A lot of the time they're hardwired, especially if it's one of the direct current stimulators because those are basically just a battery with some resistors built in. But a lot of them now are controlled by microcontrollers, which means that if there are any vulnerabilities in those microcontrollers that you can gain access to them, you can change things like the current shape, the current duration, what the maximum allowable current is. And if it's one of like, if it is one of the devices that has electrodes in multiple positions at the same time, you could also change things like which part of the brain is being stimulated just by telling it to stimulate in a different spot. So here on the left is an example of one of the things you might wanna do with this type of brain stimulation. What you're looking at here, this little triangle bit is someone's nose and you have just a top-down view of their head. It's called the 1020 electrode positioning system. In red, you've got a cathode. In black, you've got an anode. So the cathode is like on your forehead. The anode is on your shoulder. This is something called the DARPA accelerated learning paradigm online. Just need to make sure the bunny quotes go in the video. And so this is a paradigm that was used in a study once to help train drone pilots faster where they were looking at a scene and trying to pick out what thing they were trying to actually focus on. And what they did was record their brain activity during like the first chunk of training, figure out which parts of their brain activity were changing as a function of training and then use the electrical brain stimulation to make it change a lot faster. So they were actually managing to bring the training time down by a fair bit using this. On the right, you've got an example of a brain stimulator that I built. You've just got one wire going for the cathode, one for the anode and a little dial to change the current on it. It's very fun. So the safety concerns for this one are quite low. It's not fun to burn yourself with the system, but it's also not really life-threatening. And the effects of the brain stimulation are quite weak. They can produce very cool effects, but if you wanted to really stick it to someone and accidentally make the current run from their shoulder to their brain, instead of their brain to their shoulder, worst case, they would learn something a little bit slower instead of a little bit faster. It's unlikely to be a huge issue. It gets to be a bit more of an issue in the clinical context where if someone is using it as their depression treatment, you could potentially actually make their depression a bit worse instead of better, which is just not good. And again, privacy concerns. I have not seen anyone figure out how you can record brain signals directly from the brain stimulation technology. You'd have to build in actual recording systems in order to get some of that information back because the resistance is just way too high from saline-soaked sponges to be able to read the brain signals back. So it's not really a privacy concern. And then you get into the more invasive stuff, the brain implants. So I'm gonna break this down into three different categories. You've got motor sensory, extra sensory, and cognitive. And these are in terms of the effects that they can have on the brain. And again, we're still working with the same type of signal transmission protocols as before. Okay, so this is an example of a sensory implant. It's called the Argus II retinal prosthetic. And what it does is it works much in the same way as a cochlear implant. If you're familiar with those in the context of hearing, we've got a little microphone and it stimulates the cochlea and lets people hear. But in this case, it's got a little camera that then stimulates the retina and lets people see again, which is very neat, but carries some pretty unique privacy implications because in that case, you do have a continuously recording camera and it has to maintain a certain memory bank in order to actually be able to do the correct stimulation at the appropriate time. And if anyone remembers how horrifyingly the Google Glass went over in public spaces, people were very upset.  So it's definitely something to consider when you are moving towards more invasive implants that if you were to try to remove this, it would cause much more damage than a pair of glasses. And here's someone who was implanted with one of these devices and has since taken up a variety of extreme sports, including archery and heliskeying. But it works well enough that people can start, you know, making out different shapes or like navigating in the real world, which is very cool. This is an example of one of the movement prosthetics. So in this case, she has electrodes implanted into motor cortex and is using her thoughts to convince this robot, not convince this robot to directly control this robot so that it lifts up a glass and brings it towards her so that she can have a drink. And this has a few other applications as well. So for now, they've gotten it to like do this. There's also research going on into complete remote robot assistant control. So instead of just controlling an arm that picks up a thing and brings it towards you, ideally people that have these implants would be able to just like send a robot around their house to fetch something from the kitchen or other similarly useful things. Then you can get into some of the more cognitive stuff. This kind of bridges between the movement and the cognitive. What you've got on the left hand side is a mouse that's being driven around with a remote control. So the mouse has electrodes that are implanted to subtly suggest that if it turns the way that the remote control is telling it to, it will get a brain stimulation reward.  So it's kind of like electrical cocaine. It sounds horrifying. They're really useful for search and rescue. Apparently mice can get lots of places that cars can't. You can also do the same thing with moths. So there are some cool videos online of people like driving moths around because they've been implanted with electrodes. And then on the right you've got something that's kind of similar but in the context of a larger animal. And this is research that was done back in like the 1970s.  It wasn't a super well controlled study. It was the 70s. And the researcher is actually the one on the right. He's holding a remote control. He decided that the way to test his theory that brain implants could be used to control behavior was to jump into a bullfighting ring with a remote control and a remote controlled bull. Yes. So to summarize risks and consequences, the safety risks are pretty high, especially if the circuits are not built super well or if power consumption becomes an issue, eventually power sources get hot. There's also a risk of infection when you implant these, when you take the implants out. There's always a risk of infection on people's skulls, unsurprisingly. But then it does also carry the additional risk of behavior modification. So it doesn't have to be something as dramatic as the remote controlled mouse in the case of a person. That would be really difficult to do. I'm sure most people would notice if you were subtly giving them suggestions to turn left and then shocking their brains. It's much more easy to do with a mouse. But if you are worried about things like hacking cars, if everyone all of a sudden has these brain implants that connect their brains to the Internet, it does also carry the risk that, especially for movement control, you might be able to temporarily take control over someone's arms or something like that. So just making sure that any implants that are doing something useful can also be used to do something not great if someone gains access to them that shouldn't. And again, privacy is a pretty low risk because they are built for stimulating the worst of recording. And unless you build in recording electrodes, you're not going to be getting information back from them. But you can always build a closed loop system, which has the best of both worlds, but also the worst of both in terms of safety and privacy concerns. So if you remember the study I talked about where they were recording activity during word recall and figuring out which words people were going to forget, the second part of that was actually that they had brain stimulation on hand and were eventually able to train a system to detect when someone was going to forget one of the words that they were reading and apply brain stimulating current to help them not forget it. So they were actually able to significantly increase this thing called free recall in the traumatic brain injury patients, which is really, really cool. So this carries a lot of implications for future directions, especially in terms of non-clinical applications like merging with artificial intelligence, which seems to be the goal of a company called Neuralink, run by Elon Musk. If you haven't looked into it, you should. It's a bit of an interesting read. So in terms of developing these applications, they're still quite far off in no small part because it is very difficult to get ethics approval for implanting things into people's brains unless there's a very compelling clinical reason to do so. So what most of the groups that are looking towards human enhancement are doing is working in clinical populations for now and trying to develop new sorts of sensors that will be less risky so that you can move into non-clinical contexts, which carries its own set of ethical concerns with it since historically using people as guinea pigs for the purposes of human enhancement has not gone great. In terms of mitigation strategies, one of the big ones is to keep the hype about what brain computer interfaces can actually do to a minimum so that people are not likely to take on huge risks for very marginal benefits. So for instance, it is really cool that you can implant things to modify behavior in clinical contexts. That does not necessarily mean that you should go out and try to get a brain implant so that you can remember more words in a day. That is not a particularly great trade-off for having an implanted device in your head. Make sure that people understand their datasets if you do ever get approached to do contracts related to medical devices. Start at the level of what data you're collecting because if people are storing raw data you might not necessarily know what sorts of signals you'll be able to predict later on so making sure that things are secured at every stage not just at the database storage stage is important. If at all possible keep devices off the internet unless there's a very compelling reason not to do so. I feel like that's probably just good advice in general for electronics but especially true for brains. And store data locally as much as possible. Again, you don't necessarily know what sorts of things people will be able to predict from your brain signals in the future so keeping the data local might be a good plan. Good, so neuro-technology not uniquely vulnerable to hacking but still vulnerable to hacking. The consequences are potentially worse than usual if it can help you by making your arm move. It can probably also hurt you by making your arm move or any such similar things for all of the types of applications. So maybe think about what use cases you actually need brain stimulation for or brain recording for before incorporating it into things. Good.


Putakpros, after the Romans there was no Palestine in the sense, it was Arab tribes, Jews etc living there After the rejection of the 1947 UN plan by the Arab tribes, the Palestinian identity was formed But we now have to deal with this construct, we cannot go back to the 1947 to do it better Agreed, there has to be a place where people compromise, right? But we must also agree that Israel was a construct as well, right?  Because that's crazy


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Hey, tribe of dream men and women. So welcome back. This is episode two of Living in a smart light slash spiritual school so We finished up the previous episode of me going there for the first time three months and I Came back with the way I got a bit depressed and my mom said Go back to your purpose. So let's continue from there So part of the story which I engaged you and on the first part is When I met my key to instructor for the first time for like a personal meeting which we had once a week more or less and I told him I wanted to become an IQ instructor and he Told me that I will have to stay at least for six months for half a year And I was planning to stay only for three months to get a black belt Also to just in case you were freaking out I did I kiddo for like four years before in Lithuania So it wasn't like, you know, you get a black belt in six months, but also you're training like 15 times per week So so you know it was all of that and I was freaking out because for a young mind It seemed forever. I thought I was naive obviously, but I thought I trained for four months So I just go there for three months I trained my the hell out of myself and you know Just like really really dig everything and and learn everything and that's that's kind of how I was I was always switched on I was always Listening to everything he said did everything he told me to and read all the books and I was like mad in regards to learning I was sucking everything in I was a super devoted student and And so when he told me that I Need to stay for a few more months. I was like, oh, that's forever But you know to get kind of okay, so I keep it together or because you will make it funny part is I come back for the second time And I think it was like August. Yeah, and I Start kind of feeling the vibe and getting started and initially interesting also to use the first time I came I was super confident over confident the second time I came I was a bit more humble You know, I got that in the lost in confusion mode.  He's like, well, you know, actually you should stay here for a year Get your black belt because then the black belt passing was more or less in a year It's like I think it's gonna be good for you to stay for a year get your black belt and my brain is exploding I came back for six months, which seemed a lot for me and he's telling me to stay for twice longer So basically I came there the first time for three months. He told me to stay for six months, which is twice longer I come back for six months.  That's like ages and I'm gonna get all that time And then I'm gonna miss out so many things and I want to go back to the way Yeah, I want to now open my school I want to teach Aikido there and help people and so I was freaking out, but I was like, okay You know what? Okay. I will do this. I Trust him. I believe in him if it's a year if it's it's a year If we I continue down that storyline about eight months past my black belt exam is coming closer and We meet for a meeting again and he tells me So when you're gonna go back with Wayne after you get your black belt What what do you want to what are you gonna work for? What job are you gonna work on the side to support your dojo? I was like What do you mean?  I think it was a smart suggestion from him. And so he asked me So what are you gonna work on the side? And I was like There's nothing I really want to work on I work as and he started giving me options. He's like, well, maybe you want to be a waiter at least or you know Anything else like what inspires you and I kept thinking and thinking I was like Nothing inspires me.  There's nothing else. I want to do I'm fooling on this I don't want to do anything else on the side and He listened and he's like, well, okay. Well, I can I can dig that and he's and he tells me so that means Probably then that means you should stay another year Then you will get your second degree black belt You will and then he's told me then then you should maybe also consider becoming a yoga instructor because if you run a full school You know that kind of differentiates the classes and you have different people in different classes So it's going to be easier to support yourself again in that way and maybe you should also by the end of it go to a India for a month or two to kind of settle in and get more life experience before you start and I think it's a great again. It was a great advice great suggestion.  That's again double That's again double from what I was planning to do and it's a one more year. That's forever and then I stopped I caught myself doing that and I actually remember that moment very vividly Which is which is pretty pretty instinct and I caught myself. I was like I've been here before I've been here before This is not the way to go and and I caught myself and I said, you know what orcas Let's do this don't think about when you will leave just focus on being there become so good You know like like learn everything possible become so good that people would look at you and they would say You don't have anything else to gain here from rocas.  I'm like, I could have been better But but there are some moments where I did I did apparently they did a really good job and Everyone in the community where they're like, whoa was one of the best examples I ever saw and so on and so on and everyone's super super impressed and And I was doing a lot of work like I was that's all I was living and breathing And reading all the books and training extra, you know with 15 classes per week. I was still doing extra training and Again a moment I remember very vividly is The year was coming to an end like this physical year calendar year and We were chilling doing the Christmas vacation that was closed and we're making our schedule for the next year and My keto instructor told me said well, you know what I think Rokas you're Yeah, usually that this and that date should would be good for you to leave and open your dojo. I'm like I'm freaking out I didn't see that coming it was really weird I was so pumped all that time before to to go out there and open my dojo I could I was so looking for I couldn't I couldn't wait for it And then I settled in to just kind of becoming a great student being a great student And the day when the day came and I didn't see it coming and he told me now We should schedule when you're gonna leave The dojo to open your thing and I was like Holy crap, is this real? Is this really happening? I really having that conversation. I was freaking out I was like, am I ready to leave? I'm I started almost feeling anxious and And I I was surprised because in the past I just wanted to I was like looking for for that day so much to be told Go out there and open a dojo and when I was when that day came. I Was confused. I was almost Scared, but then I settled into it. I was like, you know what? Okay, that means I'm ready And a while later eventually, you know, I went to India for that month I came back to the way and there's an episode of how that went But so it's a very interesting kind of storyline of that whole process But there's a lot of things that happened meanwhile So I've come back to that so one of the things I Mentioned was me going to personal meetings with my a kid instructor They were kind of like coaching spiritual coaching, I guess and It was very specific and it was actually really intense to you. It's something I do look back and I appreciate that Thing it wasn't always done in the best way, but I kind of appreciate that that hard school Psychological school you help me grow a lot But it's it's it's an interesting method now that I look back So the way it would happen if we come back even to these first three months The very first time I went to Switzerland to live in the school We would sit down for the coffee and My kid instructor would ask what I want and I told no one to come I can instructor And I can't remember exactly what I said, but I guess the lines of the thought was like I want to help people and want to be you know inspiring and so on and then that never changed and and He then would ask certain questions and give certain feedback But most of times when we would meet He would be very specific in pointing out the differences between what you said and what you do or what you did And it's kind of again an interesting methodology basically the way it went So let's say I wanted to I would say to him. I want to be more honest and Because we spend all so much time together He would catch those moments when I wouldn't be honest per se Not it's not like a specific example, but a general example So he would caught catch that and we would sit down for the coffee He's like, well, do you remember you told me that you want to be more honest But that day at that moment you did this and that and I was like Holy crap or whenever I would have like a naive thought something he wouldn't agree about and sometimes To a correct degree like I had kind of a faulty idea He would break that down and he would point it out and he would show you your flaws really well He's like look you're doing this wrong, you know this part of you is you're saying this and you're saying and you're doing that and He would prove that some of the Thoughts that you have or ideas are false through kind of rational logical Breaking down or just kind of not always sometimes it was you know his own perspective But but still it was an interesting process because it's it always challenged and I know it wasn't just for me All of the especially the long termers which he did she's who lived with in the school We would all come back from those meetings half broken because he would push us to the to the kind of Furthest points of pointing out you your flaws and making you admit that you're wrong in some places I Think you know I wasn't like ego sent you from him It was it was really he was really trying to kind of you know in that specific way today to help you out in True so the way I would describe it. He would kind of break you down Or you would realize oh my god.  What's wrong? Where am I feeling and so on and then slowly you start to kind of Build yourself up again, and you're reconstructing yourself, and you're like well actually no You know he's right here, and I could improve here, and you know what actually I think this is true And by the end of the week you would kind of feel like you're back on your feet And you meet again and the same exact thing happens at some of those meetings. I almost cried You know I'm not I'm not a big cryer. I don't cry often But at some of those meetings I all it was like I was that close to crying. He pushed me to the furthest points interesting thing to you is I Told him to as well that was his methodology, but also early enough when we met I told him You know what I want to learn as fast as I can I want to learn as much as I can You hit me with everything don't spare me Don't hold back on me if there's something that you have for me give it You know just like go full-on don't don't don't hesitate on on Telling me about stuff because you think you know I won't take it I'm like I'm gonna take it all and sometimes he would push me where I was like breaking down and almost crying He's like remember of course you asked for it. You asked for this is like If you follow that storyline specifically That that was very evident the first year I lived there The first in the first year of our relationship By the beginning of and mid of middle of second month second year, sorry That started to change I started it was harder It became more and more difficult for him to catch my flaws not because I was hiding them Not at all actually but just because you know I started to see what he's talking about and I would I would be able to You know I would slip less and less in telling that I want to do something and not acting on it my words and my actions became more and more consistent and And also to I mean yeah, I mentioned to you I really want to You know Present the positive side here, but I'll just slightly mention this part You know also to I think it's important to kind of recognize that maybe also because I understood His perspective and I was able to relate with it and I did it in a sincere way But you know I was able to know what he's expecting To know what he believes in and those became my beliefs as well. And so we clicked more, you know, I didn't challenge him I didn't question him and Maybe you know that's when I when I was saying that whatever he's saying is true because I believed it He didn't challenge me so much in the past if I'd be like well, what about this, you know And he would prove me wrong in some way Then, you know, I would be in a crisis. So again, it's kind of a consideration But then by the end of coming back to the story by the end of second year Or second year mid-second year, I was like I was barely challenged anymore, you know, we were on the same page I was really, you know playing my game at the top level and those challenges didn't come across anymore So eventually that changed but the first year it was really intense It was really tough, especially for me being, you know, an 18-19 year old guy thinking I know everything and being proved I don't know nothing But for those deconstructions and reconstructions, I feel that they empowered me in a way Where I feel like, you know, that that may be more mature and ready to face Big challenges and to know what I believe in and to know what I'm about There's also the dark side which I spoke about other videos Not that it was all perfect, but as I promised, I will focus on the good side Looking at the whole experience one more time just reflecting about the whole thing One more challenge was which I didn't see coming was living in a community living in a close Community like we were spending a lot of time together the luchides We barely had any personal space. We cooked for each other as well. And we were also all in that intense process where we were questioned all the time and and we were questioning our beliefs and We were pushed her to our edge. And so that kind of came across Because we were pushed to the edge.  We were cleaning the dojo and cooking for each other and etc. Etc So if somebody fucked up something we were all like really heavy on it. I think I was the lightest I didn't like that already, but still I was part of the game So we're all kind of punishing each other for our mistakes. And so it was like really sometimes it was better Sometimes it was worse, but eventually actually I became the senior student. I was the I was the senior uchi deshi So I was kind of setting up the vibe and I think When I was the most senior one, I was setting up the vibe. I made it lighter and more friendly and so on But beforehand there was another person who was the senior uchi deshi and that person was very critical quite judgmental And and that was kind of the vibe that was set up. So it was even worse So that was a lot that was very intense So like like constantly knowing that you're under the radar You're under the magnifying glass as soon as you're gonna fuck up everyone's gonna tell you that it was stressful, but also That made me learn to live in a community to be also We're forced and that was kind of part of the vibe part of the culture there to always Confront each other if see if you don't like something and something is you know You think it's unjust you go and confront each other and you talk about it and you talk it out And I don't think that that's the best way to go But but that was the the hard core school for me Because I learned to deal with conflict all the time We're like so there were so many conflicts so many times we had to talk to each other and and face each other That by the end when I came back to Lithuania, and I was so used to that I appreciate that that part because I went through hell when my students would Challenge me or or we would have some discussion or there was some Conflict that I needed to address and confront. I had no problem till this day I'm not that afraid to come in cut if somebody wants to talk about with me about something heavy I'm like, let's do this man. I've done this so many times. I don't feel uncomfortable So that's a superpower. I guess that that I gained from that living of hell to a degree Yeah, and and I think just a couple more things The the another really cool moment of the story kind of unique that I feel will be valuable for you to hear Is that the first time I came there the first three months and then again the second time I came For a couple months. I was so inspired. I was so hyped that That I was not I was barely sleeping I was reading books all the time and I was training I would go out on the map because the map was always accessible and I would just do my solo practice like at 4am or something I was super inspired and that was kind of crazy and I did a lot of experiments Like I was like, what if I don't sleep at all or what if I eat only when I'm offered to eat or stuff like that So I got a lot of explorations and that was wild, but I you know, I also learned a lot But another interesting part of the story is that after those three months of spending there at the time initially When I came back to Lithuania Actually, I lost most of my friends Which is interesting now if you look back Because I was so changed, you know, I and I felt like I was changed I did change but also I felt I feel like I felt that I changed I believed in that change so much and I was so hyped about what was being taught there That my friends have a difficult time to connect with me anymore. They're like, who's this guy? They loved me as a joker as before But I came back, you know with all these new ideas and inspirations and some of my friends stayed but some of them were like, well Okay, he's too weird for us and there's good and bad in that. I think at that time I was more focusing on blaming them They're like, oh, you know, I'm just on a different level and they don't understand me now that I look back Maybe you know, maybe I was a bit too You know, cultish too Hyped about the whole thing and and later I toned down and I could relate to them more Maybe I pushed things too far at that day But it was an interesting experience that that that some of them couldn't take my changes and kind of I lost friends because of that I guess it's worth a whole different exploration But I try to when I talk in those videos the lesson I learned the hard way I really want to give you The the best of the best of my discoveries. I don't want to think out loud too much on record So maybe it's something I'll think about more next time and talk about in a different video So, yeah wrapping things up. There were a lot of different things that happened there Yeah, there were really a lot of things that happened here a lot of There are a lot of experiences. I really felt like I matured. I learned so much But also to you, there's a lot of things I didn't learn But that's evident in some of the other stories I already told you and will tell you No, I didn't really learn so much about life. The school was so spiritual That I was kind of adept adept and good at understanding that spiritual realm you know Being in the flow being one with the universe and then kind of using your intuition and trusting life That was a big subject big top topic You know that life is intelligent and it guides you where you need to be And I kind of believe a little bit of that still of course I'm more skeptical about that But but I was like all about that And the thing that's what also made me made me exciting to my Aikido students when I came back to Lithuania and opened my dojo They were all like holy crap. Who's this, you know, some spiritual being here But but there were also a lot of things I did learn and some of the realities weren't really addressed so You know, there were pros and cons but But as I said, I really wanted to share with you the Positive side of the story and I hope you got some interesting cool bits and Pieces from it. If you're interested about some other aspect of that whole experience, let me know Often actually very often I still I usually try to make these about 40 minutes long at most so So I think I still have a few minutes to tap touch that a lot of people ask me about money It's like, how did you support yourself? So maybe I'll just write a way answer it here. So the thing is I have to say huge. Thank you to my parents.  I worked like I worked in my dad's company. I was digging actually this This house that stands there My dad built it. So at that house. I was I was digging Holes there before it was built and I was also at the same place I was also being a security guard just walking around and showing that someone is there Uh, but the money was still low and our economy in Lithuania was way lower than switzerland's So the money I earned through a few months of hard work You know, I It lasted to me in in switzerland. It lasted me like a month or two months The economy is just so higher so much higher there so much more expensive Yeah, so I was always I was always saving money I was all I was never a big spender and then I was really buying the the cheapest things and really Making sure I don't spend much money outside like going to restaurants or something was not I could not do that By no means like if I bought a kebab once in a month for company with others. It was like wow The kebab was just like So expensive for me. So I bought only the cheapest of the cheapest things and Yeah, so I learned my ways around that and also to People some people are generous around that area.  I was walking a dog of my friend In switzerland and he was paying me money for that Which is pretty good money because you know, it was swiss standards And my kid own structure I have to be grateful for him as well because sometimes he would give us some work like in the dojo to build something Right his house to build something and he would pay us money for that and he knew I needed money So so he was more generous in those options. So I do appreciate that and also But but the first year was harder because you know, I was still just building my way up But when I got my black belt, it started to become easier Because first of all, my instructor gave me the option to teach private classes, which I wasn't that bad at And people would take those private classes often enough with me and I got some extra money And he also gave me the job offered me the job of cleaning his house Which he gave me some money for which again, I really appreciate that um and Yes, I was actually cleaning his house for about like Almost two years. It was like a free story. It's free for building. So there's a lot of cleaning But but still I can't complain. You know, I got some money for that And also to I eventually he gave me the senior position Of the you know, when I became the senior uchi deshi He also gave me some discounts and this and that For with the deal that you know, I will be supervising the uchi deshi's and You know, I will be taking more responsibilities teaching some aikido classes for him if he wasn't around So so yeah, I I kind of was looking for options myself Sometimes people would offer me stuff. My parents were always supporting me But the further I went into the less I needed support from them Because I I didn't I never wanted to be supported mainly by them I wanted to make sure that you know, I don't abuse their finances Uh, but yeah, and as far as you know, we have some hard misunderstand misunderstandings or hard Hard disagreements with my former aikido instructors. I said, I am grateful for some of the things he did And that's one of them, you know, he he definitely Tried to make The program accessible to me and gave me options and so on. So But that's kind of how I financed and supported myself there But yeah, aside from that if you have any questions about some details Let me know and you know, maybe I'll just make another episode in the future about that But I think there these are some main Fun parts of that story. I'm sure I'm missing some there's so much But at least you kind of have an overview and a feeling of What it was and how it went so so you have more questions. Let me know Thank you for staying with me for these whole two episodes I hope they were valuable and you learned something good from it And as always keep questioning and I'll see you in the next one Actually, you know what? I just realized I was kind of sitting here looking back at the footage that I already recorded And I realized there's one more important valuable thing. I wanted to share with y'all And that I kind of introduced but never summed it up as a valuable message Uh, I guess I spoke about that a little bit in one of the previous episodes of opening my own Like, you know dojo and I slightly point it to that But I feel that story and that particular part, you know, where I was completely devoted I was I was like like madly Always learning and picking everything up and being more attentive asking more questions and training more than anyone else I think that was part of the reason I was able to open my successful school My own school and obviously, you know, there were there were other elements my passion my enthusiasm and so on but but that also gave me confidence because It's something I keep reminding myself and in general, you know, people talk about the importance of niche Expertise I agree. They're super important And they were super important, especially back then to me as a young person and trying to establish myself in this world and provide value Uh, but the fact that I was so madly devoted to learning I was reading more than anyone else. I was Doing all those at extra training and putting all that extra attention and effort I think that did lead me to kind of go further At the game than most people around me or even though I was young and I was a big challenge for me I was a young guy wanting to do something which usually older people do I'm meaning Aikido instructor and I knew that I need to come somehow step up the game to balance out the scales So that really helped because by being so devoted to learning to to being a great student I I learned more things than usually I was technically capable of knowing in that age And that's kind of something I wanted to reflect with you quickly about is I feel it's an important lesson, especially I guess with millenniums These days and it's something I bumped into While I was running my own dojo. I had some volunteers in the end millennium, you know that that age Guys who or girls who were in crisis And I realized the articles that I read they were true The article said I threw the erected Conversations with them. I learned that whatever the article said turned out to be true, especially in those cases And I'm sure there's more is because those guys that I met and ladies They were born into having all of these things already You know laptops internet and so on and and they're surrounded by the stardom of youtube and instagram And they come to a conclusion that kind of you know, they're special Already just because they're born Not really the way the world works But they have that idea that you know as soon as they'll go out in the world They're going to create something amazing But the thing is until you put in the grind until you put in the work until you dig deeper than anyone else It will be difficult for you to create anything exceptional anything valuable And so I'm very happy I did that myself and that's something I would recommend to anyone who wants to open their dojo Who wants to create something amazing is first you need to do a lot of grinding You need to do a lot of work need to choose a direction and go wild in it. And again, I'm happy I did that and that tremendously helped me when I opened my dojo Obviously, there were so many lessons. I still didn't know there were so many things I still Wasn't aware of and I had to learn for the hard way through direct experience Some of them just couldn't be taught by anyone else. You have to go through these things But the but the baggage of knowledge and experience I already had Definitely made my path easier for me. And and that's again a moment where I appreciate That my Aikido instructor didn't let me go off the hook too easy and didn't let me go to Open my Aikido school too early because then probably I would have burned out and In an early stage and I wouldn't have handled it and I wouldn't have given enough to my students And the thing would have fell apart At early stages But the fact that I went there with such confidence and knowledge where I could easily sit down with another Aikido instructor who's like, you know 30 40 years old and and has been in the game forever But I could sit down with him and discuss about stuff and and provide value to him to a degree And prove that I'm good at what I do because of all the hard work that I put in So as the last message for this episode that that's something I wanted to make sure I do say And it's a recurring subject. I'll probably keep on coming back in various videos is putting a lot of work don't don't you know, don't rush Into giving and that's something I need to sometimes I might need in myself But don't rush into getting first of all make sure you get and that's one of the reasons why I'm I I'm all about reading books again and I want to also excel and my knowledge before I give Even more to people. So so it's it's kind of a balance of learning and not hesitating to give So yeah, quick reflection. I think it's available. So keep questioning


Okay, hi everyone. Hi dear colleagues. My name is Sergei and I'm working on Linux system roles. And in modern world, diversity, equity and inclusion became a main topic and a focus and because it's important for all of us to feel comfortable on the projects that we work on and the projects that we use and we participate in. And one of the parts of these is conscious language which is about using words that are rather inclusive rather than exclusive. And in Linux system roles, we started using a tool that is called walk to detect language that is not inclusive in our code. So today we'll cover, first of all, why this initiative is important and then we'll switch to technical part about the walk to itself and its features about the GitHub action that exists there with walk and then about some caveats that we had working with walk and how we worked around them. And yeah, after this we'll have some Q&A section. So software often carries, often uses some words that carry a great deal of emotional and historical baggage. And to be truly inclusive and welcoming, we should try to avoid the use of words that can carry these unintended second meanings just to welcome all the participants and just to not limit the number of participants that we might have. So that's the first reason and the second reason is for those who use English as their second language, it may be problematic to translate those idioms. And now let's move to the walk tool. So here I described the pictures that it has, so it finds non-inclusive terms in your code in file names and in the content of files themselves. It also suggests alternatives that you may use and it has some configuration that you can apply, for example, to identify the words that you want to mark as warnings, words that you want to mark as errors and also you can choose what paths you want to search on. So yeah, here you can see the example of the GitHub action that exists there that enables you to run walk on every PR in your GitHub repo to identify if this PR does not introduce any non-inclusive terms in it. So it's pretty simple. And here I have a slide demonstrating how this will work. So it sees that there is a non-inclusive term in your code and it has this pretty feature that prints the exact place where this occurs and also prints the terms that you can use instead, if you wish. And in this case, this is marked not as an error, but as a warning. And as for the caveats, that's the reason these two. So in my project, we needed to mark some words as errors to strictly fail on them and some words as warnings. And currently the tool fails both on warning and errors and we needed to change this. So we made this change to the code and submitted this PR, but unfortunately the second issue is that there is a lack of attention from the developer, from the initial developer of this tool. So hopefully the developers will return and continue the work, but for now we did the following. We created a clone, kind of forked the project into our local repose and just created a custom action instead of the official one. And here how it looks, you can see that we are pointing to also to our configuration file that we also customized for our needs. And instead of the official action, we're using just the path where we copied it to. And yeah, that's pretty much it for myself. And please, if you have any questions, yes please. Sorry, could you repeat, I think I didn't catch it. Yeah, so you're probably asking about GitHub actions. GitHub actions is an environment that GitHub provides where you can use GitHub resources, virtual machines and containers to run any test on your repository. So you can configure it to automatically run anything on special triggers. So for example, in our case, we are running the stool on every PR to check the content. Yeah, of course, yeah, you can also run work locally and yeah, customize everything and just use it locally as well. Just continue and I will get to you. Is there a plan to make? Yeah, actually the fork, it's pretty, we just, yeah, I'm repeating the question. So the question was if we can make the fork available to everyone and the change that we did, it is currently publicly available in our GitHub and it's actually pretty small and it's not actually the full fork but we just copied the code to our repo. So officially, it's not a fork. And yeah, so in the next slide, by the way, I have a reference section where I'm, yeah, I'm linking to this fork that we did and also linking to some other things that I talked about today. Yes, thank you. Please. Just a question. When you mentioned that the work action, actually the text includes the words but what if those words are part of the documentation of specific tooling that can only change and is there like a way to ignore, because there is this but we cannot change it because of this tool that's how it provides it. Yeah, so to repeat the question for the audience, is it possible to ignore work on some particular lines because sometimes, and this is the case with our project as well, we're working on many subsystems that just use the non-inclusive terms and we cannot use them in our project because we're just automating what is there already. So yeah, so first of all, in our configuration file we marked some oftenly used terms as warnings and did this change to not fail on them and also you can ignore separate files in the config file or also in the file you can ignore a separate line by appensing a comment above it or to the right of it to say walk, I think it's walk, ignore and the name of the rule that you are ignoring. So yeah, it is supported. Yes, please. So optionality of the code, right? And I'm guessing that remains to be just hand-picked manually but by whoever uses it. It shouldn't be changed like a copy and replace, right? So you need to check every instance like that. And is there any possible way around that or is that just how it works? Well, yeah, that's the work. Yeah, the question is about that sometimes again, you have terms that you cannot change because they are part of some other underlying project that you don't have like authority to interrupt and what are the ways around it? And yeah, so in our case, we needed to do this work and to just run walk on every repository that we do support. And we like about 20 of them. And of course, some of the terms could be replaced because we are using them only in the repo. And some of the terms come from the underlying project. Some, for example, the name of the main database is a master database in Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft IDAL that they are going to change it in for civil future. So yeah, that's something that we need to live with and yeah, in this case, we just need to ignore this word either in the config file or on the line itself. Any more questions, please? Okay, if not, thanks a lot for your attention. Again, I think you will get the link to the slides and the slides I have the reference section where you can click through the things I talked about and have some look at them. Thanks a lot.


Welcome to Digital Asset News to get top stories and crypto and bring them out of bite-sized pieces. Today, just as the thumbnail suggests, we're going to take a look into 2022 by retrospectively taking a look back into 2021. We're going to try to answer the eternal question, is hodling the answer? And the answer is no. And yes, I'll explain it a bit. Also, we're going to take a look at what history tells us, just taking a look at what has happened, hope potentially what could happen. We're going to take a look at why 2.3 trillion for our market cap is absolutely nothing. And then we're going to talk about a video we'll do at the end of the year, which is 2021 predictions that I made in January and how I measured up. And then also, we're going to take a look at my exit strategy and just talk about did I live up and do what I said I was going to do. So we'll take a look at all those things. But first take a look what's going on into the market today. So today, it is the 27th Monday, beautiful day here in Puerto Rico about 80 degrees. Just got back from the beach. Very nice. Family was in town. I took a couple days off. I mean, look, I mean, couple days for the holidays is a good time to actually sit back and reflect about what is super important. And usually, pretty much family. But today, we're getting back to the grind, taking a look at what is going on. So it's been a pretty good, pretty good timeframe.  And if we really take a look at the seven day, we can see there's been some pretty monstrous gains. We look at Solana, it's 12%, Cardano, 22%. We've got Terra up 16%, Polkadot 30% in seven days, 19% for shape. You know, wow, Polygon 27, trypto.com 26, 33 for Uniswap, 27 for Chainlink, and on and on 74% for near protocol. Man, that's a monster. And just on down the road. So there's a lot of good things that are happening. I mean, if it wasn't for these seven days, the center would have been pretty bleak. And then if we take a look at just some on-chain analysis over a crypto quant, nothing really going on too exciting for most of these. I mean, the all miners outflow in the purple, we don't see a lot of miners selling. The all exchange reserve for Bitcoin, looks like people are still taking off Bitcoin, maybe a little uptick and a little bit more. So when people take Bitcoin off the exchanges, that's good. They put in cold storage, they can't sell it. All exchange reserve for Ethereum, again, going down. Taker by Valium, you know, these whales are just buyers are just kind of propping with the price because they're like, we don't want to go too far down. And then, yes, we've propped it up a little bit. But this is the one that always concerns me. And it's been high the last three, four days. It's the all exchange estimated leverage ratio. And we get above 0.2. Those are pretty all-time high numbers. And we just hit 0.2103. Now we're at, oh, sorry. Now we're at the all-time, almost the all-time high, 0.209. So those leverage plays out there could potentially be not catastrophic. It's just a natural cycle. But expect some volatility when you have a lot of leverage. That's all I can tell you. So that's what's going on into the market. Now what we're really going to do is just take a look at into the question, is holding the answer. Now, on this channel, I've talked about just buying and holding, buying and holding. And is that really the correct approach? Sometimes. And here's what this was actually came about. There was a tweet that I thought was pretty darn interesting. This was from Blockworks. And they said, here's the price, the top 10 cryptos, last Christmas, last Christmas, 2020. Bitcoin was $23,000. Ethereum was $633. Binance coin, $33. Solana, $1.45. Cardano, $0.15. XRP, $31. Poked out was $5. Avalanche, almost $3. Luno was $53. And Doge, $0.004. And I have to tell you, I owned all of them, except for Binance coin. I never really gotten to Binance coin, just didn't. And still own, well, every single one, except for Doge. I get rid of Doge when Ilana Musk was on Saturday Night Live. I sold it at $0.66. I'm like, there's no way it's going. It's not going to a buck. And that was like one of the few times I've sold at the top. But who knows? In 10 years, Doge coin could be $2. I have no idea. But at that point, it just kind of made sense for me. And I just said, hey, this isn't a get rich quick scheme. It's a get rich overtime market. You don't need trade. You don't need to be a genius. You don't need to have a ton of money just buying, holding, you make it. It's very simple, but some people make it complex and it's not. And there really is some caveats to what I just said when I talked about there in that tweet. Because if you just hold on forever, would it be good? Let's take a look at a little bit of history, shall we? Because if we take a look before we get into history, let me just play this video. It's been stuck in my head for the longest time. This is Nick Murray and he is the advisor to the advisor. He's been in financial industry for 50 plus years. He is the one that people turn to as far as sage advice. And he gives some really good advice here. It's only a minute long. Just take a listen. The stock market in the United States in our lifetimes. I mean, since World War II has gone down an average of 30%, an average of every five years, kind of whether it needed to or not. And what was the difference in all that time between investment success and investment failure? I will argue that it was the single mistake of mistaking the temporary declines for a permanent loss, panicking out, thereby creating the permanent loss that you said you were fleeing from. Whereas if you had just sat there, never mind adding to your positions, which most people should be doing over most of their accumulating lifetimes, if not all of their accumulating lifetimes, but put that aside. If you just sat there, the temporary decline will go away and it will be then followed inevitably by a period of above average returns. That's the cycle. The big thing here is that, yes, he's talking about the stock market, but I think more in depth is probably the S&P 500 index. We're just indexes in general because stocks can go to zero, too. I mean, it's not like we're the only crypto or we're the only market that can go to zero because some stocks do go to zero. Some companies go out of business. It does actually absolutely happen. When he's talking about these things, it's like, well, is this everything? Because if we really then take a look at what history tells us, which is something like this, I want to show you something. I love looking at these old charts because it just gives us a perspective and the ability to really zoom out. This is a historical snapshot from the 3rd of December, 2017. Look at the prices here. This is during part of almost the very tip top of the bull run, the next two weeks, Bitcoin shut up to almost 20,000. But on the 3rd of December, it was 11,323.  But what about the other ones? How about Ethereum, 465? Yeah, you feel pretty darn good, right? Because right now, it's like 4,000, pretty good 10x over four years. But it then gets a little bit of shaky here. To hold all Bitcoin cash, it was at $15.59 at this point, and it went to over $3.45 at some point. XRP was $0.25. Not too bad. But look at what's happened. Dash, remember Dash? Dash was $768. Litecoin was $101. Bitcoin gold was a thing at $320. Cardano was $0.13. All right, now we're talking. And then Monero was $200. And then all down the road that you can see. And there's some things in here that I haven't seen forever. Look at Salt. Salt was $5.56. And Salt was one of those projects that was like DeFi before DeFi. You were able to actually get loans on the Salt protocol. And it was supposed to open up everything and had a really great team. It was awesome. Where are we now? So that's a great question before I even answer those. Let's just jump forward just to a couple of months. Two or three months. 11 of February, 2018. Remember, Bitcoin had gone all the way up to 20,000. 19-something, right?  So Bitcoin was back down in two months, $8100. So if you bought over here, and this wasn't even the top, you know, you feel not too great. You'd be like, wow, it's still down. Which is what a lot of us actually feel because of volatility. Ethereum, 814. XRP was actually a dollar. That's pretty good. Bitcoin cash, $1,200. All right. Cardano, $0.36. Litecoin, $148. Wow. Stella, $37. NEO. Remember NEO? Yeah, right. $103. EOS. Which was supposed to, there was a million dollar bet for EOS. It was going to go to the moon because of how these great airdrops, everything else. 841. NEM. IOTA. Dash. Again, 580. Monero, $229. And on and on down the road. So let's fast forward just a little bit more and take a look at 2nd of December of 2018. So we went from 30 December, 2017. Just a year later, we hodled the whole time. Let's just say we hodled the whole time. You had $11,000 Bitcoin. Now what do you got? You got a $4,100 Bitcoin. $4,100. Now again, you are still feeling pretty good if you came to today at $51,000. That's not too bad. XRP at 36 cents. If you're holding for four years, that's about right. Ethereum is 116. Oh, you are doing great, right? Stellar, 16. Bitcoin cash, 172. EOS, 285. Litecoin, 33. Tether, nobody cared about that back then. Bitcoin SV. I don't know why this was even here. And on down the road, Cardano at 4 cents. So you can see that in some of these, it worked out okay. And we can see just even more into history. If we take a look at, let's just take Bitcoin cash. Bitcoin cash. Remember here, how great it was when you're looking at $15.59. And then at like a crash, it was at $1,217. Well, look at it now. If you had held the whole time, you would be a whopping $471 for Bitcoin cash. That's what it is right now. You would have done here, if you would have bought anywhere along, let me go down so you can actually see this, anywhere along this continuum around here, it would have sucked for a long time. You would have hold old and hold old and hold old. It's going to go up, hold old. It's going to go up. And it does. And it reached the exact same price four years ago that you are over here. It's going to go up. No, it doesn't go up. It goes down. And then let's take a look also at Dash. Remember Dash was over here. And it was like doing so great Dash at $768. Well, now it's at $153. But how did it do? Well, it hit some pretty big highs. But if you just say here, well, look, it's at $346. But I'm going to hold old, hold old, $727. And not $1191. Hold old, $1,200. Hold old, hold. Wait, what? $460, $220. I'll hold old. I'll hold old. I'll hold old. I'll hold old. I told you it was going to go up. I told you $339, which is the exact same price over here. Hold old. Hold old. Maybe in 10 years. Who knows? I don't know. Then let's take a look at Litecoin. Litecoin whopping $159, $159. Where were we at before? $101. So good for you. You made $50. That's good. That's great. So you're here. And it comes down here. So you're like, oh, not too bad. It comes up a little bit. I'm hold old holding. And I go all the way up. $354. It'll go up higher than that. Hold old, hold old, hold old, hold old. So also let's talk about one of the last ones, salt. Salt back here, which was right here, $556. And you have it over here at $0.12. So again, is hodling the answer? Not all the time. As you can see clearly right here on some projects, it's better to let go because it ain't coming back. And maybe salt does. I have no idea what salt is doing. I mean, they put their, they slapped their name on a conference and it seems like that's their bigger thing right now. I don't think it's really going as far as the crypto. But salt, there it is. And then, what about iota? We talked about that as well. Same thing. I mean, look, and we are riddled with these types of things where they don't even come back to their all-time highs. Here's Cardano. I think this is one of the, one of the better ones, obviously, because look over here, had this little, little peak here at $1.18. And I, I and I think a lot of people hodl all this way through. And then here we are going up again. So it works out okay. Ethereum worked out, Bitcoin worked out, but it doesn't always work out. And that's how it is. So, and then lastly, we'll talk about Monero. Look at this just comes here, goes down, comes up. So again, the question really comes down to is hodling the answer. And the answer is sometimes. What you really got to do, and of course, everybody wants the answer, the perfect answer. Rob, give us the answer. Tell us what to invest into. First of all, I can't do that. I'm not an investment advisor. Second of all, I'm just some YouTuber. I'm just some guy who invests in the crypto digital assets. I can tell you what I'm currently investing in. And it's a lot of stuff. But the prospect for me is just looking at the UTT. I look at the utility does actually do something, is there updates and things are actually going on? How's the team doing the tea? They have a pretty strong, are they building? Are they making ways to the future? They have good developers. And the tokenomics, how does it look? Does it have a quadrillion tokens, which is going to be drowned out? Or it's just got like a couple hundred million or something like that. It all depends on the project itself. So to answer your question, is holding the answer not all the time?  Because over 2018-2019, it worked out pretty well for me. I just hodled because it was kind of a crappy year. But as time goes on, you have to understand that I know these products going to change the world. We know that they will. But the question is not if they're going to change the world, but when are they going to change the world? And how long does it actually take? So as time goes on, I will dollar cost average in and I would dollar cost average out. And that's what I'm trying to do today. So I can't tell you what to do. You can hold any project that you want to forever. But I'm just letting you know that at some point, some of these projects ain't going to make it. And that's abundantly clear. And if you get too much as far as the emotional part, it always or usually doesn't end up in the right direction. So let me know what you think about that in the comment section. Let's move on to our next piece where I just talk about really quickly why our market cap of I think it's actually 2.5 trillion now is nothing is nothing. And I always like to bring this up just as a focal point for everybody because I know 2021 was a tough year. We thought December is going to be fireworks. I did just didn't work out like that. Does that mean it's over? No, it doesn't mean it's over. It means we got a lot of room to grow. The question is I can tell you that I think that crypto and digital assets will really take over a big splice of a lot of different industries. I just can't tell you exactly when that's going to happen. But right now we've got a lot of big players in the space. So this is a graph I always bring out every so often. This was actually in May of 2020. These little squares right here is worth $100 billion, which seems like a lot, right? $100 billion? I don't have a billion. But be nice if I did. And here's what this represents. So Bitcoin back in May of 2020 was only $244 billion. Military spending was a lot more than that. The U.S. budget deficit is a lot more than $3.8 trillion right now. We're just talking about printing off another $2.5 trillion. Coins and banknotes, $6.6 trillion. The Fed's balance sheet way more than that over $7 trillion. Billionaires. Gold was at $11 trillion. I think maybe it's like $12 trillion now. Why couldn't we eat into some of these balance sheets and revenue? $4,500 companies. Here's the stock market. $90 trillion. Probably around $100 trillion now. Who knows? Money supply. We're looking at almost $100 trillion again. Here's global debt. $253 trillion. Here's the global real estate. Can you imagine when someone starts tokenizing these different assets as far as real estate goes? Oh, it's going to be huge. $280 trillion. Man, here's global wealth. $380 trillion. Here's the derivatives. That's a quadrillion, which is like Shiba Inu's market cap, I think, or circulating supply, not market cap, excuse me. If you're looking at where are we and are we going to take off? Yeah, this is us. That's just a quick reminder just to remind you that it wasn't the greatest year. We didn't see the all-time highs on December. We saw them mostly in April, but I still think we got a lot of room to run. Let me just think about that in the comments. Then to finish up, I'm just going to talk about real quick the strategy moving forward and as far as what I plan to do and this video want to do. I still think that dollar-cost averaging works out, but you have to dollar-cost average in and dollar-cost average out. When I talk about buying the dip, remember those graphs we saw? Let's just take XRP, for example. Remember when it was at $0.36, then it went up to $1, then it went back to $0.25? All those times when it actually goes down, I can't tell you what to do, but I buy the dip because my average cost-based price goes down when the dip goes down. If I buy XRP at a buck and then I initially bought it at $0.25, then I meet in the middle, well, my average cost is much less. Then when that price comes, I can sell and just go, well, at least I got to wash if it didn't work out, or maybe I wait until XRP goes to $100 like some people think it's going to do. Sure, whatever. But still DCA, still buy the dip, and still HODL to a point. The question is which of those projects are. I will reveal my projects that I'm going to really focus in on 2022 when we do the follow-up to this video, which is my price prediction. I will tell you that Bitcoin, I thought, was going to $150K. Then in June or July, I thought, well, maybe $130K, totally off on that one. But there were some that I actually hit, and I had some decent ones, but I had some massive misses. That's why we want to talk about the things that didn't work out too well, the things that did. We'll do that in later, actually four or five days or so when the end of the year comes about. Then we'll also talk about my exit strategy, which you can see right here. I'll talk about how the ones that I nailed every single one and actually took the profits, like I said I was going to do, and then others, which didn't work out because I got a little too greedy, and then the catalyst that made it all up in the end. I'll talk about that in the video. That's it for today. I know there's a lot of information, a lot of things that we talked about. Don't get discouraged. I think we've got a long ways to go, but there's going to be some little shift for me, little strategies, but that's it. If you like today's video, go to thumbs up. I'll consider subscribing. A lot of you talk about our time sensitive, and that's it for today. Thanks so much for watching. I appreciate it. I'll see you on the next one.