Okay, so we're looking at an interesting topic about things that are offered to idols and specifically he's talking about the eating of things, so we know that he's talking about food offered to idols and eating of it. And so the Kondin culture had, it was an idol worshipping culture and so there were idols, there were temples and as was the norm, there were food that were being offered to idols and as a part of the worship of it, food was then distributed to those who were worshipping in the temple but also the other thing is that there was food that was sold in the market which may have been offered to or consecrated or blessed by the idol, which was used as a ritual and then sold in the market. So these options, these scenarios were possible. So Paul is actually addressing the topic of food offered to idols and this is just one part of it we see in chapter 8 and then in chapter 10 we see that he deals with it even more in detail. So here like we saw earlier he says that idol is nothing and the food offered, eating of food also is nothing in the sense, it does not commend us to God it not, take us closer to God nor does it prevent me from going closer to God, it's just food. And also he says that an idol, it's the presence of course, it's an image, a graven image, it could be a picture, whatever a statue but we know that it is nothing because we know that there is one Father, the Son and everything was made through them and through him and for him. So he says that because of this knowledge you don't get puffed up and you don't let it not make you proud and let you love God and because of that you are known by God and let this love be in your heart, let it edify you and not cause you to and let this knowledge not cause you to be proud or arrogant so you look down on others and so on. So let this be your attitude.  So he's saying less somehow this freedom of yours, it becomes a stumbling block. So someone who is not as strong as you are, someone who is weak, who is an immature believer, who's not a mature believer, who's still maybe new to the faith, who does not have this kind of understanding. So let this not become a stumbling block for them and cause that brother to perish in the sense that, you know, this person sees you doing this, he says, you know, sees you eating in a temple, which means that he's saying that that's fine. Even if you do that, you have the freedom, you know, you have this knowledge. So it's fine. But if another brother who is weak who does not have this maturity and understanding if he sees you doing that, and he does the same, but he is weak, right? He does not have this understanding. And you will actually cause him to stumble in his faith, in his spiritual walk, right? And it is what happens then. So he caused him to sin and you wound their weak conscience and you therefore you sin against Christ. So let's read that. We'll stand onward. If anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idols temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols. And because of your knowledge, shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died. And when you thus sin, when you sin in this manner, when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. So Paul is saying, you know, this is the scenario and this is why I will not eat food that is offered to idols. It's a completely different thing from what we are normally used to hearing. So Paul is giving the reason. He's saying, when you eat food offered to idol, someone who does not have that understanding, you're causing that person to sin. And if because of food, you're causing that person to sin, then you're actually sinning against Christ because you wound their weak conscience. You're causing them to sin. Therefore, you sin against Christ. So for this reason, he's saying, I will not rather eat meat at all. So our freedom and our understanding, our knowledge of the truth should not make us proud, but we should actually have, because of love, for God and for other believers, we should actually be concerned about their walk and your decision regarding freedom, it is, you know, you need to be, we need to be concerned about their walk as well. Okay.  And in that manner, you know, when you walk, you will not sin against Christ, because if you're actually causing another person to sin, because of your freedom, because of your action, then, you know, you're actually sinning against Christ. Okay. So any questions here? Have you ever looked at food offered to idols in this manner, you know, eating food offered to idols in this manner? Right. Any, any questions? What are your thoughts? Just want to hear from you. Yes. Anyone, Dave, would you like to say, you know, about food offered to idols?   So, so those I regard not to take it. Like when we were in school, our friends did, they do go to temple and bring such foods like, like, like those. So those food, I would not rather not take first. But in temple, like, yeah, like in, like, like some kind of, when people invite you for something, then I think it's okay to take the food that deserves it. But have you considered the reason why Paul says, you know, don't eat it? You know, or Paul is saying that I will not eat for this reason. Yeah. Because like, yeah. My opinion would be, it's because the food is directly offered to the, to the God, I mean, there's the reason. So, so if you partake that food, we are, we are partaking in, in their, their their belief, their thing that they are, they are somehow getting connected with their God. So, so we, I think we cannot do that. Okay.   If I go wrong. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, Thomas. Oh, go ahead there. Go ahead. Knowing that the food is offered to, yeah, we know that the idol is, our God is powerful than the idol, but, but, but, but my thinking would be, the devil, he works in very cunning way. So if we give a foothold to him, he will somehow try to do something which, which so many times we, we do not know, we do not think about it. But the, there's, even though it's, it looks like a person idol, but there, there are spirit behind, behind those. And that the evil spirit would, they will work somehow. That is why I would not. Okay. Okay. Right. Thomas. The thing is, another passage Paul explained when a matter of taking the convenience, how can you take the most table and then coming in table together, that scenario is also there. And my experience past, I wasn't fishing. I will never bother to take the, this put ups to the items, especially I used to go with the friends to the, and I won't worship. But along with them, I used to eat some things and then what happened? This people understood. Oh, okay. Also God, that is why he also, you know, honoring these things and all see other Christians and all won't take it, but Thomas is a good person. He respects all the God and he believes all the gods. So some, some we are acknowledging what they're worshiping is a God according to them. So that somewhere hit my mind. So when I understood those things, I stopped taking those things. And suddenly they asked me why all these days you take part in these things, but now we are not eating. And now I realized what is that I said like that, then they didn't force. Right. So that went that way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's interesting.  No, like, see, one thing is that we don't have to fear the idol or even, you know, see, look at it this way. What did the Lord say that those who believe in him, what will you do? You will go lay hands on the sick, right? You'll pray for the sick to recover. They'll recover. You will lay hands. You will pray with other tongues. You will also cast out demons. Okay. So which means we have the upper hand that you will cast out demons when it comes to demons or any, you know, assignment of the very, any weapon of the enemy, right? Look chapter 10 and verse 19. The Lord says to his disciples that behold, I give you power. I give you the authority to trample on serpents, scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. Okay. So he has placed us in that position. So we do not have to fear. We do not have to be afraid. We do not even have to have a second thought. Okay. Of, you know, whether those things will affect me or it'll cause something in me, we don't have to have that. But if that thought is there somehow, it's better not to, it's better not to eat, right?  But we know that it is actually nothing when compared to God. These are nothing, right? Yes, like they've said, you know, there is that spirit behind the idol. There is that, you know, and he is actually Paul talks about it in chapter 10. Okay, so we will look at that also. Okay.  It is not that this thing will somehow affect me. You know, he never gives that at all.  Food does not commend us to God. Yeah, for neither if we eat verse 8, right? Food does not commend us to God. For neither if we eat, are we the better? Nor if we do not eat, are we the worse? Okay, so he's putting it very clear. Now, I know that this is offered to idols. I know that this is maybe used in an act of worship or whatever. But eating it, not eating it, is not going to affect me. He says, but this is Paul, right? He's saying this is not going to affect me because I have that knowledge that this is nothing. Okay. So I have this knowledge. I'm confident. I have this faith that I know who I worship, that he is all powerful, all knowing, and he is only God. These things are not God's. I know that. And so me eating it, not eating it, does not make a difference to me. Okay. However, me eating it, if it is going to cost someone else's faith, like what Thomas is sharing about, about his friends, saying that he thinks he's actually worshiping. Thomas is by taking part in this thing and he's eating this prasad, he's eating this offering. So therefore, he must be thinking that this is also God. He, Thomas thinks that all gods are one. So this is what Thomas's thought is. This is what he thinks. Now, what is that? If that is the case, then we are being a stumbling block. Okay. So to their, no, these are not believers, obviously, in Thomas's case. But this is their, they are coming to a wrong understanding. Okay. Now, if they were, let's say, if there are other believers, okay, who are, they're probably new to the faith. Okay. So now they would also probably come to the conclusion that, hey, Thomas is doing it, he's a good Christian, and I'm just starting to be a Christian. I think it's okay, right? I think it's okay to do it. And even though I know, I fear this idol, I know these things can attack me, et cetera, but Thomas is doing it and I think it's okay, right? So what is happening there? That person considers that idol to be something, considers eating food offered to idols to be something, and he's eating. And that causes him to stumble in his faith. That causes him to be weak in his faith or stumble in a spiritual walk. So now, so then, like Paul is saying, I will not, I will not eat of it. Okay. That is the reason for me to eat, not eat. He's referring to meat that is sold in the market or meat that is offered to idols. So you say, I will not eat, you know, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat. I will, I choose to make this decision that I will never again do this because I don't want to make my brother stumble and I don't want to sin against Christ. Okay. So we need to understand why he's not eating or why he's saying, you know, if my eating causes my brother to stumble a weaker brother, then I will not. Okay. So it is not because, you know, this is going to affect me spiritually. This is going to attack me spiritually. None of those reasons, you know, we don't see any of those reasons there. In fact, he quotes the opposite of that. His reason, when he builds up the case, you know, whatever he says is, he's getting the opposite of that. He's saying, you know, I know this is nothing. I know this food is nothing. Food offered to I listen to nothing. I know that and food does not change anything between me and God. So if I don't eat it, it's not the word. If I eat it, it's not going to affect me in any way. So he makes all those statements. No, we need to understand that, you know, why he is not eating. Okay. Because, you know, even in our country, I know all of us face this kind of a, you know, scenario one way or the other, we might have faced this kind of a situation. Maybe, you know, while in neighbors, if you're working in office, that happens, office, there's some kind of a worship thing happening or a puja or something. And then, you know, we face that. So we need to be clear in our understanding. Why am I saying no or why am I saying yes? We need to be clear. And it should be for the right reason. So that is why I'm just reiterating this. Why does Paul say no? When he chooses to say no, why does he say no? It is so that the weaker brother does not fall. So that the other person does not stumble. He says, I have the knowledge. I have the freedom. So he's addressing all the people who have the knowledge and have the freedom and who want to go about and just live, you know, live confidently and say, okay, I know this won't affect me in any way. So I will eat anyway. So he's addressing all those people. That entire group of people saying, okay, why should I bother? Doesn't affect me. I'll do it. But he's saying, okay, that's fine. You have the freedom. But consider who is watching you when you're doing it or who is with you when you're doing it. The weaker brother, the weaker sister. Okay. So we need to, you know, get clarity and understand this clearly. So in chapter nine, however, he goes on, he addresses a different topic. Okay. So let's look at chapter nine. And when we continue on in chapter 10, we will see the connection of, you know, again, food offered to idols and he reiterates certain things again. Okay. Okay. So let's look at chapter nine. Okay. So chapter nine, he's addressing, he's going to be sharing something about his life, you know, some personal decisions that he made. And he's sharing that because there were people in who were actually disputing Paul's claim to be an apostle. Okay. You know, you recall, right? Paul says in the first chapter, in the second chapter, right? He talks about, you know, why are you people saying I am of Paul or I am of Apollos? So there were people in the contingent who were saying, you know, I am of Apollos. You know, I don't consider Paul to be that great. I consider Apollos to be great. And I consider Peter to be great. Sefa, Peter is great. But I don't consider, you know, Paul to be great. So also, you know, so there were such people and who were actually disputing that Paul, was Paul really an apostle?  And I don't see any proof of that. You know, I don't see any evidence of that. Was Paul really a call to be an apostle? And in his ministry, is it apostolic in any way? Right. You know that the word apostle in Greek apostolos means the one who was sent out, the one who sent out on a task commissioned by God, commissioned for a particular task. Generally it just says, it's a term that is used in the army and referred to, you know, people who are sent out to conquer the land. So apostolos sent out once.  So fully authorized by that king to represent the king and sent out to carry out the task or the purpose for which they are sent out, right? So they, you know, doubted that. So Paul is going on to write certain things here. Now when it comes to, you know, apostola, you know, you would study in the apostolic more information. There are three kinds of apostles that we see. One is the founding apostles or the 12 apostles of the Lamb. Sorry. The ones whom Jesus appointed, you know, he called them, he appointed them. And after Judas, you know, Judas' death, there's, we see Matthias, you know, who's added to the list. And we see that, you know, there are the early apostles. So we call them the apostles of the Lamb, which we see in Revelation 21. These are the 12 apostles, okay? Then we also see some of the founding apostles, you know, the others who are referred to as apostles.  They brought Revelation to the church and so on. Then we also see the third category of apostles, which is the ministry gift of the apostles. Like we see in Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 and 12. Now, these are appointed by the Lord Jesus. He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, for the edifying of the church, Ephesians 4, 11 and 12. So we see that this is also, you know, these are also apostles, right? So we see that there are three broad categories of apostles.  And he writes down certain reasons why he is an apostle. Okay, so let's, and in doing so, he lists down, he doesn't say, you know, I had this encounter on the road to Damascus, and I heard the voice of the Lord Jesus. And even when, you know, when I was ministering to you guys, the Lord Jesus came, stood next to me and encouraged me. He doesn't give any of that as evidence, but he says, you know, I was sent to serve, right? And I sacrificed these things. I went through these hardships. Okay, so he gives that as evidence of the Apostolic ministry. So it's interesting to say that, see that, right? Okay, chapter nine, verses one, am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? Okay, so he asked these questions, rhetoric questions there. The answers are all yes, right? So he says, you know, am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen the Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? Okay, if I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you. Okay, okay, let's say you're saying that, you know, I'm not an apostle to any of the other people or other churches, other groups. But definitely for you, I am because you are my, you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. Okay, meaning that I came, I preached the gospel to you, and it was with the demonstration of the power of God. I taught you, I was there for, you know, one and a half years.  And then you also see that demonstration of that power in your own lives.  Okay, so it starts with saying that you are the seal of my apostleship. My defense to those who examine me is this. Okay, that's what he says in verse three. My defense, I want to give some proof, I want to give some evidence, and my defense is this. Okay, what is this?  Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the apostles of the Lord and Sifas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working? Whoever goes to war at his own expense, who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk of the flock? Do I say these things as a mere man, or does not the law also say the same also? So he's saying, you know, all these rights and responsibilities, I have these rights as a person in ministry, as also the other apostles to take a believing wife. And to, you know, so Paul, what he's saying is, you know, I chose willingly not to do that. I chose to, you know, make certain, I chose, I made some decisions in my life, right? I chose, okay, you know, to remain single. I chose to, you know, not stop working, right? Because we see that he was a tent maker by profession, so he worked and he, through that money, he supported himself, his expenses, and also the expenses of the team in some cases, right? And others would also support the ministry, of course, but, you know, he chose to work, right? And also in certain places, you know, especially in Corinth, he chose not to ask them for support. Okay, so he made a decision, he will not ask them for support for the ministry, etc. He took care of his own needs and all that. So he's saying, you know, I did all this, okay? I did all this, and this is how I, these are some things that I sacrifice. Now, who goes to war at his own expense? Will a soldier take care of his own expense? Or will the king and the, who's sending the soldier take care of the expense? Or from the kingdom, right? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat?    You will, okay? So he's saying, do I say this as a mere man? Or does the law also say that? Does scripture also say that? Is there a scriptural example for doing this? Okay, so he's saying, it is written in the law of Moses, verse nine, or it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox while it threads out the grain. Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does he say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? If others are partakers of this right over you, are we not even more? Nevertheless, we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ. Look at his perspective. So he's saying, others have this right. In the Bible, we see in the scriptures, in the books written by Moses, so he's quoting from Deuteronomy saying, the Lord says, the instruction is not to muzzle an ox while it's threshing the corn. If it wants to eat, you eat it, let it eat. Don't tie its mouth, don't muzzle an ox, don't tie its mouth, so that it's unable to eat while it's doing that work of threshing the corn. If it eats a mouthful, it's fine. So that is what we see. And also, one who soars, one who tilts the land, one who soars the land, he does it in hope that he can partake of some of those. So what is it? If we have sown spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? That we get material benefits out of, because of our ministry, some offerings that you gave to use that, is it wrong? He says, nevertheless, we have not used this right. It is the minister's right to do that, but we have not used it. I have not used it. But endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ. Even if it is lack, I endure it. Even if there's hardship, I endure it. Lest I hinder the gospel of Christ. For some reason, you think that I'm here just for the money. And you don't receive Christ because of that. Lest I hinder the gospel of Christ, the good news of Christ, because of some of the things that I, my actions, it is right. It is my privilege. But because of this, I don't want to hinder the gospel of Christ. I don't want to hinder you from receiving the gospel of Christ.  And so I'm going to resist him and his message. I don't want that. So I supported myself. Verse 13, do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple? Because he's talking about the tabernacle and the priest goes and the high priest goes in. He will eat of the food that is there or the bread that is there. He will eat of the showbread, actually. So he's saying that do you not know that those who eat of the things of the temple? I'm sorry, he's not talking about the tabernacle, but he's talking about the temple itself. That same principle that those who serve partake of the offerings of the altar. Even so, the Lord is commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel. But I have used none of these things, nor have I written these things that it should be done so to me. For it would be better for me to die than that anyone should make my boasting void. So he's saying, did I not, even though the Lord has laid down that principle, that those who serve minister, they should partake of what people give or what material things. That is the principle. But I have not used it.  Okay. So he's saying, you know, this is not my expectation. Okay. But I'm writing to clarify certain things. So this is not my expectation.  You know, this, I'm boasting about this. I don't want this boast to be made. And you know, I don't want it to be cancelled or made void.  Wrong. Because he did it for a very, you know, he did these sacrifices for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of that they, nothing should stop them from receiving the gospel. Right. So, so he feels very strongly.  Anyway, right. So he's saying, verse 16, for if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of for my necessity is laid upon me to lay it upon me. Yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. So I'm not preaching this gospel as, you know, as something that's like he's saying, you know, that even though it is, you know, it is, these are the reasons and this is the principle behind the support of those who minister, you know, that's not the reason I'm preaching. Right. I'm preaching it out of a necessity. I'm preaching it as a good steward. And I'm, if I, you know, there is a responsibility I have towards God. Right. He's saying woe is me if I don't preach the gospel. Like let me be cursed if I do not preach the gospel, you know, very strong. Romans one also he says, all right, Romans one and 15, 15 or 16. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Because it is the power of God, Romans one and verse 16. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it is the power of God. So he knows this is the reality. And he is preaching because it is a necessity for him. You know, he understands that this is, I'm a steward. I'm called, I'm sent by God. I'm commissioned by God to preach the gospel. Therefore I will preach not for the other things. Not because I get some material benefit. Not because, you know, I need to live in this manner. No, I'm supporting myself. I'm doing this and woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. So he's saying in verse 17, right. Sorry, verse 16. If I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, of necessity. For necessity is laid upon me. Yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this willingly, I have a reward. But if against my will, I have been entrusted with the stewardship. So he's saying, you know, in other words, he's saying that I'm doing this willingly. I have a reward. I'm doing this willingly. And it is a stewardship. I have been entrusted with the stewardship, right. We know who a steward is. One who is faithful to the things that they have been entrusted. The responsibilities that have been given or the resources that have been given to him. Like a steward is like a manager, an overseer, right. He says that earlier also, you know, who are we? We are stewards of the mysteries of God, he says, right. You consider us as servants of God, as stewards of the mysteries of God. So he's saying, you know, that I have this stewardship. I have to be faithful to that. So I do it willingly. I share this gospel willingly. So what is my reward then? That when I preach the gospel, I may, verse 18, I may present the gospel of Christ without charge, that I may not abuse my authority in the gospel. Okay, so this is, this is my reward. I want to present the gospel without charge, you know, without any material benefit to me, without any profit to me. I don't want to charge you for it, right. And the thing is that I don't want to abuse my authority. I have authority, the authority for edification, right. He talks about that. Authority has been given to me, right. As a servant of God, I have the authority. But I don't want to abuse or misuse that authority in the gospel. Okay, so, you know, some powerful truths. Life change is protective to be a servant of God, to be a servant of Christ, right. Paul shares that. And he says, verse 19, for though I am fit from all, and I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. To those who are without the law, as without law, not being without law toward God, but under law towards Christ, that I may win those who are without law. To the weak, I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now, this I do for the gospel's sake, that I may be partaker of it with you. Okay, so, you know, you see Paul's heart. You know, he's reason for doing ministry. Okay, and the way he did it, like saying to the Jews, I became as a Jew. If there are certain things, I will just, maybe the way he ministered, it will be from the scriptures, it show them from their own scriptures, to the big, I became as a Jew. You know, I would go into the synagogue, observe certain things. To the ones who are under the law, as those who are under the law, you know, similar to Jewish people. And those who are without the law, yes, as a person who's without the law, but he makes a clarification, you know, not as a lawless person without Christ. Okay, he says, but under law towards Christ, not being without law toward, not as a person who does not, you know, consider God or consider the values or the truth and etc. But as under law towards Christ, that I might win those who are without law, who are, you know, non-Jewish people, Gentiles, that I might win them over. Okay, and so I, to the week I became as weak, that in all things, I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some. Okay, so this is what I want to do, that I want to relate to people. Become irrelevant to people, not compromise on my own, you know, purity. You know, that's what he says, right? Not as without law towards Christ, not to compromise on the message, not compromise on my own purity, etc. But I want to be all things to all people, so that by all means, I may save some, that they may come to the saving knowledge of God. Now this I do for the sake of the gospel, right? That I may be a partaker of it. So this is what he says, that I've been entrusted, I'm a steward, I do it willingly, I don't do it for material benefit, and I do it so that people will be saved. Okay, this is why I do it. This is why, this is how I do it, and this is the reason why I do it, or why I'm minister in these ways.  Let me tell you, you know, this is how I minister. And these are the reasons why I minister in this manner. Then verse 24 to 27, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize, run in such a way that you may obtain it? And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now we do it for, no, do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty, thus I fight, not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself become disqualified. Okay, so he's saying that everyone who runs in a race, now he's talking about, you know, the race and typically the Greek, you know, they would have these sporting events in that arena. So he's saying run in such a way that you may obtain the prize. Okay, don't just go for a jog or, you know, don't just run without any direction, without any purpose, live your life with purpose, with a sense of direction, and the purpose is to obtain the prize, right, live with purpose. In other words, he's just saying live with purpose.  He's saying you live with purpose. Okay, now he says, now everyone who competes for the prize, this is the direction, this is why they are competing or running the race, is temperate in all things.  So saying is temperate, is disciplined, who are the people who are, who want to actually run in such a way so that they can obtain the prize. Okay, so he's, the word he, the Greek word he uses there, you know, the person will be self-controlled. Okay, the person is not going to be without control, person will be self-controlled, self-disciplined. They are able to, you know, live in a way that is temperate. Okay, in other words, they are empowered by the Holy Spirit and, you know, they are living in a disciplined way. So he's saying that, you know, so they do it, why?   In order to win a crown, win a prize, that is perishable, right? It is perishable in the sense, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it has some value, but you know, it's a material thing, right? It'll be, it is perishable, it's for a short time and someone else will win it the next time, right? It's for a short time, but we do it for an imperishable crown because the reward is an eternal reward. Right, a spiritual thing, which does not perish, right? So, but we do it for an imperishable crown and therefore I run, but not with uncertainty. So I think therefore I run, meaning, you know, when the Bible talks about walk, walking and running, running, living to our life, the way we live our life, our lifestyle, right? Walk as led by the spirit or run with endurance. It talks about our life, the way we live our life, the way we make our choices, right? So it says I run not with uncertainty, but with certainty, okay? And thus I fight the sense, he's talking also, not talking about fighting with people, you know, he, even if there is a spiritual fight of faith, he says not as one who beats the air, but, you know, as, or just, you know, punching in the air without any meaning, without any, without any target, but I do it, I discipline my body and bring it under subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself might become disqualified, right?  I want to, you know, I don't want to say something and then live another way. And at the end of it, you know, I myself become disqualified. No, I don't want to do that. So this is how I minister. So these are the evidences that I'm placing before you, the ones who are examining and saying, you know, am I really an apostle? Okay. So you're saying this is, this is how I sacrifice. These are the choices I made. And this is the reason I share the gospel, right? It is because I'm a steward and I do it willingly. I don't do it for a, you know, for many material benefit. And this is how I live my life with self discipline, being temperate, and I do it with certainty, you know, knowing the purpose for which I am sent. And I live my life like this because I don't want to preach something and do something else. My life and preaching are one and the same. I don't want to become disqualified after I have preached. Okay. So with that, we come to the end of chapter nine and very interesting, right? Chapter eight and chapter nine. So next session, we'll continue. So today we looked at the half of chapter seven and chapter eight and chapter nine. Okay. So, okay, we'll stop here. You guys have a good week and we'll meet again, right? God bless.


Hello, this is Hans van der Klaas Senior Lecturer at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. In this video I'm going to test the new MSI installer for QGIS, and I'm also going to test the new point cloud functionality. Most of my videos are done with the LTR versions, which I can also recommend you to use for operational use and in the courses, but the newer versions are always great to test the new functionality. Normally you will download the installers from the download sections of the site you can choose between the OSGO 4W and the standalone installer, but here we will use another installer. In this video we are going to test the experimental MSI installer, which will be the future way of installing QGIS on Windows. The link has been provided through the user mailing list of QGIS, and I also posted in the description of this video. When we run the installer, we get this pop-up wizard, which looks really great and simple. We click Next, and here it provides us the user license, and if you accept it, you can click Next. You can keep the default locations and start installing. They will take some time. I have done a fast forward here. When the wizard is done, we can click Finish to exit the setup wizard, and we can find QGIS in the Windows Start menu, and we will use here the QGIS desktop 3.18. As you see, it starts up perfectly well without errors. Let's first download the data that we are going to use, and I am going to demonstrate the point cloud functionality using the dutch elevation model, AHM, which we can download from the paid-off website. I will put the link in the description of this video, and we download the point cloud LAZ file and save it to our disk. It is a big file, so it will take a bit to download. In the browser panel, I look for the folder where I downloaded the point cloud, and I do not see it there. That is the first bug that I encountered, and it has to do with the file extension. I found out that if your file extension is in capitals, like in this case, you need to rename it to the lower case to be detected as a point cloud by the browser panel. Here we see that it is recognized. Now we can drag it to the map canvas, and this is a great feature that it shows us the extent of the point cloud and not all the millions of points immediately for this large file. While it is processing, we can still do other things. In fact, I want to reduce the size, and I am going to use an aerial photograph for reference that I downloaded from PDock. It is a great plugin that gives access to many free data sources for the Netherlands, and I download the aerial photograph. Go to the layers panel, and there I see that the projection of the point cloud is not detected. Maybe the PDock does not recognize the dutch projection. I'm going to set the on-the-fly reprojection to the dutch one, and I click on the question mark to also change the projection of the point cloud, and let's zoom to the layer, and we need to, of course, drag the point cloud extent to the top to see where it is, and there we are in the Netherlands, and as we see it covers quite a large area around Rotterdam, and I am going to clip it to only the part in the center. So around this area I am going to clip the point cloud, and then later I am going to sample the RGB values also from this ortho-photo, because the point cloud that we downloaded doesn't have the RGB attribute. In order to clip our point cloud, we need to define a polygon with the extent of the area. I use the create layer from extent tool from the processing toolbox to clip it to the extent of the map canvas. I define the output file name, it's a shape file that we need, and you see here a folder has been created while it is processing, it's still processing our point cloud file that we downloaded, so I'm going to remove it because we really want to work with the smaller one, and here we see our polygon, zoom a bit out so you see the area that it covers, and then I need the last tools plugin to further process the point cloud, because the native processing tools for point clouds are not yet developed, and we need last tools to do things like clipping or sampling RGB values that we do later. We need to set the path of the last tools where we have downloaded and installed it, and that's explained in another video. It's important to choose the correct path so it can find the tools, so we see that it's still processing our original file, so I click on it and cancel the processing, otherwise QGIS will be affected by that and it will consume a lot of memory. So under last tools I go to processing points and I choose last clip, and I choose the original file, and I choose the polygon that is used to clip it to the correct extent that we want, you can use this tool to clip and to classify, we use clip so it ignores the classify option there, I give it an output file name, let's call it clipped.laz, let's run the tool, it takes a lot of time, here I cut it a bit and it's done, and if we refresh our browser panel we see the clipped last file and it shows us the extent and it starts processing immediately this file and you see it goes much faster because it's much smaller. Let's also set the projection to the dodge system, here unfortunately QGIS is crashing which always can happen in these test versions, so I'll restart and continue from here, so I've restarted QGIS and here I find the files that we created and I'm dragging the clipped last file to the map canvas and it detects automatically now the attribute of the classification, let's also set the projection to the dodge one, it doesn't remember those projections, always make sure that you have your project and the layer in the correct projection, now I lost where it was but I also load now my aerial photograph, there it is, drag it to the top, I still don't see it, so let's see if that's a problem with refreshing, everything seems okay, so it looks like a little bug there, let's just add it again, there it is and now it's in the correct position, I set the projection, just to be sure and let's have a look at the layer styling panel and there we see that it uses the classification attribute and it has a few classes here that were in the attributes of the original point cloud and if you go to the properties of the layer, you see here the attributes of the point cloud but what is not included here is the RGB color and what we're going to do is first look at this in 3D with a single color to just see if it has the Z values there and we can make a bit sense out of that, so I open a new 3D view and it knows automatically that this is a point cloud so we don't need to choose it, it just takes it automatically and here we see indeed that these are all our points, you can play with the size of the points and I can play with the colors but we don't have the RGB there and if you see that there's a renderer for the 2D and for the 3D, I've switched off the 2D renderer to have only the extent so the 3D renderer comes out better, so I'm going to export now the map canvas view with the ortho photo to a geotiff because that's what we need to sample the values from in our point cloud and there's a nice tool from last tools to do that, it's called last color and I choose the last file that is our clipped one, I'll choose the input ortho photo and I choose the output file name and let's call it ahnrotogamcenterRGB.laz and let's run this, it also take a lot of time and it will sample for each of those points the RGB color from the ortho photo. It's done, you see here a note that because of not having the license it will not process all the points and have some other tricks but it's good enough for our purpose here and I'm going to add our new layer to the map canvas, it shows the extent, I indicate the projection, I can remove the clipped one and it's processing, converting it to another format that it uses so creating that extra folder with the data. Now it's done and we see here our RGB colors automatically on the screen so after the processing is done it will take that and we see the difference and we can remove there the aerial photograph from the background and let's look at it in the 3D view and here in the layer styling panel we see that it uses RGB for the 2D but for the 3D we need to choose also that it needs to use the RGB attribute and then here in the 3D view points are visible with the nice colors from the ortho photo sampled and we can here recognize the buildings of the city, the marked hall, the cube buildings and other strange shapes of the city. So in this video I've explained how to use the QDS 318 MSI installer which will be a future way of installing QDS and I showed how to import point clouds in QDS and do some treatment of the data sample RGB values using the last tools plugin and then visualize it in the 3D view.


Hello and Happy Solar Eclipse Day to all of you in North America. This video is to go back to something I talked about, I don't know, probably less than a year ago. I was talking about antivirus software and stuff like that. And I asked people if you know of any websites that just by going to those sites would cause a computer to get infected with some sort of virus to let me know. And I got a few people posting URLs in the YouTube comments and none of them actually did what I was asking. So what I've done is in the description of this video is a link to my website where you can submit URLs. And I'm asking anyone who has a URL like this to go ahead and submit there because I would love to look at and see how these supposed websites work. So what I'm looking for is not phishing stuff, not stuff that's going to, what I go there is going to, you know, ask me to enter information or ask me to download something or cause pop-ups. I mean, that's not what I'm looking for, that stuff, what I'm looking for is something that when I go there just by going there gets my computer infected. So that's what I want to see. Check out the link in the description, I'll compile a list that I get from you guys and in, I don't know, a week or two, I'll publish that list for those of you who want to see it, but I want to check it out. So if you, again, know the website, what I'm looking for is not a pretend virus site that tries to get you to download something. What I'm looking for is a link that I go to and as soon as I go to it infects my computer. That's what I'm looking for. I don't care if it's doing it through a plug-in such as Flash or Quicktime or Java or if it's just using browser vulnerabilities. I just want to see these sites that people talk about because, personally, I feel pretty secure because I don't run Flash or Java or any of these other types of plugins like that. So for my machine to be attacked, I'm looking, I would have to worry about something that is basically taking advantage of a flaw in my browser and I would love to see. I think those are very, very slim and I want to see what that might look like. So go ahead, link in the description. Thank you for sharing. As always, I hope that you have a great day.


Welcome to Jalassette News, the top stories in cryptocurrencies and Jalassettes, and break them down into bite-sized pieces today. Exciting stuff. First up, Citibank executive says Bitcoin will trade at $318,000 by the end of 2021. And at first glance, it looks pretty ridiculous, but we've already talked about this in a previous video called 500K Bitcoin, and the results aren't that far off. Also, pretty good article on Cointelegraph talks about Bitcoin chose decentralization and immutability over payments, says Fidelity Executives. This is a great piece because it goes over the six misconceptions about Bitcoin, but there is one thing, Bitcoin is not great for everyday use. And more great news, SEC Jay Clayton Head will step down as a US SEC chair by the year's end. And I gotta tell you, it doesn't get more bullish than that. Lastly, we'll go over QTheDay where I talk about Excelsis being a scam and what I said on Twitter. So again, all that great stuff. First go over what's going on the markets today. It is 10 a.m. getting started early, Monday, November 16th. And usually Sundays aren't that great for crypto because things start to take little dips as people take profits and trade out and do all their little magic. But on Monday, we start to see a little bit of rebound. Today, it is no different. And it's a great Monday because Bitcoin, 2.6%, almost at 16.5%. Maybe we can hit 17K. Who knows? Quite the rally the last month. It's been up 6% for 7 days.  Did pretty good. Ethereum up 0.6 at 458. I was watching Hashoshi and he was talking about how Ethereum 2.0 may be delayed. It's an interesting piece. I just watched a snippet of it. Smart guy. And he just talks about how they want a certain percentage or a certain number of Ethereum to be staked. And right now, it's only 10% of the total that they actually need or want. So go ahead and check that out. But I'm like, that's never good for Ethereum. They're talking about delays yet again. Anyhow, Tether almost at 18 billion. So great. Tether's printing money like crazy. XRP. Hey, look, XRP almost hit my hit 30 cents, 11% for 7 days. So congratulations XRP holders. Looks like you're really up. And yeah, Chainlink 2%. Litecoin is the big winner for today. 13% up. 16% for 7 days. I think people are just warming up to the talk about what Litecoin is, how it fits into the whole PayPal process. And people are actually getting into it because really, if you take a look at it, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Cash and Ethereum, Litecoin is the cheapest one. So if you're looking at getting the cryptocurrency, this is the same thing that people talked about in 2017. Well, if everything's going up, why don't they just pick the cheaper one because maybe that'll be the next Bitcoin. And maybe that's why people are picking up Litecoin. Who knows? Bitcoin Cash up three, two and a half percent for USD coin. Let's go down. Let's see what really 7.4% for a, what? Ethereum classic. Have fun with that. Look, if you're a fan of Ethereum class, that's great. But I think they've had three 51% attacks. I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pool. Let's see. Ways up 12%. Graduation waves holders. I've heard good things about them. Need to do some research. Looks great. 8% for Doge. Whoever holds Doge, congratulations. I like that project. I think it works pretty well. Started off as a joke, but really it does pretty good things. Let's see, 2.4%. Hey, did you buy the thing that I really need to do a video on? I never always talk about, never do. Did you buy? Congratulations. 11% for Zillica. If you don't know, Zillica is doing staking right now. And the staking percentage is like super high. I think it's like 22% or 29% and something crazy. Dave over at Crazy for Crypto's talks about it all the time. And hey, somebody should take a look at. Qtum, what? Quant 5.8%. That's great. Hedera Hashgraph. You don't know Hedera Dashgraph. It is one of those like super smart type of projects that people should really take a look at and really get into. I don't know if it could be the next big thing, but the prospect of what it could do is pretty powerful. It's just seeing when actually do it. And again, as far as like businesses go, you can have the best product in the world, but it doesn't matter unless people actually use it and want it. Look at McDonald's.  So let that sink in. Sushi, 123% for seven days.  Yeah, have fun with that. See if that crashes again. And that's really all. What a empty set dollar. I don't know what that is. 17%. 16%. Who knows? I don't know. Elrond, people talk about how great it is. It could be. Looks like another smart project. Again, let's see if it can actually make it. But again, a lot of good businesses don't make it even though they've had a great product. And Curved Dow Token 6.3. So that's your top 100. Let's jump into today's top stories. So first up, this is good. City Bank execs as Bitcoin will trade at 319,000 by the end of 2021. So if you're old in Bitcoin, 2021 could be your year. Look, I don't know if that's quite what it's going to be, but I can tell everybody that 2021 is definitely going to be a great year for crypto and digital assets. I could be wrong, but I felt that for quite some time and we'll see if it actually plays out. But I think it's going to be. So right in the report titled Bitcoin 21st Century, Fitzpatrick, the author makes the surge argument for Bitcoin. He says the digital gold's current trajectory appears to be similar to that of gold in the 1970s. I'm a big fan of history and I kind of think like what happens before is going to repeat and happen again. So this was interesting to me. He states, before structural changes were implemented in the early 70s, gold had spent 50 years of trading in the 20 to $35 range. I did not know that. Interesting. However, after changes were instituted, gold surged and recently touched a new all-time high in August of around 1900 per ounce. So imagine you have in 2035, what we're talking about 30, 40 years ago, and now we're looking at $1,900.  No wonder they're always talking about it. But do you really think gold can go 10x and go from 2000 to 20,000? No.  So I could be wrong coming out in the comment section, but I don't see that ever happening unless there's like massive inflation. But who knows? States with the COVID-19 pandemic, still hemorrhaging economies around the world. Governments will continue to responding to the crisis by printing more money. This in turn will benefit safe haven assets, which perform well in an inflationary period. So, spoiler alert, they're going to keep printing. And also with Joe Biden as a president-elect, if you think that Trump still has a chance, sure, whatever. But if you think that Biden won't keep printing money and the Federal Reserve won't keep printing, you're delusional. It's going to be money printing out the wazoo, and we're going to see a ton of money come into play. And we'll see how it all works out. But again, as money gets printed, it really benefits the top, because the top people now have all this money. And then when it gets disseminated into the lower class, to the middle, upper middle, middle, lower class, that's when it starts to depreciate. So I don't think this is going to be good for the economy in the long term, short term.  I'll be going back till I'll pass on a couple of weeks. We'll see how that works out. Dead, the hottest place in the country with coronavirus. But gotta go back. So we'll see. But again, printing money is good for gold, silver, digital assets, cryptocurrency. And Fitzpatrick notes this, gold has restrictions such as storage, non-portable, and could possibly be even called yesterday's news in terms of financial hedge. Bitcoin is the new gold. Bitcoin is digital gold. It's finite, only 21 million. We're not going to find more Bitcoin. We're going to find a lot more gold as time goes on. We're not going to find more Bitcoin. I can send it to anyone, anywhere in the world, for in less than 30 minutes, for next to nothing. Also, it's the best performing asset class ever. It's outperformed, all stocks, oil, gold, silver, ever. So used to cost a penny or a nickel, now cost almost 17,000. That's why I'm heavily invested. And that's my Bitcoin elevator pitch. Anyhow, to support his view, Fitzpatrick says the same thing that I say, which is limited supply, ease of movement across borders, and opaque ownership. Or you can see who owns it quite easily by just taking a look at the blockchain. Consequently, Fitzpatrick believes more investors will choose Bitcoin over gold as a result. And I believe that to be true. And it'll take some time, because really all the wealth in America, I don't know how it works out the rest of the world, I assume it's the same way. But it's in the hands of the older population we call them the baby boomers here. Matter of fact, they have the vast lion share. So this is the percentage of US household wealth by age of generations, median cohort, or what they actually own. So you got millennials not looking too hot, Gen Xers, not too bad. Baby boomers far away the biggest. So they are the older generation, they are used to what they're used to, which is gold and silver, so on and so forth, stocks. So they're going to hold on to that. But as time goes on, it'll flip over to Bitcoin, just the way it makes sense. Now to finish up, unlike other digital currencies, such as central bank digital currencies, CBDCs, Bitcoin cannot be confiscated, therefore making it a more secure asset. Also, CBDCs are centralized, so you can shut them down at any time. So that's what we got for that one. Pretty interesting piece there. But again, check out that video on 500K Bitcoin. One of the things that we took a look at was the circulating supply in the market cap and what the actual market cap would be for 500,000. It came out to nine and a half trillion dollars, which seems like a lot. But if you take a look at the global amount of money, just gold itself has 12 trillion. So I'm just saying. If it just eats up a little bit of gold, a little bit of currency, a little bit of tokenization, a little bit of store of value, just put this all together and 500,000 is not that far away.  But now I'm like, that seems okay. I have a conservative view of 150,000. But anywhere from 150,000 to 500K, hey, I'm still pretty happy. I'm interested in the comments section. Let's move on. Next up, Bitcoin chose decentralization and immutability over payments as Fidel. This is a really good article where if you really want to get into the meat and potatoes of what makes Bitcoin, Bitcoin, this is really good. And it lays bare some interesting points and some things that people have held to, which are poorly false. So the first one is this, Bitcoin has failed as a means of payment. I know I will get crucified in the comment section, but it has. You can't use it as payment. Have you tried to use it as payment everywhere? I mean, right now, I think maybe you get away with it for small things. But first of all, why would you want to, like just as we just took a look at before, take a look at what Bitcoin is or where it's at now and where it could be? Why would you use it as currency? It doesn't make any sense. And then also as more people start to buy into it and get into it, especially 2021, it'll be the same thing as like 2017, which I always talk about. It gets super slow. It gets super expensive. Transactions per second are like minimal. So again, it's not a means of payment. It just isn't. It could be a store of value. And that's why I think people are buying it up. But I don't see it as a means of payment. Let me know where I'm wrong in the comments. I'd love to hear from you and let's keep going. So the currency is outperformed, fidelity accepts by conventional payment rails like Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, all of which can offer high throughput. And when they say throughput, it just means transactions per second or TPS. And what they're talking about here is when you run your Visa or your Mastercard or debit card or whatever else, how much can it actually process per second? And this is an older chart, but it still holds true today, roughly. So Bitcoin has between about 7 to 12. So 7 to 12 transactions per second, Ethereum 20 dash at a blazing 48, Litecoin, hey, this may be one of the reasons why it's going up. It's at 56. So pretty good. Bitcoin cash is doing pretty good here at 60. So that's what their whole argument is. Like, hey, we're here for currency and we have 60 transactions per second. Sure. Paypal is 193. All right. Ripple has 1500. It should be XRP. I don't know why it says Ripple, but it's an old one. And then Visa is at 24,000. Visa has also claimed 150,000 at one point. So we'll just average it out. Maybe it's at 50,000. But just to look at transactions per second, that's a lot. And for Bitcoin to hold up, it's not going to happen right now. I know people will talk about Secular. What about the Lightning Network? Well, it doesn't work that hot right now. So maybe in the future, just not right now, it can't hold up. If everybody in the world used Bitcoin, it would crash in a heartbeat. Forget the world. Let's talk about like one nation. So let's just take Canada. If Canada did it would crash. So moving down, there's another thing that I failed to mention, which was Bitcoin's tax definition as property in some jurisdictions, meaning that you just have to calculate gains and losses for every payment or purchase in Bitcoin, renders it impractical for many payments. So that's another thing. So if you really want to use Bitcoin everyday purposes, you'd have to calculate that for taxes as losses and gains at the time. So let's say you bought today at 16.5 or whatever it is.  I don't know what you're buying. And now Bitcoin is at 16.7.  But for everyday use, you'd have to calculate every single transaction you would do and then you would have to put it into the IRS or wherever you're at, Canada Central Government. So again, this wouldn't really work out.  Further on it states, the coin's design has prioritized, prioritized aspects such as decentralization, finite supply, 21 million, and immutable settlement, meaning you can't change it because there's so many nodes, there's thousands, I think there's like now tens of thousands of nodes throughout the globe. So you can't change them because they are on each node and they will find out if you try to not to do that. So that's the whole thing about immutability. Also no central bank or government can step in to support or prop up markets and artificially subdue volatility. So that's what's great about Bitcoin. They can't step in and prop up the markets like the Federal Reserve is doing right now with the traditional markets or the stock market. That is propped up totally solely by the Federal Reserve. If they weren't injecting so many things and buying so many things, it would crash a long time ago. Bitcoin's volatility is a trade-off for distortion free market. True price discovery accompanied by volatility might be preferable to artificially or artificial stability if it results in distorted markets that may break down without intervention. So really what they're trying to say here is that this, that there's going to be volatility until we discover exactly what the value of Bitcoin is. There's some price discovery going on right now. Is Bitcoin worth 3,000 US dollars or is it worth 500,000 US dollars? Well, we'll figure it out and as time moves on, there will be less volatility. Just right now, expect volatility. Let's just be honest. It's going to be pretty big. Like what? In March, just eight months ago, we were at below 4,000. Today we're almost going to hit 17. So I would think that's a little bit of volatility. So those are just my thoughts on that one. And then it goes on to say that there's a couple more things in the report, but I didn't mention here. So I was like, what are those things? Cause I want to know the things we just talk about were interesting, but there was three more criticism, I think four actually. And Chris number three is that Bitcoin is wasteful. This is exactly what Brad Garlinghouse of the CEO of Ripple States. He says, Hey, Bitcoin is super wasteful. And when Joe Biden comes in, he's going to clamp that down because they did not like to have waste or they try to try to do renewable sources. Well, here's the response. A substantial portion of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy or energy that would otherwise be wasted. Additionally, the energy that bank Bitcoin network does consume is valid and port. So at first people like, okay, well, what's the number? So here's the numbers. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance or CCAF estimates 76% of miners use renewables, especially hydroelectric power as part of their energy mix. So if you're looking at where mining pools are, they're mostly in China, not that the miners themselves or the mining rigs are in China, the mining pools. And a lot of those pools, they are using renewable energy such as hydroelectric power. On top of that, you've got layer one in West Texas and they are going to be doing a massive amount of Bitcoin mining and why is it in West Texas? Because renewable energy is super cheap because it's super windy and that is renewable energy source. So that's another prospect of that. And there's some, and there's a new piece I had no idea about it says more recently, mining operations have been set up to power Bitcoin mining with stranded gas. I'm like, what the heck is that? So stranded gas is a natural gas that is limited to utility and is likely to be wasted in oil or gas. While it does not have the pipeline infrastructure needed to transport the gas is considered standard. Stranded gas is flared or burned in the air or vented, allowing to escape in the air. And that's when you see like in the mining rigs, where there's a big blowoff, stranded gas. Sure. So they're using something like that, which will already be wasted, which pollutes anyhow.  But in all honesty, Bitcoin is still going to be a little bit of wasteful. And that's what they talk about here. So they are going to use non-renewable energy sources, but it is what it is. So when people start to talk about like, well, it's super wasteful, it's 100% and just use dirty coal, it's madeable. And this is one of the reasons why. So another one was Bitcoin is used for illicit activity.  I'm not going to go too much in this, but it states as a share of total transactions, Bitcoin transactions connected to illicit activity are very low. Of course, we all know that the number one currency used for illicit activity is the US dollar. So just that's what it is. Chris is number five, Bitcoin is not backed by anything. And this is what you're going to hear when you start to talk about your friends and family, especially in 2021, when Bitcoin really explodes. So you're going to say, hold on, Bitcoin's not, it's not backed by the US government. It has no utility. So it's just made out of nothing. You're like, no, no, no. It's Bitcoin is backed or Bitcoin is valued because we say it has value. Gold isn't backed by the US government, but yet it still has value. Diamonds don't really have utility. They just look good in a ring, but they still have value. Your digital movies and games that even that gamers play in their specified games, they have value and yet they don't really exist. So when you talk about Bitcoin not having value, so what else you got? Bitcoin has value because we say it has value. And for all the things that we talked about, it is permissionless, it is decentralized, it is immutable, it is transferable, it is finite. These are the reasons why. And also we have a consensus and we give it value because we say it is. And it's not just me and you that give it value. There's millions of people around the globe that says it has value. So there it is. And lastly, Bitcoin will be replaced by a competitor. This is the biggest one that I think that I get on the channel. Well, Bitcoin is old and slow and it's the Netscape navigator of browsers. Let's just upgrade to Google Chrome. And it's a valid point actually because really, if you think about it, Bitcoin is old. It's like 13 years old and it is slow. We just talked about how slow it was. But one good thing about about being old is it's battle tested. And when you're going to invest into something, sometimes you don't want the newest and greatest and latest things. Those are for like the super early adopters. When people want to look at like what is a little bit more stable? Well, this has been around for over a decade and it hasn't been hacked. It looks pretty good. And also another criticism as well, we can just fork a fork, a fork of a fork and we just get some more Bitcoin. We can get Bitcoin tomato or whatever. It doesn't matter. But the whole thing is that, well, yes, you can fork it. It's an open source software. A fork of a fork is about to happen or just did happen. Actually, I think Bitcoin cash just forks. I don't think ABC is going to last or whatever. But that's not the point. It's the community and the network effects. It cannot be altered. So even though that we can have Bitcoin and then Bitcoin cash, when you get to Bitcoin diamond and Bitcoin potato and Bitcoin possum, those don't exist. I mean, well, one of them actually does exist and just kind of went away. So it all depends on what actually has value, what has utility, what has use, and what people say has value. So let me just think of the comment section. Let's move on. Next up, I'll make this very quick. This is a good day. This is a good day. Not that I have anything against Jay Clayton. I'm sure he's a nice guy, family man, sure, but doesn't like cryptocurrency. And that's not good for me. And if that's not good for me and you, why do we want him in there? So Jay Clayton will step down as USC chair by the year's end. That's great. Hopefully we can get Hester Pierce, Crypto mom in there. And she can be the new chair. That'll be awesome. So Jay Clayton will be leaving the agency by the end 2021. And when I read this, I'm like, whoop, whoop, by the end of 2021 or the beginning, because this doesn't make any sense year's end. Well, I guess that is the year's end. So I had to take a look and just double check over on CNBC. It says Jay Clayton says he will step down early as head of the SEC at the end of 2020. So we're looking at two months, a month and a half.  That's like another year and a half or a year and some change. But no, it's going to happen quickly. And that's good for us. As chairman, just a little bit of a history. Clayton also warned that Bitcoin investors last year that they would be sorely mistaken in expecting the crypto should be traded on mainstream exchanges without more robust regulation in place. And pretty much would just poo poo all over it. Not every chance he gets, but he wasn't a really big fan. So it was kind of shocking when the SEC came out and said, hey, we're going to allow banks and all these other authorities and everybody really to be custodians of Bitcoin. So big institutions can now be their own custodians. And I thought it was interesting because I'm like, wow, that's kind of a reversal of what they were really planning on. So we have the SEC saying they can be custodians. We have the OCC saying they can be custodians. And then we got the banks in the middle going, we're not innovators. We're not going to do that. But it just goes to show you that it is good that these government agencies can actually be a little more forward thinking. Banks, eh, what are you going to do? So really, that's it. And the article doesn't talk about who is going to replace him. It does talk about where Jay's going to go, which I really don't care. But who's going to replace him is the big question. So let me know who you think could or should replace him in the comments section. Let's move on our last piece, which is Q of the Day. So on Q of the Day, I had sent out a couple of tweets, which was this was the Leia Helpern show. And she has a great question to Alex says, how can crypto companies pay 10% interest when banks are offering practically nothing? And Alex answered the question, kinda. I mean, he pretty much says that banks can make 17%. They don't give you guys squat, but we give you guys a lot. So I just said, hey, is Celsius a scam? To like, have people who think of this scam watch and go, oh, it's, you know, seems legit. So then people were like, oh, so what do you think it's a scam? Like, did you watch the video? So then I had to clarify it and said, hey, do I think Celsius a scam? No. And have there been some errors? Yeah, there have been. So this was really the big question. And I want to really clarify some things about why I still have taken my portfolio from 30% in Celsius down to 10%. So let's jump in. All right, everybody, welcome back to Q of the Day. And this was a good one. This was something that I had talked about in my previous video, where I talked about Celsius network and my plans. And if you don't know what it was, I'll just give you a quick recap. Celsius, they had a switchover. They did a, what's called a DNS propagation, where they had to upgrade their services on GoDaddy. So when you do that for DNS propagation, sometimes it takes 24 hours. Sometimes it takes 72 hours. I've done that on both of my websites. And it took about, you know, 24 to 36, but it is kind of harrowing because everything goes down. And they tell you what's going to go down. So you can let your customers or members know. So me personally, when I went to upgrade, they said, hey, it's going to be, it's not going to have access for quite some time. So you need to tell everybody. Sure. So I told everybody one week out, five days out, three, two, one, the day of, 36 hours afterwards, when it was up. And then of course, ask, ask any questions.  So when I saw what Celsius did, I was a little bit concerned because they are a multi billion dollar company. So I don't look, I will just say this, no company is a hundred percent perfect, right? There's nobody that is infallible. But for me, when I looked at this, I'm like, well, it's kind of a big mistake. And it's one of those mistakes that they shouldn't have made. And, and if nobody told them at GoDaddy that this would happen, it doesn't really matter because the people that are required or actually are there to change everything over, they should know these things. And then also as far as like the security team, because, you know, it's so one of those things as far as security and, and customer information, they should also be have been are aware of what actually happened. I know people will say, well, it doesn't really matter because it's not the cryptocurrency isn't on the website. It's not on the app. It's on the blockchain. That is all true. However, you don't want some kind of data leak going on, and which is what happened with other companies. So as far as the security team, of course, they were involved and they did the right thing. They didn't open it up very quickly. However, I think they should have known. So it's just one of those things where it's a, it's a breach in trust. That's all it is. And some of the, so when I said on yesterday's video, I was going to decrease my portfolio in Celsius. People were not too happy with me because they're like, well, how can you do that? And you should really believe in that.  So not a big deal. I'm like, wait, it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter what I do. If I do something like that, then that's just me and what my thoughts are that does not affect you. So if you want to keep 100% of your cryptocurrency assets, that's fine. Go ahead and do that. But for me, I thought, I just really thought back, you know, 30% is kind of a high number to keep on any one centralized platform, because you never know. And then some people say, well, it's DeFi. It's not DeFi. It's centralized finance. That's exact. And even Alan Koshinsky will say, it's centralized finance. And yes, there is insurance through Celsius, but it is FDIC insured for your fiat. And when your cryptocurrency is there, then they also have a form of insurance. However, when they lend it out, which is the whole platform, and Alex will tell you this as well, when they lend out that cryptocurrency, there is no insurance. So if something happens and that's it, now they do ask for collateral. And that's great. So like, if you want to borrow 100 bucks, you got to give 150 bucks. Well, essentially, that's really how it is. But we have seen instances where other places have said the same thing. We have collateral. And all of a sudden just didn't really work out. Now, there is one bright spot I will say about this, not one Celsius is probably far far away, the best out there that I've seen. And I know people will say, well, what about X? And what about Y? What about Z? I don't know about X, Y and Z. And the ones that I've looked at are not that great. So when we take a look at the history of what has happened, we can also have to do is look back to March, when the whole pandemic started, and there was a huge crash for Bitcoin and all the crypto assets out there. And during that time, there was a, and this is the whole trouble that started with credit. Once that happened, people were like, we can't pay back the loans because we are overextended here and overextended there and it became a huge mess. So with Celsius that didn't happen. They said, well, we have the collateral. And unfortunately at that time, the crypto collateral went down so far, they're like, hey, either have to pay back the loan or you have to start collateralizing more so you can keep the loan. And out of all those things that happened, they only had to liquidate either three or four people, I forgot how much it was, but it was a very low number. And that is kind of like your benchmark as to how well a company can do.  Okay, look at Bernie Madoff. It was working pretty great for that whole time. But when the waves start to crash or when the tide rolls in, you can see or the tide rolls out, you can see who is left swimming naked. So it's one of those things where it's like, well, Celsius passed that test. And that's one of the bigger tests that I can think of that may or could happen. Now we're in the future. So it's a pretty bright spot. However, going back to my thing, which is 30% of my entire portfolio on Celsius, some people say that was a little bit crazy, a little bit too much. Some people say that wasn't enough. But it doesn't matter what other people say, it's what you think and what you do with your money. So for me, I felt like it was a time for a little bit of a cool off period. And I reduced from 30% down to 10%. Now as time goes on, and there's no problems, when we see more things, then I will probably add back in. I don't see the problem with that. And then will I keep buying the Celsius token? Absolutely. Why wouldn't I? I mean, it's just going to keep going up for quite some time, I believe. Now it could go down, but I believe in the platform and I believe in what Alex is doing. But you know, I just think that it was time to just do a cool down and a pull back. And this is where I'm at. So hopefully answer your question for today. But that's it. So I hope that answers some questions for you about Celsius. Also, just a quick reminder, Dan teaches crypto, the free website is up. And again, we try to simplify everything as far as what is crypto, what is crypto good for, some different investment strategies, not that it's investment advice, but just kind of like the basic things that I find important and things that I think you could actually find important as well. So if you're looking for like the basics type of thing, this is probably the best place to go. I'm my personal opinion. If DanPetersCrypto.com and there is a link in the description and that is it for today. So if you like those types of videos, there's gonna be two months going to pop up on your left and right, let YouTube do its magic. And that is essentially it for today. So thanks for stopping by. Really appreciate it. And then I'll see you on the next one.


Hey stampers! Welcome to another week of Watch It Weekly Wednesday. I'm Aubrey, part of the Stampin' Jill Creative team, and today I'm excited to share with you the new in-colors that are in the new annual catalog. These are the in-colors that will be available in the 2021 2022 catalog, and I am in love. They are so much fun. So I wanted to show you what they look like and then some of the products that we have that go along with them and coordinate. So we'll start with the cardstock. Obviously, we have our beautiful cardstock in all of the colors. Oh, let me tell you their names really quick. Let me see if I can remember them. Polished pink, pale papaya, evening evergreen, fresh frieze, and soft succulent. So pretty. And they actually all coordinate really well together, too. I love them.  I love it. So much fun. So we have our cardstock and then we have, of course, our stamp pads in all the colors. And our ribbon. Look at this pretty sheer ribbon that they're giving us. Oh, I love it. So much fun. And our in-color jewels. These are so fun and so iridescent. Do you see how shiny those are? So fun. So I came up with a few cards to showcase all these products and I wanted to share those with you, too. I used the Spiral Die. This is the cutest tie-dye look stamp that's also in the annual catalog. It's a background stamp, so it's just one big stamp. Love it. But look at these cute cards that I made using all these in-color products. So much fun. I love them. And I'm so excited to be able to use these colors for the next two years. Stampin' Up always does such a great job of giving us the in-colors that we need to complete our collection. I love it. The new catalog will go live on May 4th, so just in a couple of weeks. We are so excited. If you don't have a demonstrator and you're interested in getting a catalog for us, make sure to email us at sudemonstrator.gmail.com. We'd be happy to be your demonstrator and send you a catalog. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week for another Watch It Weekly Wednesday.