If both of these conference finals end in sweeps, we will have nine days to wait until the finals run it back starts out Happy Monday morning. This is run it back. Wow a rare occasion all four of us in our respective homes Look at us. Look at us. Just boring home people. I'll go ahead and introduce everybody Shamshirani a stadium insider right there Chandler Parsons and Eddie Gonzalez coming at you live and guys I Mean, I know some people are mad about it, but I ain't we might have two sweeps on our hands We're gonna start with the one that happened last night because it's fresh in our memories. Oh good god Celtics What are you doing? Absolutely? Destroyed by Miami 128 102 they now have a three nothing series lead Jimmy Butler is everything gave Vincent turning into everything and Jason Tatum Was there? Chandler Who do you blame for this? Well, first of all before I even get into the Celtics and they're absolutely Never I've never done this before for a year. I got an issue an apology to the Miami Heat to the fan base Players I have slept on them all season long. I'm on the record saying that they aren't gonna win in advance I am on the record saying whoever wins earlier Boston is gonna beat them It's gonna be rather quickly And I was dead wrong and this team is is unbelievable and they play so hard and they all know their role and they have really just put their foot and a lot of people's mouths including me so I just had to say that initially because they have been super impressive and I'm not so sure they can't win a championship this year no matter who they play it's looking like Denver But who's to blame on the Celtics? I mean my god, where do I start everybody? I think it starts with the best players I always thought that and this comes down to Tatum and this comes down to Jaylen Brown You can't have 12 and 14 points and go six for 17 and six for 18 in the biggest game of this season You're now down to 0-3. No team has ever come back from 0-3. No team will ever probably come back from 0-3 It's a huge hole. It's a huge mountain to climb and the Celtics they just look defeated They didn't play with the same edge. They're not playing with that same toughness that has put them in the position that they have So I know Missoula is saying the right things and he's taken ownership as a first-year coach here But this is on the players. This this is on every single person that stepped on the floor last night This is on Malcolm Brogdon having zero points going 0-6 last night This is on Derek White going 3-4-9 none of them came ready to play None of them stepped up and the biggest game of the season And now it's looking like their season is going to be done rather quickly. So Again, this is an absolute fall from grace from Boston But you got to give the heat credit because they have put them in awful situations. They have played tough They have forced them into bad shots They have defended and like I said, everyone on that Miami team just knows their role and are just playing it beautifully It's it's pretty insane that this was the lowest scoring team in the regular season They're the fifth highest scoring team in the playoffs. They're the highest scoring team left in the playoffs They have six guys averaging over 12 points a game. They're just getting contributions all across the board After those six guys you have Kyle Lowry who's been effective in his own way as well It's so who do you blame for the Celtics? You blame them. I am heat You blame them for averaging 120 points a game in this series.  They're playing four white American players in their rotation The highest drafted of them is the worst player coming off the bench But they've managed to turn that into a Playoff and championship defense because those guys know where to be they could keep dribble handlers in front of them They're doing like basic stuff and it's just working They're running rough shot through the Eastern Conference and I'm with Chandler This is a championship team like when they play Denver I'm very curious to see how that works out with them at a buyout with Jimmy Butler doing what they do on defense And the way they're just efficient on offense. I'm very curious to see what it how it looks now I will say the Denver Nuggets played them twice this year beat them both times by double digits So but clearly whatever the Miami Heat were in the regular season the lowest scoring team in basketball They're averaging 120 points a game versus the number one defense in the league from the last year We gotta stop talking about the regular season with them It frustrates me as a fan because I care about the regular season But clearly the Miami Heat do not and they have the right idea They made three of the four last Eastern Conference finals and they're on the verge of a trip to the to the finals And they're beating a team that we thought was unbeatable all season long And so who do we blame? We blame the Miami Heat. I think when you look back at what Jimmy Butler said when they lost game 7 that's gotta be the most savage response He's like we're gonna be better and we're gonna be back here and then we're gonna win And that's exactly what they're gonna do in the series up 3.0 I mean what Miami is doing is the number 8 seed after the season that they had You know, I don't know if they were just duping everyone They were trying to play everyone or they just played with the regular season and then just turn it on But Jimmy Butler, I mean his his his percentages his numbers they've gone way higher in the postseason He was shoot. He's shooting way more threes now and this team as a unit ma'am out of bio I've been saying it all year. He's been such a big part of this team even making the play in the playoffs when Jimmy Butler was in Out of the lineup early in the year He's played like the best big man in this series. I think he's only gotten better as the playoffs have gone on He's playing like the all-star 20 and 10 type of guy that this Miami Heat team has needed over the last several years to be a competitive team But maybe what they're doing the first ever eight seed to win by 25 points or more in a playoff game So right off the bat there and they're undefeated at home in these playoffs and they've made Jason Tatum Jalen Brown Look completely exposed in this in this postseason so far So you have to give Jimmy Butler in the Miami a lot of credit It is crazy that they have they can literally put anyone on the court and they know what they're supposed to do And they all contribute. It's a beautiful luxury to have as a team, especially when you see other guys not have that Unfortunately Chandler, I know you're putting a lot of the blame on the players Which is the logical thing to do but the guy who's gonna feel the most heat is Joe Missoula. Here he is after the game Joe the biggest game of the season a game you had to have and you guys just look completely lost after the first six minutes What exactly happened out there? I just didn't have him ready to play Last 48 hours. Yeah, I just I just didn't have him ready to play. I should have Whatever it was when it was a starting lineup or it was an adjustment It was just I have to get them in a better place ready to play. That's on me Unfortunately under coaching one of the big job description points is having your team ready to play So that's probably gonna be an issue for him Chandler, but the team itself body language everything It looked like they all just quit. Is that fair to say? For sure they look defeated they look once and it's hard in that situation. You're down 30. You're getting absolutely just dubbed You know and the biggest game of the year again It's hard to not pack it in and have those summer plans start sneaking in and again. This was smart by Missoula He's trying to get the locker room. So he's taking ownership. This is his first year He's gonna be there for probably some time and is it partially his fault? Yes, there's some in-game adjustments He could have made there's some rotation things he could have made but He's not the reason that Jason Tatum's first in miss shots this postseason and you know He's not the reason he's first in turnovers and they hasn't made one field goal in this series in the fourth quarter So again, this does fall on the coach a little bit with in-game managing But this is a player's league man, but players got to play players got to be effective the systems in place They've been doing this all season long for five six seven months It's devastating because this this team had hopes and this team had championships Expectations and and they are just absolutely blowing it but again, this is more about the heat for me We talked about the development if I'm a player, too That's not a lottery pick or you know a 10-day contract.  This guy's a real player And last thing on the heat Duncan Robinson this guy signs a big deal He gets just dragged through the mud out of the rotation all he can do is shoot He's not effective anymore. He's been a huge piece to this team and and this Against the Celtics and to shows his professionalism kind of like a Lonnie Walker situation that everything He's been through now in the biggest moment of their season. He's maintained professional He's still been ready to play and which great because now he's actually a trade asset going forward December So Happy for all those guys But the way that they managed this team the way that they've Jimmy Butler has just become this absolute superstar BAM has just been an anchor down low and you sprinkle in all these undrafted guys that nobody wanted It really is impressive and I got nothing but respect Everything they've been through this season to play in games knock off the box knock off the nicks And now they got to arguably the best team of the NBA down 3-0 to go to the finals Nothing but respect for the heat Nothing but respect by the way that magic tweet was about a spicy and it's Enraged magic tweet that I've ever seen in my entire life. Even though it was still pretty lame and mild Jimmy Butler Is my spirit animal his level of pettiness is something that should be emulated It should be studied for generations to come He's trolled whoreford williams. He just he remembers things and in the heat of the moment callback If you're the Celtics Maybe not poke him we'll go ahead and put that on the table eddie, but how do you prepare? How do you do anything about jimmy butler at this point or are we just over it? We're just moving on I mean, this is goals to the last question about joe mazula. He waits till they're on the verge of going down Oh three to say hey, maybe we should double jimmy butler Maybe maybe jimmy had less points, I believe than Peyton Pritchard yesterday Like they finally got the bad game out of him by deciding to to bring help watching him go middle Over and over and over on grant williams and nobody helped in game two was just baffling I had no clue what was going on and and that is a coach's decision It is a coach's decision. Hey, hey, we're sitting at home. We're worried about these shooters Hey, we're gonna trust grant in this situation. We're gonna trust Jayce Tatum in this situation and then just letting these guys get torched I I don't know that they have the answer. I mean they have was the defensive player of the year last year marcus smart He's no answer to him the two wings. They got the two jays. They're no answer for him It's it's tough. So what do they do to stop him? I mean They run doubles at him and get the ball out his hands, but that didn't work yesterday Hey, they the heat were scorching from three and and honestly, they're just out of their depths And I I feel for joe mazula because I know that this team loved e-mail doka I know the players the young guys on the team loved him and you he gets thrown into the situation where Chandler is right in la like this is a great situation if I coach any team it'd be this team But when things go bad and you have a championship team, we're all gonna look right at you and wonder Hey, what the hell is going on here for him to say yesterday? I've lost the locker room for him to say yesterday. They weren't prepared That sounds like a guy that isn't a head coach and it has people wondering Yo, are they gonna get out of that? Is brad stevens gonna come back downstairs? Are they gonna call doc rivers? It's just a it's a massive Collapse for that team and uh, what do they do about jimmy butler?  By the way, what you're not going to do is watch the town again That might be the worst thing i've ever heard a head coach doing uh and admitting to by the way It's one thing to do it another to admit it Shoms are a lot of guys on this heat team as we've talked about that maybe the casual fan had No idea who they were before this thing started, but now we all do as far as the offseason market Gabe vinson. What are we thinking? So he's going to be an unrestricted free agent So he spent four years with miami starting in 2019 20 and he's made a little bit of money He started to your 3.5 million dollar deal that he's on right now But uh from what i'm told when i when i talk to team executives And what they tell me this is a guy that's going to be sought after he's proven now He can start for a team that's on the verge of making the nba finals could win a championship this year He replaced kai lari in the starting lineup So the fact that he's able to show that he can start he can lead a team And i think the biggest question when he was coming into the league was is he a one? Is he a two? He can show he can ball handle and i do expect there to be a significant marketplace for him this summer I mean just look at his numbers 18 points a game 61 percent from the field 56 percent from three point lane 100 percent free throw percentage I think he's one of the few players if not the only player in nba history to score 15 points per game in the In in the conference finals on 60 50 100 splits. So gabe vinson Unrestricted free agent this summer. Uh, he's in line either miami or elsewhere to get a pretty sizable contract It'd be nice too if he goes out there as a as an nba champ and starts a new job somewhere else By the way that josh heart tweet I think a lot of us have been thinking over these playoffs about a few people And one of those guys happens to be in the next series nuggets Lakers, who could we have another sweep? I don't know but the Denver nuggets with a three nothing lead right now I'm sorry. I'll take the smile off When the 19108 win in Los Angeles a stun crowd leaving early not shocking jamal murray 37 7 to 6 yokich 24 6 and 8 Look ad and lebron Doing what they can reeves Obviously about to make a bunch of money as well But whatever was proven in game three by denver. What did you take from that channeler? That they're just a superior team that when they defend that they're an elite team And even when yokich has an off night, they have a guy like jamal murray who goes and has 37 points and dominates From start to finish I will say the nuggets bench has been great with bruce brown. He's giving them such good minutes Jeff green comes in when they go small he battles defensively Christian brown comes in he defend So they have a nice mix of of offensive talented players Gordon and porter have been great all year long knocking down shots kcp's making shots So they kind of have this balanced team where they move the ball They have two heads of the snakes that can dominate inside and out And like I said, even when yokich kind of struggled last game They had a big games from other people and and even when they got down, I think they were down 13 14 points In in game three, they didn't hang their head. They came back. They knew this game is the series If we can go in there and we can steal game three This is probably a wrap and and they did just that and I don't know that I've ever seen two conference finals You know 3-0 situations where they both could be sweeps I know I think it sucks for the mba I think the mbls much rather have seen the lakers and the Celtics, but the two better teams are winning these series And the and the nuggets are are showing that they're the the better team here They're showing that their weaknesses all year long with the defense. They can now defend They're switching yokich is at least giving effort in the pick and roll So they're putting it all together and they're absolutely dominating Hmm Yeah, I mean at this one we have to put like tyson's hand was saying right here We we have to put the yokich and Murray Conversations to bed. Jamal Murray is averaging 35 points a game in this series right now on 52 45 and 93 Like this is ridiculous. This is a defense that for the most part stymied stefan curry just two weeks ago This is the defense that we all just Proclaim the best defense in the league with what jerry van der bel and then a shooter are doing He's absolutely as mentally at 30 points in the first half yesterday They're running through defenders trying to figure out what to do with him on that pick and roll Then his struggle is all over the floor jerry van der bel can't stay on the floor And they're using everybody else on their roster and it doesn't matter He scored 30 points in the half He only scored seven and second half and the other guy stepped up because then you have Nicola yokich who's probably the best player alive now Like it's time to tip the hat and just admit it 27 points a game 14 rebounds 14.7 Let's call it 15 11 assist the game and easy same thing 52 percent from floor 45 percent from three Like what do you do with those two and on top of that they're playing defense This is the best team in the league. They were the number one C in the western conference We we dissed them all year long. We said, yo, they got to show it. They got to show it They're showing it right now. They're outperforming Anthony Davis and lebron james. They look like two of the very best players in the world and if they win this title There it changes that absolutely the entire conversation around them But i'm gonna say this Not that winning the title doesn't matter, but we see what they are now They're beating a championship team right now. They're dominant offensive players and they're just great enough on defense It's not like they're getting picked on they're doing just fine out there They're holding the lakers in these fourth quarters to absolutely nothing It's they've proven what they are they're two of the greatest greatest in the league The fact that jamal Murray is doing to this defense with stefan curry could not a week ago is fascinating to watch And i think they're putting this on the night like it's i don't know what else the lakers can do at this point Are you okay? Okay, i've got one prediction already shams I mean, I I hate to say it But i mean i've seen this kind of denmer surge coming all year Maybe i was the only one that supported them all year. I you were i might be biased I saw them in the bubble in 2020 I'm like this team is really on the cusp and then tim connelly their other former president He goes on gets erin gordon and i think a couple years ago They were ready to make it to the NBA finals jamal murray unfortunate tears acl And i think at that point they kind of spiraled into position where they're literally just trying to compete to make the playoffs Now jamal murray's back and he's one of two players in the history to have his 35 and five On 50 shooting in conference finals history him and akima large one just two players So what he's doing right now? How dominant he's been offensively? And this is a guy that nikola yokic has come out and said this guys are closer Like he's our best player at the end of games and he's shown it at a really really high level Always happy to see a guy like that come back the way he has and nikola yokic is He just looked like he has a care in the world about mvp about anything He just wants to hoop he's wants to play basketball this team is deep And i think the only team that that would have been disappointed if they lost Um and really with themselves held them to such high expectations We're the nuggets and i think everything would have been on the table if this team would have lost early in the playoffs But now they're ready on the cusp to making the mba final Uh, look all all eyes are obviously on the brawn and ad for obvious reasons chaneler But does it look like they're wearing down or is this just they're just up against a much better team? I think definitely look a little sluggish at times You see some of the clips where lebron is is not finishing and he's you know, I think this every other Day schedule has definitely affected him. But no, I think they're just outmatched. I think they're out man I think this is a better team Uh, they've actually played very well this series like anthony davis has kind of matched the production of yokic He's been aggressive They made a point to get him the ball and get him going early Lebron has still been a little passive and we know his fourth quarter struggles with the threes But he's made shots last game and they put themselves in these positions to win these games It's not like they have, you know, they got the brakes beat off them Like they like the Celtics did last night all these games have been winnable They just haven't been able to sustain it They haven't been able to close it every time they go on a run Someone on dimberg kind of makes a big player a big shot and it just hasn't been enough But when you look at those three guys on the lakers with ad lebron and austin reeves They all three have been productive. They've got absolutely nothing from dangelo russell He's been really really bad and that and that's hurt them a lot trodder has been inconsistent They found something with ruwe who actually has been very solid off the bench offensively and defensively So it's a combination of they've actually it's it's weird because they're playing solid They're doing enough to win a game the nuggets are just the superior team The nuggets have closed the door on every single run every time they need a big shot Someone makes a big play yokic has done yokic things, you know the entire series So it's it's it's partially their fault, but they're they're just they're not as good of a team And then they don't have enough to beat this team Yeah, i'm with chandler, you know, like they've performed fine They're top four guys ruwe and austere's are almost averaging 40 points combined between the two of them And they're scorching from three they're scorching from two as well ad's averaging 29 and 14 was exactly what you would want from him And he's been great off ball on defense and lebron's averaging 24 9 and 10 This is the type of production you think would be enough But like chandler said the nuggets are just a better team The first off the top two they're outperforming ad and lebron just outright You're getting incredible contributions from bruce brown You're getting errin gordon contributing on defense kcp is lighted up every other night It seems and deans old russell for all the talk about what lebron's shooting from three Deans old russell's somehow shooting worse from three danish schroeder's offered next to nothing on offense Jared vanderbelt has gotten played off the court They've just shown that the nuggets are a deeper team and they're only playing eight guys And one of them is christian brawn who barely plays as it is But they have seven guys that can contribute in every single way on the court both ends of the court And it's it's just a better Constructed roster than what the lakers had to cobble together at the trade deadline Where they go from here who knows but it's not about ad and lebron wearing down They look fine lebron looks healthy for all the conversations about that and he finally hit a couple threes It's just that the nuggets are better Chandler, I know you mentioned that the league and you probably wanted a lakers celtics Matchup, but here's the deal. I speak for all the pa's across the country every network every channel every station You can stop cutting all that footage the decades of rivalry footage that you were probably gonna have to Just take a break. It's gonna be denver in miami. It's new fresh beat This is what we should want if we're basketball fans But is there any chance in hell and we know nobody's come back from the 3o deficit the daunting 3o deficit Any chance at all this lakers team could do that No, no chance and we're done Yeah, we've covered this now the the nuggets are too good. They're too deep They can't stop both yokech and murray and I do think they might sneak this one out tonight But there's no chance they get, you know tonight Bob and denver I just don't see that happening We're gonna take a quick break here. Well, we come back super nix fan Jerry ferrara is here.  Yeah, you're smiling. So this is good, right? You've had enough time to process I'm at a good place in my life with my nix fandom I had some time to heal and recover and I'm not saying I'm rooting for the miami heat. I'm just saying No one's beating them. So this is great for us like we we took him to six I'm now proud that the nix took the alien space jam team to six games Oh, yeah, we'll we'll get to that because I do think that lessens the pain a little bit But you were just in the Bahamas with chandler the man who lives all of our dream lives What was it like? Did he embarrass us at all? Uh, no, no, he he was uh, he did real well out there You know, I got to watch that game with him and charles oakley and all that stuff. So, uh It was incredible. But uh, yeah, chandler definitely enjoyed watching my pain Chandler So me and jerry there was there was basically an episode of entourage where there's all these x athletes There's jerry. There's kevin. There's kevin dillon kevin connelly and we're sitting there in this game six, right? And so I go to jerry and it was obviously a diehard delusional nix fan And and I said, all right, I'll give you odds and I bait him into it. I give him very good odds I say I got the heat for this amount of money Do you get the nix for three times that money? No points. No spread What do you think and and we sit there and I just watch him just blow up in flames And and he was not happy.  I just yelled at him give me your venmo chandler. Just give it to me. All right, just air I was so upset. It was so upsetting So jerry, I know as an x fan it was probably heartbreaking how the season ended But do you still consider this year a success getting to the second round? Absolutely this is like I I love the nick fan community. I have a lot of friends within the nick fan community And of course we get carried away There was a golden path to potentially getting to the eastern conference finals and then anything could have happened We ran into the juggernaut. That is the heat. But yes, i'm thrilled. Look at where we started Look at the season we were coming off of and this is why I get so upset when everyone turns on julius randall So quickly we're regardless of the playoff performance. I understand it didn't go as planned, but He has accepted the challenge. He has two out of the three last seasons. Uh, he made all mba So I just think everyone like needs to calm down a little bit and realize we are ahead of schedule No one had us getting to the second round and taking the heat to six games and potentially reaching the eastern conference finals So i'm disappointed, but that's gone away and the future's bright. We have assets And uh, we have jaylen brunson. So the future is really bright Yo jay big fan first of all, I cannot believe you honored a bit to the real life venny chase. Oh my god handler There's no way he would have to get it in blood. But uh, looking forward you have all those assets You have julius randall's poster getting ripped off the wall over there on eighth street What do you what do you want the nicks to do going forward and is trading julius part of that process for you You know my my opinion is I would I'm not trading randall. I think that's I think that's ludicrous I get the the postseason performance wasn't what we wanted But for me What I would like to see is a fan shooting shooting shooting get me shooters We've seen what it's done for even the miami heat with dunk and robinson coming alive No one missed gay vincent doesn't miss kaleb martin doesn't miss kevin love came in there He didn't shoot well, but he's still a threat just get us some shooting so he could space the floor for brunson and randall and rj I want shooters So i'm gonna take a long list of all the shooters that are potentially possible that we could get and i'm gonna beg shams to give me some info when he won't and uh, That's that's how my offseason is gonna go I like to think that there's a celebrity nicks fan thread That's just constantly going knowing how nicks fans are and it's it's a great passion and I and I love the fan base But I like to think that like you and ben stiller and tracy morgan are just texting each other like Don't shoot the ball julius or or something about rj barrett when you get mad. Is that is that a thing? Uh, I there's a version of that. I there's definitely, uh, twitter dms and texts that go around I am in a big nicks, uh, twitter dmi this thing has like hundreds of people in it and it's awesome It's kind of going on but then that now we're like recruiting they're like asking me like hey get ben stiller in here I'm like i'm not asking anyone to join This twitter group, but yeah, I mean ben stiller is one of my favorite people to talk nicks I've probably met and talked with ben a bunch of times I don't think we've ever talked about hollywood or movies or tv shows. We only talk about the nicks. So, uh, it's real I mean You know that courts I went I went to game two It was like an out of body experience because I've never been to a nicks playoff game at this point in my life I'm 43 years old. It's my first playoff game Oh, that hurts Sorry first first nicks playoff game and you you're on the biggest celebrity row I think for next game this year. Maybe you sat next to erin rogers What did you guys talk about? What are those conversations like we we we need to know? I'm gonna be 100 honest. We had in-depth basketball conversations like that dude loves basketball We talked to bill about you know the bucks and you know his link with the bucks and stuff like that We I ended up talking the sauce gardener a lot too who I don't know if it was his first or second court side game but uh And also seeing sauce gardener like stand up next to erin rogers.  No, because I think you know the giants I think if I remember could have today they took tibido. I think so I I mean He he is very very impressive. No, I really do I'm bothered by the fact that how good I think the jets are going to be this year so But no, I didn't need that's the thing I'm sitting there with the jets I couldn't even really they don't want to talk about the giants So we didn't talk football at all. We really kept it about uh about basketball But yeah that that whole celeb row I thought they would have put me in like the last row because I'm like power I've been dead on power for two years three years now I don't know if I get the feet on the wood like I used to but they they they did right for me Come on you you got to be on the wood what we talk about I'm curious. How does that work? You get there on the garden your court side and this you know going in like yo Me arod sauce or you know me and jessica albert. You show up in this boom There's tracy borger and with his big-ass chain and we're talking hoops No, uh, you don't know, you know, obviously Look, like I said, they've always you know really treated me Well, and I've done a lot of work for msg with like the 2k league and stuff like that But you get there you don't know where you're sitting or where you're sitting with but then you do see like Oh chris rock just got here. There's there's two front row seats gone and dave chappelle walks in It's like well, there's another two gone like you're watching you're going further further back in the arena in your mind, but uh Yeah, I mean and I gotta say though. It's it's cool. I mean all those guys and girl like they're all big nicks fans And it's real the love for the team is real.  Are you am I going to see you in miami tomorrow? Like what's your what's your day to day right now as a fan? Uh, look, I just want I I wanted these series to go a little longer We're we're we're looking at sweeps or at least what do they call gentlemen sweeps when it goes five? I mean I I just want to see more basketball I do think I I was listening when you know You guys were talking before and yeah, I I think and I actually got a question. I guess it would be for chandler, but I think that boston does fire. I don't think boston's gonna go quietly now. What whether that means five or six games I don't know, but I think I do think it'll put up a fight chandler with the lakers right because I look at Yolk itch and I look at that game too when the lakers were exhausted and denver wasn't I know they're a little younger But does playing in denver has that benefited? Yolk is just in a Cardio vascular way like when he goes on the road because he's so used to playing In denver with the altitude and all that is he Does he not get tired ever in these road games too? You actually see some guys train and like denver or aspen in the off season Just to kind of get your lungs right and get your legs and we talked about on the show Making it every other day in the playoffs was a huge disadvantage for the lakers for the brawn For ad for these guys that are older that are banged up So that's definitely a factor and those guys like you feel good early, but until you get that second wind You're cooked, bro Like it really does affect you and having that's probably the best and biggest home court advantage in the mba Just because of that factor because it's physical right? It's not noise. It's not the crowd It's not the rap you have all that but that altitude is no joke Especially when you're 39 years old like the brawn and you just played a day and a half ago pretty much. It's it's tough But I I don't I don't think either team just lays down I'd like to think none of them neither of them are going to get swept But I mean who knows I took one sip of a beer in denver and I got buzzed like 10 times quicker And also i'm 43 years old I can't even stay awake for the west coast games let alone play in them Like I have a hard time getting through the fourth quarter at 11 30 at night. So I I think I just hope for more games That's that's what I'm really rooting for is like let's get to game sixes. Maybe make it a little spicy Yeah, I'm with uh big news today jerry carmelo anthony Officially retired. Were you big fan? Were you not? Well, what was your take on him when he was a nick? A huge fan. I always say that anyone who Takes on the task of trying to win with the nicks and everything that the organization organizations been through I you know, I give everyone respect. That's why I give randal the respect I know it wasn't you know, some huge acquisition at the time But with mellow the only thing I ever wished for mellow and it is connected to denver So full circle I just wish that the nicks didn't have to give up every asset to to get him like in They waited a few months. They probably could have signed them Uh would have signed them So I just would have liked to have seen him with more of the talent that they were actually starting to acquire And amari was a little You know wearing down by that point But I just give him nothing but respect because he tried to win in a city where They're not known for winning and I always said if you could bring a championship to the nicks That's like two anywhere else and He tried so mellow is one of my favorite nicks of all time and uh I mean, I wish him well. I'm happy he retired and went out. Uh, you know with this great career to look back on Everybody knows about that nicks conversion championship rate. It's like completely different math that they're not used to Um, like there's a lot of this must be the question you get asked the most uh about an entourage reboot. There's there's talk Is it happening? What has to happen? Or would you be a part of it? What's the deal? I really do think mr. Parsons got this thing started He posted that picture and then all of a sudden the picture went viral and uh Look once a year there's always always talk about it. Um And you know, I we all live in different cities now and I go a little bit without seeing those guys Although we're always talking and when we get together like we're all just and you know in the Bahamas together It does make you say, uh, it would be fun to dust this off and do it again I just think we would have to Really revisit what the show is. I don't think we could all be living together in the same house 40s and 50s maybe And you know, I think we would have to really revisit maybe we bring in like a young vince cousin Maybe as like a cousin who wants to be an actor. So we're the old heads and we have this new generation I think it would need something like that I mean, we live in a nostalgia era for entertainment. So I this would be huge By the way word on the street the street being you is that you have sticky fingers on sets What what have you I mean I got the posters back there. We see that. What have you taken and why? Oh, I take every anything I could take that they won't arrest me for Uh, I got I had the posters back there with power like I took the sweatshirt that proctor got killed I mean my prize possession is the fukijamas the gold Air force ones that are actually they're right over there if you want to see them. I could I could bust those out Yeah, uh, so I just take I take everything I possibly get because uh, I think it was jack Nicholson Now this is a myth. This is probably not true.  So like if he wears a nice watch, it's like well, this one's mine Don't know if this is true. That's just something I heard as a young actor. So I I went off that Yeah, I like this As as ghost would say proctor, um Gary were you as sad as I was when you got shot down in the seat in in your finale episode like I was depressed. You're my favorite lawyer of all time. Okay, tell me what was that like and and where where does that rank for you as far as character? So power heaven is a funny place, right? No actor when you think about a show like power where most of the characters die, you know I I think about it from an acting perspective like those are people who no longer have a job, right? so there's that level to it, but You know, I thought I was gonna maybe get it in season five Like I said, I my character was starting to know a little too much But then I make it to season six and I start thinking wow, I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna see the end I'm gonna make it to daylight And then it becomes like the show hard knocks, you know, you're on the studio lot one day and Someone comes up to you and is like, uh, courtney kemp the showrunner would like to see you bring your script You know, they tell the players trying to make the team bring your playbook Bring your script. It's like, oh my god. It's happening.  It becomes like a family almost but I will say I went out with a bang and a shootout with Tommy Egan who's the terminator and uh when that episode aired I think I was on my honeymoon. So it was it was uh a fun way to sort of get all the man I mean people were sad about it and that's I think that's the flattering part And it lives on to this day. They're still saying if proctor were alive I would have, you know, Tariq would have been out of this mess or any so It's it's a power heavens a front place to be Procter. Yeah, procter. Look if you're gonna get murdered that Tommy's the way to go As far as I'm concerned and always was Jerry. This has been an absolute pleasure Enjoy the rest of the hopefully the heat taking care of the Celtics. I think it will help It will help ease the pain. Yes, and thank you and let's do this again. Please. Let's do this again Absolutely. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break when we come back Well, Draymond says if he would have never punched Jordan pool, they'd still be playing He says a lot when run it back Ritter When NBA playoff games tip off, there's no better place to bet than fan duel America's number one Sportsbook because now you can build a same game parlay after the game has already started Live sgps are just one of the new features added for the playoffs So go check it all out right now on the fan duel sportsbook app Make every moment more with fan duel official sportsbook partner of the mba Time for some scoophage with our own shams. Uh, we got some all star news shams talk to me Yeah, so the nba they've been meeting ever since this year's lackluster I mean everyone I think knew this year's all star game had a very limited competitiveness. So ever since then Owners board of governors gms They've all been meeting to try to figure out how to fix next year's all star game in indianapolis And one idea that's beginning to gain momentum is returning back to east versus west And I think that's something that the league is going to continue to look at they have to have more meetings And another idea potentially that has also been discussed is USA versus the world and I think that's something that has been tossed around But east versus west looks like right now a return to that is what the league is looking at pretty strongly I like the world I think it's it's it's so watered down regardless right unless there's implications on home court advantage something like some other major sports leagues do I I don't like to draft. I don't like the awkwardness of a guy finally making an all star team and then getting drafted last on national tv I don't I definitely think they should change off that the east versus west too is different because If you're on the heat, do you really care that the east is better than the west? It's not like you're repping your conference So either way if you go back to west, I don't think it's going to be the most competitive game Unless you throw in some real advantages for your regular team for the regular season But it's definitely they've got to make some changes because this year was horrific Yeah, I think this is part of it like the draft is cool. I know the players don't like it I know that for a fact I when it was a zoom and now when it's in person I don't even think it's about getting picked last it's just the entire ceremony of it Yeah, I make it conferences. I put them back in their jerseys.  I think that'd be so much fun to watch I'm all in on that. Um, the warriors have a lot of decisions to make in the off season, including bob meyers shams was the latest So bob meyers has just over one month left on his contract and then he's gonna be a free agent and right now There's no traction on a new deal. Michelle. Actually, there's hasn't been any offers No counter offers in several months really the beginning of 2023 So when you look at those tea leaves the fact that his contract is about to end There have been no substantive talks. I'm told for for several months No offers made for several months The tea leaves don't make it look like there's any deal that's gonna happen And so as right now my is appears likely to walk away to come a free agent The warriors earlier this year offered him a deal that would have made him one of the highest paid executives in the league But I think there's a sense around the warriors and around bob meyers that if he were to leave This is not just about the money and even if they offered him the highest contract that this is kind of Been at the end of the road for him potentially there and so 12 years We know about his relations with steve curry clay thompson steve cur dream on green And so I think there's going to be more conversations with all of those people Before he formalizes his decision potentially to walk away, but this is a big You know big decision for the warriors in their future because after this they have to decide on dream on green What do you do with clay thompson as far as extension? What steve curse future with one year left on his deal and that all revolves around steve curry who looks like he's one of the Best players in the league. How does this team? Make it and continue to move on if bob meyers is really done Yeah, bob meyers he's he's brilliant He's been a huge piece to the success of this whole warriors dynasty and I love the fact that he Was an agent and then he become you know became a front office member. So he sees both sides He's relatable. He's a great guy and you know Maybe this is just him wanting to kind of this. He's done all he can here And he wants to go do it again somewhere else, but he's he's an impressive dude And he's obviously a huge piece being executive of the year different things like that in his role He's one of the best there ever was and they have a lot of decisions to make too. So I don't whoever takes over that job He's got they got big time decisions to make with regarding her and clay and dream on so if i'm them I'm resigning this guy because he's one of the best Right who wants to walk in and make all of those decisions? That's a tough place to be shams Thank you so much. We'll talk to you in the morning. Um dream on green loves bob meyers He's talked about it on his podcast in various places. He also talked about the jordan pool punch again guys He said if he hadn't punched pool They would still be playing Eddie you buying that Look, I That's clearly broke there. I don't want to curse. I don't want to do the channeler thing, but yet no no No, duh, you know, like it obviously Fractured the team and and we'll do so going forward. We'll have ramifications that will affect that team For years ahead people are already thinking are they going to get rid of jordan pool this year shams reported a week ago that they're ready to offer dream on a long-term extension the same thing with clay thompson That fractured the the personality of that team in a way that we haven't seen even with the kevin durant situation And yeah, it mattered bro. Thank you punched your teammate in front of everybody In the future of your franchise Steph curry told logan murdoch that in the in the locker room after they lost to the lakers He nods over at jordan pool says that's the future for us right there They know what jordan pool is for that franchise and then you deck him in front of everybody Yeah, it mattered. Yeah, you're right draemon and and apparently they're picking draemon in this situation going forward. So Yeah, it's a lot and if that's what breaks this dynasty up He's got to he's got to eat that and it sounds like he is Yeah, this is something you don't forget as a player as a person as a man as a teammate jordan pool was embarrassed And I'd even go as far as saying this had a role in jordan pools, you know Unsuccessful run here towards end of the season. So i'm the warriors. I'm not residing draemon green I I think that they've already made the decision with jordan pool early now He struggled throughout the playoffs, but this is something he's had to deal with all season long Like I said, he's publicly embarrassed.  That's going to linger. You could say all the right things you want But this is not going to just give I don't think they're on court relationship will ever be Whole again, so they're going to have to decide on one of them One of them is a lot younger and one of them is an offensive real talent that can sub in so I don't know who knows But it's not something that they're ever going to get over Man, just don't punch the dude. We'll be back to wrap things up Get in on the NBA playoffs action right now first tip with fan duel New customers can get a no sweat first bet up to $1,000 That's $1,000 back in bonus bets if your first bet doesn't win There's no better place to bet all the playoff action than america's number one sports book download the app Bet on the nba playoffs today fan duel official sports betting partner of the nba the week has just started guys We've had jerry ferrara. We have flea tomorrow And we have white howard on wednesday and flea. I If the lakers lose, I hope he just comes on here and crushes everybody Win or lose to the lakers flea should be awesome Right, I feel like I'm gonna recruit flea to the spurs Almost better if they get swept flea fresh off a sweat Flea fresh off a sweat We'll be back tomorrow with flea.


Now President Obama doesn't agree with me. Surprise, surprise. And he had a famous speech a few months ago, well maybe it's over a year ago, that has me title that you didn't build that speech. Because in the speech he said to businessmen, to people who engage in activities of business, he said you didn't build it. Not by yourself, he had employees. You had a great teacher in high school that's responsible for your success because she inspired you. You drove on government roads and therefore society invested in those roads, so they own a piece of it. You didn't build it, we built it. If you know a little bit about American political history, I guess, Hillary Clinton had a book years ago called It Takes a Village. And that's the attitude, right? You don't do stuff by yourself. You need other people to produce stuff. Steve Jobs did not do this by himself. He needed employees and he needed designers and all kinds of people in order to make this. And of course he drove on the roads and he went to the schools and everything. And that's the reason, they say, that wealth should be considered social because all of us did it together. Really? So yes, Apple has employees, I have employees, any business has employees. But you know what? We pay them. They get paid. That's the return they get on being employees. And they get paid better than any other alternative they have. Otherwise what would they do? Leave and go and work for somebody else. You know what?  You'll get a little bit less than what you're worth to the business because nobody's going to hire you to lose money for them. They hire you to make money for them. So they're going to make a profit off of you in any job that you have. It's just like the iPhone and me buying it, right? When you take a job, you know, you're coming out of Exodus or what, 60,000 pounds a year? I'll be generous, right? I don't know, I have no idea. That sounds like a lot of money. That's a lot of money. If you accept a job for 60,000 pounds, how much is your time worth to you? Less than 60,000. That's why you're willing to take 60,000 and give your time to this company, to whoever's employing you. How much is your time worth to your employer?  Who's lost? Nobody. No exploitation, no, right? It's a choice. It's a trade. Win-win, just like when you buy the iPhone or you buy the nice shoes or you buy anything else in the mall. Labor is the same type of trade. Win-win, you wouldn't take it if you're not going to be better off by doing it. So, labor, employees, yeah, they've been paid for it. Indeed, Microsoft produced more millionaires than any company in human history because they were paid well. Apple employees are paid very well. At least in the U.S. We can talk about Chinese employees if you want. So, yeah. People help you build it. And they get paid for it. And what you get is what's remaining, which is the CEO, the Steve Jobs, who has the ideas, who organizes it all. And he gets more than everybody else. You know what? Because he's more valuable than anybody else. Economically, in terms of production, in terms of value to the economy, in terms of value to your lives, he's more valuable. So, he gets more. What about the roads? Right, government roads. You're using them every day. Don't you owe society something for the government roads? I'm talking about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any rich guy. Right? Well, where do government roads come from? From taxes. And who gets taxed? The wealthy gets taxed the most. They're paid for the roads. They pay for it all the time. Indeed, you don't have roads until you have wealth. We, in the modern times, somehow has money and they create stuff and then we build on top of that.  The primary is not government. There are no roads, good roads, until you have taxed money to build the good roads. So, somebody has to produce something so that you can tax it so that you can build stuff. The primary is production. The primary is the making of stuff. So, we paid for the roads. What more do you want? It doesn't mean the product of societies. It doesn't mean the wealth of societies just because I paid for a road that I'm using. And then, of course, there's a teacher. We all had a great teacher in our childhood. At least, some of you did. I don't remember any of my teachers from my childhood. But that, just because I have a bad memory, doesn't mean they weren't any good teachers. I'm sure they were. Let's leave it for the Q&A, because otherwise, just remember the question. We'll do it in the Q&A. What about the teacher? Well, A, they get paid. That's a job. They do a good job. That's wonderful that they do a good job. But if you're rich and you really had a good teacher, then I think it would be nice if you lost. If you went to that teacher, thanked her and wrote her a nice check. That would be cool. That's great. But I don't think we should impose that on you. I don't think you should feel guilty because you had a good teacher. I don't think because you had a good teacher, society owns the stuff that you make. It doesn't give society a right to your value to what you produced. So I don't buy this idea that society owns our wealth. Individuals produce wealth and therefore it should belong to individuals and individuals should decide what and how to spend their wealth, what to do with that wealth. It's none of our business.


Did you know that you can use underscores in your numbers in Python programming language? For example, number 1000, you can also write in Python programming language as one underscore followed by three zeros. For example, let's make a variable 1000 with value 1000 and let's do some basic math. For example, let's add to our variable some number and we will get the result of this addition 2017. Also, let's try with some other numbers how to write a million with underscores. We could write it like this and let's do again some basic calculations. For example, population of New York City will be 8.55 times a million. Let's print our result. I've made a mistake. Let's try it again. Population of New York City is about 8 and a half million people. That's all in this lesson. Thanks for watching.


Welcome back to the session on latex. In this session, we will learn to change the orientation of the entire document or a particular part in the document at page breaks and insert footnotes. Orientation of a page refers to the direction in which it is displayed. There are two types, portrait and landscape. By default, the orientation is portrait, that is, the height is larger than the width. In the landscape mode, the width is larger than the height. It is helpful when we have an image or we have a table with many columns, etc., etc. Using our favorite geometry package, we can change the orientation of the entire document. The syntax is slash use package landscape geometry. Let us see a demo. Ever heard of Lorem Ipsum? Well, it is just some placeholder text which people use for filling up the document, some random text. Using this Ipsum package, we generate some random text. Here, 1 dash 10 means generate paragraphs from 1 to 10. So, we need not write some dummy text. Well, coming back to the point, let us add use package landscape geometry slash use package geometry and we write landscape. Well, let us build and run. This is a landscape page. Let us remove this just to confirm, build and run. You see, we again shifted back to the portrait mode. Let us go back to our slides. Now, what if you want to change the orientation of only a certain part? Well, just write your content in between begin landscape and end landscape. L-scape or PDF L-scape packages are used for this purpose. Let us see a demo. Let us comment out the geometry package first and we will add some random sections title. We add some random text, Ipsum 1 dash 2, generate 1 of 2 paragraphs. We add another section, section second title, second title slash Ipsum 1 dash 2. And there comes our Ipsum 1 dash 2. Let us build and run. So, the pages in portrait mode title section 1, section 2 is a second title. Well, now let us add slash begin landscape. We indent this for better readability slash end landscape and we add our package slash use package L-scape. Let us build and run. Bravo. So, we have our portrait mode, page number 1, page number 2 is in landscape mode, coming back to the portrait mode again. You see the section title is inverted. Well, now let us comment to this L-scape package and write PDF L-scape. So, we copy this, we comment it out, we come here, paste and we write PDF L-scape. Let us observe carefully, build and run, observe, page number 1, page number 2. Did you see the difference? The page is rotated well essentially L-scape and PDF L-scape, I mean they both are same, but when printed it helps when one wants to read it on the screen. So, PDF L-scape is a better option if you are reading some document or text on the screen. Now, let us switch back to our slides. While typesetting a document sometimes we want some content to appear on the next page. This can be done using the page break or new page command. Let us have a look. So, we go here and we write another section, section, a section in between and we write some random text using Lipsom 1 dash 2, build and run. Yes, we got the section here. Now, suppose we want this section number 2 to appear on the next page. So, we come here, we write slash page break and we build and run again. Bravo, section 1 is on page number 1 while section 2 is on page number 2. Let us switch back to our slides. So, it is so easy right to take a new page, footnotes, footnotes convey more information about certain statements that one writes in a document they are added using slash footnote command. Let us see a demo. Well, on this page number 2, just after the Lorem-Ipsum command, let us come here and writes Lorem-Ipsum is my saviour and we write slash footnote refer to the wiki article for more information. Once build and run, you see Lorem-Ipsum is my saviour and with a number 1 and it is referring to the wiki article at the footer. Let us add another footnote. What else do you need? Slash footnote, contact me for any help. Well, this is just some random text, build and run. What else do you need? With number 2 and referring to contact me for any help. This is how we set footnotes. Great, so this brings us to the end of our session and I believe that now you can change the orientation of the entire document or a certain part at page breaks and insert footnotes. Thank you. Have a nice day.


everyone and welcome to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Dr. Kay Lee Ikeena, your host and the president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Today we'll be talking about removing Hawaii's barriers to virtual currency. If you're in any sector of the economy in Hawaii, any sector of industry, you know that we are overloaded with government regulation, and that ultimately doesn't help business and it doesn't help the consumer. As a result, we have one of the fastest rates of exodus of people leaving the state of Hawaii to live somewhere else largely because of the cost of living and the lack of economic opportunity. But you've heard some names that have been circling around recently, Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain. The new market for virtual currency has exploded in recent years, but not here in Hawaii, which has some of the highest barriers to entry for virtual currency companies, as well as you know many other industries. So to study the issue, Hawaii regulators took on an experiment. They lifted the regulations on 15 virtual currency companies and we'll tell you what virtual currency is all about in a little bit. And they used a program which ends in December of 2022. River Financial is one of the 15 companies that was allowed to operate in Hawaii through this program. And today I'm going to talk with Alexandra Geiser, the company's director of regulatory affairs. Now let me tell you about this individual. Prior to joining River Financial, Alexandra was the executive secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she worked directly with Secretary Munchen and led a diverse team responsible for the review and analysis of all regulations and interagency coordination on behalf of the Treasury Secretary. Quite a position. Ms. Geiser holds a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from King's College and she has a J.D. from the University of Texas. Alexandra, Aloha. Thanks for joining us today. Welcome to the program. Aloha. Thank you. It's great to be here with you. Well, it's winter up there in Washington, D.C. What's it look like outside your window? We got a ton of snow, so certainly our first snow of 2022, but more snow than I think I've ever seen in my time living in the district. So it is a winter wonderland out here. Well, we have a little bit of rain, which clouds the 80 degree weather on the beach. Yes, I would rather be doing this live in person from your office. Well, hopefully we'll be able to visit soon. You certainly have a wealth of experience on the regulatory side of the emerging world of virtual currency, but now you're in the private sector. So you've got a bird's-eye view as to what's going on. What's attracted you to this field and what keeps you engaged in it? Absolutely. As you mentioned, I have a background in politics, philosophy, and economics. I was first interested in Bitcoin really from an economic perspective. Even now, I like to joke that Bitcoin will make economics true again. So when you look at the big I word from the last six to 12 months' inflation, it's something a lot of people are really worried about. The most compelling thing to me about Bitcoin is there will only ever be 21 million of them. There's no Federal Reserve that can create more Bitcoin on a whim. It's not policy driven. It's really sound money. Well, it certainly is an innovation. It takes us back to the very roots of money. So we're talking today, however, about virtual money or virtual currency. And bear with us, please, talk baby talk to us. So that we can understand what is meant by Bitcoin and so forth. But before we dive into that, talk to us about money. Just the traditional notion of money. You worked at the Treasury Department. Presumably, unless you're a conspiracy theorist, they have a lot of money. And what is this thing called money? What does it do? And tell us what the role of government is with money? So money tends to have three main characteristics. First is a unit of account. So you want to be able to measure it, whether that's in dollars and cents or pounds. It always has a unit. Second, it's a stored value. So you want it to be worth roughly the same thing today that it's going to be worth tomorrow. And finally, a medium of exchange. So obviously, we could have a really complex barter economy where if I have some lawyer skills and you're maybe a great chef, maybe we could swap them. But ultimately, that becomes pretty cumbersome. So money is a nice common denominator. So throughout human history, people have used all kinds of things for money, salt, shells, gold, the US dollar. And so what we have here is really just another iteration of something that fulfills all three of the classic characteristics of money. Bitcoin does that really well. You'll hear talk about some other cryptocurrencies. Sometimes they're called virtual currencies. A lot of them are actually not trying to be money. So Ethereum is trying to fuel smart contracts. Some of the other coins that you'll hear function a lot more like securities. So the stocks that you would tend to trade in a Schwab or a fidelity account. They work a little bit more like companies and the tokens are a little bit more like stock issuances. So it's an exciting and developing world. But I do think that Bitcoin is a little bit easier to talk about than some of the others because it's really the only one that's trying to be money. And it does everything as well. So we'll come back to that in a little bit and I'll ask you about Bitcoin and virtual currency. But just to kind of encapsulate what you said, virtual currency is now the latest evolution, so to speak, of a practice as old as man and that is bartering, exchanging one thing for another and using some kind of symbolic token to represent what you're exchanging. So you don't have to carry around all that wheat or the cows or whatever it is. Instead we used coins, we used money and there were certain purposes of money. Before advancing the conversation, I wanted to ask you what role governments have played with money because that seems to be a very key issue now as we look for new forms of creating money to transact transactions between people. For the last hundreds of years now we've relied upon governments to play a significant role in money. So what is that role that government plays in money and what are the pros and cons of it? The role government plays in money is actually a little bit more nuanced and varied than a lot of us assume. So for my whole lifetime the US dollar has been sort of the world's reserve currency, so a lot of things are denominated in dollars and other currencies are not pegged to something like gold, which they used to be. So it used to be kind of late 1800s until World War I that the gold standard was how you denominated the British pound in the US dollar and the Swiss franc and everything was just a different fractional amount of gold and this is where this is the period of human history where you saw the most zero to one innovations. So it's to go from zero to one is like inventing electricity to go from one to multiples is like using electricity to power computer, right? So both are really impressive and important innovations but the zero to one really creates something new and you had the most zero to one innovation when the entire world was on the gold standard. So we tend to think a lot about money being complicated and really connected to government monetary policy, fiscal policy. That's true right now and it has certain pros and cons like you mentioned but it hasn't always been true. Humans, like you said, have always needed to trade for goods and services. They're always mutual gains to be made sure and so whether you have government that creates a currency and sort of explains how you do this or whether you have something your community has decided on, we use a lot of different things. Even now I pay for some things with credit card points. I book certain flights with airline miles and anytime I give or receive a gift card it's denominated in dollars but it's not quite dollars. It's a little bit more like store credit. So we all are actually pretty sophisticated consumers of different types of currency, not all of which are related to the US government. Well you know Alexandra that's very interesting. It seems to be a natural inclination of people to come up with forms of exchange, forms of currency and yet the government would you agree pretty much has a monopoly on the predominant currency that is used in a country, legal tender so to speak. Only the government can print money. In fact we might even be better off if the government stopped printing for a while but that's a different conversation for another show. But the thing is there's this monopoly element that governments have with regard to currency and what is the trend now when we go to virtual currency? What is the vision of the role that the government would play with regard to Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as we begin to look at new ways of exchanging value and storing wealth? Yeah I think it's important to distinguish between legal currency accepted forms of payment and illegal currency right. So if I were to print a counterfeit dollar bill that would be illegal currency and I could go to jail. But like we mentioned there's actually this realm of sort of in-between things that are not legal tender so a merchant isn't required to accept them but if a merchant decides to accept them I can use them to pay for goods and services. So again we've got airline miles, credit card points, gift cards, even credit or a personal check right and so that actually fairly hands off and allows people to transact as they see fit. And then you have legal tender which the government that's the U.S. dollar but there are other countries around the world about around a half dozen that use the U.S. dollar as their official form of currency their legal tender even though it's not the U.S. So there is a little bit more kind of give and take you've also got the Eurozone would be another example where there's a little bit more of a tenuous relationship. Very good well thanks for explaining that now let's move on and move from currency as established by government which generally holds a monopoly over that and sets the rules up for it to this new phenomenon that's out there virtual currency and probably the most commonly heard word associated with it is Bitcoin. What do we mean by that by virtual currency and Bitcoin? Yeah so Bitcoin is the original virtual currency or cryptocurrency and again it uses something called blockchain technology that functions basically like a long string of Legos. So in Bitcoin and in a lot of other cryptocurrencies you'll have what's called an open ledger.  So essentially the Bitcoin algorithm right and so what this allows is for a trustless network because everybody's transactions are always visible. Think of it like playing poker with everybody's cards on the table. Pretty hard to bluff or cheat if that's the case right and so what Bitcoin did this is actually today is Bitcoin's birthday. Okay so Bitcoin innovated and solved a couple of problems. One was the tendency to want to inflate currency which has been with us really since the dawn of currency. If you could break off a little piece of the coin and keep it for yourself and use the coin well now you've you've accumulated a little bit of extra money right you're inflating away your currency and Bitcoin doesn't do that like we said there are only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin but it does a couple of other things too. It prevents double spending right so typically you need a third party whether that's a bank or a government or a credit card processor who verifies that you're good for the makes sure that once you've that was really hard to figure out to hit copy and paste into a new window and so there was an issue with how could you prevent a digital currency from being essentially copied and pasted a hundred times over and so Bitcoin through its open ledger and its blockchain technology solved that double spend problem and then other currencies have built on some of those innovations. Well it's definitely very innovative and you used a metaphor to help describe what's going on here of the Lego blocks or what you call the blockchain. Now in the traditional currency model the most famous metaphor is really Fort Knox that there's this vault with gold inside of it and so the dollar bill that we are transmitting to one another and carrying around with us is backed by a vault full of gold somewhere. That is a metaphor just as the blockchain is a metaphor for something going on today in the computer world in cyberspace. In what ways is virtual currency like the old metaphor Fort Knox and in what ways is it different. Sure so I think the the biggest difference would be Fort Knox is owned and controlled by the US government right and so they're keeping it safe and they own it. The Bitcoin network is decentralized so it's tens of thousands of computers all over the world and the computers are talking to each other but there's no one entity or no one country that really owns it. It's all of these computers that collectively have incentives to secure the network to make sure that the ledger is verified that people aren't cheating and so it would be the incentive structures set up really well so that really it's too expensive to ever cheat. It also requires too much computing power so that's a big and again I think a really nice appeal to Bitcoin is it's designed to be global and very fast unlike you think about the ECH settlement time you need when you pay your credit card from your bank account it takes several days for those funds to actually move well maybe that's fine but maybe you'd like for it to go a little bit faster right and so that's something that we can do through the Bitcoin network. Well thank you you know many states are moving ahead in terms of being able to make transactions through virtual currency possible and to allow companies to facilitate that but as I mentioned earlier in my introduction Hawaii is one of the most restrictive states when it comes to virtual currency. Hawaii regulators did lift the regulations a little bit on 15 virtual currency companies so that they can do business in the state and that program will end in December of 2022 River Financial is one of those companies so you've been able to see that program at work. What exactly do companies like this do? What is the role they play? Yeah so we have been absolutely thrilled to get to participate in the Digital Currency Innovation Lab or DCIL and like you mentioned this has really made it possible for companies like River Financial to operate in Hawaii. Previously we wouldn't have been able to do that because the regulations were too restrictive so this has been an absolute boom in terms of our ability to operate in Hawaii and get to do business there. We're like you said one of 15 companies and there are a variety of business models so River is Bitcoin only we are a brokerage custody and mining company but there are other companies that let you buy and sell a ton of different cryptocurrencies. There are companies that focus a little bit more on a business to business model or maybe charitable giving. There are a lot of companies that are doing really interesting things in this space and so I think it's been phenomenal that the Hawaii Commissioner of Financial Institutions, Iris Akeda, kind of thought this up and worked to get it up and running and to really create some space for innovation and hopefully some prosperity for Hawaii and its citizens. What are some of the lessons that are coming out of the Digital Currency Innovation Lab? What are we actually learning and demonstrating is possible here in Hawaii? Absolutely. I'd say one everybody agrees fraud is bad and so when looking at sort of things you do want to regulate you do want to prohibit fraud. Fraud is always bad for consumers so that's a pretty easy takeaway. The second I'd say is Hawaii is unique it's almost exactly halfway between the North American and the Asian markets so there's a lot of excitement you could have in cryptocurrencies trade 24-7 so to be perfectly situated in between some major markets has I think some very exciting possibilities. Three, you want to recognize it is a set of violence and so the population in Hawaii is never going to rival the population in California or Texas. There just aren't that many people so you want to kind of level set the fees and expenses that you put on companies to operate in Hawaii against the actual business that they're doing because at some point even if every single Hawaii resident were a river financial customer that still might not be very many people right and so it's important to right size the regulation to match the business opportunity. You know once the laboratory has completed its course the legislature has to decide if not by then sooner thereafter what to do how to take the lessons and apply them in new legislation here in Hawaii. What do you and other practitioners there hope the legislature of Hawaii will do? I think our main hope is that they will get rid of the really onerous kind of double reserve requirement that's been put in place so this requires us to not only keep our customers cryptocurrency in reserve which we do. River has some state-of-the-art custody services that we offer for free but then it also requires us to match that amount of cryptocurrency in dollars and hold that in reserve as well and so this is difficult for two reasons. One river is a young company we were started in 2019 and so for us to compete with some of these big established financial institutions with that kind of a reserve requirement would tie up a lot of our capital. Two, Bitcoin trades 24-7 and so the amount that you'd actually need is literally changing every minute that makes it pretty unlike a traditional commodity but most commodities are somewhat volatile particularly in the short term so the metaphor I like to use is it's the difference between your savings account and a safety deposit box. People know that if you put something in a safety deposit box it's there and it's it's locked away it's safe that's how our custody services work. Separately you don't then need to also have some sort of savings account that covers the amount that's in your safety deposit box. It's clear that you don't oppose government regulation completely or entirely as you mentioned government is necessary to prevent fraud but at the same time I take it that you clearly don't want to have over regulation by government so how do we strike the right balance to allow this industry to go forward and really serve the needs of the people? I think we look to traditional financial instruments so it's pretty hard to completely reinvent the wheel or come up with something totally novel so I think the most important thing people can do is try to find the right analogy or the right metaphor to something that already exists. Americans and Hawaiians are no different are used to interacting with a variety of fairly sophisticated financial products. Your home mortgage and your savings account and your 401k and your private stock investments are all extraordinarily different and yet Americans interact with those and navigate through them every day. So similarly in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies you want to say well is this thing more like a savings account or is it more like the US dollar and then you want to regulate it accordingly. People already interact with a digital economy in a lot of areas of life. If you've got a banking app on your phone or if you ever log in to your bank website you're already interacting with a digital ledger, a digitized currency. A lot of things that make our world in 2022 pretty convenient and work well and so again I think you know everybody's going to have sort of their own fine-tuning preferences in terms of more regulation or less regulation, more consumer protection or less consumer protection. But we've come to a pretty good point with a lot of different financial products and services and I think it's actually easier to mount that onto a fully digital space than we often want to give it credit for. Very good. Clearly many states are moving ahead rapidly in terms of facilitating digital currency for the residents and for people from across the world. Hawaii is moving very slowly with regard to this. If we don't move quickly enough and if we continue to over-regulate what would be the ultimate impact for Hawaii in terms of our economic direction in the coming world? I think it would be tragic. So you look at bitcoin there's no five-year period and actually most of the time it's a three-year period where you could have bought bitcoin, held it, and lost money. That makes it a really compelling medium-to-long-term investment and again that's just one of the cryptocurrencies and buying it and holding it is just one of a handful of activities that you can really do. I think we're still very early. So to be in 2022 in the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is kind of like being in 1996 in the world of the internet. There's so much that we haven't done yet. We haven't built yet and so I would hate to see Hawaii miss out on the innovation to really improve life and to be creative, to be innovative, to make new products but then to also miss out on the wealth that comes with that. So I and I think the other sandbox participants are very interested and very hopeful that the legislature will pass legislation that really closely resembles the DCIL and some of the innovative products and services that we've been able to bring to Hawaii and its residents. That'll be great. Just about 30 seconds left if you quickly address the issue of risk. There's a great deal of fear in this new technology. How safe is it to move forward with virtual currency? I think like with anything it depends on what the virtual currency is and what you're trying to do with it and then who you're using to do those activities with. So river financial is extraordinarily well respected and trustworthy in the industry.  But again, I think people are sophisticated consumers of a lot of different financial products and so different people are going to have different risk tolerances and that may or may not work out. But again, we we deal with this all the time and in a variety of ways and spaces. And so I think again, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are more similar to life as we know it than than we might be afraid they are. Well, thank you very much, Alexandra. Thank you so much for updating us on this very important topic. My guest today has been Alexandra Geiser. She's an expert when it comes to virtual currency with background both in government and in the private sector. Thanks so much. I'm Kaley Iakina on the Grass Root Institute program Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii broadcast network. We will be back with you next week. Aloha.