What's up, everyone? I'm Giovanni. Welcome back to another CoinTelegraph AMA. Today, we're going to talk about Equify, a platform that aims to create a seamless bridge between decentralized finance and traditional finance, thus creating a better user experience for decentralized finance. For this, I'm joined by Brad Yesar, the CEO at Equify. How are you doing, Brad? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me, Giovanni. It's a pleasure. So probably we're going to be joined soon also by the Equify chairman, Jason Blick, but so far we have just Brad on and we can get immediately started. But before we start, I want to remind our audience that this is an interactive show, so please don't hesitate to write your questions in the chat. And I'm going to ask Brad about it, anything that sparks your curiosity about Equify. So let's get into it. Brad, can you give us a bit more of information about your background and the background of your project? Absolutely. So my background is in technology. I introduced the computers at a very early age and started programming and fell in love with the whole process of creating something that makes these machines do the stuff we want and sharing that with other people. And that started a lifelong journey for me with technology and entrepreneurship. So that was my start then, of course. That was the early personal computer years. Then the internet came and the connectivity and the utility of the things we can create really grew exponential. And I did a big data company at that time that was interesting to learn about how data can be really valuable. Fast forward to today, I'm on my 15th business. Equify is hopefully going to be the biggest and the most impactful. And it is basically a platform that brings centralized finance and decentralized finance together. Because for the past four years, we've been talking about disrupting finance, disrupting banking, more access, more utility, inclusion. And what I've seen is that when you go in with the mindset that everything that's out there is broken and you have to redo everything, you use a lot of resistance. People don't like it. The incumbents don't like it. And they start taking action against what you're building. We honestly didn't want that. What we wanted was to bridge the two universes and give people an opportunity to still be in the five pools, still earn incredible yields, still enjoy cutting-edge technology, at the same time be able to use that value that they created in their everyday lives. Go buy a new car, go buy a house, go buy something nice without jumping through four or five hoops of selling LP tokens to native tokens, selling native tokens to stable tokens, selling stable tokens to Fiat, transferring that Fiat to a bank account if it's even possible. Because at certain values, it's scrutinally heavily and then not be able to access it.  We're in 180 countries and our mission is to bring DeFi to everyday people, simplify it to a point that your grandma can use it, my grandma can use it. And on the flip side, bring sustainable and supportive banking to our DeFi community.  Am I going to be banned? Am I going to be suddenly on the crosshairs of the government? And by doing it in a licensed regulated way, we're confident that we can do that. Awesome. Yeah, I think that making DeFi a bit more user-friendly and creating a seamless user experience, it's definitely something that the space needs right now. And you decided to find a solution about it by finding a compromise with centralized finance. Oh, I think that we have Jason on. Yes, hello. Hi, Jason. How are you doing? What you posted today? Awesome. Okay. So let me introduce you first. So here we have Jason Blick, who is the Equify chairman. So he will join the discussion about Equify, a seamless bridge between decentralized and traditional finance. So we were just, Brad was giving us an overview of what Equify is. So I want to just encourage our audience once more to write your questions in the chat. We're going to ask our guests about it. Also, now I would like to get a bit deeper into the types of product that you offer on your platform. So Equify offers a variety of different products. Do you mind to go through the main ones? Jason, maybe you want to take the word here. Absolutely. And thank you again. So we have four products. I'll let you take this, but we don't actually have the platform. I'm sorry. What was that? So we have four products. We have a fixed rate lending product. We have a variable rate lending product, a money market product. We have a fantastic proprietary yield aggregator, a nominal product. And we have an interest rate swap product. I believe the first interest rate swap product is the default rate. And that allows you to find a low rate lending and deposit facility. Obviously, all of this is powered by Ekibank, a global bank. So I get credit cards, services, all edge stuff. I think that your audio is a little bit spotty, but I will summarize what you just said. So you have a lot of different interesting products among which this yield aggregator, you have deposits, you have borrowing, you have interest rate swaps. So let's get a bit more in depth into it. So let's start from this yield aggregator. So right now, earning yields in DeFi is probably one of the most attractive functions that are available in DeFi. A lot of people are attracted by the DeFi project because they promise very high yields. And that comes, of course, with all the disadvantages that the user experience of DeFi platforms usually have. So maybe you can tell us how your yield product solves these issues. Brad, maybe you want to get in? Sure. Yeah, I mean, the biggest difference between our product and everything else out there is there was a rush to the highest APY among a lot of protocols and platforms. And that, unfortunately, led to probably some short taken by those projects in instances of security and sustainability. Our approach is different from that in a way that we have a yield aggregator that actually the pools, a lot of the yield is out there and aggregates that in different pools. But it allows you to get exposure to projects and pools and products that you may not be able to find by yourself because we do the heavy lifting for you. We take the yields out there and then we have a 12 point risk criteria we apply. So we look at the age of the pool, the pairs, the usage on it, the depth, the liquidity and a few other things and categorize in a way that allows you to say, I want to earn a conservative yield. I want to de-risk the, or I want medium risk, medium reward, or I want high risk, high reward. But even our high risk pools go into unsustainable products out there that are promising 400, 500,000% APY because we all know those are not sustainable. And yes, you may benefit from them for a couple of days or weeks, but then those may also collapse and stop paying. So we have a much conservative approach where once we hold a yield pool we know around a month from now, three months, six months, a year from now and the engine behind it does all the risk analysis and allocations to make sure you're still getting the highest possible reward but you're not getting the highest risk. Okay, that's interesting because I've been researching a little bit these risky practices that are being done in the DeFi space and I found out that there are a lot of projects which are essentially fraudulent in the sense that they have a huge risk of being rug pools. So projects that potentially have bugs, potentially have issues in the contract which are dangerous for the investors. So I guess that as far as I understand from what you said you carry out some sort of vetting process which selects the projects and rank them according to the level of risk, but there are certain projects which you would never deal with because you would consider them as basically too risky, potentially fraudulent, right? I don't want to call anyone's project fraudulent. Unfortunately there are projects that are not designed for community benefit and we all have heard about them, but it's more like we try for our stakeholders so they don't have to worry about where's my investment going to be in six months and we do that through a series of automated analysis that tell us this may be a super high yield pool but it's not going to probably be around in two months or this is a pool but it's very sustainable, has a lot of support and history so this is a good investment for us to go into. Okay, that sounds interesting. So let's talk about another of your projects which is the borrowing and lending side of DeFi. So right now a lot of people are interested in DeFi because they can lend, they can borrow funds without going through a classical KYC and credit checks. They can just borrow funds and lend funds without all these kind of procedures. In your case it's a bit different because you still have as far as I understand KYC procedures in place but so maybe you can explain me like what is the difference between the product that you offer in terms of borrowing and lending from a traditional bank. So if you introduce this old KYC procedure, how is that different from getting those services from a traditional bank? Absolutely, so our KYC is tier not immediate to the level of a bank. What we try to do is again as a hybrid platform we try to only have KYC when it's necessary and required. So if you want to just connect your wallet, a few platforms without depositing or using large amounts, there's no problem, you can do that with minimal, just with your email address and password kind of minimal information. The KYC starts coming in, kicking in. If you trade and use really high numbers, if you want to use banking products, things that are licensed and regulated, we have to comply with the regulators. But on the D side, we start with very important information sharing form and need more extensive use of different products. Next, we ask for those questions at that stage. Okay, so a very light user friendly procedure in that sense. Can you talk a bit more about this lending and borrowing service that you have in place for people that might not know what is borrowing and lending in DeFi? Maybe you can go through that procedure on your platform. Maybe Jess, on your back, you can maybe take this one. Certainly, so we provide a variety of lending services, both fixed rate and variable rate, across a whole range of asset types. So basically a client can deposit their preferred crypto with us and receive a stablecoin or indeed cash based on their needs. And we're a bit different to most platforms because we do have that option. So some clients prefer the certainty of a fixed rate lending product, say five, six, seven percent or indeed as low as two or three. And that gives them a certainty of the payments they need to make. On the variable side, a lot of clients prefer short term lending or are more comfortable with a variable rate. And that variable rate adjusts with demand, etc. And the beautiful thing about our products, as Brad also highlighted, was they're linked to Ekibank. So clients have a really effective way to get on and off the fiat and crypto gateways. Okay, that's interesting. So in terms of collateralization now, I would like to understand how your platform works. So we know that in traditional banking, in order to get out alone, you need to show some sort of credit history. The bank checks your credit history and gives out a loan accordingly. The revolution in the DeFi space in crypto lending is that without going through these checks, these creditworthiness history, people that have not a financial history can already access a loan. And how does it work in your case? Because in order to do that, most people have to put more collateral, these are the so-called over-collateralized loans, in order to, of course, to guarantee that the money will be repaid in any way. So how does it work on your platform in terms of collateralization? Jason, maybe you want to take this one? So in comparison to usual banking, and as you rightly say, to get a traditional bank loan can take anything between two weeks if you're lucky and up to two months and the amount of work that is required, both by the client and the bank, is enormous. With Equify, we've really broken those boundaries. So the client simply lodges their collateral and we can lend significantly higher loan to value than most of the DeFi products. Now, obviously, there is a call upon collateral in the event that the underlying cryptocurrency declines in value. But what we're finding is we're able to deliver loans in as little as 20 minutes. So it's really revolutionizing not only fixed-rate, but variable-rate products as well. Wow, 20 minutes is very fast compared to traditional banking. But I was also wondering, since you still have a connection with traditional banking, as you said, Equibank is partnering with your project and Equibank is a legacy bank in the sense that it's still a centralized entity that could still potentially carry out these credit-worthiness checks. Why are loans on your platform only collateralized and you don't have also unsecured loans, for example? What is the reason behind that, Jason? Well, unsecured loans are a lot harder to process. With an unsecured loan, you do need to go through the enormous hard work of doing the credit checks, processing the applications, and the loans can be very expensive. With Equify, it's very different because we can provide loans to people in 180 countries around the world, something that frankly any centralized bank in the world would be unable to do. But it does require collateral, and that means we can keep the pricing down, we can provide the best service and the best LTVs to our clients. That makes sense. Yeah, I think that it's a great thing that people all over the world can access your services while in traditional banking, you most likely would have to be the resident of a specific jurisdiction and submit a certain amount of documents. So, yeah, I think that it's great that you can find a compromise between the user friendliness of banking and the possibilities that Defy has unleashed. Also Giovanni, we just launched six weeks ago. So as we have our users build their profiles on our platform and give us the data points, we need to understand what type of user they are, what type of needs they have. We can also do our own profiling on obviously how they're using and evolve our products in that direction. Obviously, I don't want to ruin any surprises from our development and marketing team, but there are ideas that are being floated to marry the two and have hybrid products again that allow the users who use the platforms for six months, 12 months to prove their credit worthiness that way to us and be able to access exotic products that way because now we have first-hand data on are they paying on time? How much do they borrow? What are they needs? What do they use it for? Are they speculating with the loans or are they using it for a business purpose? Once we have a little more information, we have plans to introduce much more interesting products to all our user base. Yeah, that's fascinating. Maybe we can already jump into the questions of the audience since I see that there is a question here. One of our viewers is asking, does Echify has any insurance in place for all the products or services? Perhaps, yeah. At present, there's no insurance for our product set. We are a little bit different, though, because we're one of the few licensed and regulated DeFi platforms. So we have auditors in place that need to check every element of our capitalization, every element of our loan book, etc. So we are regulated, we're licensed. It gives that level of protection. And if clients want to open facilities with Echibank, Echibank has one of the best credit ratings of any digital bank in the world. Okay, that sounds reassuring. So you said that you are fully regulated. Where exactly is the jurisdiction you are referring to in terms of regulation? Well, we're delighted that we're regulated and licensed investment manager, which gives us an enormous amount of influence over the products we can provide. And clients have that security of being audited, licensed, regulated. If there's a problem, they can go to our regulator. Our regulator is in BVI of British overseas territory. So it gives that again, that security of knowing it's being regulated by the laws of England and Wales. Okay. So yeah, I want to just remind our audience to continue asking questions because this is a very cool product according to me. Personally, I find myself, I find it difficult to interact with DeFi products, and I would actually like something that would facilitate all that and kind of bridge the user experience we usually have in traditional banking with this new fascinating space, also providing additional security since the space is notoriously known for a very risky environment. Thank you, Giovanni. While we wait for more questions, just to add on the insurance conversation, there are some very interesting decentralized insurance projects launching right now. Unfortunately, they're not live and they're not at the maturity that we can just deploy them, but we are partnering up with two, three of them to both support their development as well as to have that option available to all our users because when we started building Echify, one of the most asked questions we would get was, well, traditional banks offer insurance, whether it's FDIC or, you know, in other places by the government. How are you guys going to offer insurance to be on par with the peace of mind that those provide? And on the banking side, we're already in really great shape because a lot of the times banks have to have insurance because they lend out the money that's deposited and that's their business model and the insurance kicks in. Because we don't lend out anything from the books, we don't really have that risk of not having the capital available to our banking clients. And same on the DeFi side, as soon as there are products that we can incorporate, that's going to be number one priority on our development map because we want to get to a point where all the value locked on the platform, whether it's crypto or fiat, is safe and secure and people can have the peace of mind that both technologically as well as procedurally, we're doing everything to safeguard their valuable assets. Just building on that for a second Giovanni, one of the incredible advantages we have is obviously it's bank proof. The compliance teams, the engineering teams, the operations teams have been running banks for more than 150 years. So we know how to protect client money. We know the kind of products that clients want and we know how to deliver the right service. So we're a very transparent organization. You can jump on our website, you can see who's involved, you can see the corporates and institutions that are involved and it's really given a huge level of comfort, I think, certainly to the clients that are new to DeFi. Yeah, for sure. So for everyone that is interested, just check out Akify website, which is akify.com. It's written EQIFI.com and you can find a lot more information about this project. Now I would like to just sum up the products that you have been offering. So we mentioned the yield aggregator, we mentioned the borrowing and lending. Is there any other thing that I'm missing, Jason? Well, it's that interest rate swap product. Giovanni, the interest rate swap product is an interest rate swap market, I should say, is worth over $500 trillion. It's one of the biggest industries in the world. Akify is the first platform in the world designed to solve and provide an alternative way to do interest rate swaps. It's a really great way to leverage perhaps loans you have with other providers to provide a level of security. So for example, if you're in a variable rate product with a different provider, you can basically swap that for a fixed rate product with us and vice versa. You can go from a fixed rate product with a different provider into a variable rate. So we provide a huge amount of hedging and protection to clients on both of those incredible platforms. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's also quite fascinating. But of course, your platform is also relying on a specific token. We know that EQX is your native token and it has a specific functionality within your platform. So maybe you can go through the main functionalities of your native token, Brad? Yeah. So I do want to clarify one thing. Our platform doesn't depend on EQX. You're more than welcome to come in, use your blue chip crypto assets and use the platform. We are not making it mandatory. What EQX does is it actually improves the experience on the platform. So more EQX you have, more you stake it, better rates you get, better access you get, higher limits as well as access to different products. The bonus on all this is if you're interested in tying all your assets together so you don't want to have a separate bank account, you want to have your crypto and banking in the same place, the tokens also allow you to benefit from all our banking facilities at certain tiers with no fees. So it's an enhancer, it's a utility token that enhances the experience as opposed to being a key to unlock the platform. I mean, we want everyone to use the platform if they choose to use it heavily and really benefit from it. Of course, there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of value to use EQX and improve the experience, but if you just want to test it out, you can do it with EAT, USDT, USDC, BTC. So there's no restrictions on using the platform if you don't have our token. But you do get better rates Giovanni, you get more higher LTVs and as Brad says, we are the first defy and bank in the world that allows cryptocurrency EQX to be used to open accounts, secure credit cards, etc. So it really does have an incredible use case. Yeah, I also saw that EQX can be used as a governance token. So this is, I guess, an important point to clarify. So your platform does allow for some sort of community governance, as far as I understand. So as in the spirits of defy your platform allows the community to have a saying in all the different functionalities that your platform offers. And as far as I understand, EQX plays a crucial role for people that want to participate in the governance of the platform. Maybe you can explain better how it works. No, you did a good job. I think it's just, our motto was community governed banking and we didn't want to build something that the community didn't find valuable and useful. We want to build things that excite our community. So the governance comes in to play there where if someone says, why don't you guys incorporate this chain or that chain, we listen to them and we prioritize those developments because the best experience on the platform is going to be the experience you want to have with the assets you already have. It's not going to be, if we go and build something tangential to what the majority of our community expects, they're not going to really benefit from it and we want it to give everyone a voice. Jason, I thought that you wanted to add something about it. No, Brad just covered it. I think it's completely unique for a licensed and regulated platform like ours to have that level of governance. There's no other platform that offers that level of sort of security being licensed and regulated and having that open governance. So we are really excited about our EQX holders really having a voice in terms of products, rates, additional benefits, et cetera. And that's Brad and I's mission. Okay, cool. And how does it work exactly? So let's say that I am a token holder. I have a large amount of your native token. How do, when and how I participate in these decisions? Do I get notified every now and then about certain potential changes to be made and then I make my, and then I vote about it or how does exactly work, Jason? Yes, you're absolutely right. This isn't when there's broader distribution of EQX when a decision needs to be made in terms of a new product, a new rate, et cetera. It doesn't go out to the community for community vote and we're tremendously excited about getting to that point. Awesome, awesome. So after a while, I will give you the opportunity to explain exactly the process of your project like how far it went and what are the next milestones. But first, I want to give the opportunity to our audience to ask some questions. So we have a question asking, who would you say is the current leader in the CFI, DeFi space and how are you different? What do you think gives you the edge? Who wants to take this one? Yeah, Jason. Well, there are some great providers out there and it's probably best to name them but there's probably four or five leaders in the space but interestingly enough, each of those leaders only has one product. So for example, if you need a fixed rate product, there's some great organizations that provide you with a fixed rate loan. If you want a variable loan, there's a couple that provide that as well and there's individual organizations that provide a yield aggregator. There is no organization in the world that provides all four, like we do, fixed rate, lending rate, yield aggregator, interest rate swaps. So there's nobody and there's nobody in the world powered by a global licensed and regulated digital bank. So with a lot of platforms, even the really good ones, people still find difficulty getting on board, getting the transfers to their bank, the bank might not be crypto-friendly, all sorts of problems there but with Equify and Equi Bank, it's completely holistic. Everything a client needs from a bank account to a credit card, to an interest rate swap, to a yield aggregator and our two lending products is all available in one suite. So we've really had a look in the market in terms of what people have wanted, what's been successful and we've compiled them all into one platform, Giovanni. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's definitely a powerful formula. We have another question, which is about the... It's again about your native token. So as far as I understand, your native token has a limited supply, right? So it kind of wants to give this scarcity element, which potentially could be good for its price in the sense that the scarcity might drive the value of the token higher. But there is a question here, which asks, will the limited supply cause problems in terms of sustainability in the future? Maybe, Brad, you want to address this one? I'm gonna address it by combining two questions, because there's another question that says, is there any buyback or burning program for EQX token in the future? So if we combine those two, scarcity and non-infinite emission is good because we want the early adopters to benefit from the value we create on the platform, from our growth, from our increasing total value locked, from our increasing adoption of new blockchains and new products and features added to the platform. In order to do that, we didn't want to have a very large number of tokens or an expansive number of tokens. We set it to a limited amount, which should have the correct effect on the tokenomics after three years. Of course, that also puts some pressure on the circulation and availability of the token, and we plan to actively manage that through buybacks. We're not gonna burn any tokens because it's a limited supply, but we are gonna manage the circulation and the velocity of our token economy with buybacks and other strategies that include staking and having an OTC desk and things like that. So everything is by design and we don't anticipate any problems at any given time in the near future as well as maybe 10 years from now with the token supply. Now, if there is unexpectedly a strong adoption, we have other plans in place to address that in different ways, but we believe having a limited amount of token supply and a small limited amount is very favorable to early adopters, early supporters, our strategic partners, and we expect that to benefit the whole ecosystem. Yeah, I think it's very important for every project to give an incentive to early adopters while still not penalizing the future participants. So that's sometimes a very tricky thing to do, but I see that you have a solution here in place. I also want to address another question which actually makes me think about another product that you have, which is the credit card. So you have a credit card product which allows people to spend both fiat and cryptocurrency. Can you maybe explain better how this credit card works, Jason? Yes, we have a hybrid credit card that's available, so it's set against a particular deposit for the client lodges, but it's a completely unlimited card. So if you choose to go out and buy your Lamborghini, you can do so with our card. And the process is really quite simple to load it. The client can sell their EQX, it's an OTC transaction onto their card and off they go. In the near future, we'll also be introducing a new product which will allow a direct spending of crypto on the credit card, so hugely exciting.  We encourage any questions or clients. So let me understand if I understood correctly. Basically, you said that in the future, there will be the possibility to direct spending crypto. Right now, there is a mechanism in between that let's say you have, on your card, you have a deposit of 50 bitcoins and you want to buy something, those bitcoins will be transferred to fiat and then the purchase will be made. Is that how it works? That's absolutely correct Giovanna, yes. But it's working incredibly well. The number of clients that are taking that, we've got one order that's coming up for nearly 30,000 of those cards, so we couldn't be happier. That's great, and how much time does it take for this transaction to happen? Like from the crypto into the actual moment to actually finalize the payment? Well, once the client's on board with us and goes through that minimal KYC process, we can undertake those transactions in as little as a couple of hours. It's actually instantaneous. Oh, okay, okay, that's great. Yeah, I think that making crypto spendable in an easy way, it's something that we would like to do more often in our everyday life. Unfortunately, the space so far hasn't provided a lot of solution regarding that, but I see that products like yours are advancing also this aspect of cryptocurrency, which is just spending cryptocurrency in our everyday life. Yes, we're definitely ahead of the field in both being licensed and regulated on the DeFi side, plus being powered by the bank. I mean, everything you need is in one place. Yeah, now I would like to maybe give you the opportunity to go through the stages of your product. So, as far as I understand, Equify is a very, very new product. You launched this year, as far as I understand. Maybe you can tell us what are the milestones that you have already achieved so far and the milestones that you aim to achieve in the following months. Any, Brad, you want to take this one? Absolutely, so we are a brand new platform, but I have to give Jason all the credit here for us being able to go from a white paper to a live platform in one year, exactly. Our white paper, the first iteration was done last August on the 6th, and the platform went live August 6th this year, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Jason and his team started all the conversations around the banking licenses with our regulators, five, six years ago, and those took a really long time to educate and get the right relationships in place. So, when I say we launched in one year, it's because we kind of cheated and came to the party with all our licenses and regulator relationships, and so there was a lot of hard work done there. On the development side, again, we kind of cheated a little because we deployed our own development team, we had the resources in place, and we were able to activate them, but as far as the milestones, white paper was last August, we did a small fundraising round in March-April period to establish strategic partnerships. That was very well received, and truly humbled us because we had five times the amount we were trying to raise in a few days, and it was more of a challenge on managing the cap table than raising the funds. We launched on time again this year in August with all the products we promised we would do, so we had our variable rate fixed rate, interest rate swaps, yield aggregator and staking available at launch. Of course, this is a living project, so based on the feedback we got from our users and community, we deployed some fixes, some upgrades after the first couple of weeks, so we already had a version up last month. We're going to do another one this month because we really valued the data points and the feedback we get, so we're going to deploy another upgrade to the platform. We also always said we want to work with different blockchains, so we were never an Ethereum project or a Polygon project or a Polkadot project. No, we wanted to, you know, in the spirit of bridging the divide and being the gateway to crypto for people who've never used it and be a gateway out of crypto for all these incredible DeFi projects, we always wanted to have a multi-chain approach, so we bridged Binance Smart Chain with Ethereum at launch just because we had token distributions on both and what's on the roadmap is all our product suite on the Binance Smart Chain and right now, you know, the staking, the yield farming and such is not on the Binance Smart Chain. You can have our tokens on Binance site, but there's really not much you can do on the platform with it and we want to remedy that. Once we have the products on Binance Smart Chain, we're going to keep implementing other blockchains and building our products. We did announce a partnership with Rezos last month, so that's going to be one of the sprints that's up and coming. I expect us to be on four blockchains by the end of the year and we hope to add another four next year and we're in talks with all of them and initially, we're going to start by bridging the assets, introducing our staking product and then building the landing, if possible, yield aggregation, if possible, interest rate swaps and such and these are all monumental undertakings. I mean, if a bridge already exists, it's easy, you use it and you build your products, but if it doesn't, then you're basically bringing two blockchains, however closely related they may be together and it takes a lot of development time and hours and resources. So on the tech side, that's our roadmap on the token side since everyone keeps asking that. We launched, we said, look, we're going to try to add one exchange every month so eventually after two years, we'll be on all the exchanges that all our community members want. We went a little faster than that. It's going to be our third month now, third distribution and we're going to be on 10 exchanges at that time. So we have a couple of tier one exchanges, a couple of tier two and we're going to continue every month to work with our exchange partners, with our strategic partners to add more to the point that eventually we're going to run out of places to list that's a good thing because then our telegram chat is not going to have when Binance and when this and when that, it's going to have more productive conversations. But our goal is to be on all the markets that our community members use so they don't have to create a new account, they don't have to create a new wallet. We're constantly adding new wallets with EQX as well. Just to make it easy again when Jason and I started talking and getting excited about building something, it was all about the user experience.  What we want to do is we actually want to make it simple for my parents to use the platform, your grandmother to use the platform, people who don't know anything about tokens but would really benefit from a yield that's three, four percent or if they want medium risk eight percent, ten percent or if they are young and they just don't know technology but they have some wealth that they accumulated for them to be able to come and benefit from the high-risk pool without knowing anything about wallets and we're going to keep working for that dream to become true. Yeah, that sounds fascinating. I mean, I'm looking forward to the future where my grandmother will be using DeFi because that means that DeFi has literally taken off and become mainstream as people say we should aim at the future where blockchain technology are invisible for users so that they just interact with them without even noticing that they are actually interacting with these technologies. Exactly, that's key. I think in that regard we're already succeeding Giovanni. A lot of people feel very comfortable because Ekipank has been up and running since 2015 and we've been voted the top ten digital bank. Ekipi has been voted the number one DeFi platform countless times and quite a significant proportion of our client base is completely not only new to DeFi but new to crypto so we're providing the accessible hedge funds, institutions and what have you to get involved for the first time ever in a licensed and regulated platform which is phenomenal for the crypto community as well. Cool, so now I think that we have time for one last question from the audience and then we can wrap up the discussion so I see I saw some questions during the discussion regarding regulations so a lot of people are concerned about rumors around potential crackdown of the SEC or other regulators in the US or elsewhere like China on the cryptocurrency environment in general but specifically on DeFi so what are your thoughts about this potential regulatory crackdown that could happen how is your company looking at this potential events maybe at this end? So we're very blessed Giovanni because we're a bank and as a result of that we're incredibly heavily regulated especially in those two pillars AML, anti-money laundering KYC, know your clients so we were able to bring a massive compliance and operations team to bear for Echify and really future proof ourselves so we already took the steps to ensure that our KYC is future proofed and we have the AML systems in place to ensure that everybody is protected that isn't the case with most products and most projects so what we're trying to do is really lead from the front by showing people and regulators that you can introduce a DeFi platform powered by a bank and you can be licensed and regulated and you can be user friendly as well we don't believe in cutting corners Giovanni so we got it right straight from the beginning Awesome, that sounds great I think that's gonna wave off a lot of concerns because people want to put their money into something not only that brings high profits but also that is not too risky and regulatory compliance is definitely an important component of all that so maybe it's a good time to find some final remarks, Brett do you have anything else that you think our audience should know? I think there were a couple questions about competition we don't believe we're competing with anyone to be honest with you on a product level yes you can say well you guys are competing with this platform but overall we are looking to grow through partnerships and we like supporting existing projects in the market instead of trying to grab market share there were issues with questions with how any clamp down or any kind of adverse action if it would benefit Echify if it would harm again we welcome regulation we're not trying to hide from it or run away from it we just want it to be done in a meaningful way that allows for innovation that allows for new things to be built and inclusion and access so as long as our innovators are supporting us we don't expect any challenges on the global scale of growing and future adoption so we're excited and hopefully our community is too cool Jason maybe you want also to add some more final remarks specifically I see that there is one of our viewers who is asking about marketing approach so you maybe want to just add something regarding this aspect what is the marketing approach you're using of course we're a little different in that regard as well of course we're heavily involved in traditional crypto media the nominal telegram group etc we reach out to people in all key media but we also have a team that's dedicated to quite significant announcements and we bridge that traditional finance and crypto market so you'll see a lot of our coverage in things like Wall Street Journal Financial Times, The Economist and we're really the first people in that space as a DeFi and banking platform so we're doing a really nice job of appealing to institutions large investors, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and they're seeing us as a really safe and protective way to go into the DeFi space and those monies that kind of liquidity really helps all our community on EQX holders get incredible value for money great so I think this is a awesome note to wrap the discussion up I would like to thank our audience for being so involved in the discussion there were very interesting questions thank you Brad and Jason to come up on our show thank you, it's all pleasure thank you for having us and for everyone who is interested to know more about the project just check eqfi.com and you're going to find much more information regarding this project we're going to look forward to the next developments so yeah, I'm Giovanni, your host thanks for watching, don't forget to like and subscribe the video and see you next time


Government mass surveillance of the population has pretty much become the norm in countries that have the technology and the infrastructure to actually pull it off. This is something that was suspected by a lot of so-called conspiracy theorists for a long time, but the conspiracy has now been confirmed by the Snowden leaks and the extent to which this mass surveillance is carried out has been revealed. These days the government doesn't even try to hide the fact that they're spying on us. Instead, they use the ancient strategy of divide and conquer to justify the spying. The same strat that Julius Caesar used to conquer Gaul. Government has managed to convince large portions of the citizen populace that certain aspects of this mass surveillance is good for them and keeps them safe. In fact, they'll tell you that you could be even safer if you tell your local representative to support the countless new bills and executive actions without legislation that further expand the surveillance state. For example, in New York City, the police there have decided to use aerial drones to monitor people that are having backyard barbecues. All it really takes for one of these little unmanned drones to be hovering over your overpriced New York lawn is someone calling in to report to the cops that you are having a large gathering in your backyard. Wait, are large gatherings illegal now? Is it suspicious to have a large gathering on your own private property during a national holiday? You see, this is where most of the legislative effort goes in this country these days. It goes into finding the perfect ways to circumvent your right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect you from the police searching and spying on your property without a warrant or without probable cause. But of course, those high mortgage payments that you're making don't include ownership over your airspace. Anything taller than maybe a basketball goal is officially police airspace that's used for drones and other surveillance equipment to come in and surveil you or maybe to park itself in perch so that they can recharge the ADX Optical Zoom 4K night vision camera that the city bought and installed onto the drone with your taxpayer money so that they can keep you safe. And of course, Mayor Eric Adams, who was a police captain himself, fully supports the NYPD's use of drones. And he actually wants to expand New York's drone usage even further, saying that he wants to use Israel's use of drone technology in their country as a blueprint for what he wants to do in New York. But of course, if you want to get a gun in order to protect you and your family so that you guys can have some actual safety, you're going to have to bend over backwards and do some backflips through hoops for the city in order for you to get a concealed carry permit to use in the state of New York. That's an easy litmus test that you can use on these city officials or whoever your government is to see if they actually care about your safety and your liberty. If they want to make it easier for criminals to arm themselves than for responsible tax paying citizens, then it's guaranteed that you're going to get a rise in violent crime so severe that the mayor can say that he wants to use IDF counterterrorist surveillance techniques in your backyard so that they can keep you safer and nobody is going to bat an eye at the proposal. Yes, fear is the tool that the government uses to make you welcome these illusions of safety that they put in place. Every day people stand in lines for the TSA, they drive through police checkpoints and now they're going to grill hot dogs in their backyards with police surveillance drones hovering overhead so that they can have another illusion of safety. Some people think it's perfectly okay for the police to break the law. They'll say that these overreaches are for the greater good like when the police or when the FBI rather carried out operation pacifier. This was a mission where law enforcement had taken over a hidden service, you know a tour hidden service that was distributing child abuse material. They took over this after they got an anonymous tip probably from one of that hidden services competitors and instead of them just shutting down the site and arresting the owner they decided to keep running the website themselves for a few weeks in order to add some de-anonymizing malware to the site in order to catch some of the site's users. And during the time that police were in control of the playpen the site's users were saying that the website had actually gotten better and that pages were loading faster and the site seemed to have better performance. And this was probably because the FBI were using their servers and their state of the art data center to host the site instead of leaving it up on whatever shady low tier hosting service the site's original creator was using. So the police were actually distributing videos and pictures of children being abused in order to protect the children. I mean what's next the police setting up crack houses in order to catch crack heads the police becoming pimps in order to catch johns. Now we all know protecting the children is one of the most potent divide and conquer tactics. But before you vote yes on another bill that claims to improve your safety or your kids safety understand this. When you give the police the legal authority to commit any crime they want criminals and of course corrupt police officers are going to find a way to exploit that. The same is true for the online accounts that the police use when committing cyber crimes in order to try and fight other cyber crimes like we see here with this operation pacifier example. And this is something that's made worse by corporations. You see we live in a world where it's not just the government watching you but it's also big tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook that create these free but not Libre softwares for you to use. These programs are free because you are the product. Everything that you do on Facebook is stored by Facebook. Everything that you search for on Google or that you watch on YouTube is stored by Google and used by them for targeted advertising. Everything that you look at on Amazon and especially that you buy on Amazon is stored and monetized by Amazon and used in their ad network. Now normally this network and this data is used by these companies for their own profits but they also have partnerships with law enforcement where they share these data points on you with them whenever they request it to fight crime. And at a high level this relationship between big tech and the government probably really exists so that these companies don't have any antitrust action brought against them because we keep hearing politicians saying how much power these companies have and I mean if you look at it really when it comes to governing the internet Amazon and Google seem to be much more powerful than the government especially than the US government and so some politicians will beat the drum saying that these companies need to be further regulated but yet no action actually ends up taking place but anyway if a hacker can spoof an email from a federal agent to these companies or if they can actually steal the credentials to that federal agent's email then they can just as easily get that data from the big tech companies sent to them as if they were an actual law enforcement officer. If a hacker can compromise an account that's used for something like Operation Pacifier then they basically have a license to distribute CSAM or whatever new horrible crime the police are going to get a pass to commit in the future. Police may be a necessary evil in our society but they are not your friends. Don't put them above the law and whatever you do do not give up your rights to them.


Welcome to Sheboygan County, working for you. My name's Adam Payne and with me today is my co-host, fearless leader and friend, Dan Lemeyou. Today marks the 30th program that Dan and I have co-hosted. Our objective was and continues to be to share with you the many programs and activities that Sheboygan County has to offer. Today is somewhat of a unique program because again, my co-host is also our guest. Dan, why don't you start a little bit telling us what your future plans are? Although before that, a little background about yourself and where you grew up and what's new in your life? What's new in our life is a little puppy. We got that about a month ago and we're back to having a baby in a house again, so we have a puppy. But I grew up in Huesburg, born and raised there. I published the local shopper in that Southeastern part of Sheboygan County for the last 20 years. That's what I do to make a living. The last 14 years I have served on Sheboygan County board for the district that covers Huesburg and part of Tonga Holland. Serving the last 14 years on the board and the last two terms or term and a half as County Board Chairman. So that's a little bit of my background. The future, there will be a change in my life and in my family's life come January. I've been elected to the State Assembly representing parts of five counties, Sovereign Sheboygan County and parts of Ozaki, Washington, Final Act and Dodge counties. So I've expanded the number of people I represent, the area I represent, and I'll be spending some time in Madison next year.  And that's exactly why Dan is our guest today. He resigned from the County Board this week. He's going to soon be moving into a state office. And today we wanted to talk a little bit about not only some of the accomplishments of the past, but where we're headed for the future. Dan, why don't you share with our viewers or at least remind our viewers how long you were on the County Board and some of the committees that you were active with. Like I said, I've been on the County Board for 14 years. When I first got on the County Board, being a rookie, I'm not knowing a lot about County Government, I asked some questions and said, well, what about committee assignments? What should I try to get on? Well, I was told as a freshman County Board Supervisor, you pretty well get what's left over. But they said, if you volunteer for the personnel committee, you'll get your first choice because nobody wants to serve in a personnel committee. So I did that, volunteered, requested personnel committee. I served eight or 10 years in the personnel committee, chaired that committee, did a lot of work with the negotiating contracts, grievances, benefits, things like that. And then I also spent a number of years on the finance committee, chaired that committee prior to serving as Vice Chairman and then Chairman. As Chairman, you don't serve in any committees, you're ex-official in all committees. So, but that's the area that I was involved in on the County Board the most, was personnel and finance committees. So as you look back and you reflect on those 14 years and the different committees that you served on, what do you see as some of the primary accomplishments or contributions that you made during that time? Well, on the personnel committee, I think back to the time where we were starting to see some premium costs increase in our health insurance and decided, and we had private, a private carrier at the time and we made the decision that we wanted to go self-insured and I was part of the process to get us there was with the number of unions that we have and union contracts which stipulate benefits and healthcare coverage, it wasn't an easy move. It was a struggle for a couple of years to get to that point but we went self-insured with a preferred provider and for a number of years saw no increases or decreases in our health insurance costs which were very beneficial to the bottom line of our budget. Now we're starting to see that increase again so we need to look at that area again but I think that was a big area while serving and the personnel committee was that change over in that area of the benefits. On finance committee, I think some of the things that I mean just in general working on budgets and trying to maintain a flat or a level mill rate, we've done some things in the last few years to refine the budget process which as far as goal setting and accountability, I've been a part of that and I think we've come a long way in the budget process. As chairman, one of the things that I wanted to do was to get more discussion among all supervisors as to where we were going as accounting board and what are some of our goals were and I started when I became chairman once a year we have a leadership forum where we all get together outside of the court house in a neutral setting for a number of hours, sometimes a greater part of a day and just talk about where we're going have some discussion, have some input and try to reach agreement on where we're going as a accounting board and county government and I think that's been very instrumental in helping us with the direction we are going. One of the other things that I've done in the last year and a half is, started has a local government meetings with top elected officials from all the towns, villages and cities and myself and again just to sit down in an informal setting and discuss some of the common concerns, common issues that we're all dealing with and try to solve them together so that we don't all have to solve them ourselves and try to share some services and opportunities with the different levels of government and that's something that the state wants is to do a down the road to share services and to be more efficient in providing the services at the local level. I know when you're asked well, what contributions or what accomplishments did you make and certainly you shared some with us but with the county board as a whole, it's a collective approach and I think that was one of your greatest strengths was really pulling the board together. We also have a tax rate today that's less than it was 10 years ago. I think you could go on and on with a number of good things that you and the board as a whole did. You started talking about some of the roles that you had as a county board chairman the last few years. You were unanimously reelected as chairman a little over a year ago. What do you see as the primary roles and responsibilities of being a county board chairman? Well, obviously the chairman as the type elected official is a spokesperson for the county. When somebody calls the county and wants the county to be represented at a function, my office is the office they call and obviously since we've had the position of administrative coordinator that you filled since we've had it and we share that responsibility somewhat and that's good. I mean, it's a good sharing and it lessens the time commitment to the chairman a little bit because it's a part-time position. But you're the top spokesman for the county and besides that, I think the most important thing takes place the first two days you're chairman that's setting up the committees. Sheboyin County as many counties are run for the most part by committee work and our county board meetings are shorter than most that's because we have a strong committee structure and in order to have a strong committee structure you need strong committees and it's the duty of the chairman to come forward with those committee assignments within 48 hours after he's elected as chairman and that's probably the toughest and most important job that the chairman has is making sure that we maintain strong committees that the committees are accountable to the executive committee and to the liaison departments that they work with. So that's very important. I think the other thing is just to keep things running in an orderly way, whether it be county board meetings or executive committee meetings maybe be a common effect when things get a little tense and keep everybody focused in on the issue at hand instead of letting the emotions run away with the issues and that's not always the easiest thing but try to be a common effect and keep things going in an orderly way. Which we're gonna continue to need more of in the state legislature as well. As you look back over those 14 years you talked about some of the accomplishments that you and the board have made. What do you see as some of the significant changes that have occurred during that time period? I think one of the, well a couple of the areas are healthcare centers, some big changes there over the years. It's a discussion that we've been having for years and years and years and we'll probably continue to have for years and years and years but there's been a change in how funding comes to healthcare facilities whether they be public or private. There's been a change in how the orderly are taken care of. When I first got on the county board we had nursing homes and they were the orderly retired and went to a nursing home.  Now the people we have in our healthcare facilities are there because they need nursing care. They need almost 24 hour care and that's been a big change and it's shown in the numbers of beds that we have and in our recent consolidation. So that's been a big change. Another change has been in technology. Tremendous change in technology and it continues to change in the business role and in the public sector. We went through that right before 2000 and since with our JD-Edwards program and the technology we have now I think we're set now for a number of years hopefully and but technology keeps on changing. So that has been a change. Probably the other change is the concern right now over how services that the counties provide for the state are being funded and the future of that funding and who's gonna provide those services? Who's responsible for providing those services? Not only at the county level but at the city and tongue level also and that relationship between all these levels of government and that's a big concern right now and it's been changing and it'll continue to change. And that's a good segue to the next question as you look ahead. What do you see as some of the key challenges for county government? Some of these changes are changes that I'll probably be involved with from the state, from the other side of the table now.  Almost $4 million worth of shared revenues every year and that number has stayed flat for the last about seven, eight years and it doesn't look like it's gonna go anywhere up if anything down in the future. So that's a concern and a big budgetary concern. IGT funding for our healthcare facilities is a concern. Again, all these come back to budgeting. The IGT money, if that goes away we have some serious concerns of how we're gonna fund our healthcare facilities in the future. So I think that that whole relationship is gonna be the biggest concern in the next few years. And earlier you also mentioned health insurance and the difficulty we're having tackling that right now. I think a 29% increase for 2003. We saw a 17% increase for 2002. And because we're a service organization, we don't make a product. We're not manufacturing automobiles or anything like that, we're a service organization. So what we have is a lot of employees and as the wages go up, as the benefits go up and the cost of benefits are increasing much faster than the wages in the private sector and public sector that is gonna be a concern. And in order for us to maintain the level of employees we have, something has to happen because we just can't continue to absorb those costs. We have levy caps and things that we just can't do. The money just won't be there to continue those increases the way they are. And as many of our viewers I'm sure know we have 23 departments, we have nearly 1,300 employees. It's a good size organization providing a broad way of services and activities. This week the county board elected a new county board chairman. And supervisor Bill Gehring is going to be stepping in your shoes for the remainder of your term maybe reelected for a second term. He's likely gonna be seeking some advice. What advice would you offer to our new chairman as well as leadership on the county board in general? Good luck. The next couple of years are because the money's gonna be tight both at the local level and state level. Budgets are gonna be hard. I guess going back to what I had said before about the roles of the chairman, I think it's important that the new chairman and executive committee keep the committee strong. I think they need to keep people on committees that are willing to make the tough decisions that are willing to set goals and stick to them. And so they need to maintain that strong committee structure and strong individuals on the different committees. I think as county government and also state government we have to realize that we just can't keep everybody happy. Just we're in a situation now where some people are not gonna be happy with us as we make these decisions whether it be at state level or at the county level.  And then the last thing is to set goals. We have a budget process in place where we set goals, where we give the departments our goals. I think the chairman and executive committee and finance committee in the next couple of years it's very important that they set very specific goals and that they stick to them and don't compromise those goals or there's gonna be problems. So and I'm confident that the executive committee we have and chairman Gehring they'll do a fine job of that. I've confidence in that. Very good. Well let's move on to the next chapter of your life. You decided to run for the state assembly in the 59th district this fall. You had a challenging primary with a number of folks seeking the office. The final decision and election in November. Why don't we start with why you decided to run for the state assembly? Prior to May or June of this year I had absolutely no intentions of ever running for state office. I was very happy running my business. I was very happy being county board chairman. Serving on the county board has been very fulfilling for me and it's been very rewarding. With the redistricting after the 2000 census in late May the new districts came out and Southern Chewbacca County, Usberg, Cedar Grove, random lake areas for the last 20 years had been tacked on to either Ozaki County or Washington County as the tail on a bigger district and never really had enough population to be able to elect somebody from this area to the state assembly. With the redistricting we picked up four more townships in Southern Chewbacca County and it made it obvious that somebody from Southern Chewbacca County could be elected to the state assembly. The 59th assembly district where I'll be representing was Glenn Grossman's district and Glenn and I have known each other since, well, since he was elected to the state assembly about nine years ago and we started looking around for somebody to run for that position from Southern Chewbacca County and as we talked to people they kept on looking at me and said, well, why don't you run? So after a few weeks of that and Glenn talking to me I decided to throw my hat in the ring finding out that there were eventually that there were seven others that decided it was a good time to try to get the assembly also. But that's basically how the process came. I really had no intention of doing it. Talking with people after the redistricting. My name kept on coming up as I talked to people when we were looking for somebody else and I decided that I would take the experience that I've had in county government and in the business and see if I could do something in Madison. And as we mentioned, a challenging primary a number of good people were seeking the position. You came out ahead and then I think in November you received almost 80% of the vote. Did you not? I think it was closer, 70%. 70%, okay. So Dan, why don't you share with our viewers what strengths, what values, what experience that you feel that you can contribute to the state legislature? Well again, I look back at 14 years of county government. Many of the things that state government does locally are done through the counties. And I'm familiar with that. I'm familiar with the Health and Human Services area, which is basically all state programs that we're running. The court system, the district attorneys, that whole area. I've been the last two and a half years in Madison dealing with IGT funding, things like that. So I think I do bring some background in that relationship between state and local government to the table when I go to Madison.  And so those are some of the areas that I think I bring to state government. One thing you've got to bring to the position is patience. Sure, I think one of the, excuse me, one of the other things that I've learned in county government, and especially being the chair of a committee and personal finance were two top committees and also being chairman, is that you need to be a good listener. I think I said Tuesday night at my resignation speech that I found out that all my ideas aren't the best or the correct ideas and you find that out by listening to people. And I found that out that you have to listen to both sides of an issue and then make your decision. And I think I've done that. Not everybody might agree with me that I've always done that, but I think I do. And the other thing is I think I have a reputation both in my community and with my county board work of being a person of integrity and ethical standards, which I think we need in Madison. I think we need to bring back some accountability and integrity to the institution of the legislature. And I'd like to be part of that. You often hear that in a session there can be anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 bills, pieces of legislation that need to be reviewed and may or may not see the light of day. And sometimes people run for the state assembly because they have a very specific agenda or item that they want to address or something that's happened in their life. As you enter the state legislature, are there any areas or issues that you're particularly interested in? Well, like I said before, up until five months ago, I just, this whole thought of serving in Madison wasn't even part of my thought process. Now that I've won the primary of one election, now I have to, you know, now reality sinks in and I've been there a few times now to try to set up a staffer in office. And now what do I do? Well, in talking with leadership, Speaker Gard and some of the leadership and talking about committee work and my involvement there, my request was in the areas of small business and the state and local government relationships that they should use my experience in county government to help better that relationship which has deteriorated over the last 10, 15 years. And they agreed and we don't have all the committee assignments yet as we're taping this, but those are the areas along with, I'm a very strong pro-life individual and I campaign that way. And there are no committees that deal specifically with pro-life issues. But as some of those issues do arise, I'm sure I would get involved in those types of issues also. So those are the small business, state and local government relationships and pro-life issues. Those are the areas I'd like to concentrate on. Now you just said at the time of this taping, the committee assignments haven't been confirmed yet, but how about your office, or you're moving into your new office? I was in Madison yesterday and there's 11 Republican freshmen and four Democrats. The 11 Republicans were there yesterday and we had 11 offices, we could choose from there to draw lots. I drew number two. So I got the second pick and I do have an office picked out. I don't get anything yet until January 6th until we're sworn in because I don't have an office budget until that day. So we don't get the keys or anything until January 6th, but I do have an office picked out. I don't have a phone number address or anything like that yet. Back to the committee assignments, I did have one, found out yesterday that one of my committee assignments is the Committee of Urban and Local Affairs and that does deal with state and local relationships and I was told that I would, actually I was told that I would be vice chair of that committee yesterday. So that would be one of the committees that I'll be on. Very good. And it sounds like there'll be like four committee assignments per representative and I don't have a clue what the other ones are yet. So with all of this coming at you, fast and furious, what's your general impression as far as you're being orientated to your new responsibilities? Well right now, I think a lot of it is it's just standing back and you're sort of in awe of the institution. You go into the Republican caucus room and you realize that a lot of major decisions are made there over the years in caucus and then you bring them to the floor. I haven't been in the chambers yet. I'm sure that's gonna be even more awe inspiring to sit there and be a part of that. I think the half a dozen times that I've been to Madison since the election, as I drive down Washington Avenue towards the Capitol and you just, you see the Capitol in the distance in the dome, it's a humbling experience to think that this guy from Wolfsburg is not gonna be representing one one hundredth of the state making decisions and running the state and right now it's a humbling experience and one that I look forward to. Well I couldn't let you go without asking you one tough question and I know we only have a few minutes remaining but shared revenue has been a topic that you and I have been discussing for the last couple of years pretty frequently and you're now gonna be in a position to make a difference and to vote on what happens with shared revenue statewide. What's your present position if you have one formed in regards to state shared revenue and maintaining the levels for counties and municipalities or whether or not there's gonna be any changes? Well again, you asked me if you could keep that question on the list and that's for sure. Absolutely, keep it on the list. I haven't been involved obviously as a freshman in any of the discussions that have started on the budget process. One of the things and everybody that's been elected has said we're not gonna raise taxes. When we're not gonna raise taxes we have to make cuts. I made no promises when I campaigned and I cited no pledges but I think one of the things at a very minimum I think we need to see a freeze in the spending where it is now and that's a start. Whatever cuts that are made I would like to see made be consistent and I would like to see everything on the table and that includes shared revenues. It also includes the university system and also includes corrections and some of the other areas that are some of the bigger ticket items in the budget. And I think we have to be realistic and realize that for the next few years until the economy improves there probably will be some cuts. My goal is to keep those cuts at a minimum and be consistent with cuts in other areas of the state budget so that they're not penalizing local governments and trying to shift the burden of the tax to the local governments but try to be consistent. Very good. But to think that they're going to stay exactly where they are and increase I don't think that's gonna happen. Well do you have any parting remarks today for your vast TV eight viewers out there in Sheboygan County in the land? Not really. Well it's been a pleasure co-hosting this program with Dan for the last few years and I'm certainly on a personal note going to miss working with him as County Board Chairman. I think he leaves Sheboygan County in good hands. I think the state legislature is very fortunate to have someone with his background and his experience going to be working for the constituents here and I hope that you will continue to join us in the future. Our new County Board Chairman Bill Gehring may or may not be here next month. He was just elected this week so he as well as being orientated and has a number of decisions to make but thank you for joining us and happy holidays.


Ladies and gentlemen, Ogir Geblevich. Dear friends, thank you very much. In the past two years, despite the pandemic, I had a chance to meet many of you, members of European Parliament, national leaders, regional and local representatives. My message to you has been always clear. The EPP is the political family which sees reality through eyes of European citizens because we have the strong base on the local and regional level. Our hundreds of thousands of regional and local politicians, including those 50 representatives which are with me in Rotterdam today, enrich the EPP as a party of action and delivery on the ground. In the last two years, we demonstrated that regional and local politicians are problem solvers, crisis fighters and election winners. We delivered when we had to face the COVID health crisis. We delivered when our local economies needed support. We deliver now when our cities stand in solidarity with Ukraine, hosting refugees and providing aid to partner cities. We are also preparing to deliver imminent food and energy crisis so that our citizens feel secure in every region, city or village of Europe. And we are doing that hand-in-hand with our EPP friends from national and European level because we understand that being a first political force on the continent is a work in progress and we need each other to win citizens' trust. Today, the EPP carries a historic responsibility for a future of European democratic model. It is a model which is now defended in Kiev, Kharkiv, Severodonits, but it also needs to be protected and improved in our European house as well as in structures of the EPP. We feel that the best way to protect our democratic model is to keep it modernizing and our proposal is to make it three-dimensional. A 3D democracy in which local and regional, national and European politicians take decisions together for solving what matters to the people on the ground. And we are grateful for a recognition overall of the local and regional level in the updated EPP status. It is a great third step and clear sign that EPP is and remain not only the biggest but also the closest to the people with a fit on the ground party in Europe. Thank you very much. Yes, that's it.


When I came here in like Year 9 on a tour I really liked it right away and I felt like I really belonged here. They offered the new Advanced Biomedical Science degree, it's a research degree, it was different to what I was offered at other universities. My course, Environment and Playmate Emergency, it's available only here so. Probably the best come to meet students at other universities. I know there's a guaranteed internship at the end of my degree so I was interested by that and not many unis offer financial planning as a commerce major. The course that I wanted and the units and the kind of flexibility that's what it offers. I really like the campus here.