Okay, so now we'll talk about our module. This is a spin-off project from Biltest. So maybe some of you may be familiar with in previous talk on like the Biltest module features. What we've done is taken some of those Biltest module features and you're exposed into our module. And I'll start off with one of the user surveys. I think I was conducted last year in EasyBuild. So, the survey indicated like, how many modules were installed at the facilities and what I found was like approximately about like 60% had like 500 plus modules. There were a few sites that had like up to 1,000 or even more than more than that. So it's got, it's a lot of modules actually. So the idea is like, well, if you have so many modules we need to have a mechanism to automate the module, like just automate module testing, right? It helps, obviously gain conference in your system like your software stack through just simple sanity check of the modules. And I have also seen instances where, we've written like an invalid module and then we may have got like few tickets from them because some people like to use specific modules and the goal is to help even reduce the number of tickets that come up. So what is our module? It's basically a Python API for module system to automate like the module load test. And as I mentioned, this project grew out of built tests. So previously all the features were in built tests. They were deprecated in version 08 and now it's just a standalone Python API. And the goal is maybe other communities, other projects may find this useful if you're using modules in some way. El module uses spider tool to like actually query the software stack. And if you want to install El module, you can just use pip to install it. And the documentation, you can find it over here on the right. So just an overview of El module, it currently supports three main classes, module spider and module load test. The module class is just like, it implements some of the features of the module command. The spider is an interface to the Elmod spider tool to basically query the software stack. And then there's the module load test class that automates the module load test of a software stack. And that's used mainly just for just testing the software. So let's start off in module class. You know, in order to get started, you can just import the module and you know, from Elmod module and you can invoke the module class and create an instance. And it expects a name of a module either as a string. So in this example, we say, I want to pass in GCC core and you can use the get command module to get an actual return string code. You know, of what the module command would look like. So it just shows you some module purge and then loads the module. You can also pass in a list of modules so you can expect either a string or a list. So we can say, I want to pass in GCC core and Zlib. And if you say get command, it will get you the, both modules are loaded. You know, you can also test the modules. So if you load some module in some instance, you can use the test modules method and it will actually test the actual module load and give you a return code. You can also find if a module is available. So you can say, I want to create an instance of module and say, I want to use the isAvail method and say is module GCC available and we'll give you a return code. And it could be, you know, basically it's using the module isAvail command. So by default, we purge modules, but you can tweak that behavior, right? So all you need to do, like, you know, let's create an instance of a module and say I want to load open MPI, but I want to say purge, I don't want to purge it. So I say purge is equal to false. And then it would just only load open MPI without module purge. You can also say, I want to force purge. So if you say force equals true, then it will append the force option to the module purge and then load open MPI, okay? And if you, for instance, say I want to force purge, but not do purge, like if you say purge equals false, then we ignore module purge because force is just an option to module purge. So we support module collections, kind of, you know, the Lmod module collections. So like, you know, saving modules, showing the modules, like module save, module describe, you know, like to get the collection name using module restore and actually testing them. So if you create some instance of a module class, you can say save, just call the save method. If you don't specify any argument, it will save the modules that you have into the default collection. So it's equivalent to module save command. If you want to specify a collection name, you can specify that as an argument to the save. So let's say, I want to save GCC Core and Zlib into the GCC under Zlib collection name. So it will just store that as a collection. We can also show the collection name. So, you know, if you're familiar with like module describe, we have a describe method. So if you don't specify any argument, it will show you the default collection. You know, that's equivalent to running module describe. You can also specify a collection name. So in the describe method, like I want to say, show me GCC Zlib collection name. So it will show you that. You can actually get the appropriate module restore command using the get collection. It will return a string. And that also operates on the collection name. So if you don't specify anything, it will show you the default. If you specify an argument, it will show you the collection name. And finally, you can actually test the collection. So using the test collection, underscore collection method, and it will give you a return code. And what it does is just running the module restore command and seeing the exit code. Next, we'll talk about spider. So our module uses the spider tool to query the software stack. You know, to get started, you just import the spider class. And what it supports is getting unique software, getting the module trees. It can get the module names. It can retrieve parent modules and also versions of particular software. Okay. So to get started, like you just invoked a spider class. You can specify, you don't have to specify any arguments. And what it will do is it will just search all the modules in the current module path. And you can use get names. That's a method in the spider class. And that will show you all the unique software names or yeah, basically unique module records that spider finds. And if you want to, you can also filter by a specific module tree. So in this example in the bottom, you can specify a root of a module tree into spider and then use the get names and it will give you just modules in that particular tree. So you can also do some interesting things. Like, you know, you can use spider module to like class to do like filtering. And this is just a simple example. Like we create an instance of the spider class. A is an instance of spider and we're gonna loop over them using the get modules method and filter by all modules that are of CUDA and GCC. And then we can invoke the module class and actually test them. And you know, if you run the script, basically what we've done is the script is just testing all the CUDA modules and GCC modules on your software stack. So I think it's worth mentioning the content of spider. What our module does is it runs the spider command which is it has multiple options. One of the options in the dash O for output format is spider-json. It gives you the spider record in the json format and you can specify a list of directories for the module path to search. This is an example from Lmod eight spider record. And there was a change between Lmod six and seven in the sum of the records in the spider. So here's a record of diffutils. So the top level key is diffutils. Then there is a key that follows it with the full path to the module file. And then it shows you all the metadata of the module file including the full canonical name. That's what we use to find the actual module name used to load it. The version property here in the red is the actual module version. And we also can query the parent modules that's used to load modules before you load this module. And it's just a list of modules to load. So now I'll talk about module load test. That's the class that's used to kind of implement module testing using spider. And this is compatible with Lmod. And the goal is to help automate module testing. You currently, we can test all modules by module path. That's the default behavior. You can test by specific module tree. You can tweak the module purge behavior and filter modules by name, also full canonical name. And you can also like test by login shell if you want. So you just import the module load test class and you can just create an instance of it. If you don't specify any argument, it will just test all the modules specified by module path. So this is just an example and it will just start testing everything. In this example, we have two trees that we're testing and the output is an entry of the module name, the full path to the module file. And if it pass or fail and the output can be quite long depending on how many you have. So that leads to the other part, like you may wanna test modules in different ways. So you could test them through a module purge or you can test them without module purge. That really depends on your site and how you want it, but you can use the purge option. So in this example, on the left, we specify in the module load test the path to module tree. So you can actually do that. You can also specify the purge option that tells, okay, I wanna say purge is true and it will run module purge before each test. So run module purge and then load the appropriate module. If you say false, then it would not load module purge as you can see. And you can also enable like debug if you want to see the actual command that's being run. So you can say debug equals true or false. We can also test modules in a login shell sometimes. So by default, we test in a sub shell, but running a login shell can help solve some weird issues that you may have in your current shell. So in order to just do that, you can just say login equals true. That's just an option to module load test and it will just run everything in a new login shell. I guess in this example, just a bash shell. You can also filter modules. So using the name property, and that expects records from spider. So when we say, and it's a list of spider records. So if you say filter by CUDA, it will go into the spider and find all the CUDA modules and then test every single one. In this example, we just test only six CUDA modules for this specific module tree that we have. So now, what if you have environment module? How can you use this? Well, you can actually use L module for this. So first thing was that currently L module or environment modules didn't have support for parsing modules until like version four, four to five. And this issue I raised up with a Javier about having some kind of ways so I can like an equivalent to spider. So, you know, in order to parse it. So they added this dash, dash, Jason option. I'm not sure if this format's gonna be like if it's gonna change over time. So I haven't implemented anything like this yet but I have a script that I just implemented to kind of parse environment modules, output, like, you know, we're using module avail and just test them. Just forgot a little bit of code but the idea is we take the output of module avail and use dash T to get like the a list out place that's abbreviated and then we just parse each entry and we use the module class to for loop over them and test them. We get the return code and then right now, you know, you can just do like a pass, like we just have a counter to see all the modules that pass and fail. And, you know, if you wanna use the same source file you can just download it and it should work pretty well. So what we have done is we have actually taken that script and I have this tested on Corey. I have this tested on other systems also using environment modules three and also four. So what we have is that we have this script called module test.py and we test it for every single module tree. So we have, I think like five different tests and we're expecting a pass or a pass of 100%. That's in our expression. And we found that one of the tests failed. It had a 95% pass rate. This, one of the trees that was the opt-cray PE module files and in that output we saw one of the modules perf tools light failed. It had a return code one and it failed because it required another module to be loaded. So this test actually kind of shows how you can actually do like your entire software stack just testing them through modules and you can add as many trees as you want. Yeah. I just wanted to bring up some known issues. So if you have environment modules three which we do have here in Corey if you load an unknown module it will return an exit code zero which is not the right exit code. As you can see on the bottom right if you were to do this so what we're doing is we're just loading module load X and it's not a valid module but it gives you an exit code zero. But if you were to do the same test on like environment module like four like I guess the latest version you get an exit one and in Alma is the same thing. So just one of these weird issues that's present if you have an older version. So finally, I wanna wrap up the modules it's to the primary interface for the users and the software stack and it is important for the facilities to actually test their software stack just basically a simple sanity check on module load is sufficient. Currently we have one release of it this was released in March and yeah I think it would be interesting to know like if others have interest in this and you can probably improve the API a bit. If you need help you can please file an issue or you can just join the Slack channel. There are also some examples in the documentation to help you get started if you wanna write your own scripts and yeah you can just yeah that's it. Thank you. Okay thank you very much Shrizaad. We already have a question by Maxime. Yes, hi. So we install basically 99.99% of our modules with Easebill which already tests loading the module when it gets installed. Do you see use cases in that situation for L-Module? If it's not installed through Easebill if it's some user software stack they install themselves sure I'm not sure how it's being well I mean I'm sure it may be okay if you already have it tested but I know that for instance there are some software packages that may have to be installed that are out of scope of like sometimes even Easebill or spec like you have to have custom modules for this thing like that still requires testing. Right, yeah those are pretty rare but yeah okay. I guess there could be a use case when people start cleaning up installations and are not careful enough. So since modules generated by Easebill load other modules if you happen to remove one of those you may not be aware that you've broken something. So that's where L-Module could help with flagging those modules as broken. Shrizaad maybe you can kill the screen share so we have something to look at yeah. Any other questions Maxime? He's already muted again, I guess not. No okay, I did have a question as well Shrizaad so you mentioned relying on spider provided by L-Mod and when you're running the module load tests does L-Module take into account that there may be other modules that have to be loaded first before you can load the module? So if you're in the module hierarchy where you first have to load a compiler and an MPI to reach an application is that something L-Module does automatically when it sees that L-Mod reports so you have to load these first before loading something else? Yeah, I believe where was it? If I could share it's using the parent module. So I have to test that part out. I believe I had this feature tested but I don't think I have it, what was it? In this spider record. So I don't have it with me right now but one of the features is there's a spider record called parent AA and that is responsible for, these are parent modules that load module path to other trees where these modules are and these modules need to be loaded first before you load like in this example of diffutils. I don't believe I have that support or I have to test it on a L-Mod system. I can test it on another system. I just don't have it on Cori but I believe I had this feature in in build test when I was trying to migrate most of this. However, I think you can, if you don't have L-Mod system you can still use the module class and specify your custom like list of modules so you can go into like this example on the bottom left. You can say a list of modules to load or you can have a script that says like, I wanna load some modules before I load something else. Yeah. Okay. It's not clear exactly, automatically do it yet. Yeah, that may be important because if you do an L-Mod spider on a module name L-Mod may give you multiple options that says, okay, if you wanna load this module you either have to load A and B first or DNC first. So L-Mod will have to iterate over different options and only one of those may be broken depending on what happens in those modules whether the actual module is actually there. So maybe what could happen for example is that in the L-Mod cache the module was recorded. So L-Mod thinks the module file is there but when we actually try to load it that's when it reads the actual module file and that may still fail even though L-Mod is still reporting. So if your cache is out of date or something like this so it may also be useful to actually test whether what L-Mod is telling the user is still working. Yeah. Yeah. And the spider actually, where was it? It was in, I'm sure as if you have an L-Mod system you would be updating your spider cache on like some cron basis or something like that. And if you have, if you invoke spider or if you invoke the module load test class it will just use the spider command. And during the interval when you submit it and spider record is not up to date it won't pick up the new modules. It's just trivial, but I think, I mean, you could still work around it. I think that's, I don't know if that's in scope for L-Module to do that, but I didn't consider that yet. You can also tell L-Mod to ignore the cache. If you wanna bypass that and wanna actually look at the system but then it will be slower to walk through all the modules and load them, that will be a bit slower but you can just, it's an environment variable. You can tell L-Mod to ignore the cache and just go to the actual files on the system. So depending on what you wanna test do you wanna test the cache or the relation between the cache and the actual files or do you just wanna check what's on the file system? There's again different options there depending on what you actually want to test, of course. You may sometimes also want to check that the cache isn't corrupt. That can happen. Isn't corrupt or isn't outdated. So usually people have a cron. So we, for example, run a cron that updates the L-Mod cache every hour, but if that cron dies or the node where that current is running is dead or cannot reach the software or whatever happens, then the cache doesn't get outdated. So having a check that verifies whether the cache and the module files are not out of sync could also be very, very interesting, I think. It could be an easy check that people could run in their monitoring. And if they see the, if L-Mod says, okay, the cache and the files are out of date or out of sync, then it could flag a red flag in the monitoring. So that could be a good use case for L-Mod as well. For L-Modul as well. Okay, I don't see any other, questions popping up and we're getting close to the next talk. So we'll wrap up here. Thank you very much, Shazab. If people want to ask Shazab questions on either build test or L-Modul, I suggest you can move to the breakout room. I think Oka will have to recreate the room. So feel free to jump in there. I'm not sure Shazab if somebody will show up or not, but you can check what we have to get ready for. Next presentation. Thanks a lot.


Welcome to digital asset news to get top stories and crypto current digital assets and break them down to bite-sized pieces today Still some concerning things first up. It's someone with draw 96 million worth of Bitcoin from okay X CEO J How has the answer and if you've been living under a rock or just haven't really been up for air lately? The exchange okay X has shut down all transactions due to an investigation and the detainment of one of their founders So the question was asked how was Bitcoin moved if everything was on hold also Bitfinex announces polka dot staking rewards next to Cardano Eos and Adam this time I'm pretty excited because I own most of those just not out and lastly Bitfinex partners with Celsius Network Limited lending platform. This is big news for Bitfinex all the way around They're gonna be able to buy things easily and also be able to earn a nice APY or yield before I take a look at the market So today it is October 17th It's about 1 p.m. Texas time into Saturday and if you may have noticed I did no video yesterday And I have to tell you I gotta tell you that it just felt very weird I got so busy with other things other parts of businesses that I just could not make one which is a rarity and It just felt made me feel very antsy. I I have goals. I have Structure in place. It just yesterday everything kind of broke down So it makes me feel like I said very discombobulated so I try to get back in the groove Which why today we're gonna do two videos. So first up This is what's going on today. And this is not surprising like we talked about yesterday and also this is another thing That's been taking more of my time I've been doing a lot of a lot of live streams over on theta if you look in the description of my videos There is the link. It just says follow down the very first one is my theta channel And I usually do live streams around 11 to 12 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Mountain center time and it goes for like an hour and they're fine. I mean, they're super fun They're really engaging. There's not a lot of people there. I answers everybody's questions. It's just good times So if you had a chance check those out on theta and just join me over there, but Let's see what's going on right now. So Bitcoin is down point two percent I think it was down point six percent and this is what I was talking about yesterday on theta I was saying that because this this okx what's going on over there, which is just awful You're gonna see a dip you're gonna see big slumps And it could be massive or it could be a little bit But it's definitely gonna slump because that's how things work in cryptocurrency assets when you have news That is negative. Everything just kind of falls apart for a little bit This is a very early community a very early asset class So when something like this happens, hey, there's a little bit of a dip So just expect it and just know that this is a great opportunity Because nothing changed. Bitcoin didn't get hacked You know Satoshi Nakamoto didn't come on go surprise me Vladimir Putin and and nothing has changed, right? Ethereum is still moving forward tether tether. Nobody really cares XRP still holding strong at almost 25 cents.   Fantastic timing. This is the day. I'm going to DC a not dump a bunch of money in But when it goes down a little bit just put a little money back in there See what we got because I can tell you I can tell you right now that most of these ones in the top 20 I'll say not all but most will go back up But let's see what we got so chain links down 3% Cardinals 1.6 up. Hey, that's pretty good. Let's see. Let's see what's up because everything else is down stellar of 7% On the news that they're going to support us DC So so that's actually big news if you're ever trying to send us DC sometimes not as quick But if you can send on the stellar network, I mean that is like lightning fast super fast When I use stellar to send anything and the same thing with XRP it is it is Light years ahead of everything else That I have found so when I'm when I'm sending a theorem, it's not too quick, but it's quick enough Bitcoins a little bit slow, but XRP. It's like a couple seconds stellar same thing So now you can send us DC on the stellar network. That's big news stable coin off a stellar So that's why people bought that and this is the result. What else we got wrap bitcoins up Hey, great. Okay B is down 19% that makes sense as that is a token of okay X So sure I can see why that would probably take a dip and then NEM is up 1.3 percent Congratulations NEM holders. You're rock rocking it right there with 1% and pretty much everything else Ah theta down 7% I don't know what happened there, but I will tell you this I will be buying I think today I'm gonna be buying a massive amount because I'm what I'd like to do is I'd like to be on a guardian node That means I need 10,000 theta So if I can do that I will do it and actually this leading to up to a question I actually got from a subscriber. They said hey, I'd like to be on one of those guardian nodes for theta But I don't I'm not gonna be able to get 10,000 which is let's be honest It's pretty tough. So I reach out to my man digital Dave over at crazy for cryptos I asked him that same question he goes he says I believe they could join g pool.io with less than 10k I was like, oh interesting. So G pool.io. I'll put that in the description But it's just g pool.io. I think that's how it works I haven't done my due diligence, so don't quote me, but it's just a little off the top of my head type of thing I wanted to talk about real quick. So yeah, that's what's going the market. Let's just jump into today's story, huh? All right, so the question is this another great story by Alex D'Avniat Did someone withdraw 96 million worth of Bitcoin? So great question What happened? So if you don't know there is something very odd going on at okx I have heard and I have read conflicting stories one is that the founder was attained by Chinese police But then that was like a week ago but then they said no no no it was yesterday and then they said something about how that was untrue and there was something different but Regardless it doesn't a lot of things are not adding up. That's all I can say I'm not here to try to spread flood just trying to give you the best information So there was when I was doing the live stream actually on theta. I was looking on Twitter and one of the it was Whale alert and it said 5,000 Bitcoin just transferred from okx like right as I was in the live stream I was like what how the heck did that happen? That shouldn't happen. So this was actually in response to that So okx CEO J Howe addresses the issues heads on about these internal transfers claiming that the addresses in question have been Mislabeled by third-party. So apparently when they reported this and it's just a bot that just looks at just a grand search Throughout the internet about what kind of transactions are going on that are heavy or whale like transactions And one of those was a big move of 5,000 Bitcoin Which it said from okx to Binance and they said no no no that was just an internal transfer So don't look behind the curtain about the wizards doing Anyhow okx announced the suspension of withdrawals on October 16th causing an immediate 3% Bitcoin drop again I don't I understand why this happens, but I don't understand why people don't go. Wow. This is like a little sale I can either pick that up. I was kind of hoping to go deeper But it didn't that was kind of a bummer Later later turned out that zoo star ming zing the founder of the multi-base company of okx had been taken away by Chinese Police and a statement shared with you today how whole heartily apologized for pausing withdrawals Claiming that it was done for security purposes and again this this one says he was just taken away by Chinese Police in another article. I read it was done a week ago So I don't understand why this is going on right now all other activities including deposits spot-training derivatives staking etc remain Unaffected and we would like to provide our assurance to all our customers that their funds are safe The decision to temporarily pause withdrawals was taken with user security in mind. So that sounds pretty good I like that part, but here's where it gets crazy Ming zing acts as okx's sole Private key holder, which is why the exchange cannot authorize withdrawals as of now. Let me read that one more time Ming zing who is the founder who was taken away by the Chinese police? acts as okx's sole only private key holder, which is why the exchange cannot authorize withdrawals as of now Lastly it states we're unable to reveal any information that might put our users funds at risk Suffice to say that okx maintains the highest security standards to protect our users, blah, blah, blah, okay, sure All I'm gonna tell you is this When they start to withhold information, it never is a good sign again. I could be totally wrong I could be spreading fun by fun myself, but if it was me, I wouldn't feel very comfortable going to that exchange I have my problems with Coinbase, you know, they go down, but it's not if they go down for like forever They come up and they say hey, we had a screw-up and we fixed it now I still understand why a billion dollar company can't be a little more proactive But that's besides the point the point here is that This exchange apparently has a sole private key holder and that's who does all the authorizations Are you out of your mind? Did we not learn anything from quadrica CX the Canadian exchange the same thing happened with their founder? Some guy got his name. He was the sole private key holder He went to India died supposedly and then everybody lost their money kind of crazy, right? I'm not saying that's what's gonna happen here I'm just saying that unless I'm reading this wrong and and please and feel free to correct me in the comment section This is crazy. This is crazy town. I would not go into this. I don't know why this is happening I don't know why anybody would go to okx again. It could be wrong. Let me know the comment section Next up if the next announces polka dot staking rewards next to cardano eos and adam and I've got I invest in a polka dot I love it. I think it's gonna be big I think it's me gay big because of Gavin dr. Gavin wood who is part of what I call the aetherium mafia who was one of the great eight that was the founders of Aetherium so I believe in that and what I was interested in was the staking thing because if you try to stake it Outside of the exchanges, it's a little bit technical and you can do it, but I'm not gonna do it I'll just be honest with you But I mean there's other people out there that are much more savvy and smarter than me which is not hard I might add So, you know great, but if the next is gonna do it fantastic I've also learned through my live stream of theta that kraken is also doing staking a polka dot and you get up to 12% returns and that was started back in August. So it was just interesting. So I thought this was great Another exchange is doing it. So what's going on here? So The major if the next exchange spread the word about adding staking rewards for polka dot this open source platform ensures Interoperability between multiple chains if you don't know what polka dot is it does not compete with anything is on a smart contract Type of blockchain like an EOS a cardano an aetherium It just is there for interoperability because we're gonna need that we're gonna need to have block chains talk to each other And that's what we're gonna need a lot of polka dot So that's why I'm vested into it So that has been added to a group of coins that were listed listed for staking such as Cardano Adam Visas, I don't know what that is EOS and Tezos and it states staking allows users to earn more profits using their crypto holdings Bitfinex offers 14% annually for holding their dot coins for them. What do we got over here Kraken? 12% well, hopefully they can not speed that up a little bit then lastly Bitfinex in-house custody service will ensure that That state coins are safe and sound coins will not be leaving Bitfinex for a third party custodians I like that I like that so much to go sign up at Bitfinex, but guess what I'm a US resident and they told me This is the email to confirm it you have indicated you are as resident and you must cease trading and funding activity Close any trading platforms and blah blah blah because you suck. You're in the United States. I Really wish the exchanges would just listed on their home screen like this is who we accept This is who we don't if you're in one of these countries don't even bother Go away as a business and pulling people in it is pretty brilliant Just kind of say hey come on in here give us your email address and da-da-da and then they say ah, sorry sucker You don't wait you can't use this We're we apologize and then later on when they do get compliance Nate and the US does say then they get us email the people that sign it before I go Hey guess what?  We miss you and we're gonna be able to accept you so Kind of a bummer, but what are you gonna do? However? I'm pretty excited about the Kraken thing So I'm glad did that theta live stream because people told me what I don't know and I love that anyhow Let me know what you think about that in the comment section and let's move on to our last story So now last up bit for next partners with Celsius Network again I was super pumped until I learned I could use bit for next but I do use Celsius I do use it a lot if you don't know Celsius is on my one two three punch I have this great little spreadsheet the exchange of walled feeds and it goes over everything from coin base Kraken Celsius is Voyager by an ants uphold Abra simple swap uniswap Swift Swift X KYC not me E toro Don't recommend them and crypto comm and I just go over trading fees are how much it cost how much you can get as far as a Interest or yield for just holding cryptocurrency on these different platforms like Celsius That's where I hold 30% of all my Cryptocurrency assets because I got a nice little fat yield and I like that also Voyager I got some over there and Using Kraken more and more because I'm more excited about their banking license But if you're looking for the exchange, it's in the description of my videos There's a link looks just like this and you can check it out If you use the affiliate links great It's between 10 and 25 dollars just to sign up and I highly recommend you do that Before the next bull run because in 2017 you could not get on to exchanges because they were all shutting down Because they had too many people so do that now you can go right to the exchanges or wallets and download But you just don't get the 10.25 just if you want to use the link all everything's up to you and I'll jump back So this is big news for Bitfinex and Celsius and it states our customers can open a wallet with Celsius and Manage it through the Bitfinex platform Though through their Celsius wallet our customers can earn a return of up to 6.2% of Bitcoin up to an almost 10% of Ethereum and variety of leading crypto according to Bitfinex platform and then I'll just paraphrase the whole rest of the story So I think this is great because on Celsius you can buy through Celsius They use some kind of like third-party thing, but it's like three and a half percent for a fee So I don't recommend that actually I talk about that on the actual exchange fee I just say you know, this is pretty much used for interest I use crack and a Voyager to buy my crypto So I thought it was pretty cool that Bitfinex you can buy it on there It looks like the fees that I saw were pretty low And then you could just you know get the yield the APY over there and just buy and hold on the exchange now again Of course not your crypto not your keys We're always talking about you know You have to actually have your keys to actually have control of them However, it is nice just to you know stake those things out Inside and make it pretty easy, but it's up to you you can take them off and you can stake them like that Or you know, you can just do nothing put leave them on the exchange and have yield So again, it's all up to you whatever you want to do so so that is it That is my my quick down and dirty Video that I want to do yesterday that I couldn't do and then I'll be talking later today about some What I feel some pretty big news there is a an interview with the head of the CFTC where he is basically saying I'm not kidding that he loves cryptocurrency and he's trying to support it And actually he's pulling in people from Silicon Valley and and people who actually have worked for exchanges to come work With the CFTC and he wants America to be the leaders I was blown away at this one. So there's that and I also want to talk about Tesla and chain link. I think that's a pretty big story I guess and some other things that are you know kind of cool So I'll do that later, but that's it for this video if you like these videos There's gonna be too much gonna pop up on your left and right not sure you too kind of controls that stuff And that's all I got for today. So thanks. Well, that's that's all I got for right now I'll say so thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one Which will probably drop in another three or four hours. All right You


Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here this afternoon. My name is John Fraher. I'm a senior executive editor at Bloomberg. I'm very excited about this panel that we have for you this afternoon on the outlook for Russia. 2018 will be another big year for Russia at a time when the country seems to be barely out of the global headlines. We have a presidential election coming up in March. We have, of course, the World Cup comes to Russia this summer. And of course, the crisis in Russia-US relations keeps rumbling on. On the domestic front, the big question is how and whether the government can kickstart growth after years of subpar performance. In an age where other developing countries like China are pouring huge resources into AI and other technologies, there's the question of whether Russia risks being left behind. And of course, sanctions still hang over the whole economy and many of its most important actors, which raises the question, what, if anything, can be done to normalize relations with the West? So briefly, I'd like to introduce my panel on my left, Arkady Dvorkevich, the deputy prime minister. To his left is Marcelya, chairman of ENI. We have Alexei Mordeshov, chairman of Servicetal. We have Sergei Gorkov, chairman of VAB. And we have Frederick Kemp from the Atlantic Council in Washington. Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, let me start with you. We're heading into a presidential election. And by some measures, things are going very well for President Putin. He's riding high in the polls. He's increased Russia's influence abroad. And yet, when you look at the economy, things are still pretty grim and pretty disappointing. It's struggling to pull itself out of the longest recession since Putin came to power. And there are signs, there are a few signs, that the economy is managing to diversify itself away from oil and gas. How can you assure the investors and the audiences gathered here in Davos that Putin's fourth term will be different? Thank you, John. First of all, let me thank everyone in the audience for joining us at this Russian strategy session. I would not say that figures are grim, actually. If you look at the numbers, we have historically lowest inflation. We didn't have 2.5% ever in Russia, which means that we have a very good chance of real incomes going up. And actually, we started to see this already towards the end of last year, and it's the beginning of this year. And interest rates started to go down. And this makes opportunities for especially small and medium enterprises wider. And opportunities for new investment projects will be bigger and bigger. And we started seeing that in some of the sectors of the Russian economy, like agriculture, chemical industry, car manufacturing, 20% up last year. And as a result, we fully recovered from the recession of 2015 and 2016. So if you compare 2017 with 2014, we have zero growth overall. But with improvements towards the second half of 2017, the only factor under lower growth than we expected before was lower oil production. That was the result of our intentional step to enter OPEC-plus deal and stabilize oil markets with the benefits in the medium term. So we did this in open mind, and we believe that was the right step. It cost us some few decimal points in growth, but I think it was a wise decision to make. The important thing is that I think the last point makes it clear that it is not the commodity sector that grows. It is either new commodities like grain, grain production, the record high in Russia, and our agriculture is growing very quickly, or manufacturing and services. With the recovery of household income, we have higher imports of investment goods to new investment projects of both Russian and foreign companies in Russia. We don't have any direct investment outflow. We have increasing foreign investment. And as a result, we were able to increase real wages, keep unemployment low, and stabilize demographic situation in Russia. So that's the picture. The investment climate is better. And it is not just our statement and our assessment. The World Bank increased the position of Russia in its doing business rankings. We are now in the first 40 of countries. We were in 128th place just five years ago. Is it already good enough? No, not good enough. We are far from the assessment that Russia is in a great economic situation and everything is done. But the situation is positive. It is not negative. That's the statement I would like to make very clear. So are you saying that we shouldn't really expect any major change from a fourth Putin term, if presuming he wins, any big change in economic strategy? We should just continue what we were doing. I started with inflation. Why is it important? Basically, we completed macroeconomic restructuring of the economy. On the macro side, we have low inflation, flexible exchange rates, so exchange rate risks are very limited. We have increasing international reserves, very low debt ratio, below 15% of GDP. The corporate debt ratio is also going down. So macroeconomic risks are very low. Now we should focus more on business environment and structural reforms on the micro level rather than macro level. So the focus, the priorities will be different, but the overall strategy is the same. Just a very, very brief, quick question. You mentioned the OPEC deal. Do you think it would make sense to extend that into next year as well? Right now, the decision was to extend it nine months till the end of 2018 with monitoring in the middle of this year. So we will look closely together with our partners. We'll look closely at the market situation. Our Minister of Energy is in daily dialogue with his partners, including here in Davos. We'll have our joint market assessment, and we will take the decision. So it is just too early to say what we'll do next. Okay. Ms. Mordischoff, I'd like to turn to you. Two of my Bloomberg colleagues last year wrote that you built your fortune from the heat and sweat of steelmaking. But now you're increasingly becoming more and more interested in retraining, in training Russians for the industry of the future. You've been investing in this. When you come to Davos, you hear a lot about the arms race and technologies like artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, et cetera. And that's often expressed in terms of the arms race between China and the United States. Do you worry that Russia is getting left behind as the global economy modernizes? Of course, Russia should be doing better. We should do more, for sure. And well, I hope Russia is not heading behind, but as I've said, we have to do more. And what we are doing in these fields, it's one of the reflection of this trend. We are investing now in so-called tech system of online education. We see growing use of internet, about 70% of Russian population use internet. And definitely, we observe the same trends in Russia like everywhere about technological shifts, which probably will change the paradigms, shift the paradigms in the employment in general. And most probably people will change the job, not only jobs, but profession, within their career life several times. And we believe that online education, it's not education, it's just a system of development using opportunities which are provided by internet. It could be very, very helpful. And we believe it's going to be a very, very big business, business potentially multi-billion size. It's not just helpful, it's fundamental to anything we should be doing in the future. It's a new kind of training people, adjustment to the new waves of technologies that are faster and faster and larger and larger is a key. And government will support those kinds of projects. And just to briefly focus on the economy, I believe you met with, you and some other executives met with President Putin in December. Did you talk to him? Did he talk to you about his business strategy for a fourth term? This meeting was not to talk about business strategy of specific operations. But definitely we've spoken about business climate and directions which are very important for Russia. I believe that Russia should do more in order to embrace new technological development for sure. And it brings us a lot of opportunities and a lot of threats. And I'm not suggesting to spend billions of Russian state money to invest in these fields, but probably something like public-private partnership in a way could be helpful. And we see a lot of rhetoric from very top decision-makers level in Russia about necessity to invest and support from the state all these developments in related with digitalization, internet. And I'm sure that all Russian corporations, and hopefully most advanced first, will invest a lot in these fields, in digitalization and online education, in development of people. It's going to be a very, very big topic for all of us. Mr. Gorkov, we were speaking before this panel, and you were telling me that, and this is something I didn't know, that Russia is one of the leading countries in terms of establishing blockchain companies. And your bank has been looking quite closely at this. Blockchain is obviously one of the big buzzwords of Davos this year. I guess I'll start by asking you, is there a blockchain bubble? Is there an expectation bubble about blockchain and what it can see? I think it's a bitcoin bubble, not blockchain differently. But if we're talking about currently economy, the situation in Russia, of course, I agree with Deputy Prime Minister, it's quite stable in terms of GDP growth, in terms of inflation rate. It's very low, historically low. But very important, understand this basis is based on old, not old, but traditional economy. And for Russia, very important to see the future economy, because future economy will be based on different technologies, definitely. In this case, we need to create the focus for which technology could be for Russia possible to be a leader, to have leadership. And we found one of these, it's blockchain. Actually, we started this project one and a half year ago. And this period of time, when I come to many, many my partner and explain about blockchain, it was many, many discussion, a lot of people think blockchain is bitcoin. After that, bitcoin help us a lot, because hype with bitcoin help us for blockchain technology. Because it's not the same, it's quite different. And if we're talking for new technology, I think Russia, in terms of blockchain technology, have a lot of possibility to will be a leader, definitely, based on many things. First of all, if you see five top company from blockchain in the world, the three always have Russian owners. It's a lot. Second, if you see about concrete pilot, which we start to implement in Russia, not just web, for example, Sberbank. Sberbank and web create quite big hype about blockchain. And now we, yesterday, explain on blockchain conference what Russia doing in this. And actually, definitely, we have full possibility to will be leader of this technology. Not just, of course, only blockchain, we need to make a focus for another technology as well, for example, quantum technology or AI technology. But in this case, we need to understand our resources because, of course, we have, I think, about human resources, we have excellent human resources in terms of quality, in terms of flexibility, but very important creativity, but very important understand the focus for Russian economy as well. It's when we create the matrix of this and very important that government, Russian government create new program, digital agenda for Russian economy. It's actually put in this program the concrete parts of digitalization for all country and for all industries, but very important to make a focus and create the concrete steps. But in some technologies like blockchain, I think we are not could be leader, we're already leader. But are you seeing like very, do you already have concrete operations going on inside your bank that use it? Or is it still very much in the laboratory? We have, of course, project in our bank, but very important because we're developing bank of Russia. We are ready to create platform. We create open source platform calling blockchain Khamuna, which have a lot of residents, mostly residents from different countries actually, from US, from Europe, from Singapore, from Russia as well. And actually it's common work which creates a new technology because blockchain actually developing as well. It's not just stable technology which actually after one year we see how blockchain moving as well. And it's very important to will be in hype, to will be leader because you know it's speed, it's very important for all innovation, but for disruption technology it's number one. Speed is number one. Mr. Mordeshev, did you want to say something on that? Yeah. Can I make one comment? It seems to me it's all not only about the position of Russia as a country, but it's also very important and very relevant for all companies in Russia. And it's also not a state goal, but a very big task for all corporations, all companies to pay attention and to embrace this technology in day-to-day life. And we are investing in it, not only besides steel business and developed new business and online education as we discussed before, but also we are spending a lot of money in digitalization, in the job technology in order to implement it in practical business of our companies just to have fruitful results. It's not about the national leadership, it's about also practical development of companies in national economy. No, in this case, very important environment because regulation, if you see regulation, it's important because innovation is speed, yeah? And for innovation, speed is very important regulation because sometimes regulation is very positive, but sometimes it's limitation for speed. In this case, we need to have flexible regulation and not just in blockchain technology, but in many other technologies. Yes, that's what I wanted to add. The role of the government is not just to support the ecosystem, start-up, or ecosystem for large companies who develop those new platforms, new technologies, but to ensure that, yes, regulations are flexible and it's a challenge for the world at the whole, not just Russia. The world is not adjusted yet to this quick transformation of technological picture. Second is cybersecurity and many ethical and other aspects of that issue. Third is education that we already talked about and forces infrastructure. Access to internet was mentioned already, access to modern telecommunication services is a government-private project that we're doing together. So those four things the government should ensure to promote those new technologies. Well, we'll hold you to that next year. We started doing that, yeah, started doing that. Ms. Marchegaldi, I'd like to turn a little bit now to the international climate. Of course, everything we're discussing here about the domestic economy is happening against the backdrop of sanctions and the very difficult business climate for Russia. Any is what is a company that's had long ties with Russia. I think you were the first company that operated petrol stations, gas stations after the fall of the Soviet Union. And of course, you're working with Rosneft on two exploration projects and you buy a lot of Russian gas. That doesn't sound to me like you're having huge problems with Russian sanctions, it's hurting your business. Or would your business be so much better? First of all, let me remind that we are present in Russia from 1950. We were among the first to import oil from Russia. So we know Russia very well. Now we are importing around 20 billion of cubic meters of gas into Italy. This is more or less 30% of the entire consumption in Italy. As you said, we have also, so we have very strong relationship with Gazprom. We also have very strong relationship with Rosneft. Rosneft has become one of our equity shareholders also in the big giant discovery in Zur in Egypt. We are also working with them. We are giving them some of our technology also in refinery. So I mean, we have a very bold and large relationship with Russia for a very long time. As you said at the beginning, we started to drill a well in the Black Sea. This was after the new sanction arriving from the U.S. Of course, before starting this, this was a very long time thing already projected. Of course, we asked authorization to the U.S. And so we obtained the authorization from the U.S. So we started to drill this well, but then now we have to stop it because as you said, the sanctions are hitting this. So we will try to understand a little bit better what we should do, but also this situation of a little bit of uncertainty is creating some problems. But anyway, of course, we have to be absolutely compliant with the U.S. because we are also listed in the U.S. for us. We have a lot of shareholders in the U.S. So of course, sanctions are affecting the situation. I have to tell you this also from, I'm also the president of the European Federation of Indies of Business Europe. I have to tell you that overall, as you know, the relationship between Europe and Russia is anyway very important. This year, as you know, the trade has improved a little bit. We have an improvement of 25% in exchange with Russia. Anyway, we are still 45% below the level that we had in 2013 before the sanction. Anyway, the EU is still number one trading partner for Russia and Russia is fourth, is the fourth trading partner for you. So we are still very important. Of course, Russia is, I mean, the most important supplier for gas for Europe, 40%. So I mean, the relationship is very important. And as you know, I mean, business leader and business people don't like sanctions, but of course, we are not living in a vacuum. So of course, we have to take this into account. But I think my position is that even in this situation where it's not so easy to work with Russia, I think also as business people from the different, from EU and Russia, we have to stay in touch. For example, I think we have also to work to make the situation on trading better. For example, of course, they have this Eurasian association. I think we should anyway work not to have too many non-tariff barriers, to have standards that are more, I mean, closer between Russia and EU. So my point is, of course, there are sanctions. We don't like it, but we have to be compliant with that. But I think it's important to continue to work also between business and try anyway to have a kind of, to have not too many non-tariff barriers and to have the same standards. So to be ready when and if the situation of sanctions will change to restart. So what's your outlook on that? I mean, part of your job running a company is to think five, 10 years down the line. What's your view? Do you have sort of a fixed view on how long do you think sanctions will last? Or how do you sort of at the moment assess the political climate in Europe and the US when it comes to sanctions? I mean, my friend, they are good friends. Well, we get to him. Better than me. We get to that. I don't know exactly. My point is that Russia is an important player. If we look also what's happening on the geopolitical situation, Russia, if I think at the Middle East, Russia has a role. If I think also on OPEC, I think Russia played a role. So as business, we would like to have a more open situation. I don't know how long this will take. And of course, as I said, anyway, we have to be absolutely compliant with the situation. Do you sense that the position of your own government, of the Italian government, is changing and that they will pull support and sanctions? You know, the Italian government and also the Italian companies has always been close to Russia, also because of the trading, which is very important. But of course, also our government is a European government. And so we stay stick absolutely to the decision of the European Commission. One correction just for a clear understanding of figures, our trade is, yes, it is down from 40% to 50% across different countries. But there are two reasons for that. Sanctions is only a small part of that. Lower commodity prices is a key part of that. There's two effects. One is the price effect. Lower prices lead to lower volume in dollars, lower volume of exports of commodities from Russia to other countries. But there is also exchange rate effect. We had the exchange rate adjustment after prices of oil and gas and other commodities went down. And with lower exchange rate, we have lower demand for imports. And it is not covered by increased non-commodity experts. So there is a clear arithmetical effect of other factors rather than sanctions on trade. Frank Kemp, I'd like to bring you in for the view from Washington. You've been waiting patiently there. I mean, essentially, I'll ask you the same question about sanctions. I mean, how do you assess right now the political climate in Washington when it comes to sanctions? How quickly do you think it will be before we see, perhaps, even more sanctions? And just how toxic is the relationship right now, in your opinion? It's pretty toxic. I'll come back to the sanctions issue. The one thing that's important to note, and Chancellor Merkel would want me to say this, the Ukraine sanctions are not US sanctions. They're US and European sanctions. And that's what's really given them their power. And they won't be undone until there's a Minsk agreement, until people are satisfied that the fighting Ukraine is over. And so Secretary Tillerson made that very clear at the Atlantic Council that there's a desire in the US to work more closely with Russia on issues across the board, particularly counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, military to military. We don't want to get into an accidental fight with the Russians. But in terms of economic relations, he's made clear as has everyone else in the administration that that won't change until the Ukraine situation changes. And new sanctions may be coming that are election related, and those would be potentially more unilateral. I'll come to that. Preparing for this, I talked to a friend of mine in the US government, and he told me a joke. And he said, interviewer on Russian television asked Vladimir Putin what the strategic outlook is in one word. And Putin says, good. And he says, could you expand that into two words? He says, not good. And the good side is what the deputy prime minister says, which is macroeconomic stability. And that's what Putin has wanted. And most of all, what Putin has wanted is to protect the reserves. And they're now at $425 billion. And that was from a low around $350 billion. So they've come back. It is low inflation. We do have a good budget balance. We do have external balance. So if you look from macro stability element, which is where the liberal economists have been running things, it's working. The not good is you've got stability with stagnation. And you've got secular stagnation since 2004. You've got a GDP that has got the Russian now at 14th largest economy in the world. And it was number six. And so the GDP has gone from $2.1 trillion to $1.1 trillion. You have a situation where Alexei Kudrun, former prime foreign minister, who has a group of people working on a reform plan for Putin to hopefully be looked at after the election, said recently, Russia is catastrophically losing time. And this gets to these questions around technology. There is no doubt, sir, that the Russians are brilliant when it comes to technology. Anybody who in America whose computer has been hacked knows that. And there is no doubt that in terms of blockchain, as you go to the reception here on blockchain, I swear 50% of the people there were speaking Russian or Russian, living in Silicon Valley, living in Australia, living in Russia. So the talent is there. The question is, will the government take steps in structural reform to unleash that talent? And I think there's a crying need for structural reform. There's a crying need for better property rights, a better business environment. And the view of the US is not my view, but this is the view of this US official, is that the economy has been run with a view toward the maintenance of power rather than GDP growth, rather than innovation, rather than other matters. And the real question is, after this next election, will there be a significant shift in that approach or not? I don't know whether there will be, but Russia urgently needs it. Did you want to talk a little bit about the sanctions? So first of all, the IMF has estimated that sanctions take one to one and a half points off of GDP every year, and that there's a cumulative hit to GDP at this point, 9%. That's meaningful. It's hitting primarily access to financial markets and access to technology, and very much energy technology, tide oil, Arctic, deep drilling. What's coming at us potentially is by January 29th, there's supposed to be something called, has come to be known as the Kremlin report, which has been called for by Congress with the allegations of election meddling, which are embraced by almost all parts of the US Congress and intelligence community. And a list is supposed to be provided, and we know from our own work at the Atlantic Council that it's well along, and it's been being taken enormously seriously. Of Russians that are essentially in business Kremlin instruments or carrying the influence of the Kremlin in foreign policy, potentially in the issues of election meddling. The list, depending on who you believe, is going to be anywhere from 40 to 400 people. I think it's going to be more serious if it's shorter. It's going to be more serious if people can see very clearly the links and that this really is right. But it is going to come. But it's just a list at this point. There aren't necessarily sanctions against any of these people. But of course, even the publishing of the list has reputational issues and has business impact. So I'll pivot from that, and I'll just ask a very direct question to Mr. Gorkov and Mordechov. How worried are you two that you will be on that list? You're seen as being close to the Kremlin. It must be something that's on your mind. The chairman of the Development Bank of Russia, of course, is not a company. It's a state's organization. In terms of, of course, we're very close to government, anyway. But our mission is to create new economy for Russia, and create and finance the content project, which is important for high value other products, industries, for example, and technologies. In this case, my point of view, actually, any sanctions, it's opposite way of globalization. It's a real opposite way of globalization. There's not help for not just for Russian people. They'll help for all Europe, for all the world, actually. But it sounds like you think it's pretty inevitable that you think you'll be on that list. Well, the National Bank isn't the list. We're from the very beginning. Well, it's the list from the beginning, actually. And you know, it's three years. Mr. Moryshov, this must be a, you know, what impact is this having on the business climate in Moscow? It must be pretty making things much worse. Well, I don't feel too much of direct impact because sanctions are designed in a very special way against individuals, or targeting very special technology transfer, like offshore oil and gas drilling. For private companies like Savistar, we have nothing to do with government. Of course, we live in Russia and being corporate citizens. Responsible corporate citizens interact with the government, but not more than that. We don't have state participation. We don't participate in state programs. And for us, sanctions don't have immediate impact. But I believe that I feel that sanctions made overall negative impact on the business climate because they're adding anxiety, adding unpredictability. And we have enough risks already, brought by technology, by geopolitics in general. And of course, sanctions add to this anxiety and unpredictability in Moscow or in the whole Russia. But, well, we should distinguish between private and non-private business, I think, in this case. Right, Kambi, you wanted to get us. Yes, short intervention. If this sanctions list includes people just because they're wealthy or people just because they've done successful business, it will be a failure. It is not the purpose of that list, and it's not where it should go. And I don't think it is where it's going to go from what I've understood thus far. People like me who live in the geopolitical world where you want to avoid major power conflict and ultimately you want to have bring Russia, have it find its peaceful, rightful place in a Europe whole and free. That's got to be the goal over time. That's got to be the goal over time. Me and long-term, you can see yourself there. The short term's the problem. And the short term, I think one has to accept that until the Ukraine situation changes, the situation will not be normalized. I don't think the Europeans will drop their sanctions either. And I know that in Russia, this isn't entirely understood. But in the United States, the mood regarding our elections has really swung things. And it swung things with a large number of people who are deep friends of Russia, who have spent a lot of their careers working on Russia. Bob Blackwell and Phil Gordon just wrote a very important piece in Foreign Affairs of the sort that I thought they would never write. And because they've been such great friends of Russia over time. But the feeling is that this set of actions regarding our elections can't just be let to pass because it was too serious. And so I'm not reporting my opinion. I'm reporting the factual case of the situation in the United States right now. So it's going to take some time to address that. And it has economic. You actually can't separate the economic from the political at the moment. And for Russia to really be part of the world economy, we're going to have to figure out a way to address this. Because without the financing, without the access to technology, without the openness and the open relationship with Europe and the United States, I don't think Russia is ever going to be able to fulfill all of its ambitions and potential. What will it take to change this dynamic that we have, this toxic dynamic that we have right now? Well, there's talks going on now regarding Russia. Ambassador Kurt Volker, who is a person I greatly admire, is involved in those. And at various times, they've shown some significant progress. So I think on the Ukrainian side, it's just a set of decisions. Last year, unfortunately, the ceasefire violations were up by about 60%. The hostilities were up. So the trend line wasn't good last year. And the question is, what could turn that around? And so that has to be addressed first. That could be addressed relatively quickly. The election issue is going to be trickier. And I think that it's going to take a level of deep diplomacy and discussions with Russia of a sort that just really aren't taking place on that issue right now. One final question for the deputy prime minister before I take questions. We heard a little bit in this panel about the need for Russia to unleash the talents of young people, especially. And yet, there is perception and there is, arguably, also, in fact, the government, there's a clampdown on the opposition. There are concerns about free speech in the run-up to the election. Are you not concerned that this hinders self-expression? This will hinder Russia's ability to tap its creative resources? Well, first of all, let me make one remark in the last statement about elections. The issue of elections was invented by American establishment. There is no issue of elections in reality. And we cannot discuss something that was just invented by some very elaborated minds. And I don't think that economics and economic policies cannot be separated from the politics, from political considerations.  And the size of the list doesn't make the decision smart.   When asked about efficiency of sanctions today, your Minister of Finance, Secretary of Finance, said that, well, we believe sanctions are efficient since sanctions against North Korea and Iran were efficient. But first, Russia is not North Korea and Iran. Second, sanctions against North Korea and Iran were multilateral, where all countries were part of the decision-making. And this is not the case when we are talking about American sanctions. But again, sanctions is not the most important thing in the world. It's a minor issue that we should not spend too much time discussing. We should just work more and more efficient and work better, rather than think about sanctions. And it is not Russia who is hiding from dialogue. And it is not Russia who is not open. Americans are hiding from us in Davos. It's a small village, but they don't want to talk. They're hiding from real discussion about this stuff. Did you ask for a meeting with President Trump while he's here? Of course not. I'm not the president of Russia. That's a good thing. So I'm not in the position to ask for the meeting with Mr. Trump. But certainly, I was ready for contacts with members of American delegations. And recently, I think one area where there is some dialogue is energy. Without Russia, it's very hard to discuss energy issues all together. So they didn't reply to your emails? Or how did they just? We have channels of consultation that you can imagine. But your question is much more important about unleashing talent and dealing with more important issues. I don't think we have more problems with freedom of speech than any other country. We have cases where we can state that there were problems. But the same can be stated about any big country, about any big society. And you know about these cases in other countries. I should not mention that. And some people have been fired because of their reports and because of their activities. So do we have a problem? Sometimes we have problems with all kinds of issues, but not more than in other countries. I think more importantly is what we do in our economy, in our institutional arrangements in Russia, on the micro level. And we mentioned some of the things that we have to do, judicial improvements in judicial system is very important to have a level playing field for the society as a whole, for SMEs in particular, for individuals who want to explore new opportunities. And we know all the things we are trying to improve the system. It is important to understand that we were not actually losing time but not doing some things. We just focused on the things we had to do first. And you mentioned macroeconomic indicators that show that clearly. I didn't mention but it is important that the central bank was very tough on fighting inflation and also aggressively cleaning the banking system. It comes with a cost. When you do such things, interest rates are very high and access to credit is very limited, very low. And you cannot have thousands of new projects when interest rates, real interest rates, above 10%. And we have just a few banks who can actually give credit to new companies and individuals. So it all comes with a cost. But we basically finished this phase and we can enter the new phase where we can support businesses and create new opportunities. On that, so I'll turn over to the audience now for questions. I think we have, there should be some roving microphones around the room. Does anyone have any questions? Oh, there's one over here. I can't see you, but. We can't see anyone since it's late here. Can you please identify yourself when you ask? Can you see me? You can hear me. Thank you very much for the look-on of the Russian Global Affairs Journal. I have two questions. One to our Italian speaker and to American. You, from the context of your statement, did I get right that we cannot expect any change and European sanctions before Americans will lift it? And Mr. Kempe, I assume that you don't share the view of Vice Prime Minister that the election issue was invented. You mentioned that serious work will be needed to turn this page, but what kind of action from the Russian side does US political establishment expect? Do you mean that Russia should acknowledge meddling and ask for excuse for that or what should be signed for the American political community that it's time to change attitude? Thank you. V.I., I start. Of course. No, well, maybe I didn't explain myself very well, as you know there are two set of sanctions, different one, one are Europe plus US, let's say the previous one, and these are linked to the fact, to the Minsk process, let's say. So in a certain sense until Europe and US, but also now I'm talking about Europe, didn't see, don't see a real progress on that, probably the sanctions will stay there. So this is one part of the sanction. Even though this, as the vice prime minister said, yes, they affected the economy, but not so much. So there are some problems there, but they are there, then there has been a country sanctioned from Russia to you for example, or the agri food and whatever. So altogether this first part of sanction are still there, and I think this is linked to the Minsk process. So this is one. The second one I was referring also talking about E&I are the, let's say unilateral sanction by US, the one arrived in the last month. And these are mainly on the energy part. So these are only American. Honestly, there's still some uncertainty there. Some explanation has been done for what regards us, but still is not clear where they are applied, how they are applied. And as Mr. Mordeshoff said, when you have this, when you have sanction always, business people don't like that because it creates problems. And in this case specifically, they are not so clear. I mean, you don't know exactly how to apply that to whom they are applied. So this part is very linked to the decision of the US. And of course, for a big company as E&I, as I said, we have a lot of American shareholders. We are listed in the US. This sanction could be a very tough one and can hit strongly everything. So of course, in this situation, if there is also a small risk that we can be hit by that, of course what we have to stop what we have done. So one part has been clearly and specifically authorized by the US authorities. So we decided to go on. And the other, we are still trying to understand what the US authorities will do. So in this situation, we cannot go on. So that's the situation. So there are two set of different ones. The European ones are linked to the means process. Mr. Kemper. Although the question wasn't asked of me, I think it would be very difficult for Europe to depart from the sanctions path that was done jointly with the United States. And very carefully, by the way. And by doing it carefully, one used tools that were not draconian. They were really meant to send a message and keep Europe and the US together. And without a fundamental change in Ukraine, I think Europe would be in danger of losing a lot of credibility. It must be said there are countries in Europe, as always is the case, that were more in favor of this than others. And so you'll also see, as always, political efforts to drive a wedge between different European countries, which I also expect will be the case. In terms of the, this wasn't a panel on cyber and elections and you could have two hours on that and so I won't go into that. But I don't represent the government. All I can say is in the United States, rather than more questions about whether Russia meddled, rather than fewer questions about whether Russia meddled and less evidence, there's more conviction and more evidence. And the newest is evidence that Homeland Security has come up with where there was a probing of actual voting machines. It's unclear what was done in the voting machines, one doesn't really know, but there was a probing of it, that's now prompted new legislation being brought for a vote called Deterre. Marco Rubio is one of the sponsors and then there's a Democratic sponsor. But it's looking forward to our 2018 midterms. So in the US intelligence community and the US Congress, there's a consensus that this is factual. And so my answer, I think going forward, I think it is going to be difficult for Russia and for the Russian leadership to say yes, we did that, we're sorry, here's all the information of how it came about. But you could take steps bilaterally, multilaterally, that would have to be real and verifiable in a cyber direction.  But you really could show behind the scenes and certainly intelligence communities would see them, some good faith steps and some de-escalation of some of the actions that take place almost on a daily basis. But as I said, I'm not the expert there, but I'm reporting the mood in Washington. Any more questions? You in the new stage. Hi, my name is Yasmin Chekhta. I'm an entrepreneur from Egypt. I have two questions actually, the first for the gentleman from the prime minister's office. Now that Russia is becoming more and more involved in the Middle East, can you tell us a little bit about what your strategy is, what your future vision is? Because for a lot of us, we don't know what the end game is. And we've already had a lot of superpowers meddling in our region and it never ends well for us. And for the gentleman in the business community, what our region really needs is not another conflict. We need investment, we need jobs. Are any of your big companies actually have plans to invest in the Middle East? Because that's what we really need right now. Thank you. Can we keep the answers short? Yeah. We don't want to get one more round of questions. Yeah, we're very short. First, we believe that Middle East is a very important region with huge potential to grow and become one of the drivers of the future economic growth in the world. And Russia has to participate in that if Russia wants pragmatically to get benefits, but also to bring benefits to the region. Second, we truly believe that only economic development and growth can reduce security concerns in the region, reduce migration and flow of people from the region to safer places. And we need all together, Russia, Europe, United States contribute to the improved economic development in the Middle East. We have our expertise competent technologists to bring to Middle East peaceful nuclear energy, agriculture, other projects. And we will do that, both in Egypt and in other countries. From the business side quickly? Well, maybe you know, E&I is a big investor in Egypt. We have made this discovery of this giant in gas in Zor. We will invest $10 billion there. And I think it's very important also to say, and you know this, in the last year, Egypt had a lot of problems because you had to import gas and energy. And I know because also in my family own company, we are in steel. I'm a very strong customer of Mr. Mardesh, but I also buy steel from Egypt. And I know that in the last years, there were a lot of problems. And some companies had to shut down because there was no electricity. And with the discover of Zor, Egypt will be independent, will not need to import gas anymore. And I think access to energy and independence of gas, it's really one of the things that can really improve the situation and make more growth in your country and also in the old area. Is there a question at the front? That's fine. Well, if one comments about Egypt, because we're Very quickly, yeah. Yeah, we're developing bank. Of course, we support the export. We have a few projects, actually, which we support for some of our Russian products. And just recently, last week, we made a decision about increasing the limit for Egypt and increased to $3 billion, actually, which is good news for Egypt. Hi, I'm Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. At one time, I was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. My question is for the deputy prime minister, Dorkovich. As you know, my relationship with Russia has not been an easy one. I was expelled from the country. My offices were raided. My lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, discovered a $230 million tax rebate fraud committed by Russian officials. He was then arrested, tortured, and killed. As a result of his murder, there are now five countries that have imposed sanctions, Magnitsky sanctions, on Russia. You mentioned that you don't like the election sanctions and it's all made up. The Magnitsky story is not made up. It would be easy to prosecute the people who did it. Why does Russia insist, why does your government insist on covering up the Magnitsky murder and not prosecuting a single person and covering for them? Thank you. Well, this question is in Davos every year. And we, I think, responded to this question many times. So I don't think I should repeat that. Actually, I didn't say that I don't like the sanctions. I don't care about sanctions. We just work. And hopefully, we will achieve good results. We care about people. And unfortunately, sanctions are used by United States. Even if we imagine there is some goal related to Russia, but sanctions are actually used by United States not just to punish Russia or to send a signal to Russia, but to compete with Europe and other countries. Sanctions are definitely used for this purpose. And I think the efficiency of achieving this goal, US getting higher competitive positions with every Europe and other countries, is much higher than the efficiency of sanctions against Russia, as it is. And this is our attitude to any sanctions that have been applied to Russia. But as far as specific case is concerned, I'm not working for law enforcement agencies for general prosecutor's office. So I'm not in the position to give any more information on this particular case. Any more questions? We'll have one more. Good evening. I'm a global shaper from Kazanhub, Russian Federation. I want to ask you some question. How shapers can help to support and help international relationship? We have a lot of relationship with other countries, with USA also. And we want to help to build a great relationship, international relationship. How we can do that? One of the best, I think, answers is to build trust among people, common people. When we are talking about that Russia did something, or United States did something, it's not the whole of the United States. Usually it's the government's DC establishment. When we're talking about Russia, even when we're talking about elections, if you find that some Russian hacker did something in the United States, it's not Russia, even if it's true. I don't think it's true, but even if it's true, I don't think he was in the Kremlin sitting at the computer of presidential administration office and doing something in the United States. But even if it is true, I'm not saying it is true. So you should build trust. Millions of people who want better relationships and getting those people together, knowing each other, coming to our countries back and forth as tourists, as businessmen, as students, as teachers and researchers is the best thing that can be done by a new generation of people. I have a really brief answer to that because I think it's quite important. We're working on a project now looking at Russia-US relations maybe out to 2040, maybe out to 2030. And this is a great exercise for a global shaper to do, which is look at your worst case outcome in 2040 in the bilateral relationship. Look at your best case outcome. Look at the middle case outcome. Obviously, you want the best case outcome. What is it and how do you get there? And then you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. What are the facts and then how do you get there? And I think it's a great exercise that we should be undertaking bilaterally with experts over time because this relationship is just too important to get wrong over time. And we understood that in the US-Soviet period and in many respects, we were closer then and we were talking to each other about our problems more closely then than we are now. And so that would be the exercise that I would say the next generation could go through. And we are going to go through that process. Yeah, fully revisit, yeah. Yeah, well, on that note, I mean, just to briefly sum up, I think we've heard two sides of the coin. On the one hand, some of the perhaps more surprising, some of the arguments we've heard today have argued that the glasses have full when it comes to Russia's sanctions are not as big an impact on the economy as you might think. The economy is not perhaps as bad as some people in the West argue. Blockchain is a surprising success, perhaps, in Russia. But then on the other hand, on the other side of the spectrum clearly, there are some deeply intractable issues between Russia and the West that are going to take a long time to solve. There are ongoing questions about free speech in Russia. And again, these questions will probably be with us for some time to come. But thank you all for a very stimulating panel. Thank you. Thank you.