All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 27, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:35:33
Episode 23, Nov 27, 2023 - Legendary CryptoNote developer Andrey Sabelnikov unveils ZANO...
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to Decentralize TV.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon, the free speech video platform.
And, of course, my co-host, Todd Pitner, is joining us today.
Welcome, Todd.
It's great to have you on again.
So much fun to do this with you.
It is so awesome.
It's Friday.
I've been waking up every day asking, is this Friday?
And of course it wasn't.
But this morning, man, I scored.
I know.
And look at this, Mike.
I'm wearing our decentralized TV shirt.
I love it.
You do.
You have the new shirt.
Yeah, very cool.
I've got all the mugs and the hats and everything on the desk over here from our partners, redpillprints.com.
They're And if you go forward slash DTV, you'll come right to all of our products.
Oh yeah, true.
Yeah, that's true.
And anyway, we'll get back to them later.
Let's not keep our guest waiting because he's a living legend.
I mean, this guest is truly...
This is a huge thing to have him on the show, and he's with a project called Zano, or Z-A-N-O dot org, and I have to just make sure I get his last name correct, but it's Andrei Sabinikov, and he was involved in the CryptoNote project many years ago.
He is considered a living legend in cryptography and lead development of these projects, and he joins us now on Decentralized TV. Welcome, Andrei.
It's an honor to have you on the show.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for inviting me.
Hi.
Well, hello and thank you for taking the time to join us.
We greatly appreciate it.
And I would say let's first give people a background.
You know, if they're not deep into cryptography and crypto projects, they may not be aware of your work.
So could you give us a brief background of sort of who you are and what you've been involved with and how you came to the Zano project that we're talking about today?
I've been working on blockchain development for the last 10 years.
I've been invited into the project called CryptoNode as a lead developer.
This project became the basement basis for the I think a few hundred privacy-focused projects later.
Yeah.
It's like the grandfather project of what is now privacy coins.
Yeah, including Manera.
The biggest and the most successful, I would say.
And then after...
Controversial launching of the Bitcoin, the project name was a Bitcoin.
I left the company and I was working on a project of my own called Bulberry.
And then I found a co-founder and we found the guys who was Happy to support our work.
We did the new project, did the coin swap, and that's how Zana happened.
Zana started, launched five years ago.
That was quite succinct.
Thank you for that.
Then tell us, if you would, about Zano.
I'm going to bring up the website for people, zano.org.
Secure, scalable, easy to use.
What are the key properties of Zano?
Which is new to me, by the way.
I had not heard of Zano until just recently, getting you on.
Yeah, we've been under radar for quite a long time.
Well, that's easy.
That's evolution of my work.
Originally my work, now it's a team.
It's our work.
I'm not even the key person right now in the project from a technical perspective.
We have a really long story and it started like 10 years ago.
Perception of What cryptocurrency should be, what properties should have.
Also, for my own, it was evolved.
And I think Zana is my current vision of our team, what privacy project can be, what privacy cryptocurrency can do.
So we're trying to build and we're trying to extend Boundaries of potential of privacy projects.
It's not private.
Right now it's not only private transactions.
We're introducing our latest development.
We're introducing private tokens inside the transaction.
We're introducing absolutely private proof of stake.
And, yeah, we will continue to innovate.
Wow, so private proof of stake, I mean, that sounds difficult to achieve.
Yeah, it was difficult, actually, and we're really proud of this, and we built this with the help of Koa, the guy who is now a lead developer of lead researcher, I don't know what his title, of Monero, but two years ago, I think two years ago, we hired him as a Reviewer for initial version of our private proof-of-stake work.
He found some problems, but he was so active.
He was throwing new ideas.
He was helping us.
He was doing active contributions, so we asked him to become a co-author of the paper.
So it's not only Zano team, we also got help from Core, who is a part of Monero.
So Zano, is this a project that right now people can go out and exchange for Zano coins?
Yeah, yeah.
And you have wallets for all the platforms, GUI wallets or command line wallets?
Yeah, traditionally we have all this stuff.
We have a mobile application, We have a desktop application that can be downloaded from the website.
We have very few exchanges because for many reasons it's really hard to get listed right now.
You need billions of money, tons of money.
Especially being a privacy project is also a lot of exchanges hesitate to list privacy projects.
That's one of the reasons, actually, why we built our own infrastructure and trying to build decentralized technologies where all projects, including privacy ones, can build liquidity by themselves without centralized exchanges.
Right.
Wow.
Okay, so we live in a world right now – and by the way, Todd, you can jump in anytime.
I don't mean to dominate this.
No.
Dominate away.
I know, you'll give me.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, jumping in time.
But we live in a world right now of incredible financial surveillance.
And I would call it authoritarianism, especially in the Western world where you've got the Western banks that are now saying that you can't even bank with us unless we agree with everything you say and everything you do and all this nonsense.
Yeah.
So more and more people are looking for privacy in their finances.
What role can Zano help play then in people's lives of achieving privacy in their financial behaviors or assets or transactions?
How do you see Zano filling that role for people, even maybe versus Monero?
What does Zano do that Monero doesn't do, for example?
Because people are very familiar with Monero.
I don't want to keep the narrative like versus Manera.
I don't think it's a good way because we are trying to work together right now the last year.
So it's not versus.
We have our own direction that we follow and how we can help is very easy.
Actually, that's what we do.
We try to build the technology that can Give basically anyone who is having the token, we want to provide the possibility to use XANA as an environment, as a privacy environment, so they can...
Transact inside ZANA privately with their own tokens.
Doesn't matter what it is, USDT or Binance token or DAI, whatever, like stable tokens, doesn't matter.
Rapid coins, doesn't really matter.
So what we're trying to do is, by building these confidential assets, is to give other projects, other entities, opportunity to transact privately.
So are you saying that there's an exchange built into the wallet or are you saying that the Zano tech allows all these other tokens to be built on on top of it or both of those things?
Yeah that's what we do it's not in the mainnet but that's what we do and that what uh is already running in the testnet that that's the that's the core of our new technology we we build i just to make it clear we build Two important things during the last two years.
We invented two important things during the last two years.
The first thing is something that we call Arcanum.
It's a proof of stake with hidden amounts without revealing any sensitive information, including the amount of the staked coins.
Before that, it was even Considered as impossible.
We were reading different threads on Reddit and there was an answer that it's not possible to build a proof of stake on top of hidden amounts.
But luckily, we have a guy in our team, Val, who managed to build this technology with the help of Core, of course.
They did this together.
The second technology that we also built, also Val invented this, is confidential assets.
This is a technology that creates...
There was a bunch of projects that did something before, but they did it in a little bit naive form.
They created subsets of different tokens inside the privacy chain, so you can see what type of token transaction is sending, but you cannot see addresses, you cannot see the amounts.
Created is actually looking into the transaction.
You cannot say how much money was sent.
You cannot say who was the sender.
You cannot say who was the receiver.
And you cannot say what type of token was sent.
Was it native assets?
Was it some token?
Doesn't matter.
You cannot see this information.
At the same time, Core Validate everything through the math and guarantee the consistency of all the transactions.
That's what we're doing.
That's a huge deal.
That's a lot.
Todd, I know you want to jump in.
Go for it.
Well, my question's kind of a long one.
There's a little bit of build-up to it, so forgive me on that.
But Andre, personally, being a huge fan of private crypto, I must say it is an honor to be able to have you on, and you are a legend.
And thanks for joining Mike and me on decentralized.tv.
So I've done a good bit of research.
Thank you.
Yes, you're welcome.
I've done a good bit of research prepping for this interview, and I'd like to go into the Wayback Machine and educate our audience a bit on how instrumental you have personally been to preserve our digital privacy.
So, Andre, according to my notes...
CryptoNote was the first privacy-centric protocol developed by the mysterious Nicholas von Saberhagen, who invented untraceable digital transaction technology.
Do I have that right?
Yep.
Okay.
CryptoNote sparked the features that are currently present in the Monero network and much, much more.
And as I understand it, you were there as a developer from the beginning.
So from CryptoNote to Bitcoin to Monero and now Xano.
And I think you had Blueberry in there.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think it's important to mention that it wasn't just a privacy-centric protocol.
It was the first project that was built from scratch.
No one ever did it before.
Not off of BTC? Yeah, we didn't fork anything.
And by the time when we were doing this, Didn't know how big the whole thing is.
We didn't know how much effort it will take and how much pressure it put on everything, on every team member.
And we built the whole new coder base and I think we did a really great job because we We found that the new architecture for the project that worked really good, we created the whole unit testing environment that was also used by Monero.
Monero is using the same code base.
They originated from the same code base from CryptoNode and they used it the same way.
They kept the architecture and I believe that's also really...
I mean, maybe I'm too proud about this because that was part of my contribution.
But I believe because we were looking at the way Bitcoin was coded and for me, it was like...
For me, my perception was that the way it was coded is not by...
developer, but it was coded more like by a mathematician or someone who not really experienced in coding.
There was a talented cryptographer who was doing this, but like coding and building architecture of software, it's a little bit different thing.
So we we fixed this.
I believe we fixed this.
We created a very different network protocol that gives you opportunity to evolve the protocol so you can add New features with having backwards and forward capability.
It's really important for network application.
The whole CryptoNode project is based on...
First of all, it uses modern C++ design, and it's based on handmade serialization that was created specifically for this project.
That's like...
When you do the coding, it makes a lot of sense because it saves you from a lot of errors.
I believe the crypto node, besides the absolutely brilliant ideas from cryptographic perspective, it also Created a really great architecture for the future improvements of the technology itself.
Well, don't mind me jumping in here, Andrei.
I know from listening to a lot of developers on Monero that with their next rollout, you know, Serifus and so on, they're talking about the benefits of the modularity in the architecture of the code.
And also Firo.
Rubens talked about that too.
A lot of modularity.
And I think that's some of what you're talking about too, where if you have the correct architecture, then it makes upgrades in cryptography or changes in the codebase so much easier down the road because they're kind of like blocks that you plug in to an existing system.
Does that sound accurate?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's even...
It's not even a modular system, which is also absolutely great.
It's also a lot of things that exist in the code from many different perspectives.
I don't know how to explain it without diving into technical terms, but it's more about the culture of coding.
It's also very important that If the team has a very high culture of coding, the next generation of developers will have less headaches with transforming this project into something new.
With the new changes, they will have less problems with the old codebase.
I think that's what it is about.
Okay, that's really fascinating, especially your comments about Bitcoin being coded more by mathematicians.
Yeah, it was way back ago, like 2013.
Right now, I believe they do an amazing job, but when you were watching the way it was coded in 2012, 2013, it was more like, I would call it Old-school C-style, not C++, but C-style clothing.
And this is...
This is also old school, and a lot of cryptographers prefer to use C, except they like C, not C++. That's just a weird tradition which I never understood, but that's it.
In a Bitcoin code, I saw a lot of artifacts that I would never do in my codebase.
That was one of the reasons why we decided not to take a single line from Bitcoin, because we want to build from scratch from the whole new thing to make it more reliable.
Go ahead, Todd.
Andre, as I understand it, crypto was launched with the primary mission to fix Bitcoin's fungibility problem, right?
Can you just speak to what you feel Bitcoin's fungibility problem is?
Or at least that's what I read.
That's...
Well, first of all, I want to mention that I wasn't the guy behind the philosophy of CryptoNode.
I was hired as a developer.
I had a very minimal understanding of crypto by that time.
So most of the, like, philosophic ideas and motivation for creating CryptoNode was coming from Nicholas.
He was the guy who understood the need of creating a project like that.
He was your mentor, right?
Yeah, yeah.
At the beginning, I think during the whole year, he was educating me constantly.
And even after I quit, I kept consulting with him about literally everything.
I have to, and sorry, Mike, I'm just going to ask his last question.
I want the juicy stuff, Andre.
Okay?
Sure.
So, Nicholas was your mentor, so you obviously know him very well, and you continued the relationship.
Now, as I understand it, both Nicholas and Satoshi Nakamoto seem to vanish without a trace.
So, Andre, my question, and I think you would know, what did Nicholas and Satoshi do to piss off the Clintons?
They were disappeared.
Well, Nikola didn't disappear.
He's still around, but he just don't want to be on the spotlight, but he's around.
I even tried to convince him to come to Maneratopia.
Oh, cool.
Oh, that would have been something.
Okay, so he just withdrew just because he could, and what he gave birth to was just he's a proud papa.
He just wants to see him grow up.
There was a founder of the project, and we were just working as a team, including Nicholas.
It was like a company that we were hired.
Okay.
All right.
Is that a good enough answer, Todd?
That's a fine answer.
No, nothing deeper.
I had to slip in the Clinton joke.
That was it.
Okay, all right.
Well, okay, let me take us to another practical question then, which is the fact that almost all the privacy coins that we know about that we cover on this show are proof-of-work coins, you know, including Monero.
And yet you've chosen proof-of-stake.
And so what I'm curious is the positioning of Zano and Monero, What proof of stake as your choice or your project's choice, what you believe that that means for the applications of Zana or resilience against consensus attacks or things like that?
Why proof of stake and how do you think that changes the applications of the project itself?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And first of all, I said it many times that Zana used Proof of Stake not to motivate people to hold coins, not to motivate them to stake it.
The only reason why Zana used Proof of Stake is because at this moment, the only way I know to secure transaction history.
And we actually, yeah, we spoke with many teams and we always invite anyone who wants to have a discussion about proof of stake versus proof of work.
And we had a few, we even had a few discussions that was technical guys coming and we had a lot of arguing with them.
All arguments are always the same and we even had, on Monerotopia, we had a panel proof of stake versus proof of work and there was a A few guys, even Peter Todd was there, and all the arguments were from 2014.
The perception of proof of stake for a lot of people is connected with the confusion that proof of stake is something related to banks because it also pays you some percentage.
I don't even know how to explain how wrong it is.
Proof-of-stake, it's just a consensus algorithm that secure your transaction history.
It's absolutely simple to convince anyone who is listening because if you take a few projects as an example and you calculate the cost of double spent attack, you will see that the proof-of-work is a It was a good start, but it's a weak point of every pure proof of work project.
It's like a weak point.
I share this concern.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but of all the things that we cover on this show, I am very frequently concerned about proof of work attacks and how inexpensive they are to mount against small projects.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's the reason why we do this because I've been there.
I launched my first project.
Bulbary was a pure proof of work.
And I saw how easy it is to...
There was different attacks.
And I saw how I was doing calculation.
I saw because I was speaking with investors.
Most of our investors, the big ones, we know personally.
We met them in different countries.
And I mean, we are...
I mean, I don't know how I would look into their eyes and see.
Everything is okay if we have a weak consensus, right?
And it was really clear that proof of work doesn't give you enough power.
And even for a big project, they still don't realize it because they are big and they are in a relatively safe area.
It's a big project, but they will have these problems Sooner or later and the pure proof of work is a I think it's pure proof-of-work projects will be over in the next decade.
You will not see any proof-of-work projects.
That's a huge prediction.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure about this.
No project that's taken seriously will kept proof-of-work because it's super easy to mathematically prove that the cost of attack is very cheap.
And also, the other problem that a lot of people have...
Confusion about proof-of-stake is that proof-of-stake is equal to centralization because they see the way it's made in Ethereum, for example.
And also, I keep repeating that There's a different model of implementing proof-of-stake.
For example, the model that we have in ZANA doesn't have any dedicated validators.
Even if you have a small fraction of coins, you have a chance to build a block.
Everyone can build a block, and we call it probabilistic model.
Oh, wow.
So it's kind of rotating the authority.
Yeah, it works similar to Proof of work, but you use not the hardware that you buy, but you use your coins.
The same, absolutely same approach.
So what about the, and maybe these are the same old criticisms against proof of stake, but let me just verbalize what I'm sure our audience is asking and what's in my mind too.
I think, Todd, you would ask this too.
Yeah, the concerns that we've always had about proof of stake are that a project, there could be a lot of pre-mine, there could be millions of coins in the hands of people before the public even hears about the project, and then at that point...
There's only a few individuals who control every decision from that point forward, and really no one in the public can have a chance to meaningfully participate.
So I'm sure that's a criticism that you've heard.
Yeah, that's a good concern, but it's a criticism not addressed to proof of stake as a As a consensus algorithm, because a consensus algorithm doesn't describe your pre-mine.
It's a matter of a financial part of your project.
The huge pre-mine is not safe from any perspective, from the price maintaining, from any perspective.
And when I speak about proof of stake, we can discuss it in ideal conditions.
For example, when the initial distribution was created with Some proof-of-work history of the project like Zana has.
Originally, we had a Bulberry that created an initial coin distribution.
Also, we have Zana pre-mined, but it's like a 10% of coin emission.
Even right now, it's smaller.
Yeah, there is no way we can make a significant impact on the consensus.
What you say is right.
It's a good concern.
And I believe that it's a bad thing to have a huge demand from many perspectives, including impact on the consensus.
But proof of stake consensus itself In a healthy project, in a healthy coin distribution is the best option we have so far.
Wow.
Mike, this is blockbuster.
I know.
I mean, you heard it here.
Andre Damas stating that in 10 years, no Bitcoin, no Nero, no Epic Cash, no proof of work.
What do you think about that, Mike?
Well, first of all, I think that history has shown that there can be significant leaps in computational capabilities that arrive suddenly.
And, for example, quantum computing obviously comes up a lot in cryptography discussions.
But even without quantum computing, you can have leaps of computational capabilities or aggressive reduction in the cost of computational density, right?
So cloud systems, right?
So somebody could take $100,000 and go onto an Amazon AWS platform and build an attack against a coin that has a market cap of, let's say, $5 million.
And for $100,000, they could take over $5 million.
Am I right, Andre?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's even cheaper than you can imagine.
It's very easy to calculate.
You just see the, like, whatever, average blockchain project, you see the block reward that they have.
Block reward is just the cost that the network spent on the time of the block target.
So you see how many confirmation time they have, you just multiply the block reward on these confirmations that needed.
Multiply it on two, just to be sure, that's the price of double spend attack.
Like in a very simplifying situation.
And if you apply these calculations, you would be surprised at how How easy to target relatively small projects.
Like you said, the five million market cap is like a quite small project.
That's the reason.
We cannot speak about Bitcoin because Bitcoin itself is a very unique project and it's not that easy for Bitcoin because you won't be able to find that much A lot of pure proof-of-work believers use Bitcoin as an example, but it's not correct.
Because if you think about technology, you defend Bitcoin.
Yeah, that's cool.
I'm glad, actually, because Bitcoin is something very different and we have to keep it the way it is, like a historical artifact.
And that's the value.
But yeah, you cannot use Bitcoin as an example because Bitcoin is not a technology anymore.
Bitcoin is something just a value that people believe.
Bitcoin represents the idea of crypto itself, even though it's not the best technology at this moment in the crypto, right?
But it's something that represents the belief in crypto.
So that's why it's so expensive.
You cannot use it as an example.
So it is the church of Bitcoin, in essence.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, well, I confess I'm part of this church.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know what?
I wanted to ask you, because I'm just fascinated by your history.
How does somebody arrive at your level of skill with all of this?
What did you do prior to being educated in We're at CryptoNote by Nicholas.
What did you do that...
I mean, were you a mathematician?
Were you already a programmer?
I wasn't a mathematician and not a mathematician at this moment.
We have a wall who is doing mass type.
I'm a developer.
I'm a coder.
I'm an architect.
That's what I do.
That's what I've been doing for ages.
Originally, my background was before the crypto node.
My background was security systems, anti-malware systems.
That's what I was working in for the eight years.
And that's where I learned how to build the network.
I learned how to...
So originally I was working in Agnitum, that was a Russian company that was building network security projects.
And there I learned a lot about networking, about just effective ways to build a network application.
And then I worked in a few other companies that work on the anti-malware projects, and that was also a very interesting experience, because it's also some sort of rocket science.
Yeah, so my background before was related mostly about security and network connectivity, like network security, that's it.
Well, I... Go ahead, Billy.
Okay, I have a question following from that, thank you, which is, Andre, the...
It seems like a lot of the privacy protocols in crypto are now becoming...
More commonplace, well understood, well documented.
Whereas even five years ago, not so much.
It was a lot more experimental.
But the privacy algorithms and the privacy code and so on is becoming more accepted.
So my question to you is, where do you see privacy crypto in five years?
Do you see privacy spreading to other projects that are currently not privacy?
I hate those questions like that.
I mean, thank you for the question.
I'm joking.
No, it's fine.
We're not going to...
It's not totally easy to be on the show.
We're definitely going to hammer you with a few tough questions from time to time.
That's hard because...
For me, that's hard because for the last 10 years, I was watching the history of the crypto being inside it and being a little part of this.
And...
Anytime in the past, I couldn't imagine what it's coming to transform into.
Because there are people who say that, oh, I saw it, I predicted this, blah, blah, blah.
No, most of the people didn't see it, maybe except very few people, like Vitalik, who was a visionary.
He has a vision about, Vitalik Buterin, I mean, about Ethereum, his thing.
And by the time that we were coding CryptoNode, Ethereum was just an idea, a paper, and a few publications.
And we was wondering, who is this guy?
What is he up for?
And seeing how history of crypto was transforming every, I would say every bull run, because every bull run normally is a kick that like speed up the Next year?
Yeah, every bull run was kicking this.
And every new bull run was something new.
Every new, every phase turned it into something different.
And I have no idea how it will be transformed in the next five years, but I want what I want it to become.
As to become more replacement of a traditional payment, more replacement of a bank.
I mean, it's nice things to say.
I mean, since the beginning, everybody wanted to pay with Bitcoin for the cup of coffee.
But right now, it's something new.
For the last year, for the last two years being a Russian, I had a lot of troubles with the banks.
Being a Russian who lived in other countries, not in Russia, we had a lot of troubles, a lot of payment systems and banks cut us from the cards.
I can only imagine.
I have so many cards that was annulated during the last two years.
And what I really want is crypto to be replacing step by step.
It's already doing this and crypto itself is doing a really great job for creating the financial freedom.
And once again, being a Russian in a given situation, we felt it We felt it, how it helped people to solve the simple problems.
Let me jump in and just add to what you're saying.
And this is why we do this show on today, because we believe in personal freedom and financial freedom and privacy.
But you get cut off from Western banks because you're Russian.
I get cut off from American banks because I'm a real American.
How come?
From telling the truth.
The banks in America, they will do banking like JPMorgan Chase.
They will bank with Jeffrey Epstein, pedophiles, child kidnappers, and sex traffickers, but they do not want to bank with Americans that tell the truth about anything.
Andre, you're speaking with the most censored man.
I am one of the most censored people in America, that's true, yeah.
But solely because, again, we are willing to tell the truth about many issues.
But my point is that you are Russian and I'm American, but we're both censored by Western banks for different reasons.
So the goal would be for us to all be able to move value privately, anywhere, anytime, any amount, right?
That's right.
Including to Russia.
If you happen to have family members in Russia and you want to give them a gift, Merry Christmas, you should be able to do that.
Yeah, that's the reason why privacy is actually fighting with censorship.
Because when it's private, it's hard to censor.
That's right.
But wait a minute.
Wait a minute, Andre.
Anonymity plus privacy plus digital transactions, that certainly means that you just want to do something nefarious, right?
I mean, don't you believe that privacy is a human right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I believe.
I believe.
Yes.
Well, that's our core philosophy here.
It's a human right.
Can I ask about that network attack going back to, you know, even a small $5 million privacy project?
You know, you have some really smart developers there in all of these.
But I hear you.
It's all math.
Tell me what your thoughts are, because you are Andre Damas.
When the CBDCs are the new normal, Don't you think some of these smart people out there, let's call them white hats, don't you think they're going to go after the CBDC network?
And the folks who have created those probably aren't as smart as those in private crypto.
Don't you think that somehow, someway, that there's going to be just an attack on CBDCs?
Well, I think it's a matter of money.
If some organization has enough money to attract high-quality developers and researchers, they can do okay.
Of course, there are always whiteheads, hackers, or whatever they call themselves, that can find the problems.
It's a little bit different and I don't have any sympathy to this because I believe that money is something different and the government normally screw up with the money, the way they operate.
So it shouldn't be controlled by government.
As soon as you have control over the government on the money, you'll have problems.
In many ways.
And Bitcoin itself proven this theory perfectly.
Actually, that's really great that Bitcoin existed and succeeded that much.
It's just to bring a perfect example that the general money can exist without any government.
It just exists by itself, controlled by mass.
I think also, Andre and Todd, that the key issue that people are going to come to learn is that under a CBDC system run by a government, central ledger, centrally controlled, you, the user, you do not have custody over your money.
Yeah, it's just a joke.
It's a joke, right?
It's not even yours.
You don't control it.
They can cut it off.
They can limit everything.
So with Zano or Bitcoin or Monero or whatever, as long as you put it in your wallet, take it off the exchanges, you have self-custody.
And especially with a privacy coin, like Zano, no government can take it from you.
Unless you give up your seed phrase or your password or whatever.
But they can't see it, so they can't take it.
They can't force it from you.
It's kind of like if you have gold and you have gold buried in your backyard, yeah, technically the government could take it, but they would have to come with shovels and dig up your yard.
That's a lot of work for governments, which tend to be very lazy.
Yeah.
They just want to take your money because they already control it, pretty much.
Comments?
Well, I basically agree with this.
So where, Andre, can we acquire Xano?
Yeah, good question.
Like, what exchanges?
On exchange?
We have a CoinX right now.
The best exchange that we have so far.
What's the web address for that?
Coinx.com, I think.
Coinx.com.
Oh, okay.
Coinx.com.
Yes, Coinx.com.
All right.
We'll bring that up.
Yeah, we have also listed on TradeOgger, but this exchange looks pretty scary for some people.
It's like from 2008.
10 or something like that.
I remember first getting into private crypto and I use trade over a lot, you know, and then everyone started scaring me that it's just a scam.
They're going to, you know, there's going to be a point where there's a rug pull.
And so I hesitated using it or certainly recommending others to use it.
But I thought it was a great exchange.
You know, it worked.
Well, the problem with exchange is that before we've been listed on an exchange that's called Stacks.
Stacks wallet?
Oh, Stacks.
Stacks, yeah.
And about two months ago, the exchange just disappeared.
With all the money, with everything, it just disappeared.
We know that it was a Ukrainian-based exchange, but all the context was removed from social media, so I think it was an exit scam or something like that.
So what's the lesson learned here?
Get your coins, people, off of the exchanges as soon as you acquire them.
Not your keys, not your coins.
Not your keys, not your coins.
What about swap services, you know, like StealthX or SimpleSwap or things like that?
Are there swaps that support Xano?
We support atomic swaps, but this technology is actually not really...
I mean, it's working, but it's not really popular for users.
And I understand why, because atomic swaps, the classic hash time locket atomic swaps, They always give advantage to one of the parties, and more than crypto trading, time is the key, and you don't want to miss the opportunity or get some side.
So it's not really popular, these atomic swaps, and that's why what we're building in Zana, we built something that we call ionic swaps.
It's actually truly an atomic operation that runs with One transaction, one transaction, execute, and that's done.
Or it's not.
It's way similar, because with AtomicSwap you need at least four transactions, proposal, answer to proposal, execution, withdrawal, withdrawal, right?
And with IonicSwap you use it in one single transaction, which should be better.
And we're trying to build, Pavel right now working on User experience that will be looking similar to Binance peer-to-peer exchange because we cannot show the order book in an open way because it's private.
All the transactions are private.
So you don't want to know what tokens are exchanged.
And if you show it publicly, it will be possible to collect analytics and then predict which transaction actually holds what tokens and what amount.
So we created something like trying to build something like a peer-to-peer experience when people When they match each other with what they want to do, they together exchange the keys and then they together create this confidential transaction.
In one transaction they swap assets.
That's cool.
What trading pair on CoinX?
Is it a BTC trading pair?
I know that there is a USDT to Zana and probably something else, but I don't know.
I don't trade much, honestly.
Okay.
Let me ask you, too.
I'm on CoinMarketCap, and it says the 24-hour volume of Zana right now is about $11,000 per day.
But is that missing activity because of its privacy nature and the DEX that you have?
I mean, is CoinMarketCap...
Even really capturing the activity of the coin?
Honestly, I really don't know.
Okay, fair enough.
Because I'm not following the financial part of the project.
Thanks God we have Pavel who is handling this part of the project.
Okay.
Yeah, me and Val, we mostly focused on the technical side.
Okay.
Yeah, I cannot say if there is missing anything.
Well, no worries.
And it's interesting because the price on CoinMarketCap right now is literally.9999, which initially seeing that, I would think, oh, it's trying to be a stablecoin.
But it's actually...
Yeah, it's funny.
I don't know why.
I have no idea for what reason, but for the last...
For the long time, few months, we had the price stick to $1 for no reason.
And we don't...
That's funny.
Yeah, I'm like, why is it always a dollar?
Yeah, I don't know.
I have no idea why.
No, I see it used to be like 40 cents and whatever.
Even just last year, it was quite a bit lower.
So yeah, it just happens to be $9.99 today.
But anyway, funny thing.
Yeah, but the price behavior is very strange for me.
It's never related to what we actually build.
Yeah.
Two years ago, I think two or three years ago when Roger bought our coins and we met him in Mexico and we talked with him and he then put the picture of us in Instagram.
Our price jumped to the sky, like to the $8.
But people don't really care what we actually do.
That's funny.
Yeah.
But Todd, isn't that kind of what we found too?
That a lot of the pricing is about the buzz more than maybe what's under the hood.
It's the buzz.
It's, you know, people don't realize, but in these crypto communities, there's a lot of emotion, right?
It's like this ecosystem of, it's a community, right?
It's kind of like a big family, and in big families, there's tussles, but then all of a sudden, everybody gets motivated, and it's rah-rah, and all for one, and then there's other times where it's all for one, and you've got one person saying, and I'm the one, and Who dumps on everybody.
You know, but you need to have a strong stomach to suffer through the volatility of really any microcap, I think.
But, you know, I love what I've heard from you and I intend to acquire some Xano.
Yeah, me too.
I mean, I don't own any right now.
Do it at your own risk.
Yeah, at your own risk, absolutely.
I want to play with it and find out more about your hybrid, you know, proof of work, proof of stake approach.
I still don't understand the hybrid part of this.
Where does proof of work come into play?
Yeah, the only reason why we still have a...
Sorry?
Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, I just said good question.
Yeah, the only reason why we still keep proof of work is because there is one attack, long-range attacks, that we don't know how to overcome to solve this problem, so we left proof of work as a Solution to protect us and the way we build it from the long-range attacks you have to Accumulate all this proof of work has been for for a long time.
It's not like it's economically not profitable In any way, but as soon as we the thing is the project like Ethereum that who use PBFT algorithm for consensus for proof of stake and They solved this problem with finality, and that's fine.
They're good to go.
But we don't want to use PBFT because it requires you to have a validator.
You have to put additional conditions.
You have to have a bunch of coins, set up nodes, or do some complicated stuff.
And there is a question about decentralization because now you have a Few dedicated people who are obliged to make a decision for the coins, for the consensus.
And we don't want to go this way.
So for now, to solve the problem with long-range attacks, we have a proof of work.
But as soon as we figure this out, We'll get rid of proof of work, like, forever.
Well, Andrei, this is, and we're almost out of time here to wrap this up, but you bring up a really important point, something that Todd and I have also noticed in just many various projects, where overall the project may be about decentralization, but then internally within the project there could be, for example, concentration of mining, Or, you know, concentration of holders of proof of stake, like we talked about.
Or, you know, concentration of coders, maybe just one or two people control everything, all the software, all the wallets, and so on.
That's true.
How do you address this in a relatively small project?
You know, it's not Bitcoin.
But how do you achieve that redundancy and decentralization internally?
Honestly speaking, I think from this perspective, from the team perspective, Zana is a quite centralized project because we are quite small.
We're just a team of five people who, yeah, we've been doing this for ages, but we are not that centralized as, for example, if you look into Monero, they They, right now, have an absolutely different, like, next generation of developers.
And I think Maner is a great example of decentralization of the organizational structure of the project.
Because I was speaking with the different people on Manerotopia, and I was asking how you guys are doing this stuff, because I see, like, five years ago, seven years ago, it was a Absolutely different people who was frontman and running Monero.
Now we have a different, like absolutely different people, the whole new people.
And the project is still running and the project is fine.
And they managed to find a decentralized way of running the project.
And I think that's the great example and Zana will be Trying to be more like that.
That's what we think is the best way.
Okay.
Fascinating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, we've been able to get really deep into some serious questions here.
So, Andre, I mean, it's been a pleasure being able to speak with you.
It's my pleasure.
Yeah, I have a sneaky suspicion that when this comes out, you know, we're not Roger Ver, but I think you might have a lot of people visiting your website, like me.
It's like this weekend, I have some research to do.
I'm going to figure it out.
Well, me too.
Zano, I put in the category, here's a project that has really innovative technology, very amazing technology, that most of the world doesn't know about.
It's astonishing to me the asymmetry of how good tech can be in a project and yet how few people can know about it.
But that's also opportunity for people to embrace it.
Unfortunately, there are many projects, underestimated projects in the crypto field.
We've met a few very talented teams, but the problem of the projects like that is that they have tech-focused teams that are building something with lack of understanding the marketing, how you have to promote the project.
For ages, I was doing this project alone.
Focused on technology and always was fighting and reading the negative comments in the chats and there was a clan wars, like tribal wars.
And that's what it is.
And with Zana right now we're trying to change this.
We are still tech-focused project, but I have a co-founder who is We're trying to change this and we're actually getting more and more people who are interested in the project and trying to help us from that perspective.
We have a group who is helping to fund us last year and they're helping us with marketing.
So we're trying to fix this.
I understand this problem, and it's a problem for many projects in crypto.
If you don't solve this problem, you're going to die, because a lot of dead projects were a good project, but they are now dead because they were not taking care of the marketing, didn't give enough attention to this.
Do you have any group on Telegram?
I just think Telegram is really great for community.
Yeah, we have Telegram and Discord, and we have connected this between each other.
Okay.
Yeah, we have it.
We have it.
Okay.
So I guess people can find those links.
We have all the links on the website.
Okay, perfect.
All right.
Perfect.
So let's do that.
Let me give out the website again.
Zano, Z-A-N-O.org is the website.
Yep.
Zano.org.
And then, Andrei, I just want to thank you for taking the time to join us today.
It's been a real pleasure.
I mean, fascinating.
Oh, yeah.
The pleasure was mine.
It was a really warming conversation.
Thank you very much for having us.
And thank you for interested in our project.
You are welcome.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate you, and I know it's late where you are, so have a good night and feel good about it.
You did a great job here on the show today.
Yep.
Thank you.
Especially for a lead developer to do a little bit of public relations.
You know, you're doing great.
So thank you for joining us.
Hashtag legend.
Hashtag legend.
Thank you for having us, guys.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Andre.
Okay, good night.
Cheers.
Join the official discussion channel for this show on telegram at t.me slash decentralized TV where you can ask questions or offer suggestions of who we should interview next.
Also be sure to subscribe to the email newsletter on decentralized.tv where you'll be alerted about one day in advance of each new upcoming episode before it gets published.
On Decentralize.tv, you'll also find links to our video channels and social media channels across all platforms, including Brighteon, Rumble, Bitchute, Twitter, Truth Social, and more.
Check it all out at Decentralize.tv.
All right, folks, that was Andrei Sabilnikov with Zano.org, and I'm just so blown away.
I learned a lot of things here.
Wow.
Yeah, what are your thoughts, Todd?
Well, my thoughts are, I have to share with you, Nicholas, what is it, Nicholas Van Saberhagen, when you go out and you do the research, there's a lot of people out there who thinks he is Satoshi.
Yeah, yeah.
And then there's a lot of people who think...
That Andre is new Satoshi.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that.
Yes, yes, yes.
That he might be both.
I don't think so at all.
No, I don't think so.
He already said the code was too, you know, mathematician-like, but...
Exactly.
But it's interesting.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's fascinating.
And, I mean, we hit upon so many really important points in this interview, and he dropped a bombshell.
And what was his prediction?
That there wouldn't be viable proof-of-work projects after...
In 10 years.
10 years, right?
After 10 years.
And that's a big bombshell.
And actually...
Frankly, this is the first time that I'm starting to understand the big vulnerability of proof of work on smaller projects.
Right.
Why do you think that somebody, you know, I'm not going to say smarter than us or nefarious or anything, but why do you think there hasn't been some attacks then?
I think it's just a question, because really, if you can apply computational power to a smaller project, then you can achieve double spends, essentially.
But what's the value of the double spend on a very small project?
So if you think about it, if you could double spend, let's say, FIRO, What would you do with it?
Okay, you could send it somewhere.
You could swap it for Bitcoin.
You could extract Bitcoin out of a double spend.
But on the smaller projects, you can only get away with a certain amount before you're cratering the price of that project.
Ah, there you go.
You see what I mean?
Yeah.
So the computational power that you apply to it has a limited payoff.
So one would need to be smart enough to identify the attack vector, but patient enough until that $5 million market cap might be $100 million, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Because I think the minute you start to unleash a double spend attack, you're going to start...
Red flags are going to start going off at the nodes, and people are going to start investigating, and then they'll probably roll out possibly even a hard fork, and everybody changes the software and fixes whatever that was.
But if a project is more like $100 million in valuation, but frankly, I think, Todd, this comes down to the daily liquidity.
If you're going to do double spend attacks and then offload those coins, you have to do so in an environment of high daily liquidity.
You do.
So that you don't get noticed before you're offloading a bunch of money.
Correct.
That's why Monero still, to this day, is the king of private crypto.
Today, I was talking to Alex, our good friend.
We interviewed Alex from Monero.
They did $4 million on Kraken in Monero in the last 24 hours.
That's a lot of liquidity.
Yeah, that is.
Yeah, Monero, you know, first of all, Bitcoin is almost impossible for anybody to attack with computational power, right?
Because you'd have to have warehouses of specialized servers.
But as Andre pointed out, that's a rather unique situation.
There's nothing quite like Bitcoin, right?
Right.
Monero in the privacy space is the closest to that.
Yep.
And I don't know what kind of computational power you would need to achieve, you know, to break consensus and achieve double spins in Monero, but I would imagine it's something quite significant.
Yeah.
But what I got out of the interview, too, with him is he's very impressed with Monero and their deaths.
Yes.
You know, they're teams and that they're really working on next, you know, generational type tech.
Yeah.
So that's encouraging too, you know, it's just...
Absolutely.
There's so many smart people in this space.
And I thought it was great too that Andre, he wasn't...
Wanting to attack Monero.
No.
And I wasn't trying to bait him into that, by the way.
I was just wondering about what are the distinguishing properties that set your project apart.
Yeah.
Good question.
Yeah, we're not here to bash Monero.
I mean, we're fans of Monero.
Yeah, we're not versus, he said.
Right, right, exactly.
And that was the same attitude that Ruben had from Firo as well.
It is.
It's like, okay, Monero is the giant in the privacy space.
And even as Andre said, it's a decentralized development environment inside Monero, and it turns out that a lot of these developers do collaborate with other projects.
Right.
And they should.
Yes.
I think that's great.
And they should, because ultimately, as we discussed at the beginning, the goal should be about how do we move value privately.
Period.
In a story.
Yes.
You know?
Right.
But it's still not clear to me What are the strong differentiating factors of Zano versus Monero, right?
So, I mean, the argument would be like, okay, let's say I'm using Monero right now.
Why would I want to diversify into Zano?
Or why would I use Zano?
Like, what's better about it?
And I don't know the answer to that yet, but then again, I need to dig into it.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I haven't answered.
It's not going to be a lot, but it's going to be something because I really want to support the project.
Oh, true.
And, you know, I loved...
His passion for privacy, and I love his commitment and his whole history.
It's all been about, you know, privacy-centric protocols and what that can do for humanity and freedom.
He used freedom several times, and I love that.
So I think we need to support projects like that.
And who knows?
Here's the other thing, Mike.
It's just...
Crypto is crazy.
You never know when you diversify and you have a little bit, you know, across several, when one just really takes off.
Not financial advice here, folks, you know, but microcaps have a much greater opportunity or chance of being able to do that 10x or 100x thing than Bitcoin, or Monero, or any of these large projects.
I want to address, too, I think an advantage of Zano is the fact that the lead developer, Andre, is Russian.
And let me explain why that is.
See, I think that the American empire...
Is authoritarian, tyrannical, punitive.
and if American developers are well-known on any project, Monero or otherwise, and this is one of the reasons why it's hard for us to ever interview developers, because they're all hiding for all the right reasons.
Correct.
But if there's an American developer that were a lead developer on a project, the American empire, this tyrannical lawless government, can pressure them, debank them, threaten them, audit them, whatever, shut them down.
Whereas, you know, here we have Andre living in Europe, not in Russia, but I don't want to say where he is.
But he did tell us before the show.
But the American empire can't touch Andrei.
And that's actually a key advantage.
And the same thing is true with Firo, right?
So Reuben is in Malaysia, right?
He's in Malaysia.
So the American Empire is going to have a hard time suppressing a Malaysian citizen or, frankly, someone in, let's say, Japan or someone in, I don't know, Right.
Right.
Poland or places like that, right?
So I kind of tend to like projects where the key developers are not located under the control of the American empire.
Right, right.
Well, and I think the mysterious Nicholas Van Saberhagen, you know, nobody knows who he is, you know?
Again, from my research, it's like he is very, very mysterious.
But that's because he had the forward vision, same with Satoshi, right?
You cannot pioneer this privacy technology without a bullseye on your back.
That's right.
By...
Yeah, and frankly, I think the Western Empire has the most to lose from privacy crypto because the Western Empire runs...
The whole global business model of the Western Empire is to print fake fiat currency and then use its military to project power onto other countries.
And crypto makes that less viable, that whole model.
Yeah.
Because if countries can trade with each other, well, I mean, frankly, I guess we could get into the BRICS currency project as well, right?
So the BRICS nations and what they're coming up with, which as I understand, is supposed to be a gold, not a gold backed, but a gold priced international transactional currency used by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, right?
Brazil, Turkey, India, and many other countries that, When that actually goes live, who needs dollars for those transactions, right?
What do you think when they come flooding back to America?
What's going to happen to food inflation, Mike?
$50 hamburgers is what's going to happen.
That's why I bought a quarter of a cow.
It's in my freezer.
That's why I'm planting a food forest in my backyard.
That's right.
I mean, you're going to be going to the grocery store.
First of all, there's going to be mass looting of the meat section of the grocery stores.
So you're going to have flash mob looters.
Yeah, with the...
Pants to the ground, you know, with a big old pant.
You were talking about it on your podcast.
I was, yeah.
I was like, are you happy to see me or is that a side of pork ribs in your pants, you know?
But that's shoplifting in America.
They'll just go in with baggy pants and then just grab like a side of beef or pork and shove it down their pants and just stroll right on out.
Mike in California, they don't even have to shove it down their pants.
They can just walk out, yeah.
No one's chasing you.
No one's even prosecuting the shoplifters.
And you know, when I don't even think the workers can try to stop them, they'll get fired.
They will get fired.
Right.
So, but, I mean, I got to mention this.
What retail operation is going to maintain any store in a California city?
Like, nobody.
Nobody.
Well, the ones that will be subsidized, they'll become government grocery stores, right?
Oh, boy.
Yeah, line up for Soylent Green, yeah.
Exactly.
I remember the story.
My wife, she's Russian.
She told me that during the Soviet-Russia time that they got meat two times a year.
They could go to the Russian-controlled grocery stores, and the two times a year was, I believe, November 7th, which was their...
Veterans Day, I guess, D-Day, I don't know.
And then the other one was because New Year's Eve is such a big deal, they could buy meat on New Year's Eve.
Wow.
And you know the funny thing is the way their mind processed it, Because when you can't have something, you just kind of make other things up, right?
And the narrative was meat is just not good for you.
So it's a good thing that the government is giving us rations.
That's what we're hearing in America now, too, that they're saying meat's not good for you or good for the planet.
But gosh, I know vegans who have meat more than two times a year.
Yeah.
I know.
It's like, yeah, vegan most of the time, except on barbecue day, you know?
Yeah.
Hey, speaking of barbecue, and this has to do with privacy, so it's back on topic, but did you see that the New York Police Department, you know, you probably heard me talking about this, they announced that they're going to have drones monitoring the backyard barbecues of people who have...
You've got to be kidding me.
No, they're going to have drones.
Like, if you have a gathering in your backyard in New York City...
They're going to dispatch police drones to watch you and spy on you.
That's New York.
I mean, this is a dystopian sci-fi hellscape, you know, rolling out in real time.
I mean, it's just crazy.
It's just like you can't write this, but then Orwell did, you know, 1984.
Yeah.
It's like back to the future, you know?
And it's crazy because if they have excess drones to monitor people's barbecues, why don't you send those drones to the border?
I mean, there's something we could monitor there that would actually matter, which is illegal border crossing.
But instead, it's like, no, let's spy on people's backyard barbecues and swimming pools and whatever.
Yeah, because child sex trafficking, Mike, you know, it's just, it's minor in comparison with CO2, you know, methane.
Or grilling brisket in your backyard whenever you're cooking up there, your $50 hamburgers.
Goodness gracious.
But this underscores the need for privacy, which is why we love to have interviews like this today with Zano.
I think, you know, Privacy tech is really moving forward rapidly.
Wouldn't you say so?
Just from the people that we've interviewed?
Oh, my goodness.
Yes.
And continue to stay in touch with.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
They keep developing.
And there's just new nuances to certain projects.
And there's others that are just really slow and steady playing long ball.
That's right.
That's Vero, right?
I mean, he's just steady Eddie and has his eye on the prize and man just working their tails off to operationalize their vision.
And it's going to be an exciting next, I'd say 18 months.
Absolutely.
I think so, too.
And hey, while we're thinking of it, let's do a couple of plugs.
But let me start by asking, you know, your consulting service now, which we announced a few weeks ago, your consulting service is getting a lot of traction.
And the website for that, folks, is decentralizeddirectory.com.
But tell us, Todd, you've had several clients and you've had some real success stories.
But tell us what that service is all about.
Sure.
It's time to become independent and self-reliant.
And I have multiple strategies, but one in particular that is worth the price of admission all by itself.
It's a tax advantage strategy.
And I will tell you, Mike, initially when we were promoting it, it was kind of more about being able to get people into private crypto and coach them in and whatnot.
But what I found after the first week of the website being launched is...
I was turning into a crypto help desk.
I lost my seed phrase.
Can you help me?
No, the best one was this guy saying, hey, here's my cell phone.
I need you to call me.
I only have a little bit of time, but I have a dead treasure that I need to figure out how to resurrect so that I can connect it to my MetaMask and find my lost crypto.
I'm like, oh, not this guy.
I can't do that.
But the...
I will tell you that the folks that I have consulted with that have booked an hour with me, and that's what I ask, book an hour with me, and then I'm going to give you keen insights, but out of all of them,
I'm batting 75% of these have, when I educated them on this tax advantage strategy that lets them keep We're good to go.
That's right.
And I have had my own for the last three and a half years, which is why I'm so passionate about it, because I can testify it works.
It is the best investment, Mike, ever I've ever made was three and a half years ago.
And I think this is extraordinary.
Yeah, and...
For real, folks, this is something that can change your life and help you preserve your assets and also transfer them to the next generation.
But if you're going to be handling any significant amount of crypto, you need to do it inside this vehicle.
And it's worth the hour to talk to Todd and find out about this.
Let me tell you, Mike, as you know...
I spent five weeks with our friends at Kraken to get them educated to what this vehicle is so that they would bless it, right?
Because I wanted to be able to connect my bank account for my non-profit, it's what this is, this is a non-profit, to Kraken.
Because it's tax-exempt.
And so if you think about you onboard crypto or if you're in crypto already and you need to off-ramp it, that's the only time that crypto becomes a taxable event.
Right, Mike?
Right.
That's right.
But when you off-ramp it into tax-exempt status, well, you guys do the math.
Exactly.
It's worth the price of admission.
When you say non-profit, but this is a special structure that I had never heard about.
But now that you have started to bring it up, I'm fascinated by it.
I'm going to have to dig into it a little more myself.
But it's a legit IRS-recognized structure that's used by the wealthy people.
Elite, frankly.
It's a secret.
It is a secret, and you know, the reason why nobody knows about it is those of us who have it don't want to talk about it.
You just don't want to draw attention, you know?
Yeah.
But it is, and I have the gentleman that creates these, that gets them certified, that goes through the IRS and gets everything tax-exempt status, and we've been in contact over the last three and a half years.
He's been great.
And he has given me the opportunity to be the representative, the sole representative on this, because he told me, he said, Todd, I can do about 25 to 30 of these a month.
And he goes, I just want to do that.
I don't want to go find the people that need him.
And I'm like, that's what I'm here for.
I think we can help a lot, a lot of people.
And the other thing is, with my consulting service, I give you access to Kraken, the team that we went through to create all this, and you'll get white gloves treatment.
They'll know what's coming.
They'll know how to manage it.
So it's just so cool.
It's just so cool, Mike.
That is very cool.
There are other service providers, product providers and such that I've developed pre-negotiated opportunities for those who become part of the decentralized directory family.
And lastly, I'm just going to say, Mike, is the directory is going to continue to fill out.
As I start meeting other folks dedicated to decentralization and freedom, they're going to be added to the directory.
So those who consult with me and...
It's never going to be more than an hour.
Because once you're part of the family, you're part of the family.
You're part of the network.
So, I'm excited.
Yeah, it's well worth checking out.
Decentralizeddirectory.com.
And also, Todd, the person that I've been trying to reach to connect to you, they've responded.
So, we'll talk about that after the show.
Wonderful.
So, yeah, we're going to be able to connect them.
Let me plug the redpillprints.com.
Yeah.
They've created these shirts and hats and mugs for the show.
If you go to redpillprints.com slash DTV, it'll bring these up.
Yeah, there's one of those shirts there, the decentralized TV shirt.
You can kind of see it.
And the coffee mugs and hats and things like that.
Now, folks, we don't earn anything on this.
This is just solely we're helping to support a business.
That's making these, and they do accept crypto as payments, so we like to support them.
And so anyway, redpillprints.com slash DTV. And then, Todd, if you don't mind, I've got something really fun just to plug, something I've been working on.
And you know about this.
It's these new knives, which are made in America.
So I co-designed these.
Well, it's four knives, but we only have three here so far.
And These are amazing, and Dawson Knives makes these, but I've made a lot of little tweaks on the design, and these are made out of magna-cut alloy steel, which is corrosion, almost corrosion-proof.
But it's also, it has high Rockwell hardness, 60 to 62 on the Rockwell scale, and it holds an edge.
It can bend, the swords can bend up to 70 degrees without shattering.
Whoa!
Yeah, it's crazy.
So this is a revolutionary alloy.
It's got a G10 handle, and you may not have known this, Todd, but it has three points here that are kind of holes on purpose on the knife, so you can use paracord and you can strap it to a stick and you can make a spear.
Out of all of these knives.
Right.
And this is the bushcrafting knife, which has a different blade shape there for bushcrafting.
And then the sheaths are made out of carbon fiber inlaid into Kydex for extreme rigidity so that they don't break and shatter.
And you can use on the back, you can either switch it up into a vertical draw or a side draw.
And then you can switch them left or right.
So it's fully functional for lefties as well.
And these are available right now at my online store, healthrangerstore.com.
And survival is part of decentralization, right?
Yes, it is.
Getting the reflection right there, trying to show that blade.
But you've got to have gear in order to survive.
And this is the kind of thing that will last you a lifetime.
Yeah, that's generational.
Absolutely.
Yeah, you're not going to accidentally break this.
It's not like kind of a made-in-China cheap steel knife.
No, it's not that.
Now, Mike.
Yeah.
I thought you were going to show me my knife that I'm going to get.
Escape from...
Well, I don't have it here.
I don't have Escape from L.A. That's in production right now.
Can you describe it to me?
Absolutely, yeah.
Well, so the fourth knife that I'm coming up with is called Escape from L.A., and it's a knife to allow you to escape a city during the collapse.
And it's larger than this tactical knife, by the way.
It's even larger than this.
And it has a prying function plus a blade.
The prying function is designed to break open, you know, doors like elevator doors or window latches or doors, car doors, things where you're trapped because the power has gone out or there's been an EMP attack or whatever.
The zombies have come.
And so it's designed, it's a pry tool.
But it doubles as a survival knife and a utility knife.
So that's coming out in about six weeks.
And I will reserve one for you, Todd.
Thank you.
I can't wait to show it.
That's all I want for Christmas, Mike, is I want to be able to buy your knife.
All right.
Well, first of all, you don't have to buy it.
This is going to be your Christmas present then from us here at Brighton.
You'll get Escape from LA Knife.
Oh, you guys are great.
Thank you.
But I'm happy to buy it.
I've already budgeted for it.
No, that's quite all right.
I'm just happy.
I've been giving these away.
I have a bunch of them here.
I've been giving them away to guests and staff members, too.
But look, the bottom line is, I mean, I don't want to get too far off topic.
I mean, we spent too much time plugging already, but it's just...
Folks, when you watch this show, Todd and I are real people.
I mean, yeah, we're into privacy coins, and we love talking to people like Andre, who was amazing.
But our redundancy and decentralization extends into many other areas of our lives, right?
Like your food forest, Todd, or the sprouting and container growing that I do, food at home, or the knives, or financial asset protection, like what you're talking about with your consulting.
Right.
We live this stuff.
It's not just crypto, crypto, crypto every day, all day long.
It's also...
Knives and assets and food and, you know, all these other areas.
Yeah.
Gear.
Keep you alive.
And the best thing going on here, Mike, is waking up and saying, you know what?
I want to go find people out there just like me.
And those people are the ones that are watching this show, Mike.
Yeah, we have a great audience.
Yeah, thank you for watching and thank you for sharing.
We appreciate you so much.
And we're thrilled to be able to do this show.
And to get these amazing guests on like Andre is just unbelievable.
And the guy really is a legend.
You're kind of making him blush a little bit there, I think.
What he's already done in his life is extraordinary.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
I hope he got my joke.
He probably didn't get the joke about the Clintons.
It just hit me.
No, he may not have all the political background of the shenanigans in the U.S. empire, but anyway, our audience got the joke for sure.
But no worries.
So, Todd, let's wrap up this segment, the show today.
An amazing guest.
It's great.
Solid discussion.
Zano, I'm going to be checking it out.
I will probably acquire some coins and use their wallets like I typically do, test them out, kind of see how it works, see what's going on.
But I'm going to lose sleep now over the whole proof of work question because I'm concerned about vulnerabilities of smaller projects, you know?
And how do we defend against that?
Or how do those projects better defend?
I mean, the answer is, on a proof-of-work project, the answer is you've got to throw more work at it.
More servers, more computers.
That's how you defend.
Or more algorithms, right?
Well, that would require some hard forks and some real code changes.
Okay.
Which is really what Zano did.
I mean, proof of stake can't be beaten with computational power.
Right.
It's like rock, paper, scissors, artillery, you know?
You can't beat it.
And a fifth one, escape from L.A. Escape from L.A. Yeah, well, we'll make that a part of the show, that's for sure.
Absolutely.
Can't wait to do that.
It'll be fun.
Alright, so anything else, Todd, before we wrap this up?
Yeah, I just have one last question for you, Mike.
Your dog always knows when we're about to wrap up.
Is he getting a little antsy?
Not yet.
Oh, not yet?
Okay.
No, he hasn't wrapped it up.
Okay.
No, man, this was great.
Again, I find Fridays to be a blessing because of you and this show and our guests, so thank you again for inviting me way back when to be a co-host here.
I'm I'm just so proud to be here and happy with what we're doing.
We're accomplishing a lot, I think.
I really look forward to every Friday when we can do these and the amazing guests we have on.
So it's a blessing.
And thank you, Todd, for all your contributions as well.
Oh, my pleasure.
All right.
Well, that's the show for today.
And thank you all for watching.
Of course, Todd Pitner and Mike Adams here.
Decentralize.tv.
Go there for links to the Telegram channel and for breaking news announcements, whatever, and other episodes that you may have missed as well.
We're currently putting out one to two episodes a week.
I'm trying to increase that speed, by the way, Todd, to get more episodes out there.
And it's been very challenging this week in particular.
Yeah.
But we're going to get more episodes out the door.
We've filmed quite a few that you haven't seen yet, by the way.
But these are timeless.
It's not talking about current events.
It's going to apply.
Like the interview today, it's good for years.
It's what he said, timeless observations and wisdom about cryptocurrency.
I think it's going to be a very popular interview.
He's a legend.
He just is.
Yeah, I think so too.
I hope he wasn't offended by our Clinton jokes or whatever.
He seems like a cool dude.
Yeah, I think so.
He's just focused on the code.
He's not really about politics.
He's not reading the news every day.
He's doing his thing, which is why he's one of the best in the world at doing it.
Absolutely.
He's troubled by things that I'm just not, Mike.
But that's why he's a legend and I'm just decentralized.
He's probably happier than all of us because we do read the news and it's like, oh my God, what horrible thing is it?
I know.
He's probably much happier doing code than the rest of us.
I do have to just give one shout out.
What?
Okay.
Yeah, go for it.
To Nancy.
Nancy, I did a consultation with yesterday.
What a lovely lady.
74 years old, wanting to be able to protect her assets and get into private crypto.
And she was sharper than anybody I've ever met other than you.
And I mean that.
She was so sharp.
Wow.
Good for Nancy.
Nancy, I know you watch this.
She has fights with her, she calls it her Marxist family, and they won't allow her, all she listens to is you, and this show, and just Brideon, right?
And she was saying that her family, her Marxist family, you know, on a recent vacation, Would not allow her to listen, you know, without earbuds to your program.
So Nancy, we love you.
Thank you.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, well, I think we all know other Marxist people, family members, friends, whatever.
Yeah.
And sadly, those Marxist people also believe in fiat currency, which means they're going to be left holding zero.
She was saying, they think I'm a nut job.
That I'm an absolute nutjob for worrying about any of this.
And that she's just going to get totally scammed by crypto.
And I'm like, no, you aren't.
Well, you know, the mainstream people, they also think gold isn't money, but dollars are.
I mean, that's how stupid they are.
They're going to be left holding nothing, while people who bought gold or silver are going to be just rolling in riches at that time.
Yeah, yeah.
It's crazy.
It is crazy.
I asked her if her Marxist family were up to date on their boosters, and she goes, oh my, oh yes.
Extra, extra jabs for them.
Yeah, no, I put out, I mean, again, we don't try to make this show very political, so I won't go too far, but I did put out a tweet.
Oh, yeah.
Look.
He knows the show's over.
He knows it.
He knows it.
Hey, hold on.
Let me get him off.
I've got, like, knives on the desk here.
Come on.
Come on, Rhodey.
Hold on.
Hold on.
That is classic.
Rhodey, I love you.
He's good, but he wants to play.
He wants to play.
Hold on a second.
He's the mascot.
Yeah, he gets antsy.
I just don't want him jumping around with all these...
Well, we better let you and Rhodey go, Mike.
Yeah, but hold on.
Let me finish that thought.
So on that tweet, I said, you know, pretty soon we're going to have people who are locking themselves in their homes, wearing five masks and taking ten jabs and not ever venturing outside into the rest of the world.
And I said, can we please do this all the time?
Because I think it's great if those people just lock themselves in their homes and never come out.
I mean, go for it.
The traffic.
The traffic.
Yeah.
Parking.
I mean, buying groceries.
Think how much easier society would be if all those mask-wearing lunatics just stay home all day, every day.
And just start turning pale, looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
It's my precious.
While the rest of us are enjoying sunshine.
It's my injection, my booster.
Precious boosters.
Yeah, please stay home all day, every day for the rest of your stupid life.
We would appreciate that.
Okay, anyway, we'll wrap it up there.
Always uncensored as usual, but we'll wrap it up there.
So thank you all for watching.
Thank you, Todd.
It's been fun.
All right.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Cheers.
All right.
Take care.
Yep.
Thanks for watching, folks.
Decentralized.tv is the website.
And check out all the other episodes you may have missed because they are similarly uncensored, by the way.
So check them out.
Thanks for watching.
▲
Export Selection