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Dec. 19, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:18:32
Episode 26, Dec 19, 2023 - Epic Cash project lead reveals huge advantages for MimbleWimble...
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Welcome to today's episode of Decentralized TV here on Brighteon.com.
Thank you for watching today.
You're going to really enjoy this interview because we have with us a special project lead from the Epic Cash project, which is a privacy crypto that uses the unique Mimble Wimble approach to blockchain technology.
And of course, my co-host today, Todd Pitner, who is an Epic Cash expert, joins me.
Welcome, Todd.
It's great to have you on today.
Thank you, Mike.
Yes, I've been looking forward to this interview for a long time.
As you know, I covered Epic Cash for years and will continue to do so.
It is my favorite cryptocurrency, but really excited to be able to have our guest on today.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you, I think, exclusively covered Epic Cash for a couple of years on your channel, and you were, I think, the best educator on it.
You were the one who taught me a lot about Epic Cash and about Mimblewimble.
So thank you for that.
You're welcome.
And the fact is, it's because, Mike, I know everything.
And I happen to know that it's our guest's birthday today, so I just want to wish him a happy birthday as well.
Well, let's bring him in.
Yeah, it's Gene from the Epic Cash Project.
Welcome, Gene.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
Good to be here.
And happy birthday.
Thank you.
I didn't know it was your birthday.
Well, Todd knows all, so I'm not so glad.
All right, so how about this?
So let's ask Gene to give us a quick intro for those who aren't familiar with what is Epic Cash.
And also, just as a full disclosure, I'll mention everybody on the show today either holds Epic Cash now or has held Epic Cash now.
We hold lots of different coins.
I'm not currently holding any Epic Cash, but I probably will in the future, and I'm a big advocate of privacy coins.
But just with that disclaimer up front, go ahead, Gene, with the overview of what is Epic Cash.
Epic Cash is a privacy crypto.
It's a proof-of-work crypto based on Mimblewimble blockchain.
We've been around since 2019, since September 2nd, 2019, so we're up there.
We started along with just under 30 Mimblewimble projects, and today we're one of the three still standing and improving, so that's something.
So we are a proof of word crypto.
We have scarcity through limited print, if you will.
21 million ever will be printed.
We're about 17 million into it today.
Epic can be mined with regular PCs, with gaming caliber PCs, in addition to, you know, crypto mining rigs like GPU rigs, CPU rigs.
And we believe we are a store of value.
We know we are unconfiscatable private property.
We like that our privacy comes as a byproduct of our technology's efficiency rather than through deliberate obfuscation like some of the other cryptos do.
This is a really important point.
We'll get into more detail on that.
I agree with you.
It's an increasingly...
More important every day in a rapidly revolving world today.
We are community-driven, so we did not have, you know, venture capital.
We did not have a corporation, you know, so we're a fair launch, open source.
We very much believe in open source.
We are focused on increasing our transparency from the dev side and encouraging community participation, especially on the dev side and marketing side.
So it's a crypto, it's a privacy crypto that I believe everyone can love.
Tell us about how does it compare to something like Monero then?
We don't want to bash Monero.
We all love Monero here because we love all kinds of privacy.
I came from Monero, to be honest.
I got into crypto in 2010 with Bitcoin, but then we knew about privacy issues.
When Monero came around, I jumped into it in 2016.
and was a happy member of the community as the community gradually changed and when I found out about Mimble Wimble I looked at it originally and I thought it was kind of a cool thing but I didn't like the tokenomics of the two projects that were running at the time and I waited and waited and I was still in Monero until Epic came about and then I jumped into Epic literally like the first month of the mainnet so Epic,
first of all, we use CPU and GPU, whereas Monero today is using CPU compute.
And now there's some ASIC miners that are jumping into Monero space, which is weirdly ironic because they had to change algos before.
Right.
Our blockchain is lighter because our blockchain compresses information and discards unnecessary information, such as addresses and amounts, whereas Monero, to obfuscate, generates additional fake transactions that are also piled into the blockchain.
So they actually literally store a lot more data.
It's sort of like a shell game to add more shells.
Right.
And this is kind of an important thing, as you touched off on, that there could be a question of intent.
Why, you know, why are you guys obfuscating?
Why are you guys hiding?
Why are you guys deliberately throwing in, you know, bogies data into the mix, you know, for Monero that is not applicable to us?
So I think I like Monero.
I think that Monero, I was shocked and blown away.
We managed to give up a decisive lead.
They were, I think, as high as number 7 by market cap.
They're now in kind of like the 20s.
But the big thing also is, I think Monero, because they were indiscriminately trying to build a user base, attracted a lot of the wrong kind of people.
And that is also a bit of a concern.
Well, over the years, I mean, we've seen that.
And again, to be fair, and I don't want to say like, oh, crypto is all bad and evil and it's used for porn.
Internet is for porn.
But crypto...
Compared to the US dollar and euro and the ruble and the yen, crypto is still amateur hour as far as being the vehicle for dark spending on the global arena.
So anyway, as far as Monero, I just think that we're more accessible to a casual user.
You can actually still meaningfully mine Epic with a gaming rig, whereas Monero is a lot harder for an average user to get into.
Monero has some pluses, like they have a built-in address, which is something that we had to overcome because MimbleWimble does not use a fixed address.
So I'm not going to sit here and just talk shit about Monero.
Again, in full disclosure, I held Monero, I hold Monero.
Yeah, there are key differences.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but Todd, how about your take on why Epic Cash matters and some of the things that distinguish it from Monero, and especially from Bitcoin?
Sure, sure, sure.
You know me.
I need to dumb things down so that I will understand them.
And the way I like to think about Epic Cash is it's like Bitcoin, only private.
So we all know and love Bitcoin.
We know and love its tokenomics, its store of value.
But it is a very, very, very bulky, massive blockchain because Bitcoin Every transaction that has ever happened with every coin is stored on the blockchain.
And P.S., by the way, there's a company called Chainalysis, which has made $20 billion selling data by actually observing and mining the data from the chain and selling it to interested parties.
So, the way I like to describe it is, if you went to a country fair, let's say, and there were outhouses to go into, and there was this outhouse that had the B above it, Bitcoin, and you walked in there and you were like, hmm, this is weird, I can see out.
Well, guess what?
Everyone else can see in.
They can see everything that you're doing in there.
Now, Epic Cash...
But Todd, a lot of people might really like that outhouse.
It might choose it on purpose.
That's true.
I want the bonus hole.
So the Epic Cash has an opaque door, meaning that nobody can see what's in there.
But the cool thing is, no matter what happens in there, and I'm talking about rated G stuff, like a transaction, like I send Gene, you know, 10 Epic, or I send you 100 Epic, Mike.
Yeah.
It is impossible for anybody to open that door and be able to determine who sent what to whom and how much.
Because unlike the BTC transaction or an XMR, Monero transaction, all of the data is still in that transaction.
And so with Monero's case, because it's obfuscated, it's almost impossible to tell.
But there's a thing called, you know...
The future...
What do you call it?
Not AI, but the future...
Quantum computing.
Yeah, the quantum resistance.
But with the Mimblewimble tech, what that means is that the blockchain and the technology behind it through Mimblewimble and cut through and just various different tech pulled together.
The transaction completes, and it's perfect on the blockchain, but there is no information that remains.
So even if one day somebody went back and they were able to crack the code, like, I mean, as you guys know, I believe it's $750,000 is the reward for anybody who can crack Monero.
Oh, that's an IRS for a treasury reward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
So somebody's going to try and somebody's going to do it at some point in time.
And when they do, it's going to open up all the transactions out there that have ever happened.
With Epic Cash, there's nothing to see, nothing to find.
That's a really great explanation, Todd.
Thanks for that.
And by the way, folks, the reason you're not seeing me is because all of our studio cameras here are offline at the moment.
So, it's just my voice for now, but that's okay.
Let's go back to Gene, because Gene has really great technical knowledge on all of this.
And I'm sure, Gene, I know you follow AI, and there was a rumor that OpenAI had achieved, and I don't believe this rumor, but it was a widely circulated rumor on Reddit that OpenAI had achieved a new breakthrough that allowed the breaking but it was a widely circulated rumor on Reddit that OpenAI had achieved a new breakthrough that allowed
Now, I don't believe that rumor, but isn't it interesting that it's, you know, in people's minds that it's possible that that could happen one day?
It's well within the reasons of possibilities, absolutely.
You know, and to me, this is one of the things I like about Mimble Wimble is that I think the simpler the math, the more transparent the math, the more difficult it is to break if it's not...
Broken from the get-go.
You know, all of us, well, not all of us, some of us nerds, let me qualify that, remember, like, the Wi-Fi, you know, WEP64, you know, when people are saying that, oh, yeah, you know, mathematically it'll take a computer 19 years, you know, to break this code and, you know, decrypt your wireless communications, and then we find out that, hey, here's a software that cracks it in 30 seconds flat, you know, and then they go, well, but wait!
From Web64, we're going to go to Web128.
And that's an exponentially greater thing.
And that's going to take thousands of years, you know, to crack.
And we went from 30 seconds to 40 seconds, you know, down the road.
So we know that as good as somebody's math is, or as good as they think it is, if it's really complicated, there's going to be probably some bright person somewhere Maybe a kid, maybe a reclusive guy who lives with his mom in a basement in Petersburg, who's going to just crack this thing like 2 plus 2.
And to Todd's point, when he's talking about how it's good if when the veil falls, if there's nothing there to discover.
Right, right, exactly.
That's what's so great about MemoWimble.
I think that was really the first thing that attracted me to the Epic Cash realm was the MemoWimble blockchain.
But let me ask...
And Mike, it's done not as a deliberate obfuscation, but it's done as a byproduct of compression.
Right.
You want the Mimblewimble blockchain to be light, to be small, compact.
It makes it faster to read, easier to distribute, easier to bootstrap a new system that's running the blockchain.
I mean, one of the things that I always run into with Monero is, for example...
Anytime I'm running a new laptop or a new workstation, I will install the Monero wallet on it.
And it takes a long time for that thing to sync because it's a few gigabytes and the throughput from the other peered servers isn't really that high.
So it really does take a while.
And the smaller the blockchain, the faster that would go.
Yeah.
And speaking of that, actually, we just optimized our blockchain to sync up even faster for people who are running their own nodes, you know, to diversify the network or for people who are running their own nodes as solo miners.
We just launched or released a 3.5 upgrade to our wallet, which includes a better syncing server so that our blockchain can sync in a couple hours.
Okay, wow.
Yeah, that's going to make a big difference.
Now, let me then ask you both to address the one drawback to MemoWimble that we're all aware of that I ran into as well, which is the handshaking, the sending and receiving wallets need to talk to each other at the same time in order for those transactions to go through.
Now, A big advantage, of course, is that you can't accidentally send money into nowhere and just lose it, which is technically possible with Bitcoin.
But on the other hand...
I've done it myself on an address.
Oh, man.
A very small amount, but it sucked.
But we found that, you know, it is sometimes an impediment to when someone wants to send money to somebody else on Epic, and then that person has to have their wallet open for that to go through in a timely manner.
But I understand that Epic Cash is working on some theoretical approaches to resolving that.
So that's what I'd like to...
So we have an interim solution, first of all, through using servers that generate proxy addresses, right?
So you have a server that's acting like a buffer, essentially.
And you can actually create a persistent address that hangs there.
Where the system accepts the balance and it sits there waiting for you to actually get on and then it's reconciled at that point.
And that's a patch.
I mean, that's a quick and dirty fix, but it works.
The holy grail of Mimblewimble is what's called non-interactive transactions.
Exactly.
And that is the ability to actually embed a transaction into the blockchain for the sender to embed a transaction into the blockchain and then for a receiver to come at some point and magically pick it up.
Claim that.
Yes.
And that's a tremendous challenge.
In fact, there's a lot of scientific papers written on this, and we were really fortunate to secure some really top talent.
There's a gentleman from, he's actually the top cryptographer from Monero, so this is another reason why I'm still a big fan and I have a lot of respect for Monero community.
But Sarai is the top cryptographer from Monero.
In fact, I don't think if, I think if it wasn't for Sarai and Sarang, you know, Monero would be around.
But Sarai actually joined Epic Cash on a research project to explore non-interactive transactions for Mimblewimble on the Mimblewimble blockchain.
That's a really big deal.
Up until now, there's really just been a couple of scientific papers written on this, and this guy, he's a PhD, he's a superbrain.
He was able to actually observe all of this, including all the latest approaches, ideas for approaches, and form a strategic paper, which we'll be publishing later.
Which approaches are actually meaningful?
Because there's some trade-offs.
There's some security trade-offs.
There is, of course, the almighty cut-through that part of the reason why our blockchain is so tight is it tends to reduce things down, which makes non-interactive transactions more difficult.
Right.
Can I jump in with an explanation here on this?
And then I know Todd wants to comment on this too.
So to do non-interactive transactions is trivial if you want to have everything visible to the whole world, which is what Bitcoin is, right?
So it's kind of like an easy way to do this.
Let's say that Bobby writes on the wall of his school that Bobby loves Susie.
Right?
Well, everybody in the world can see that it's Bobby loves Susie.
And then later on, Susie comes along and reads that.
So, oh, Bobby loves Susie.
But what if he wanted to send that message privately?
He couldn't just put it on the public wall.
I know that's kind of a...
No, that's cool, actually.
And Susie can find out that Bobby loves her from somebody else before even seeing it.
Exactly.
But if Bobby wants to tell Susie directly...
That he loves her, but he wants to do so in a private way that is non-interactive.
He would have to leave a note for her in a secure way that only she would know how to retrieve and nobody else could retrieve.
That's kind of what we're talking about.
Yes, precisely.
And there are many reasons for Bobby wanting to be careful.
Maybe Suzy has a very protective older brother, for example.
Yeah, so...
So we did a kind of a strategic, it was like a one month plus deep dive into this, and we came up with some really good results on how we can actually proceed from that.
But it was at a theoretical level, and that's the strategic aspect of it.
And by the way, we're going to be very transparent.
We're going to share these findings here shortly with the rest of the world because we want other projects to benefit from this.
Oh, yeah.
Because we want to move this forward, not just for ourselves, but for the crypto community, especially for the privacy minded crypto community as a whole.
But on strategy alone, we realize that we need to do a more granular deep dive into the actual implementation.
So there's more of a tactical follow up that's coming up.
that is a culmination of work from Sarai's original work, plus our devs, you know, Biz, Pool Boy, Todd Lewis, the original Epic developer is in the mix, as well as some other folks in there.
And we will roll out some practical steps on which we're going to proceed beyond this.
Right.
It's got to be built out.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Run the experiment.
Run the experiment.
Absolutely.
Because, really, one of the things we try to...
One of the things we really kind of departed from is any kind of a hand-wavy, non-implementable bullshit, pardon my French, okay?
So it's the difference between delusion of grandeur and an achievement is the achievement.
That's the difference between, you know, like if you have a great idea, nobody gives a rat's ass about it until you actually build it.
That's when it becomes meaningful, okay?
So we're focusing our energy on this as the next meaningful development in Epic Cash to take us to the next level, not just within Mimble Wimble ecosystem, but just across the landscape.
I think, I'm sorry to interrupt, Gene, but I think it's such a game-changer.
I think we're good to go.
It would be amazing, but I've been covering Epic Cash for, gosh, almost four years.
And I will tell you, we had the handshake the whole time.
And we went from, you know, when I began covering it, 18 cents, it went up to $6.85 at an all-time high.
And there were handshake transactions there.
I like to think of this kind of like cash.
You know, it's Epic Private Internet Cash.
And when we get together, Mike, and we exchange value, and you have an escape from L.A. machete that I want to buy, you know, I meet with you to get the goods, and I give you the cash.
We're there together in that transaction.
So I don't think that's a bad thing.
Epic Cash, Mimble Wimble, is nothing more than that.
It's just simply two like-minded people wanting to exchange value that need to have their wallets open at the same time.
Now, there is a solve for that, and that is within the Epic Pay wallet.
In the GUI wallet, it is the Epic box, if you will.
And that basically is the go-between, but that inserts a centralization into the equation, and that, of course, is what we don't want to have.
But I will tell everybody, you know, I was a fan of Epic Cash for all of the positive attributes, of which there are 35 positive attributes of Epic Cash in comparison to other assets.
Well, and also...
There's a big one that we've got to talk about because Monero, being the number one privacy crypto, is the number one target by the IRS or the Treasury.
And I just want to be clear.
I own Monero and I've used Monero, but I've never used it for anything illegal.
And I don't think that that's what most people use crypto for.
People use crypto because they want to have self-custody.
And in the case of privacy crypto, they want to have privacy.
But isn't it true, Todd, that...
Any efforts to take down privacy crypto are going to put Monero as, you know, public enemy number one.
Oh, of course.
Of course.
And with that, can I use that as an opportunity to kind of address an elephant in the room here?
Gene, you were with Monero for a long while, since 2016.
And as I understand it, you went through the phase to where Monero, Number one in the private crypto space.
They got up to number one, number seven, you know, with their market cap.
They went through some community issues.
Did they not Oh, Monero went through a lot of community issues.
I mean, first of all, Monero's creator, Monero's a fork of their, well, of Monero, if you will, of its predecessor, because they actually ditched their founder and, you know, and moved on into a better future for themselves.
But the other thing that happened in Monero was that there was a lot of...
There's a lot of toxicity that happened over the years that made it really unfriendly to newbies.
In fact, it was really weird to read the Reddit groups and the chat groups Where people are bemoaning that they're not getting this broader recognition and they're not hitting mainstream penetration, but at the same time, whenever somebody new came around or somebody with a different opinion came around, they would be facing some really toxic, like, hey, get on our level, you know, you're not nerd enough to handle this.
It was really weird.
They're like, why aren't we mainstream?
And then they're like, hey, you filthy noobs, get out of here.
So there's a valuable lesson in there.
And I actually wish we learned more from that ourselves.
But I like where we are today.
I like where we are today with our tech and with our community.
And the fact that we have people with strong opinions in our community, they don't have to get along with each other, but they like Epic, they see the value of Epic.
I think it's actually a really good testimony to the strength of the project itself and to the strength of Epic itself.
Analogies that I like to use, maybe it's a little trite, especially in this day and age, is that both Jews and Arabs love gold.
While they're not really crazy about each other and that doesn't necessarily reflect negatively on gold itself.
So people can actually like something and not be absolutely in love with each other.
Well, I'm not going to unpack and go into details, but I do want to be very, very open because there are a lot of people that knew that I covered Epic Cash exclusively for the three-plus years and then pretty much went off the radar.
And I will tell you that was because of a community issue between some individuals.
And I just want to let everybody know, I'm going on the record right now, to be able to say that it has taken me a long time to warm back up to be super excited about this project, because what never changed was the tech.
It was the Epic Cash technology.
I love it for everything that it's all about that I covered for a long, long time.
Now, on the people side of things, the reason why I brought up Monero is because Monero stands tall today.
All three of us would agree with it.
They are number one.
They made it through their community issues, all of the agita that went on between there.
And that's what I believe we have gone through over the last six months, ups and downs and ups and downs, and vetted lots of things out.
But I think all three of us on this...
Can attest that, you know, we all feel comfortable that the issues that were personal are in the rearview mirror and it's nothing but forward vision moving forward.
Would you agree?
I do, Todd.
I got to thank you in particular for, you know, the leadership that you've shown in this.
I mean, number one, I love to have you as a host on this show.
And the audience loves it, because you and I, you know, we get to joke around as well, have some fun, but we also cover some really great stuff, and we interview some really great guests.
And, you know, today's interview is also really profound, I think, for the future of Privacy Crypto.
But I just got to thank you, Todd, for your leadership.
You know, I, because I stepped into the realm of Epic Cash...
I don't know.
It was almost a year ago, I guess, and had very high interest.
And then just being exposed to some of the turmoil, I lost interest at that time.
But as you said, that's in the rearview mirror.
And I think because of really the leadership and maturity of you and Gene here and a few other key people, There's a refocus on what Epic does well, which is the technology.
And that's what always excited me about Epic was the tech.
And frankly, all this theoretical research into the non-interactive transactions really gets me excited.
A new, because that solves...
For the use case.
Absolutely, for the use case, because that makes then Epic good at tipping, because there are cases where you want to send money to people and they may not even know that you're doing it, right?
Gifting or tipping or paying commissions, for example.
Those are all use cases.
Yeah, go ahead, Gene, your comments.
I just want to...
Yeah, you know, first of all, Todd...
I appreciate your maturity and your commitment in this.
Thank you.
Literally, the hundreds and hundreds of hours of amazing content that you put in over the years is still out there, available to people to learn about Epic, to learn about not just Epic, but to learn about economics to economics.
The absolute necessity of understanding of being crypto-literate in today's world, I have tremendous respect for you for the amount of content you generated.
Oh yeah, Todd has educated so many millions of people with all that.
Precisely.
And one thing I also want to mention, you know, since we're unpacking kind of the non-interactive transaction thing, it leads into some other really interesting rabbit holes along the way.
It opens up things like multisig.
It opens up things like atomic swaps, you know.
So multisig is something that allows you to perform a transaction with multiple signatories.
Okay, so like an escrow account creation.
So again, this gives you much more mature level of usability for handling assets, for handling tokenized assets, for doing these things.
Atomic Swap, something that would allow you to swap out between different currencies on the blockchain, on the native blockchain.
So these are...
Besides just having a persistent address or having a way to actually transact non-interactively, this takes us to the next level and the next level.
And Gene, that will increase the trading volume substantially, which increases the liquidity of Epic Cash, those things that you just talked about.
Atomic swaps, I think, are going to be a very big part of the crypto activity space.
Yeah, it's a necessity.
It's an absolute necessity.
So this is the kind of thing that we're heading into.
And if we were talking about this three years ago, It would have been a pipe dream.
It would have been a hand-wavy thing that we didn't have the depth of talent, we didn't have the experience.
Today, we've actually managed to attract the necessary talent.
We've gone through and we've done the heavy lifting to do the research.
And today, if somebody says, well, who's going to do this?
Well, we have people of the caliber of Sarai Noether who've contributed to this.
And again, this is a top cryptographer guy from Monero.
And we have other people now, and I believe as we publish this work, we'll attract attention from other people.
Actually, we're already attracting attention from other people in other, especially privacy-minded communities.
And privacy is just, I can't overstate how important it is today and how much it is under attack.
By commercial enterprises, by the powers that be, fine, and by commercial enterprises.
You know, Chainalysis is not the only company that's doing this.
It's a multi-billion dollar industry of some real heavies out there who are For the people who, let's say, they trust their government and they live in a country where they absolutely trust their government, they feel like their government has their best interests at heart, these companies are willing to sell this information not just to the governments.
They're willing to sell that information to the highest bidder.
And that's a liability.
I mean, I don't care what world you live in.
This level of privacy violation is horrible.
Hey, Gene, I'd like to make a suggestion, because I think there are going to be a lot of people that are going to watch this that will have their interest, and I would share with people that there are benefits of being involved with what's called a micro-cap, which is, I don't know the exact definition.
Is it under $100 million or the market cap?
In that area.
But anyway...
Where you may have Monero that has a $350 million market cap, Epic Cash might have a $25 million market cap.
So tiny in comparison.
I thought Monero was in the billions.
I'm sorry.
And $3.5 billion.
I'm sorry.
I don't know, but it's billions.
That's for sure.
I'm sorry.
It's $3.5 billion, and right now, BTC is over a half a trillion.
Yeah, half a trip.
So anyway, the question is, I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be interested in getting into it, but it's just not on every exchange.
So can you talk and educate people a little bit about how they would go about acquiring Epic Cash if they were interested?
Well, yeah, you kind of caught me.
We have centralized exchanges.
We have decentralized exchanges.
And I'm still partial to DEXs.
I'm still partial to Vitex because it's a non-KYC. Yeah, let's focus on that.
It's a very quick way of getting set up.
Let me mention EpicCash.com is a website where people can find links to the decentralized exchanges.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank you, Mike.
Saved.
I was going to say, your years of experience, I get a feeling you've done this before.
Yeah.
So, for example, on Vitex, people can go there and they can send Bitcoin over there and they can, without doing any kind of KYC, they can actually just purchase Epic.
We have groups, we have a trade group where people can go and they can actually do like OTC and just talk to somebody who is a vetted member of the community.
Don't talk to scammers.
Buyer beware.
Yeah, buyer beware.
Oh my God, yes.
I don't recommend that, personally.
It's the internet.
And there hasn't been one person in there that I think...
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Put it this way.
I'm disclosing all options with a caveat.
I personally have been scammed.
And I'm just saying on this show, don't do OTC with a stranger.
Sorry.
There's a lot of things you shouldn't do with a stranger.
Practice safe trading.
Safe CEX. Yes, practice safe CEX. To me, Vitex is a good alternative.
You can literally get started and you can purchase Epic within minutes.
And there is a website out there, confirm that my memory still works, howtobuyepiccash.com.
I believe...
Buyepiccash.com.
Or it's buyepiccash.com.
That is the best way for people to...
Because when you say...
You get some BTC and take it over there.
There's a lot of us who are just newbies who don't even know how to get BTC. So buyepiccash.com is the best starting point.
A good resource, yes.
And look, we also know about needing more exchanges.
For example, people talk about, well, why don't you guys own more exchanges?
Here it is, buyepiccash.com.
Sorry.
We got the screen there.
And the reason for that is...
Liquidity.
In one word, if I had to say this in one word, you have to start somewhere.
And it's kind of a catch-22 situation where when you're small, you want to be on big exchanges, but big exchanges don't want somebody who is small.
We had conversations with some major exchanges who basically said, yeah, once you guys are over 100 million market cap, We'll call you.
We'll literally call you.
And that was a couple of years ago, so probably by now it's $150 million because the dollar is not worth what it was a couple of years ago.
I keep printing the darn thing.
And we should all remember...
That Epic Cash is a community project, which means to get on an exchange usually requires a listing fee that could be $50,000 or more.
And then there's liquidity requirements to where you have to put up Epic and you have to put up USD or UST and to be able to have a market maker.
So there are all these expenses that That you have to account for.
And I remember being part of many community raises to where we did raise those funds.
But then we got on BitMart and we realized, you know, not for us.
They were kind of scammy.
I'm going to go ahead and say it.
We got scammed.
But it comes from the community because there's no centralized boss.
There's no centralized group that is able to write a check or raise money.
Isn't that right, Jim?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And, you know, look, with BitMart, for example, and this is one of those things that people learn with wealth management companies and with, you know, with some, like, broker companies, you know, where all they care about is collecting a fee.
They don't give a rat's ass about how well you do.
They want to just keep fleecing you and collecting the fees.
Ultimately, they don't care if you succeed or fail or whatever, and they're not going to lift a finger because their whole engine is really collecting fees.
Like, get the next guy in, get the next guy in, get the next guy in, and that's it.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but...
Just in the sense of time, there's another big topic area I want to cover, if you're okay with me jumping in with that.
Yes.
I just want to talk about and get both of your response about the importance of self-custody during these times when there's a lot of global fear about bank bail-ins, about currency devaluation, a lot of money printing, and as you know, as Robert Kiyosaki told us here on the show, Todd, He won't buy anything that the government can print, right?
Well, the government can't print Epic Cash.
They can't print Bitcoin and they can't print gold and so on.
A lot of examples.
But can each of you respond to the importance of self-custody and especially as we're moving into CBDCs, what it means to have a decentralized peer-to-peer form of value that is also private?
Well, I'll go first because I have to just come out and come clean.
We stated at the beginning that I own and have acquired Epic, and I did take self-custody of it, Mike.
Good for you.
I lost my seed word, so I don't know where it is or how to access it.
So, woe is me.
I should have done a better job with that.
Mike.
I'm sorry to hear that, Todd.
I'll be the poster child for those who do better.
Gene?
Well, your passwords might be at the bottom of the lake where my firearms got lost, too.
I don't know.
It's possible.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
It's actually a really widespread problem.
A lot of people who are into crypto, you know, lose laptops during boating accidents and, you know, things like that.
So they do get disconnected from their, you know, from their stash.
Well...
Yes, yes.
But on a more serious note, it's super important to have custody of your crypto.
Absolutely.
Don't store it on exchanges.
Keep whatever your play balance is on exchanges.
But store, for goodness sake, store your crypto on native blockchain in a wallet that you control, that only you control.
We got a really painful lesson, and sometimes people like to sacrifice privacy and safety for what they believe is ease of use.
Ledger is a really painful example.
First you find out that, yeah, it collects your information and it was bleeding your information.
And then today I saw that there was a draining vulnerability introduced into Ledger through a dependency tree.
No way.
So that's a trusted wallet that's a standard, you know, that all of a sudden turns out to be like super porous.
And just like some of the centralized password solutions where, yeah, you know, you have this password management software thing that, man, when that stuff gets hacked, you don't lose one password.
You lose them all.
Right.
So, again, like, not your, you know, like, you got to know your keys, right?
Not your keys, not your crypto.
It's a mantra.
It's, you know, you definitely want to have control of your crypto.
I don't care what it is, Bitcoin, Epic, you know, Monero, you know, store it on the native blockchain in a wallet that you control.
And P.S., P.S. everyone watching.
We're not going to do it here.
But all you have to do is go search YouTube on how to protect your private keys and watch as many videos as you can muster because that can be the key to you preserving your wealth in the future or regretting the fact you lost it.
The resources are out there.
YouTube is aplenty.
Mike, I'd like to just throw in a couple of things as far as what we're working on.
You know, what some of the other things besides...
Yes, please.
...transactions, which are super important.
You know, we're working on knocking out some of the lower-hanging fruit that also enhance our flexibility.
One of the things that Poolboy, one of our core devs, is working on, and that's...
By the way, all these things are on our GitHub, so people want to look at it.
They want to dive into the code.
We invite that.
We're open.
We're transparent.
We're...
And we really encourage people to sit through our code, and if they find any problems, let us know.
But Poolboy is working on enabling email transactions that will run through SMTP and IMAP, so they'll support that in the next wallet iteration.
So that's just another way for people to transact, you know, another optionality.
So you could email someone Epic Cash, in essence.
Yeah, in an automated way, so you don't actually have, you know...
That wouldn't require, then, for both wallets to be open, right?
No, but it's a sequence.
So yeah, you're absolutely correct.
You know, you send, they receive, confirm, send back, and you authorize.
So it would behave just like people are used to emails.
Yes.
That's awesome.
And the send-by-file has been around.
I mentioned it on one of your shows that, you know, you could put a file on a, you know, you can do, like, some really, like, retro spy stuff.
You know, you can put a send file on a flash drive, and you put it under a dead squirrel in the park where the other guy is going to pick it up, and he's going to, you know, put a reply file under a rock somewhere, you know, and then you're going to pick that up.
And then, so no internet contact actually occurs You know, sneaker net kind of thing.
You know, and then money will, you know, Epic will disappear from your wallet and appear in, you know, in the recipient's wallet after all of this, all of these cool steps.
So this is one of the things that we're doing.
The other thing, and this is Sky King's baby.
He's one of our contributors.
And this is really important is...
We're rolling out a payment processor framework, and this will connect merchant's point of sale, the POS side, enabling the merchant to invoice customer purchases in Epic.
Actually, it'll show it in local fiat.
It generates a QR code.
So the merchant would actually, using this framework, would generate a QR code in their POS. Then the buyer can actually scan And that QR code will contain the address, the invoice number, right, for record keeping, and the amount.
And it'll autofill the amount in fiat and in Epic, so whatever your local fiat is, okay, into auto-populated fields.
So you can actually audit it before you hit send, okay?
That's awesome.
And...
The other thing, because we're using common field, you can actually have high granularity so that it's not just a lump sum, which would be...
It's fine for just peer-to-peer, but for businesses, we'll allow breaking the amount out into, let's say, the amount and the tax and the shipping, for example.
So that you actually have, instead of a lump sum, you actually have more meaningfully parsable data for your point of sales, for your transaction recording.
So there's a GitHub that was started for that, and this is one of those cool innovation things that we recognize we need merchant support.
We need to focus on making merchant support easy if we are to gain mass adoption.
That applies to us in a big way.
We've struggled internally with integrating any crypto into our e-commerce system, and that's not the fault of Epic.
It's just the fact that, frankly, the e-commerce platform providers don't want to make it easy.
Because I think they have a lot of tie-ins with Visa and MasterCard and whatever.
Of course.
And they have pressure from the federal government to not make crypto easy.
But from a merchant point of view, and I'll be quick because we're almost out of time, but from a merchant point of view, anybody watching, if you're a merchant...
You should favor crypto over every other form of payment for the simple reason that crypto is non-reversible.
When you get the funds, you've got the funds.
End of story.
That's it.
Nobody can come along and do a chargeback.
No one can claim it was fraud.
No.
You've got the funds, so your risk is reduced.
You can ship the product today not worrying about a chargeback.
And when the customer receives a product, you don't have to worry.
They're going to steal it from you and then do a chargeback.
So from a merchant perspective, crypto makes all the sense in the world.
Mm-hmm.
And Mike, if I may just very briefly add to this, is that Visa and MasterCard, they're allowed to throw their massive stat around that, you know, we can process, you know, 100,000 transactions in one second, you know, whatever, right?
And they're saying like, oh, and Bitcoin is so slow and, you know, other crypto is so slow.
And yet, even though it takes other crypto minutes or seconds to transact, which is considerably slower than Visa or MasterCard, You get your money there and then.
That's right.
With them, their transaction happens lightning fast, and then three weeks later, No, they hold your money.
No, your e-commerce platform provider sits on your money and says, oh, you've done suspiciously well today.
We won't pay you.
Bullshit!
This is another one of those where specs to specs, you know, I just know, like, I keep hearing, like, Visa and MasterCard, they talk about how tremendously fast they are.
Then, as a merchant, like, where's my money?
Yeah, exactly.
You don't get your money.
And again, if you have a day that's like 3x normal, then they freeze your funds.
It's like, what?
Okay, anyway, in the interest of time, I think we're all on the same page on this, but Todd, what are your final thoughts to wrap up this today so far?
It's already been fascinating, but what would you add to it?
Yeah, I just invite people to...
Telegram is where everything happens with Epic Cash, and there are a couple of places you can go.
t.me forward slash Epic Cash is the primary Epic Cash community, and there are different subjects that are in there, so if you're interested in trading or marketing or whatever, it's just a great place to go.
There's a second group, t.me forward slash Epic Private Money, that isn't just about Epic Cash, but is about other crypto projects as well that's in there.
But, you know, heavily focused on Epic Cash because we love Epic Cash.
That's where you'll find me mostly.
Gene is in both groups.
But I wanted everybody to have those two groups so that you could go and just really participate.
And if you have any issues in buying Epic Cash, go to t.me forward slash Epic Cash Help Desk.
There is just an awesome group of individuals in there that are willing to help you.
And just remember, there is no admin within the Epic Cash community that is going to DM you first.
You always have to be on the scam alert with crypto because scammers are going to scam and they're very, very good at it.
Right.
And also, finally, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Great points there, Todd.
Thanks for sharing those URLs.
Just as a disclaimer for the show, people don't take any of this as investment advice.
We don't encourage speculation in anything, not even in gold nor in dollars.
If you're holding dollars, by the way, you are speculating in dollars, by the way.
So keep that in mind.
But, you know, do your own research.
Do what's best for you.
I say diversify your risks.
But I believe that privacy crypto has a very important role to play, especially for, you know, refugees, people fleeing an area, which seems to be happening a lot more frequently.
You know, people fleeing Venezuela, people fleeing Gaza or whatever.
You know, if you have private digital crypto and a password in your head or an easy way to get to it, you have money when you get to your destination.
I mean, that's absolutely critical.
Right.
Gene, any final thoughts today?
Yeah.
Mike, first of all, thank you for summarizing this.
And one point that you made about, you know, for people who are in regions where there's bad things happening, right?
Crypto is extremely relevant.
Those regions, a lot of those regions didn't expect to be bad regions.
That's right.
Going back to Lebanon, a place of prosperity for thousands of years, all of a sudden it turned upside down and other places like that.
So to me, it's about being informed and being ready.
It's not about being afraid.
It's about being informed and knowing what your options are, whether it's crypto, whatever you want to invest in.
If you want to invest in gold, if you want to invest in silver, if you want to invest in ammo, God bless you.
All of those things, know your options.
Today's world, the landscape is changing.
Privacy crypto definitely has its place.
I select all the above.
Is there an option E, all the above?
Gold, silver, ammo, crypto, garden seeds, diesel fuel.
Hedge yourself, that's right.
Food forest, solar panels.
Lots of food.
Awesome.
Thank you, Gene.
And thank you, Todd.
This has been a really great discussion, a great show.
Thank you both.
You bet.
Thank you, Gene.
Happy birthday.
Yeah, happy birthday, Gene.
Thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen.
All right, folks.
So that's the interview.
We'll have the after discussion coming up here for you.
And remember, the website is epiccash.com, which I think forwards to epic.tech, but either one of those URLs works for you.
And we'll be back after this break with the after-party discussion with myself and Todd Pitner.
Stay tuned.
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.
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Check it all out at Decentralize.tv.
All right, welcome back, folks.
Hope you enjoyed that interview.
I had a great time, and I got to say, Todd, you know, Gene has such a technical mind.
He does.
I mean, I apologize for interrupting him a few times, but I want to bring it back into just sort of everyday people, practical knowledge.
But Gene has a real handle on the tech and the future of the tech, and that's really exciting to hear about.
Well, he acquired his...
I don't think he'd mind me sharing, but he acquired most of his epic through mining.
He is just an outstanding miner.
And so he's amazing with the tech, always has been, and he's a math...
You know, he's a mathematician.
I mean, he puts me to shame with all of that.
So when it comes to X's and O's in tech, he eats it for cereal.
Yeah, absolutely.
For breakfast.
Yeah, well, no, we understand.
Yeah.
I'm just impressed that Epic is looking forward with the theoretical papers and the new math that's going to allow these non-interactive transactions eventually.
I don't want to set a false expectation with people that it's going to be next week.
It's not.
This is going to take a while.
But it's just going to add to the utility of Epic Cash.
And actually, I think it's going to be a game changer for the applications of the Mimblewimble blockchain.
Me too.
You know, no one's ever done that with MemoWimble that I'm aware of.
No.
And it will all be open source.
And like he said, the project is doing it for the greater good, not just for Epic Cash, but it's going to be implemented with Epic Cash.
And that was the one thing, Mike, that just attracted me all the way through my coverage was the tech, the superior tech.
And all of the positive attributes of Epic Cash.
I think you'll recall Todd Lewis, the chief engineer, he and I on my channel, which people can go to Decentralized Directory on YouTube.
So just like my website, Decentralized Directory dot com, if you just go Decentralized Directory, you can find my channel and subscribe to it, hit the notification bell.
But then if you go down and you scroll down or you go to the series or whatever, you'll be able to find the quest for superior money.
Oh, yeah.
We spent probably 30 to 40 hours unpacking this interactive PDF that compared all we came up with, 35 attributes of what superior money would be if we could just click our heels and create it all at once.
And then we went one by one, you know, whether it's fungibility, and we compared between Epic, BTC, Monero, Gold, We're good to go.
And then if you have your own favorite crypto, shoot, just put it in the last column and go through and do your own research and say, do you have a check or an X on there?
But Epic Cash, Mike, check every box except one, and that was mass adoption because it's a microcap.
You know, that's the thing.
These things take a while to catch on, but when they catch on, They catch on.
Those are the stories that you hear.
And I know we don't promote these as investments or to the moon or any of that.
But the fact is, microcaps, if indeed they have sound tech and they do catch on, for all the right reasons, who isn't going to be looking for Privacy coins, Mike, that literally have no transaction information in the...
Go ahead.
No, I mean, just reiterating what you're saying there, I think more people are going to be looking at all the forms of crypto as the dollar system continues to fail.
Now, and when you start to look at crypto, you know, Bitcoin is usually the first one that people look at.
And then the more they get educated about crypto, they realize Bitcoin perhaps is not what they thought it was.
It's not private, for example.
Then they start looking at privacy coins.
And the more they get educated, the closer they get to often then Monero.
And then they start looking at, well, what are other privacy coins?
And that's when Epic comes up on their radar, things like that.
I do want to correct you, though.
According to Janet Yellen, the best money is the printed currency dollar.
And the reason why, in Janet Yellen's opinion, that's the vastly superior form of money is because they can print it at no effort while you and I have to earn it.
So what would you say to that?
Janet's got you beat.
Janet is serving with $100 bills, Hunter Biden's addictions.
That's all I can say.
Okay.
Okay.
Which addictions?
I'm curious.
What's being envisioned right there?
Is there pole dancing involved?
Yeah, we don't have enough time, Mike.
We don't have enough gigabytes on our laptop to store all of Hunter Biden's addiction photos.
Yeah.
Oh, hey.
Hey there, Ro.
How you doing?
Oh, well, you know it's time to wrap things up when your dog comes and grabs you.
It's like, hey, Dad, time to go, bro.
Yeah, he comes over.
He's like, he's checking his little doggy watch.
And he's like, you know, it's half past bark, and it's time to go play.
He does know.
Well, anyway, Gene was great, and I really invite people to go to t.me forward slash Epic Cash or t.me forward slash Epic Private Money.
I know, it's amazing.
He's bringing me toys, man.
He's bringing me toys.
He's like, it's Christmas.
You know what?
It's so funny because he's dark and your back is dark so it looks like a green screen to where you just have these things floating.
Floating rings?
Have you ever worked for NASA? No.
With the green screens?
No, but we have anti-gravity tech here with the toys.
No, he'll calm down.
We'll be able to do this.
Hey, just calm down.
Okay, down, down, down.
That's it.
All right, we're good.
We'll be okay.
All right, sorry about that.
How's your smoothie there, Mike?
That smoothie looks delicious.
Yeah, I'm still working on this.
Yeah, that's breakfast, actually.
What is that?
Is that a half-gallon?
I don't know, 128 ounces or something.
It's big.
I don't know what it is, but yeah.
Okay, in the spirit of Ask Mike Anything, so you make that in the morning and go through the day, or do you go through a couple of those a day?
No, I go through the day with this, and then I eat a regular meal in the evening.
Okay.
Okay.
So you don't eat breakfast?
You just get your smoothie?
No.
Okay.
So you eat one regular meal a day?
I just do a smoothie for breakfast and lunch.
Yeah.
Because, you know, the typical breakfast in America, you know, it's like a diabetes cancer breakfast.
It's like, are you kidding me?
You know, the bacon causes cancer and all the sugars cause diabetes and heart disease, you know.
So I'm not part of that.
I want to be around to see what happens with all this tech, man.
I want to see where crypto goes.
I want to see where AI goes.
I want to see where quantum computing goes.
Longevity matters.
Okay, so then what do you like to have for dinners?
Wide variety.
Depends.
Totally depends.
Could be lots of things.
Okay.
I do enjoy dinner.
Okay.
Beautiful.
Getting back to Epic and where it's going, like I said during the show, I genuinely want to thank you, Todd, because we didn't really talk about this in detail, and we don't need to, but you have been so instrumental in the Epic community of, I think, helping to sort out some of the turmoil issues that have been sorted out and just providing leadership about, you know, let's...
Think positive here about where this can go as this technology continues to improve and as adoption continues to improve.
That should be the focus.
That's what initially attracted me to it.
Absolutely.
I mean, Mike, do you remember there was a point in time where we were doing a full series on the power of private money?
Yeah.
And it was centered on Epic Cash because that was, we both believed, you know, the future and still do from a tech standpoint.
You know, it was just there were some leadership community-based issues that we just couldn't look past.
And, you know, that became kind of a showstopper for a while.
But...
But, like with Monero, like with other great projects, you know, oftentimes you bust through, and I believe we bust it through, and I believe that we are satisfied in the reconciliation, and I believe we...
We, you, me, Gene, the greater Epic community are full steam ahead.
And I couldn't be more excited because the other thing I like is that, you know, previously there was a lot of white noise working on all kinds of other projects.
I just like Epic Cash.
And the tech, you know?
It's like Bitcoin didn't have to have a hundred other bus stops or subway stops, you know?
Right.
So Epic Cash, building the use cases, working towards non-interactive transactions, I truly believe it is the best privacy crypto out there.
You know, Fero gives it a good run for its money.
Yeah, Fero's pretty cool too, yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of good tech.
And Monero's great, by the way.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, look, that's where I think people should hold the majority of their privacy crypto investment, just because it is so liquid and it's a great store of value.
And, you know, it's heading in the right direction, Mike.
I just think the whole crypto space is going to succeed wildly because, I mean, who trusts the banking system at this point?
I mean, nobody who is informed trusts the banking system.
Who trusts the Fed?
You know the U.S. government, well, the Federal Reserve with the Treasury is going to just print trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars.
What's that going to do to the value of your dollars?
It's like I said during the show, if you are holding dollars, you are speculating in dollars, and you are losing.
You dollars are not going to become more valuable.
Trust me.
They're melting in your pocket.
Absolutely.
It's so funny to me when people say, well, isn't it risky to hold Monero or whatever?
I'm like, are you kidding me?
Check your own wallet?
Check your bank account.
There's risk.
You're losing 2% a month in purchasing power if you buy food.
In purchasing power, and that's what people need to acknowledge, recognize, study, be informed.
Purchasing power is what's key.
Yeah, exactly.
It is just so simple to just go to the grocery store and do your own research.
You have been doing your own research.
You've been astonished.
You've been like, I can't even go with good conscience to the meat section and buy a ribeye steak because they have taken what used to be a $10 steak and now it's like a quarter of an inch and they're trying to pawn it off as a real steak. I can't even go with good conscience to the meat It's a steak wafer.
Yeah.
And it's just...
I just don't do it anymore.
I just don't do it anymore.
So that's food inflation, folks.
That's your dollars melting in your pocket.
Well, exactly.
So anyway, the website, again, is EpicCash.com for people who want to check it out.
And buy EpicCash.com.
That's what's going to be most important for people because I think people are going to want to acquire it.
And that's a really good site to be able to walk you through.
There you go.
Practical solutions.
Now also then, Todd, I want to give us a chance to talk about Decentralized Directory and also then Goldbacks.
These are projects that help support the show.
Oh, thank you very much.
I don't know if you can go to it or not.
Oh, yeah, I'll bring it up.
Yeah, if you bring it up, I just want to direct people.
If you scroll down and you go to the partners supporting decentralization, that's where if you click there, I would like to show people a few things.
One, These are different people.
Scrolling down to...
Right.
Up there.
Up, up, up.
This one?
Oh.
Up, up, up.
Where my face is.
Oh, the key partners?
Oh, where you're facing.
Okay, yeah.
Got it.
And then if you click on the yellow there...
This one?
Click here to explore?
Right.
Okay, got it.
And then people go there, and you scroll down, Mike.
People will be able to see.
I had Andy Checkman on today, and he has a great offer for people to be able to get a free Silver Eagle with $1,500 order of gold.
Oh, yeah, I see that.
Yeah, it's really cool.
And this section here I want to show you is, we talk about foodforestabundance.com and solar energy, and then in the middle is probably the hero of my site.
It's the Tax Advantage Strategy.
Ah, let me click on that.
People click on that, Mike, and you can just read a little bit about it.
But I will tell you, 80-90% of the consultations I do have to do with this.
And I will tell you that I'm coming up on a meaningful number of people that I have helped.
It's a benchmark for me that makes me feel really, really good.
And I just want to tell people that a big part of decentralization is keeping more of what you earn.
And I can help you do that.
So I just really encourage you to go to that section of the site.
I give you enough breadcrumbs to be able to hopefully be interested.
But if you want to grab an hour with me, I haven't had anybody who I've given a consultation who has wanted their feedback.
Most of them, I would say 75% of them have moved forward with this key strategy.
It's revolutionary.
Yes.
I mean, everything that you've described about it has been mind-blowing.
So, yeah, I would encourage our audience to check that out.
And, you know, do your own research, obviously.
But understand that this is a tool.
Yes?
The other thing is, in there, people, if you go in there and you look for the solar energy area, people know that I've installed a food forest.
I installed solar on my home.
Well, now I have the empirical data.
I submitted my TECO bill to this gentleman named Steve.
This is my bill from two months ago, which is $648.18.
For electricity.
For electricity.
And I finally got the updated one post-selling my energy back to the electric company, and it's here.
My bill now is $24.75.
So everybody out there, if you can fog a mirror, you can certainly go to decentralizeddirectory.com, go down to the Key Partners Supporting Decentralization, click on the solar area.
Oh, here it is.
Freedom Solar Power.
Yeah, and then all you have to do is fill out that information and submit the first page of your electric bill, and Steve will give you a free assessment.
Wow.
And, I mean, it is amazing.
You'll at least be able to see what it would mean for you in your state.
And I'm just telling you, so the cost of my solar is $330 a month.
So...
I submit to you, Mike, that that $675, when you think about energy inflation, give that three years.
When the Middle East goes hot, the barrel of oil isn't going to be $84.
It's going to be $300, if not more.
So I believe and submit that people in my neighborhood are going to have to move because they can't afford their energy bill.
So we have to start being preppers when we're thinking about our own energy expenditures too.
So I invite everybody to please go get a free assessment.
All right, so that's all at decentralizeddirectory.com, which is Todd's website.
And Todd, I love the fact that you do all the things that you promote or talk about.
You do them all.
You implement them all.
It's really amazing.
All right, now let me plug one thing that's new for this show, that I've completed all the lab testing on these goldbacks, which are these gold-impregnated bills.
I mean, they have a layer of gold in them.
And if you go to verifiedgoldbacks.com, which is our affiliate site on Goldbacks, you can actually see, well, not only my video describing all this, but the actual photographic evidence.
We did mass spec testing.
I melted down the Goldbacks.
And when you do that, you get this...
Let me show you a photo.
First, you get this foil out of it.
There.
You see that foil right there?
Yeah.
You get that when you melt it at 800 degrees Celsius, and then after you melt it at 1100 degrees, you get this little pellet.
That pellet is 24-karat gold, and I did all the gravimetric testing with analytical balance, and then there's the balance.
There's the gold that came out of one of them, 1.601 grams.
I have a really high-end balance because of the lab work that I do.
And then this vial is actually...
That's gold dissolved in what's called aqua regia, which is nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.
And then we tested it for the parts per million of gold and other possible contaminants, and we verified it's over 24 karat gold.
And then we did this acid stone test that jewelers use.
Anyway, bottom line, folks, is...
These goldbacks are pretty amazing.
In this photo here, you can see they are fractions of an ounce of gold, very precisely manufactured.
You can have one one-thousandth of an ounce or five one-thousandths, ten, twenty-five, fifty.
The gold is in the bill itself.
And so when you're handing somebody one of these, you're handing them a very precise amount of gold, making gold spendable and highly divisible.
And these are available right now.
People are loving them.
People go crazy over them.
I mean, check out.
Look, this is some of the meltdown gold dust in the first layer of melting or the first round.
Anyway, you can check it all out at the website.
I honestly did not believe that these had all the claimed gold until I ran the test myself.
I am so shocked that you, Mike Adams, would run tests.
Yeah, you know, because I test everything.
You do.
And you know what?
I know from experience that...
You might want to get these sooner than later.
Why?
Because the price of these changes once a day.
That's true, yeah.
So as the price had gone up, yeah, they were getting more expensive.
That's right.
And after interviewing Andy Shekman today, I know that there has been a little bit of a retrace.
So before it goes to that next level, yeah, I would encourage people to make sure that you visit and acquire it.
It's worth checking out.
And again, that does pay us an affiliate fee that helps support our platform.
But check out this last table here.
The recovery of gold out of these bills Every recovery was over 102%, or I guess the lowest one was 101.96%.
That's crazy.
That's great.
The recoveries ranged from 102% to 107%.
So in every case, we were getting more gold than what was promised on the bill itself.
And I asked the founder about that, and he said, yeah, they actually do a 5% overage in terms of applying gold.
And there's some variability in the process, a little bit of variability.
So anyway, that's verifiedgoldbacks.com.
So thank you, folks, for supporting this show and supporting.
And understand that the solutions that Todd offers and that I just plugged there, these are decentralized solutions.
Right.
You know, we're not here...
Wanting you to buy laundry detergent or a music album or tickets to Disneyland to see drag queens twerking in front of your children.
These are decentralized solutions that are consistent with what we're talking about in this show.
Empowering you.
Giving you tools that can take you...
Way beyond and above the normal knowledge base of the American consumer who doesn't know about these things.
And that's why they can never get ahead.
They don't know about your tax-saving strategy, Todd.
They don't know about gold or goldbacks.
They don't know about privacy crypto.
That's why they're never winning.
I mean, knowledge is the difference, and we impart knowledge here.
Yeah, we aren't suggesting that you engage in expenses.
You know, these are investments.
And if you take the time to learn why, you'll quickly see.
But this is just part of the journey, everyone.
You know, Mike and I, I mean, goodness gracious, we interview people and then all of a sudden there's another rabbit hole.
Hole I gotta go down and try.
It's really cool.
It keeps us busy.
It does.
It's been nuts.
We're having fun with a lot of things.
Alright, so there we go, Todd.
I mean, a great interview, a great show, another great day with you.
I so much appreciate you being the co-host here.
We've had a lot of fun together, and we've learned a lot together on this show.
Yeah, we have.
I mean, I believe another interview is coming out this week.
You're turning around this epic interview really quickly, and then on the heels of that is another one that people are going to watch, where I think their brains are going to be broken in a positive way.
Just amazing guests.
Breaking brains without mercy.
That's our slogan.
Yeah.
So thank you.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Yeah, for pulling that off.
All right.
Well, very cool.
Thank you so much, Todd.
It's been a great conversation today, and we'll talk again soon.
All right, my friend.
All right.
Have a good one.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you, Todd, and thank all of you for watching today.
Again, decentralized.tv is the website where you can find every episode of this program.
And, of course, Brighteon.com is the platform that hosts this.
And I'm the founder of Brighteon.com, which is the free speech platform.
You're welcome to use it yourself.
Post your own videos, and you won't be censored, especially if you're telling the truth about things like, well, the things we talk about here on this show.
Thank you for watching today.
Mike Adams and Todd Pitner here.
Take care, everybody.
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