Welcome back to another meet! Kevin Report number 63 it is a March 26th Mitch McConnell's out of the hospital he's going to be working from home before Congress resumes a work and there's now a lot of concerns surrounding uh, this, uh, uh, Archangos dude who was one of the big reasons uh, that we started potentially seeing a banking crisis woes. Arcagos Capital Management has been uh, pushing for a waiver of some of the 11 counts of uh, fraud and deceit for manipulation of seven publicly traded Securities And so a lot of folks have been wondering uh oh, this guy better face Justice because Arcagos potentially was the tip of the iceberg for all of the drama that we're seeing now. And it's not to say the drama we're seeing now wouldn't have happened otherwise. but some say Arcagos was the tip of the iceberg that led to the fall of three arrows Capital which led to the fall of many crypto companies FTX Voyager General Block file which led to the collapse of Signature A Bank and Silvergate which led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank then Credit Suisse In other words, it was all a long connected Domino that went back to some of these original losses thanks to this Arcago's Capital Management Kind of wild to think about how all of it could be so connected.

Uh, back to one person who basically YOLO to 1.5 billion dollar portfolio, somehow turned it into 20 billion dollars and then became a millionaire by turning it into, well, actually, bankruptcy. So less than a millionaire? Uh, pretty wild. So uh, many things to cover today. Especially, uh, we're going to touch.

Uh, we'll go in order here today. We'll go. Uh, we're gonna talk crypto. We're gonna talk banking crisis.

We got to talk Iran Inflation Reduction Act We've got Congress fighting back. We've got short sellers. A lot of people have been asking me how to short commercial real estate, so I've got some insight for you on that and it should be pretty entertaining. A lot of a lot of information.

Uh, we'll put it that way so we'll but I think that's good? I think that's the point of why we're here is to learn insights and perspectives. So let's go ahead and start with the crypto segment. Well, Morgan Stanley just released an incredible coin and it gives us some insights into what actually might be going on with Bitcoin price action. And it's probably not what you think.

In fact, it's pretty remarkable that potentially one organization controls over 80 percent of Bitcoin trading volumes. which then makes you wonder, is Bitcoin's price action correlated with the market or company that's bumping it when they want to? Hopefully we don't get bogged, but let's talk about this: Morgan Stanley piece right after I mentioned thank you for being here. uh and remember Mr Quan they Tron a co-founder who was arrested uh in Montenegro carrying fake Costa Rican passports. Well, apparently there was an interview just about a year or so ago where Mr Kwan ended up talking to somebody a pharmaceutical executive who was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud and that pharmaceutical executive remember Quan was one of the founders as well of uh uh, the Terra Luna disaster here.

that's why who's so heavily investigated. But what's remarkable is he was in a podcast with this executive and uh, the executive says hey, I just wanted to let you know jail is not that bad and then Mr Kwan apparently turns and smiles to the camera and nods because they were doing sort of a zoom interview apparently here. Good to know He says anyway again Mr Kwan 31 years old he was arrested in Montenegro uh so uh, a pretty pretty pretty crazy here. So uh anyway, let's get into this Morgan Stanley piece which is pretty incredible.

Uh, all right so let's see here. and uh, if I mention Tron I meant not Tron uh, lift Terra Luna sorry about that. Uh, yesterday I was looking into Trot Well okay, let me clarify this. I want to make this very clear Mr Kwan is not Tron the Morgan Stanley piece ends up talking about Tron sorry I misspoke on that so I don't want to cause any kind of confusion.

Uh, but anyway, let's get into the Morgan Stanley piece so we can be clear about that. All right here. it is Okay. Okay, sorry one sec, let me fix this.

Okay, here we go there it is. Oh, finally got it. Okay, here we go. take a look at this Morgan Stanley piece.

Which is kind of scary because it shows us that the vast majority, potentially as much as 80 of Bitcoin's trading action is controlled by just one company. Ready for this? Here it is: Binance folks. listen to this Morgan Stanley piece because it's pretty dang detailed and it's worth understanding what they're analyzing and what the implications of this could be for Bitcoin because it's a really big deal. So look at this expectations of U.S Dollar liquidity support have helped BTC rally.

That's something that Kathy Wood told us as well, right? Kathy Wood Told us see, look, Bitcoin's going up because banks are having uh, problems and so if banks are having problems, maybe that's why we can say oh, look, BTC is going up BTC going back up to another FIB retracement line. Nice skyrocketing there on BTC right as the banking crisis begins and that kind of makes us think oh, maybe Bitcoin is a tool that people could use to flee the dollar and have a safe haven in Bitcoin and maybe a lot of people are doing that. But is that actually what led to the price rally for Bitcoin Well, Morgan Stanley Looks at blockchain analytics to find out and the results are somewhat surprising. Let's take a look or potentially not surprising.

Anyway, listen to this Traders On Binance Now set the daily price for Bitcoin as The exchanges volume takes 80 percent share of the market. In other words, 80 a cents out of every dollar of Bitcoin that are traded occur on the Binance network. Now this is interesting because it comes right at the same time as Binance actually decided to dump one billion dollars of Binance USD and turn it into Bitcoin. So it kind of makes you wonder.

You know we'll go into it with a little bit of Jade and we'll see what Morgan Stanley says. Wait a minute. What happened first, did the banking Crisis occur and then did Traders flee to Bitcoin? hence leading Bitcoin to Rally because they were seeking safety for the dollar Or did the banking Crisis occur? Which would be the perfect opportunity if you had control of a lot of Bitcoin to or and other extra cash to liquidate maybe a stable coin and and pump Bitcoin to make Bitcoin seem more valuable. especially if you happen to be The Brokerage responsible for 80 of the trading volumes.

Well, to answer that, we would have to know what accounts are actually transacting most of the Bitcoin coin around the time of the banking crisis and we happen to have an answer thanks to Morgan Stanley. So let's take a look at this. So the narrative quickly turned in the traditional banking sector. That basically the weaker the traditional banking sector, the higher the Bitcoin price.

This has been The Narrative of the very pro-bitcoin movement. Again, this is why Kathy Wood reiterates her one to one and a half million dollar price target for Bitcoin and the market is focused now on whether the FED will inject more liquidity. In other words, if we're going to see more pumping of uh, dollars or more printing of dollars and uh, into the Fed's balance sheet and therefore into the economy, then maybe we'll see BTC move as well. All right, let's take a look at this: BTC has outperformed other risk markets currently trading at about 10 percent stronger if we use its prior relationship with the NASDAQ.

So in other words, Bitcoin is actually outperforming multiple different markets right now. Uh, and it's actually quite neat to see this because you could jump over I'll go forward a little bit. Look at this over here. Here's Bitcoin versus U.S cyclicals.

This is kind of interesting. so you got Bitcoin outperforming cyclicals and look at this: U.S cyclicals versus defensives. That's this right here and then Bitcoin actually outperforming. By the way, I Love.

as I'm filming this, people think I'm like, uh, super like anti-btc somebody just donated five dollars. Stop hating on Bitcoin for not getting in early I mentioned Bitcoin There's like this unleash of bots and people don't actually care what your information is. Notice how I actually haven't gotten into any of the information yet and some people are already upset like I think it's I think it's one of those things where it's like what somebody has information I don't want to hear it. Don't want to hear it.

That's fine. Listen, if you don't want perspectives, just leave the video now. Okay, you don't belong here. If you want to stay dumb, put your head in the sand.

You don't belong here. I'm going to keep going now. All right. So uh, so Bitcoin's actually doing interestingly well by decoupling.

Uh, of what some people are saying: decoupling from Cyclicals here. Look at this: BTC Blue Line yellow line over here. cyclicals versus defensives. You're actually seeing a pretty good correlation here.

Good correlation here. And then you get this break right here. So you get a break around the banking crisis. Uh, the same over here with the Bitcoin correlation to NASDAQ Look at this rough correlation here: I Mean you could say that's pretty well correlated right here.

And then all of a sudden we break on BTC Okay, now what do we got here here? We have a very weak correlation to gold for Bitcoin. Uh, this is a lot harder to kind of draw a midpoint over here on BTC and gold. so the correlation isn't too clear between gold and BTC. That's leading some people to say this isn't digital gold.

So what do we have over here here? We have M2 money supply growth and Bitcoins market cap and this makes sense, right? The more money is printed, potentially the more money there is that could flow into digital exchanges and Lead Bitcoin to go up. That makes complete sense. So that's actually very interesting because it shows us that uh Bitcoin is very sensitive to the flow of money. which if we're printing more money right now, maybe that's why it makes sense that we're starting to actually see BTC prices move up see I Got them on the chart right here.

if we go out to the Daily uh, what do we have for BTC Well look at the bottom of the CTC on the chart over here we're looking at on this day chart where about March 9th right before the banking crisis, right? So we kind of have seen Bitcoin pumps since the banking crisis. Uh, and it's really pumped in a way where it's decoupled from its prior Trends It's prior association with stocks here, and the NASDAQ Okay, interesting. So why is this potentially? Well, let's take a look. So Finance dominates Bitcoin trading on exchanges.

Binance cut Bitcoin trading fees to zero last July and has continuously been gaining market share. That's actually pretty incredible. So as Binance basically was available with zero trading fees, while Block Five Voyager and FTX died, what happened bit Binance actually ended up taking a substantial market share at those times. So kind of brilliant.

Look at that right around July right before the collapse of a lot of of FTX and uh, right around the time of the collapse of uh, a Voyager and right after the three arrows Capital Disaster. This is really interesting that you're seeing Binance pull in so much of a share 81, they basically control Bitcoin trading. Okay, uh, and this is why Morgan Stanley says. Our conclusion is that Traders on Binance now set the daily price for Bitcoin.

This makes logical sense. Okay, then what do we have? Investors mostly ask us about Coinbase uh, as that is the largest listed crypto stock company, but we argue that flows on Binance more closely explain what's going on in the market. For example, after Bitcoin rallied 40 in January, the volume of Bitcoin to U.S Usdt traded on Binance reached a 38 Uh, X that of the equivalent pair on Coinbase in early 2022.. So why did they explain this well? They suggest that people might be liquidating a stable coin essentially, and buying BTC And they see those volumes of those transactions match rallies in Bitcoin Prices on Finance, but not on Coinbase? Interesting.

So what's this? Bitcoin Order book liquidity is poor, reaching the lowest levels in over a year. Okay, that's actually really important. So when we think about a small stock, for example, and we look at a penny stock, you know, maybe something that's trading for four dollars with a market cap of oh, I. Don't know.

Maybe it's got a market cap of 50 million dollars. So a really small company, to some extent, some micro cap company, If you take a small company like that and you move just five hundred thousand dollars into the stock, the stock will probably pump substantially because the order book is generally very thin. The order book is really just a list of who wants to sell and who wants to buy, and the goal of an exchange is to help match buyers and sellers. Market makers can come in and provide liquidity by filling orders at various different prices, So the thinner an order book is, the more sensitive to price to security or or some sort of asset is here.

Morgan Stanley Alleges that right now, Bitcoin's order book is very small. liquidity is very low. This means smaller trading volumes can have a larger influence on price action versus before. Liquidity has been deteriorating since Alameda closed in November as they were a large Market maker.

Most of the BTC rallied this year has occurred during U.S trading hours, and when Bitcoin rallied 15 on the 13th of March, the largest buyers of BTC were from large wallets, many of them likely to be exchange wallets. Okay, now that's interesting. All right. So what are they essentially alleging here? We'll take a look at this over here.

This is what I wrote: Remember Finance just moved one billion dollars of busd into BTC In my opinion, that's actually a very risky move you say I wrote all these opinions down here. That's a very risky move because these could create repercussions for the crypto Market that are actually very dangerous and I think it's very important to consider that I'm saying here could be right. like in my opinion, if the market Nike swooshes that is. we had our Stark down already and we Nike Swoosh up with volatility then Crypto should be fine.

Should be right. The problem is if there's some sort of exogenous shock like you know something that cripples the stock market or inflation that remains sticky, or a further into the banking crisis or or people wanting to withdraw their money from everything. whether it's Banks and crypto or or whatever right. Some kind of shock that puts more stress on the brokerages that remain like cracking and finance could end up creating substantial strain over at Binance since what they're really doing is they're taking more of their cash backed assets and they're basically buying Bitcoin with it.

That in my opinion is a weakening of Binance's risk tolerance and this follows them basically dumping uh, their their proof of Reserve audits which would never show what liabilities were staked against those. But at least we got some kind of audit into the asset side which is relatively worthless anyway, because if you only know what the assets are and you don't know what the liabilities are, what's the point we already know. Uh, or at least I should say suspect we don't want to, don't want to get sued by Bandits But we already suspect that if Binance has three coins that are each let's say, worth a market cap of a billion dollars, we already suspect there's probably only one billion dollars of cash. So when Binance tells us, oh, that coin is 100 backed by cash, sure it is, as long as it's not also backed by cash.

This, as long as that cash is not also being used by the other coin, which it probably is, as long as it's not also backing the other coin. which it probably is. But we don't know because there's no regulation over here, right? So in other words, Morgan Stanley is giving us this sort of cannon fodder to suggest. Wait a second.

If exchanges are the ones who are pumping crypto? Specifically, Binance who controls 80 to 81 percent of Market volumes. Isn't it possible that an exchange like Binance could actually be perpetrating a purposeful pump during the banking crisis to make Bitcoin appear more desirable and therefore manipulating people like Kathy would into thinking the pump in bitcoin price was actually organic? When the fact is, it was not, it was an inorganic pump led by exchanges. Well, take a look at this Bitcoin's 15 rally on the 13th of: March SAR Large Wallets Large. Bitcoin Holding wallets of uh, wallets basically holding between 10 000 to 100 000 BTC These wallets were the ones who exchanged the most and they are likely exchanges.

Take a look at this. If we zoom in here, you're going to see these are the small wallets, right? These are us normies over here. Small, small, small, small, small. All the small wallets which hold less than a thousand Bitcoin which could be as much as a decimal of a Bitcoin one to ten Bitcoin 10 to 100 Bitcoin up to a thousand Bitcoin All of the small wallets added during the banking crisis, which is fantastic, but look at this.

medium-sized wallets dumped massively. The one to ten thousand uh, Crypto wallets dumped and then what do you have over here? the exchanges pumping So it makes me wonder. Well, it seems easy to explain the idea that hey, Banking Crisis, let's all go to Bitcoin. Well, that is what normal people did.

Individuals did exactly that they bought Bitcoin during the banking crisis. But it wasn't just them, it was exchanges who actually ended up leading to the vast majority of the trading volume right here pumping Bitcoin on the 13th of March when the banking crisis was occurring. Now that's incredible because it makes you scratch your head and wonder. wait a second.

Is it possible that this is the total manipulation and that CZ over at Binance are in complete control of what happens with Bitcoin It is possible. Now there's some more information here because take a look at this total stable coin market cap has been falling while BTC has been rallying. Now that's weird because usually you actually see stable coin values go up in coordination with Bitcoin going up tether. The largest stable coin has seen issuance go up 10 in the last month and 16 this year, but quote that has not been enough to compensate for the reduction in other stable coins notably Busd and Usdc over half of all tether and and 70 percent of recent Uh, hold on a sec.

Over over half of total Us tether, and seventy percent of the recent issue has been created on the Tron blockchain. The company that's now behind uh, a subject of a lawsuit with the SEC. That's fine. I Don't know that that so much matters right now.

I Mean the SEC is coming after crypto, period? We know that. but I want you to think about this for a moment. So banking crisis happens and what happens? People think buy BTC But exchanges? uh, make the biggest moves. Uh, while dumping stable coins into BTC Is this then engineering the pump that people would expect potentially leading more people to want to buy BTC And four since Binance controls eighty percent plus of trading volume, Oops, doesn't it make sense as almost a free advertisement to pump BTC and then take 80 percent of BTC flows at Binance.

So there is a really clear, crystal clear argument here about uh, this basically crypto whales manipulating the market. Now, we're not saying that doesn't happen in the normal Market But that's not a defense. You know that's like somebody saying oh uh, you know John Murdered Sally Yeah well, will murders people all the time doesn't mean John Murdering Sally was okay. that's a stupid argument.

Like, just because there's fraud doesn't mean it's okay to do your own fraud. It's crazy. Anyway, BTC trades similarly. Okay, now we could talk about the four-year cycle of BTC as well.

But I think it's really interesting because while you're seeing stable coin issuance go net down, BTC is pumping where it would make sense to pump it. but statistically, it's actually The Exchange is pumping it. Uh, and and yeah, as hex Flex here says, it creates fake volume. Exactly fake volume.

Uh, so take a look at this over here. Crypto Exchange traded products and ETFs have actually seen outflows despite Bitcoin's price Rising Now that's also very interesting because take a look at this. If you go over here and you say hey, institutions like Banks and money managers are saying we don't want exposure to BTC then what you're seeing is stable coin issuance go down. Institutional Money Managers wealth managers Banks individuals buying.

you know Crypto related exchange products because you know we only have uh Futures ETFs and stuff. If you're seeing these go down, then it seems like normal people really don't have the power to actually make moves in Btc's pricing. Instead, it just happens to be people like CZ who are able to at the drop of a hat, say we're just going to dump a bunch of our stable coin and we're gonna go buy Bitcoin We're gonna go buy the debt. Okay, that's a little bit concerning though, because if the market is basically being propped up by Binance, This chart right here by the way, shows you the trading volume that Binance has, right? Look at this: Finance share of BTC exchange trading volume If you see this explosion here in Binance trading volume, then really, what you're suggesting here is Finance basically owns Bitcoin They basically own the market.

Now this drives me nuts as well. They say this here: A Word of caution on the reported data we analyzed information on Exchange Bitcoin Holdings based on Wallet information provided by the exchanges to the markets. Unfortunately, when cross-checking the data, it left us with more questions than answers. I've had the same problem.

It always seems like the wallet addresses that we get from CZ only paint part of the picture. You don't get a full image. and part of this is because what the exchanges keep doing is they keep making new addresses. So they have these massive addresses and then they create a bunch of smaller and mid-sized addresses and they move stuff around like crazy.

Everybody says, Oh, but the blockchain. It's transparent. You can follow everything perfectly. It's it's not that easy.

There's a reason why there are companies that make tens of millions of dollars as crypto analytic firms just to try to trace what the hell is going on because there are so many ways to obfuscate how or where your money is actually going. I mean all you have to do is understand the basics. Well, A hopefully if you're talking crypto, hopefully you understand the basics of cryptography, but then B Uh, hopefully you understand how simple it is to manipulate wallet addresses using service like service is similar to I Use this name even though it it closed specifically because there are so many others like it. but everybody knows this one like a tornado.

Cash right? It's very easy to to hide uh, your Trail so to speak. But anyway, I find this fascinating because to me it it sets up a risk factor for BTC that essentially says if look, if in my opinion, this is my opinion. So let's make this very clear. Uh first, I think you should after all this get life insurance in as little as five minutes because there's a link down below and it's awesome.

It's what Lauren and I use and it's great. Second, you know if you want to make sure you can, uh buy some BTC over here you could actually do that. uh on. Weeble If you want, uh, go to Metcaven.com uh free and you can get up to 12 free stocks to unweeble.

And if you wanted to, you could sell those stocks and buy BTC Uh, if you want to, it's not personalized Financial advice and yeah, that's a paid sponsor. but uh, let's go back in over here. to my opinion, push that button and figure out where the buttons are. Okay, so my opinion is as long as the market goes up.

Uh, that is. this is going to be the broader market, right? that is. So let's put the AKA inflation down rates stable, higher for longer doesn't mean deep recession slash credit squeeze? Then it's possible. Uh, Bitcoin and Binance will be just fine.

But what they've done in the meantime is they've lowered their risk. uh, uh um. or I should say their their protections. So they've actually increased their risk right? They've lowered their their Hedges to risk.

So they've increased their Risk by converting more stable coins to BTC over at Binance, which happens to be an exchange that controls over 80 percent of the market. That's scary, so that's something that's really important to pay attention to now. Uh, you know some people in the comments say you're late Kevin your fed won't work. What I think is phenomenal is actually the four-year crypto cycle Before your crypto cycle has been holding up and we might just be in the midst of the next.

uh, four-year crypto cycle. I'll pull it up over here, but it's actually been doing quite well. Let me see here. where's that four year? Oh, this is time zones I'll explain times those we'll go to the bullish part about the four-year time.

Uh, cycle here in just a moment. If I could find the darn thing. Uh, anyway. I'll find that in a moment.

But what's interesting is I I Really believe and I feel so terrible for people. Two more things we got to talk about. By the way, we're going to talk about Bitcoin Ordinals Uh, Time zones. Actually three things.

ordinals, Time zones. And then we've got to talk. Um, the four-year cycle. But a quick note I Love it when people are like, hey, why are you studying yeah, that's all you do.

They sound like babies. like honestly, if you use the word fud, you sound like an uneducated idiot and you should stop using it as a friend I want to be able to look at you in the eyes and say you shouldn't use that phrase anymore because it makes you sound like a dumbass Because fun is fear, uncertainty and doubt. But you're using it in a way that assumes it's fake news. But fear, uncertainty and doubt are not fake news.

They're actually important things for you to be aware of. like, uh, you got to be aware that there's a counterparty risk in stable coins. As everybody today has learned when brokerages have collapsed. So the same thing we talked about years before brokerages collapsed and guess what, people then said, whatever.

whatever. Stay stupid. So anyway, uh, so take a look at this. So over here you have uh Bitcoin rallies by time zone and I Thought this was really interesting because look at this.

you have US time zones uh, representing uh, most of the buying right here. 40 percent ish for Bitcoin Buying and selling occurs in U.S time zones AM and PM about 22 21. Now what's interesting here is I Don't know that this necessarily means these trades are occurring in the United States So right here I Wrote the following: It doesn't mean that you couldn't schedule Bitcoin trades in U.S time zones from the United Arab Emirates where CZ happens to hang out all the time because he's too afraid to go to the United States because he's going to get invested and it'll be just as much of a top G as Andrew Tate in jail. Now we'll see, we'll see, who knows Andrew could, maybe he's innocent? We'll see.

all right. Here's the four-year uh, a Bitcoin cycle. So uh, the next having is expected in 2024, and every one of the havings we've had before. What do we see? We see these massive collapses in, uh, the price of BTC and that same kind of pattern is unfolding right now.

And so it's entirely possible that uh, we are just on the next bottoming process of the third having cycle here, and we potentially could, on a logarithmic scale, move up to the next scale point for BTC, Which that's that number right here folks. one hundred thousand dollars per Bitcoin So Based on the logarithmic growth and the having cycle pain that you get, it suggests and we. It's too soon to tell, but it suggests that despite all of this control that Binance has or whatever all these other facts that we know, it's entirely possible that we end up creating the same uh price movement as we have in Prior cycles And that could mean BTC One hundred thousand? So kind of cool. Uh, this here shows you a little bit more of an illustration in terms of what the Uh having cycles look like.

Uh, and then we gotta hit Ordinals really quick. So these uh, these Bitcoin Nfts called Ordinals uh came out and some and these right here where ordinals have been created. So these are creates for ordinals and it's really interesting that creates for ordinals aligns with the uh, uh, the daily transaction count count. This is not a price here.

this is daily transaction count for BTC. So this is not a price, but it's transaction count seems to be pretty dang aligned with Ordinals, so that's pretty interesting. At the same time, the shorting for Bitcoin exchange traded products have actually remained pretty high uh, despite Bitcoin's price rise, so haven't really been uh squeezed there. The shorts haven't really been squeezed there.

Those are quite interesting. I Actually think the biggest takeaway for me out of this whole article is that you can now use Buy Now Pay Later on the programs on building your wealth link down below now just like I don't right now invest in Crypto and I don't have any intentions to right now I think there are plenty of other deals and stocks I don't recommend you use Buy Now Pay Later Pharisees but so many of you have been asking me to enable that and I was able to get into a beta and now 50 of you using Buy Now Pay Later to join those programs which I think is sort of like at a grocery store. like even though I don't take vitamins, maybe I should I don't know, maybe I'm missing something I don't know uh even though I don't take vitamins, if I was running a grocery store I'd probably still sell Vitamins because well, you got to make money and survive. So anyway, those are some things to consider.

And a big bottom line out of all of this for me is Binance controls the BTC Market a lot more than I expected a lot and I don't know how I feel about that because honestly, I don't really trust CZ I think uh, you know when he tells us we've got all this money in stifu I remember tweeting out going really, where's all the money? It's like half of what you're saying it is. In fairness, he did end up topping it off I'm not sure if he saw my tweet or other people uh, saw it or somebody else's tweet on it and they ended up fixing the problem. but they ended up fixing the problem. So good for them, right? They topped off their saving fund, but then I don't believe them when they say that all of their assets are backed one to one because I think they're using the same dollars to back multiple different assets one to one.

Quite frankly, I think they got lucky that BTC didn't go lower than 15 000 because I think if BTC ended up hitting a low of nine I Don't think Binance would have ended up being able to survive uh, the crash. They would have likely collapsed as well. and the finance represents 80 percent of of trading volumes. That's scary.

So in my opinion, that always goes to the bottom line of not your keys, not your crypto. If you don't have your private key, you are going to probably at some point in the future in the crypto. World lose your money. So if you want to use the exchanges, go for it.

Just get your money off out of them. That's my opinion. Uh, you know, in non-personalized financial advice terms, not your keys, not your crypto I Think is the biggest lesson out of all of it. And look, there are a lot of people throughout the world they don't have another choice.

They have to use Binance, but at least no. Potentially what could be pumping up Bitcoin's price here recently could potentially be Binance. ironically making their platform even riskier. I Didn't even think it was possible to make Binance even riskier, but that's basically what they're doing.

So with that said, let's go on over here to listen to Mike Pompeo and see what he has inside. Uh, that's not what I wanted to press there. We go on. Johnson Said earlier in the show he says we are.

we are not at the Readiness place that we need to be because of the last couple of years of not only sending money and ammunition elsewhere, but also cutting back on defense. While Senator Johnson has that partly right I respect him a great deal. but we have a different view. I Think it is incredibly important that we push back against what is a Chinese Russian effort in Ukraine right? These These are deeply connected.

They're not separate ideas. Uh, his point is right in that we have depleted some of our stockpiles. We need to rebuild them. This is a long time coming in the failure to reinvigorate and rebuild the American industrial base in the way that we need to.

But Maria we could. We could absolutely do this. Uh, we we have the capacity to rebuild to rearm to refit to to to build a military that is capable of the singular task which is deterrence. This is what we did for four years.

We deterred the Iranians. We deterred the Russians We deterred the Chinese Communist party. We deterred chairman. Kim This happens with a strong military and an industrial base prepared to support it.

and I I know we can get this back. It's simply a matter of will focus and Mission can we do this? Even with this expectation that Joe Biden has compromised what does the CCP have on him? Ouch. Well, I couldn't answer that and I hope these committees will get to the bottom of it. We've already started to see some of the fund transfers that came to the family or at least what looks to be receipts for those.

Uh, Regardless of regardless of that, um, I Always looked at people's actions. We try to suss out intent. For me, it's what are you doing. The Bible Matrix is putting all of the wrong things at the Forefront of America and you can see it unraveling.

You can see it unraveling for every American family. We are less secure today than we were two and a half years ago. Maria Very, very disturbing Secretary: Stay with us I Want to get your take on Iran We have new developments this morning with regard to the potential of deeming the Iranians a terrorist organization. We'll be right back with more from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

So that's actually a big deal. We'll uh, we'll listen into what they have to say about uh, Iran in just a moment because I want to cover a little bit of what's going on at Ron uh in Iran this morning as well. Uh, but uh I suppose in the meantime we'll we'll look at a couple questions here. Let me see: I've got quite a few stories.

Uh, this morning here, so we'll we'll go to the Iran one in just a moment. And then we've got to cover some more on the banking crisis. We've got the Inflation Reduction act. Uh Congress fighting back short sellers for Real Estate So this is some of the big topics that we have to cover here.

but uh, let's see what kind of comments here. Somebody here writes: don't store your seed in a bank vault as it defeats the purpose I I think that's not your keys, not your crypto uh uh. reference there. uh Weeble doesn't give you keys.

That is true Biden has been on Tick Tock all weekend while Banks burn ouch Tick Tock It's like another China reference. Oh yeah, yeah, uh. let's see here: I have a tiny coffee maker with removable Hardware filter. but I put in a paper filter doesn't everyone? I Thought that was normal like you have.

like the the filter that you could take out that's like the mesh and then you put the paper in it I Thought that was normal. Uh, this more money guy has probably sent me about twenty dollars because he's pumping Al Algorand Why you need 5 000 plus algo coins? Algorand will 50x your money. hey is that Financial Advice: Can we sue you if that ends up not being true which I mean probably won't be true Oh man I mean hey, thanks for the five dollars but I don't know. that's uh.

some of the things people say in the comments are pretty funny. and then when people pay to pump stuff, it's actually kind of funny too because it's like I think everybody should be really aware of this kind of stuff on the internet right? Like there used to be these people who was it, was it for Terra it might have been for Luna no what was it? There was always this guy who came in and he donated like a hundred dollars. If you're like published coin, man, pump this coin. pretty sure it went to zero.

uh uh oh, is that supposed to be a disc? a Keynesian curve I I Actually believe uh, in a lot of what the uh Austrian economists believe I Just think they're ahead of the like, they're they're they're too soon. I Think the Austrians will end up being right in the long term and in the short term, the Keynesians will be right. Uh, which is actually a very frustrating uh belief because what I just did basically is I Pissed off all the keynesians and all the Austrians because the Austrians are like yo the dollar will collapse today. Inflation will go to the Moon only gold Will Survive And the keynesians are like no inflation is transitory.

It's all okay. Oh my gosh, Oh geez, what Somebody asked what's my stance on Bitcoin? Didn't I just spend 30 minutes. Pretty sure we just spent 30 minutes discussing them. I See you on Twitch it's a wiser TV Kevin If you believe in disinflation and fed Cuts Plus money printer coming? why are you not invested into crypto? Because I don't want to trust CZ With 81 market share control of trading volumes and I think there are excellent, excellent value opportunities in stocks uh that I think will do very very well.

Uh, and they don't have a a CZ style risk I can diversify myself into what I think are excellent pricing power stocks with strong fundamentals with uh with BTC I Get you know binance controlling 81 of the flows and uh CZ pumping it when he feels like it. uh and and with with no audits or risk mitigation I I so I don't I just don't trust the guy that's uh, that's okay. we gotta go to Mike Mr Secretary: I Want to get your take on Iran We've spoken over the months about what appears to be this: Iran deal now dead in the water. Uh, but we've got news here that the U.S conducted airstrikes in Syria after an Iranian drone killed a U.S Contractor wounded five service members.

And now we understand that the State Department says that it would support a decision by the United Kingdom to designate the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group I Know you spent years trying to get the EU to make this designation. Uh, Maria We did. and we worked to get the EU and European countries to designate the Irgc as a terrorist organization because they're a terrorist organization in the same way that the Houthis and Yemen are terrorist organization. and this Administration lifted that restriction too.

We're about reality. We're about facts on the ground. I Hope, uh, that everyone will come to understand that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of Terror. They're they're trying to kill folks in Europe but trying to kill folks here in America.

They present real risk as we saw to the American who was killed this week in Syria. If you don't respond with real power with real Force they will continue to push and they'll continue to create more risk. We know this: Maria When you are weak when you sit at the table with the Iranians and try and negotiate a nuclear deal that will guarantee them a nuclear weapon your friends Israel The gulf Arab states won't stay with you. They'll hedge their bets and your adversaries will see that you're weak and they will continue to push.

This is this is Deterrence 101. The By Demonstration has gotten a failing grade on that and you've put together the Abra Accords. Probably the first time in decades that we were even talking about peace in the Middle East I Know at some point you expected the Saudis to join that Abraham Accords as well. Where does that stand? Well still exists.

It's working well. The the people in those countries know that they are better off and most importantly, America is better off. The risk that we'll have to send more of our kids to fight and do something really difficult in that region is lower. the the more you have peace, the more you have prosperity in the Middle East Uh, the more secure America is as well.

There's deep American interest in making sure that happens. and the Abraham Accords were a remarkable outcome of the United States Doing hard work to make sure everybody understood that we'd be with Israel that we would help the Arab states be successful as well for the gulf Arab states and that we understood Iran as the problem child in the Middle East Um, all right, all right, we're going to pull off this: I Want to give you my thoughts on Iran which I actually think are pretty? uh, pretty important deal. So let's go ahead and jump into uh, some of, uh, some of my thinking on Iran really big deal. So here's just a quick background so you know what just happened in Iran and why Mike Pompeo is on Fox yapping about what just happened.

So, uh, Iranian-backed militias basically just used uh drones to attack a Uh you Us facility. It injured about six Americans and killed one American contractor. That's devastating. We don't want to hear about American deaths.

We really don't want to hear about any deaths worldwide. But certainly American deaths generally requires some sort of counter attack. and we did counter attack here. The U.S accused Iran of backing the attacks.

so we sent two F-15s to bomb sites that were used by allegedly Iranian-backed forces in Syria after that, because apparently that wasn't enough to actually, you know, deter further attacks on Americans. You ended up having militants fire 10 rockets at a second military base in Eastern Shear in Eastern Syria excuse me at the United States operates one of those 10 Rockets ended up missing the base by three miles so it probably missed it by feet, but then it just kept traveling. Uh, injured two women and two children. And so it shows you, the militants who are attacking these American bases just don't care about America responding And that made me wonder why why would militants actually shoot rockets at America Wouldn't we turn around and absolutely level them for that? Well, apparently no.

see. American Retreat actually has more serious consequences in what happens in a region because it leaves a power vacuum. and when we were treated out of Afghanistan, we actually told the world and we left the power vacuum that we did. We told the world, you know what? We're just not going to get involved.

Now this video isn't to say whether we should or should not ever trade it from Afghanistan After all, it was a 20-year very expensive War and the Afghans didn't want us there. But what's important is that what happens after a power a Hegemon leaves a rage gym. Well, you have something known as a power vacuum. A good way to think about a power vacuum is like a black hole.

So think about a really powerful star like a sun. It's really strong and really powerful. and and when you look at it, you're like oh man, it's it's strong. Like I Don't want to attack that star because it's way more powerful than me.

America In this case being the star, well, when that star collapses or goes away in a region, it actually creates a black hole that sucks everything into the void that it left. Well, that's exactly what happens with Hegemonic power. Regional Power Players As well, when one party leaves the next strongest party uh, players Lee or enter and fill the void. leaving Afghanistan was basically like a bad signal screaming.

don't worry Biden's no longer going to get involved in other International Affairs We're just going to leave a power vacuum. So what happened in Afghanistan The Taliban took over within days. That is everything that we establish published the military equipment tanks Humvees ammunition that we left behind are now all controlled by the Taliban a clear terrorist organization that hates Americans. So The Wall Street Journal Editorial board actually takes this one step further and they suggest that Biden's position of leaving power vacuums and not responding to aggression actually opened the door to Putin invading Ukraine.

Now people on the left say that's ridiculous Putin would have invaded Ukraine Anyway, people on the right say wrong if we still had Donald Trump Putin would have never invaded Ukraine because Putin either a respected or B feared Trump Now Iranian-backed militants are testing our military. Listen to this. Out of 78 attacks on our military. Guess how many times the United States has officially responded to attacks against our American heroes in the Middle East Seriously, think about that for a moment.

Okay, think about what. I just asked you out of 78 times. Okay hoop. 78 times since 2021 since we left Afghanistan 78 times.

How many times that we've been attacked have we actually responded A hundred? 78, 70. No Folks under the Biden Administration we have responded three times. That's it. We've been attacked 78 times in the last two years that we've since we've left.

Afghanistan. So a little less than two years we've been attacked 78 times and we've responded three times. Insurgents don't care. They think we are a joke.

This is embarrassing to our military. It's an insult to the heroes fighting for our freedom. It's like sending our army into the Middle East to create stability. Where they are, they're not actually really occupying creating stability.

The contractors and service men and women that we have in the Middle East are fighting Insurgency at least then and exercising missions. They're not pulling a Vietnam or Afghanistan, they're fighting Insurgency at least, so we're told. But anyway, the militias in Syria do not seem to care because they basically see our military saying, don't worry, just ignore it We don't want the politics of us getting involved too much being an issue right now. and to me, that's really embarrassing.

That's an embarrassing side of being an American because I think America is exceptional and it's important to remember that Iran is a nuclear power. They are supplying suicide drones to Russia Iran arms militants in the region specifically Houthi, Rebels Who attack, Saudi Arabia And what do we say to the Saudis? Yeah, we just can't really help as much as we used to. So what a surprise then that the Saudis are starting to distance themselves from America Now using the Chinese Yuan for some oil contracts. The Saudis are losing respect for America because we're not helping the region in a way that we used to.

In fact, we're letting militants fire rockets at our bases and we're not even responding. This is disgraceful, especially when Iran is flagrantly violating the treaties that we have with them. Consider the following: In Iran you have enrichment limitations set by agreement with the I.E Sorry the Iaea that is the International Atomic Energy Agency. and in a recent inspection in Iran, they found a traces of uranium that were way too pure for civilian use.

That restricted level, by the way, is 60 Purity Anything above 60 percent pure uranium starts getting close to the threshold to actually make a nuclear bomb. That level is 90. and the Iaea found uranium sitting at 83.7 percent enriched in Iran. And that's only what they found because the Iaea doesn't get invited everywhere within Iran.

So this really implies that Iran is still working on enriching nuclear-grade uranium at the same time. Iran is actually becoming more of a power player in the region. And this is also very concerning because really, there are State Sponsor of Terrorism: Look at this particular chart that I'm going to show you right here. Uh oh, it's not working.

Uh, Input: Select. There we go. Look at this chart. What does this chart show you? It shows you the International North South transport Corridor So the usual way to get goods and services from India up to Uh to Europe or Russia would actually be I should not put myself there.

Let's put myself there. No, that's not the right screen. sorry. I'm using a new switchboard here and screwing it up I'll just hide for a sec.

Anyway, the usual way to get Goods to Russia would be around this way because you would avoid going through Iran from India. Well, that's a substantially longer way than just going through Iran And so now all of a sudden Iran is becoming a more powerful player in the region by actually enable substantial trade through what's known as the International North South Transport Corridor That project is also going to benefit substantially from now improved relations between Saudi, Arabia and Iran because even though Iran has been arming Houthis who have attacked Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia realizes that Iran is a power player in the region and ultimately what we have to do is recognize that crap. If the United States is going to help the region less and they're not even going to respond to threats, then maybe Saudi Arabia has to align with people in the region like Iran. Now Iranian infrastructure remains a major obstacle for these trade routes actually reaching their full potential.

Much of these Transit areas rely on roads that are really crappy and Railways that are terrible. You think our Railways are bad in America, Just look at them over there. they're even worse. But the point is, China Saudi, Arabia, Iran and Russia are all getting stronger and at the same time people make the argument that America is getting weaker that we're getting pushed out of control in the Middle East and this is dangerous for the United States long term.

after all, China was the mediator in negotiating a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran Remember Iran used to attack Saudi Arabia and now China is negotiating deals for them too. It's the first restoration of diplomacy in seven years. Iran Just signed a 25-year partnership with China as well, and the goal is basically telling the United States we don't need you China it gets discounted oil Iran gets investments from China. Although the trade balance is a little uneven, China is getting more of a benefit than Iran is.

Russia is now Iran's largest investor. You've got pretty weak economies overall. The United States still dominates from an economic point of view. but our 900 soldiers in Syria and 2500 soldiers in Iraq battling the remnant Isis are really getting no support from our politicians.

So the question now is: is our deterrence in the Middle East too weak? Is our presidency too weak? Should we be tougher? And the question then is, well, if Iran is enriching nuclear weapons, Does it make sense to potentially attack Iran and bomb these nuclear weapons? Uh, enriching facilities? Maybe. But does that then just embolden Iran to actually just dig deeper and and build their bunkers even deeper out of the range of bonds and bombs and continue enriching nuclear weapons. It's entirely possible. It's basically like in North Korea over there.

so bombing isn't a great tool. Usually the good tool was trying to be a regional Power Player where you strike deals with all the countries around Iran to limit the power of Iran, let me consider it: deals with Turkey Saudi Arabia uh deals uh with Israel Of course, being in Afghanistan uh or Iraq gave the United States a lot of power around. Iran Now, we're pretty much gone out of all of these areas. we can't even respond to but three out of 78 attacks against Americans.

So it's no surprise that Iran is becoming a larger Power Player and is partnering with Russia and China which is scary in the long term Now, Practically how does this affect us? As Americans sort of in our daily lives? Well, little now. But it's going to become very important for future presidential elections because the stronger Russia becomes the stronger China becomes and the stronger Iran becomes the weaker. Relatively, the United States becomes so long term. it's actually a serious issue that we should be paying attention to and hopefully motivates you to check out the links down below for the programs on building your wealth so you can make sure you become a millionaire by building your wealth as fast as possible by investing in real estate in the next.

Real Estate Crash. Check out Zero to Millionaire Real Estate investing program. Check out the buy now pay later services for those as well. Linked down below: check out the Stocks and Psychology Money Group.

then the sponsors Metcaven.com Life and Met Kevin.com Free to get yourself 12 free stocks and Life insurance and as little as five minutes. Okie Dokie! That gives us our topic on yeah, we're on. All right. Fun.

Not really. kind of stinky. All right. So we did crypto.

All right. We've covered this, covered this. There's a lot of good ones today. All right.

Gotta talk about banking. Uh, but first, let's do a couple of questions here. A little bit of Q A I'm gonna take a sip of coffee in the meantime. So Q A And then we're gonna talk banking crisis.

Real men buy oil. No I still think oil is going down. Everybody's like, oh, let's go into 100 I'm like no, it's definitely not. Yeah, it's like 69 right now in WTI anyway I Run my own Think Tank I Love that.

uh the kitty looks good. Thank you. Appreciate that. How do we short the banking? ETFs We're going to talk about the banks in a moment.

Video Sponsors Defense: ooh are you calling me a Fed Boy is that a compliment. Bad boys are kind of. you know. Anyway, you mean real estate isn't crashing yet? We'll see.

We'll see. real estate's gonna be really interesting. Uh, you know, mortgage spreads have skyrocketed? We'll talk about that in a moment, But mortgage spreads have skyrocketed, so mortgage rates actually haven't fallen with the 10-year trash. Now, as long as those spreads come down pretty rapidly, if the banking crisis goes away, we'll uh, we'll do pretty good I think then you'll get a nice little floor under the real estate market, so that'll be cool.

I actually have been short the doll or I was short the dollar for a while because I I don't actually think uh I think the more treasury yields go down, the more the dollar will fall I Never trusted the banks I like my cash in my own possession I Don't know man I don't think that's a really good idea. Um yeah, what's your thought on V-waggy A small holding in addition to Tesla You know if it's if it's small cap stock I Don't touch it. man, those things are just pure manipulation. What is this V-ray Oh, it's Volkswagen Volkswagen What is that unsponsored represent What is that crap? ADR You know what that is is that is that Volkswagen that's the ticker for Volkswagen I mean I've never looked at them.

That's actually really interesting I Can't believe I thought that was like some small cap ticker that's crazy. Who picks a ticker like that? That's trash uh I don't know I've never looked at the financials for Volkswagen uh I think they're you know the their their EV it'd be very interesting I mean let's look at it. The Wagy investor relations. Let's look at it really quick.

V Wagy Investor relations. A dumb ticker? like? what about who has VW VW stock just shows wee Waggy So nobody has VW that's funny. Somebody could steal it. Somebody could squat on it.

All right, let's see why. why Volkswagen See Oh that's funny. When you download the investor relations page for Volkswagen you get AMC dot Volkswagen group Don't know why Oh my God Give me the documents, you idiots. It is so hard to get the financials for this company.

Company report annual Report Got it? I think I'm on like the seventh page of clicking through here. Oh my. God Anyway, I'll keep answering some questions. We will go to war before we lose the Petro dollar.

Uh I Don't think so. Petrodollar is not even that important relative to other uses of the dollar. What do you think I'll have and quite frankly, I think the usage of Just Oil in general will go away. What do you think will happen to the stock market and real estate market at the end of this year? In a nutshell, oh, like you know, I make videos on like my opinions on this literally every day and people like, can you just give me the shorts too like there's so many ifs you know I mean it's always been my thesis uh well, at least for the last like uh, six months on the Nike Swoosh The stock market goes down harsh Nike swooshes up with a lot of volatility.

but Trends up and that real estate will bottom after stocks do. But it depends. Man, it totally depends. depends what rates do you know I think I get asked like daily and it's just like annoying at this point.

So when's house hacking by real estate? How many times and how many House tech videos have I said Q3 Q4 on But depending on what happens with rates I don't know man, just you have to go day by day like I don't think you can. You could study the news uh and just go. Just Just give me the bottom line. That's like when you get those like you know people want you to sign up for like those email lists where they just give you, they just read you the headlines of like oh here are the headlines that you need to know today and you only need to spend one minute reading it I'm like are you trying to make me stupid Like all that happens when you read a headline is you tend to have some kind of emotional response to it and then you have no logic or perspective behind that.

So if somebody asks you about it, you're just like oh, did you hear this happen? no, what happened oh I don't know I only read the headline like you time the 500 page Volkswagen reporter has finally downloaded. What the hell do you need 500 pages for? Oh all right, let's try this. Um uh, there we go. So what do we got over here? 2022 Millions All right so we got 279 billion Euros of Revenue divided by 227..

uh, 277 divided by 279. That gives them about an 18.7 percent gross margin. It's no Tesla but it's pretty good. Then you've got distribution expenses I don't even know what that is.

Shouldn't that be part of cogs? Okay, admin expenses. Other operating income that's fine could be Finance income. Uh, Operating results: 22 billies? That gives us an EPS of about 29 euro per ordinary share. Well, how much are these shares trading for in Europe and what percentage of the ADR Zone That's the complicated thing, but that's interesting.

That's actually a decent margin that they have. Uh, their gross margin? Not that bad. And here's their balance sheet. Let's look at cash flows changes in equity cash flow statement: Okay, I'm surprised they didn't start with their net income.

It's like a European way to do it, huh? Change in loans, cash flows from operating activities. Here we go: 28.4 billion dollars. It's pretty good. And earnings.

Oh there it is. Earnings before tax. Oh, that's funny how they do that. Investments into intangibles, print, property and equipment.

So they got free cash flow of around 15 15-ish billies in Euro. It's pretty good cash and cash equivalents. They get another 29 Billies in cash, but how much debt do they have? That would be interesting too. Current liabilities: Oh my.

Lord There's so many liabilities. how do I Where do I even start? Oh, Intangibles, no matter any currents, so let's let's try to do some quick Kevin math here on this. and then we're going to go to the next segment. So some quick Kevin Math here is Cash 29.1 Plus 37.2 And then they have inventories, trade receivables I mean I'll give them that.

Okay, so I'll give them 84 of cash. basically 84. Kevin cash we'll call it. And then in liabilities.

We have tons of long terms here. Financial Liabilities: 121 billion My gosh, how much they pay in interest, other liabilities, other liabilities, other liabilities I mean that's basically like 150 right there and provision for pensions. Oh God You know that's something Tesla doesn't have as a pension. so you've got about 181.

Yeah, I'll just take off the the 21 I don't know what this other is. Whatever, we could just take the Total Line that they gave us 203 billion dollars. call Lee that's a lot in long-term liabilities and then short-term liabilities. You've got 182.

but I could add back into they have any leases over here. that doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Yeah, pretty much all of those 182 in current liabilities and 84 in current assets that doesn't look good. They got debt like crazy.

So yeah, they make money. but boy oh boy I mean there are money. Hopefully just goes to Debt Pay down because I think that's all they're gonna end up doing. Let's see here.

Uh, dividends paid. Wow. Okay, they actually paid four billion dollars of dividends Capital transactions, proceeds from issues and bonds. Here they're taking on more debt.

but then they did pay off that debt. So those wash. Uh wow. Wow.

This is. this is an interesting company. You know they have a profit margin on their cars. They clearly sell a lot of cars.

They've got a good brand value, but they've got an insane amount of debt and really to to go deeper on this company, you'd have to know all of the different controlling companies in this. And how does that relate to the Adrs out here? The American depository shares essentially I don't know the answer to all that I don't know. For me, it's not something that I feel anywhere close to touching. Interest Expenses: 442 mil I'm surprised that's not actually more 442 million dollars a year in interest expenses.

That means Volkswagen is paying 1.2 million dollars a day in interest. Wow, that's a lot. Write that down. All right.

very interesting. Volkswagen Yeah, uh. all right. So let's go to the next topic.

Next topic is the banking crisis. If I could just figure out how to make this not be funky though because it just keeps it's so annoying. Video a sign HDMI out. That's what I want.

It's not that hard that goes here. thank goodness. maybe I have to do the scene memory. Let's try that.

Let's save to one save. let's see if that worked. if that worked I'll be very happy. That's my note on the next one.

That's that. That's that. Oh I took my phone away. No, it doesn't work.

Dang it all right. give me a sec I'll get to the bottom of it. Very annoying that here I don't know why that just doesn't stay that way. All right.

Okay, oh, what's this? No Oh I think I may have figured it out. Oh, that would make me very happy. All right. Well I'm not gonna test it right now anyway.

so now let's talk about them. Banks Okay, oh I got a lot of notes here to cover. all right. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk a touch on Rich u