EP14 | Beyond The Brink | Allan Staple - part 2

The VEDA Broadcast Network is a platform that hosts shows and discussions on various topics. They are partnered with Swan Bitcoin and promote Bitcoin as a form of financial protection. The show "Beyond the Brink" features interviews with guests, including Alan Staple from the Staple Crew. Alan has had a diverse background and is passionate about cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin. He believes in the power of critical thinking and hopes that Bitcoin can guide us through turbulent times. He also discusses his thoughts on XRP and its potential to revolutionize banking and liquidity. However, he is unsure about the outcome of the ongoing legal case against Ripple. He emphasizes the importance of spreading investments and not solely focusing on one cryptocurrency. He also mentions the need for government institutions to make decisions that benefit the people. You're listening to the VEDA Broadcast Network, discussions that matter. Thank you for listening. The shows on the VEDA Broadcast Network are those of the host, guest, and callers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the staff, management, or advertisers of VEDA Media or the VEDA Broadcast Network. Beyond the Brink is partnered with Swan Bitcoin. We chose Swan Bitcoin because it's easy and inexpensive and the best form of financial protection if you're hit with a disaster. It's perfect for both new and experienced Bitcoiners. Set up a Bitcoin savings plan and never miss out on the dips. Get a free book, Inventing Bitcoin, the technology behind the first truly scarce and decentralized money, and $10 of Bitcoin when you use our affiliate link, vedabroadcastnetwork.com forward slash beyond. That's vedabroadcastnetwork.com forward slash beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Beyond the Brink. The show that drives headfirst into the global events that are pushing people to their limits and driving them to the brink of change. I'm your host, Melissa, and as always, I'm joined by the most inquisitive, Christy. Buckle up because today's episode is part two of our intriguing interview with our extraordinary guest, the one and only Alan Staple from the Staple Crew. Now, before we dive into conversation, if you're joining us on YouTube or Rumble, would you please show us some sport with giving us a thumbs up or a thunderous rumble? And for all you radio listeners out there, no fear. You can catch all of our previous episodes by going to our website at vedabroadcastnetwork.com or you can catch us on any of your favorite podcast platforms by searching our handle at vedabroadcast. That's at vedabroadcast. So, we're pumped to show you part two of the fantastic conversation we had with Alan Staple. If you weren't able to catch part one, we'll put a link in the bottom of the description below. And for those of you who aren't aware who Alan Staple is, he's not just a social media influencer, he's a force of nature, and he shared a lot of his experiences with his son on the Staple Crew show, the sensational Brent Staple. Let me tell you, Alan's life has been one wild ride. Picture this, he's been a yacht captain, a ski instructor, a fly fishing guide, an investor, and even a farmer. This guy has done it all and then some, but then that's not all. He's also got a burning passion for all things cryptocurrency, and he's more than happy to share his insights and insider information with the masses. When you listen to Alan, you'll quickly discover that his message is all about hope. He's a firm believer in the power of critical thinking that's going to help guide us through all these turbulent times. And trust me when I say his words will light a fire within you and leave you feeling invigorated and ready to tackle whatever challenges come your way. So without further ado, we present you with part two, a conversation with Alan Staple. If you don't mind, with all of your banking interactions, your experience, what brought you into the crypto space? And how does your banking relationships, the people that you know, feel about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular? And I want to say, and I want to emphasize on the Bitcoin part of it, because there's this Air Force major, Major Jason Lowry. Yes. From the Space Force. Haven't quite figured him out. It seems like he's allowed to do an awful lot of talking. And I think that there's a reason for that. But I just kind of want to leave it there and get your insights and all of that. Well, I mean, how long a show do we have here? Holy smokes. We're going to have to have a back-to-back show. By the way, I'm having so much fun here and I love interviews. So we can do as many of these as you guys need to do. Terrific. My background, basically, I'll just go over it. I wanted to be a stockbroker when I was a young man. I took my Series 7 when I was 25. You know, that's what was going to be my career. And then that bad Friday and Monday on 1987 occurred. Sure. And a little accident my son and I were into when he was just a baby. And I thought, well, okay, I don't care about money that much. I'm going to go back to the mountains and became basically a ski instructor and a fly fishing guide. So the fishing is kind of going how I got into boating. But, anyway, that's a different story. So I've always followed finance and I've always followed the economics of how it all works. And I knew what bonds were when I was 25 years old. And I can talk bonds for hours and turn people's face blue. But when you work with people who are the kind of people that I've met who can speak the language of the way their accountant speaks to them, they look at you like, how do you know all that? And it's really been a passion of mine. So, really, I stumbled across crypto early 2016, I believe it was. I really started following what it was. But early 2017, my brother called me and he said, you know more about money than anybody I know. What's going on with Bitcoin? And I, right straight out of my back end, told him, oh, it's a scam and it's a Pokemon coin. Don't even go near it. Whatever you do, run. And I got off the phone with him and I said to myself, you know, you're a liar. You just lied to me. You don't know anything about Bitcoin. You gave financial advice to your best brother, only brother, and you don't know the first thing about it. And I spent basically the next six months throwing myself into it. And it wasn't until the first month I read the white paper and I literally sat, I know I tell this story in my show all the time, I sat the paper down, I looked back, and my accountant was the guy that printed it for me. And I read it and I went, that's quite possibly the most brilliant piece of paper I've ever read, ever. And then I went, I'm going to go through it again. I'm going to go through it again and figure out how we're going to screw this thing up. Is that how I read it the second time. And since that day, I have not been able to figure out how Bitcoin is going to fail. Right. That's, for me, huge. That's, for the first time in my life, I can say that something, although it is possible that it could be corrupted somehow, somewhere down the line. Sure. There are some very, very brilliant people, tech people, brilliant hackers, who are now on the team of keeping it secure. Right. So, that says a lot. That's how I got into crypto. Through a lie, basically. And then, as far as bankers go, they don't... That's a whole other story, but I met a Swiss banker a long time ago, and he became a very good friend of mine. And he told me a long time ago, I'm going to say mid-90s, that money would be digital in a form that everybody would be their own bank. And he knew that way back when. And he always talked about it in that sense. Like, you're not going to need a bank anymore. It's like, you're going to have a bank. And he was a brilliant man. And it just resonated with time. But the bankers that I spoke to don't know anything about it until here recently. And you have to understand how money works. My knowledge of how the people that I know work. The bankers and the billionaires will be the last people to buy it. Right. And the reason for that is fundamentally this. They don't have to buy it when it's cheap. That's right. I always laugh when people tell me all the time, oh, well, the whales are moving the market to get a cheaper price. And I laugh, and I go, the whales don't need it. It's hilarious to me. Like, if you're the kind of money that I'm talking about, you don't want to own half of bitcoins. Like, this is where, you know, Michael Saylor's running into an issue. He doesn't want to own any more coins than he already has. And you say, well, why is that, Glenn? Well, because he's making that market unliquid. Right. Like, the wealthy aren't going to get in that thing until it's so liquid that when they get out, it doesn't change the price. Right. Because otherwise, they're a giant fish in this tiny little pond, and they're like, well, this pond is too small for me. And when people don't understand. I never thought about it like that, Alan. That really just gave me a freak of bald, like, just, wow. That makes sense. Yeah. And people don't think from the billionaire perspective at all, ever. Like, never, ever. Right. And what we're running into today, I don't know when you guys are going to air this, but, you know, the whole bad news. I had to shoot a video about it today. I was really upset about what the SEC came forward with, coming after CZ again today. Yeah. Saw that. Yeah. But this is nothing more than them understanding the market that's before them, them understanding that Gen Z is never going to buy a share of a stock. Right. And they need a new product. They see a trillion dollar, a thousand times over trillion market for them, a new toy, a new thing to manipulate, and a new thing to work. So they're going to use it. It's going to happen. It's not a gift to me. What else are they going to sell? I mean, you know, pork bellies. I mean, come on. Who's buying all that? You need tech. And they're old and they're ancient, and their old, stinky, musty Wall Street money just isn't ready yet. And when it is, when they own all the off ramps and on ramps, and when they know they can blow a big, giant bubble out of it, and they will, you're going to want to own it. And that's really the premise of my show. I hope it happens in my lifetime, because they can wait forever, where you and I really, we want it to happen yesterday. Right. And that's our big, that really holds us all back, really, doesn't it? Well, I saw one of your shows where you were talking about bubbles. And the whales create bubbles where they think bubbles need to be created. We had the stock market bubble, you know, 87 in that area. And we had the real estate bubble in 2008. So now look at this bubble that we're going into. Where's this bubble going to? And bubbles also, by the way, are a lot like water in the sense that they can eliminate a lot of inflation really quickly. Yeah. And that's what they do. They just sort of drop it all back down to level ground again, and then they inflate it right back up again. And it's really – That's where Bitcoin becomes a threat, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, just like gold. Gold's a threat, and look what they've done to that for how many years now. Right. Yeah. Where do you think XRP fits into all of this? You know, that's a loaded question in today's world. I know the network works. I know it's a brilliant bit of software, and I know that we could really change a lot of people's lives if we were allowed to use it freely. And I know there's a lot of banks that are already signed on. I also know that if it's not the people that want it to succeed, that'll be the other team fighting against it, which I've talked about before. I'm doing a bit of a deep dive right now with Brent, my son, and I have – thanks to Simon, by the way. He's a friend of all of us here. Simon sent me a document that I had not seen yet, and it's deep. But I'd seen other stuff like it, so I already kind of was there. He sent it to me like, Alan, Mick had some tales of this for me, could you please? You know, like he couldn't get past page one. And I was like, oh, no, this is where Ripple is and what they're doing. The beauty of XRP, in my opinion, I'm just going to go quickly over this. Funding is needed. Our biggest issue in the global banking network and system is liquidity. They control the liquidity through the Fed, through central banking. They have the purse strings. If you look back to the 1850s and all the way until they created the Fed, we had deflation. We had steady-level money. And then they came along and inflated these roller coasters and deflated it, so we got all paranoid so that we needed them to control this for us. Well, since then, what they've done is created nothing but a constant bubble of inflation that we never really needed. The liquidity is the issue. They turn the tap on and they shut the tap off. We have constant, steady liquidity that is produced with a smart contract. This means that a person in Zimbabwe can be a goat herder and he can have instant loans like now, okay? Because he doesn't have to go through a bank. He doesn't have to give his blood type. He doesn't have to go through all the hoops and then maybe get a loan or maybe not get a loan. The loans would be generated through this instant liquidity that would be free to use for everyone. You abuse it. You abuse a smart contract, you don't get your money. It's real simple. And our system is based on – I say this, my wife's an attorney, but our system is based on law and global bankers. Right. And that's never in your favor. Ever. And if you look back, I believe it was the 1700s or 1800s where politicians were not allowed to be lawyers. And there was a very good reason for that because eventually they would talk this or lock our way out of our bills, essentially. Yep. So I love XRP in the sense that I think it's the perfect coin, the perfect connection, and I think it has more fundamental background than any other coin out there. It just does. What I don't like about it is for some reason they're slowing it way down with this case and they're trying to squash it, and they typically can do that for a great deal of time. And I know I'm not going to be popular with the XRP army, but I really don't think they're going to win the case right away. I think it will have to go to the Supreme Court, and I hope that those people have the people's best interest at heart when it gets there because this technology is about people. Right. This technology is not about power and greed, and you and I know that because we're crypto people. Yeah. But I do believe, I'm going to save this last bit and I'll let you guys jump in on this, but I do believe that XRP is better at moving money than Bitcoin ever will be. Oh, absolutely. And I love that Bitcoin is money. Well, an XRP ledger can move Bitcoin. This is right. And in my opinion, we need them both. They can complement each other. If you don't have both of those coins, I don't know what you're looking at. And I'm not financial advice. I'm just saying, I don't know what you're looking at. And there's so many people who own XRP that don't own Bitcoin. That's why I love you, Alan. That's why you resonate with me. And vice versa. Why would you own Bitcoin and not XRP? I mean, I kind of get that one a little easier than the other way around, but on the other hand, they both have so much support and employees. I love this. I said this in the video not longer, but it's so important. Tech is eliminating jobs all year. Okay. There's a decline in all employment. Right. Yeah. Ripple nearly doubled its staff. Right. Just since January. Okay. That's not an accident. These people are doing things, they're creating things, and they're making things happen. Now, here's the downside. Yeah, they're connected to Wes. Of course. Right. Of course they are. But now is where you have to understand where I'm at as a person of the future. You cannot simply burn people at the stake because they're connected to this or this or that. That is not progress. Okay. I understand there's a moral issue with everybody, and I get that, and I feel the same way. But you're burning Chevron oil to get to work and back. Right. You have created billionaires who are really not good people, truly not. Right. Okay. So where's your moral standard there? And I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't have a moral standard, and you should, but you should not allow – you shouldn't. The problem we have is that we lack bringing the whole village with us. We go down that road. We need to bring the whole village. Oh, no, we don't. We need to bring enough of the village to where the rest of them we can teach. That's right. And everybody has this, oh, no, it has to be this coin, or it has to be – those people aren't morally correct. I can't purchase that coin and profit from it. You need to profit. You need to make money so that you can make a difference. Right. And, unfortunately, that's the case in the world we live in. But in the future, when this world is based upon Bitcoin, you will be the future of thought and prosperity. Because, in my opinion, everybody who's not in Bitcoin 20 years from now is not going to have a say in how the world works. I agree with that. That's huge. You know what, Alan? So I think about all the things that we've researched and how they make – I think about the Catholic Church funding both sides of the war and all these types of things, right? It's kind of a similar mindset, right? You can't – you have to pay attention to the things that are going on, and you can't just pick one winner because there's an odds there that you might lose all your money. So if you spread it out a little bit. But the other thing that I wanted to circle back to is what you said about the Ripple case and the potential for it to – for them to lose the case. And I tend to agree with you, and the reason why I agree with you – and I don't know if this will make a connection with you – but after the past several years, I feel like the United States in particular has been going through an exercise, so to speak, because so many of us have been disassociated with how our constitution is supposed to work, how our government is really supposed to work, right? And I feel like everything that we're seeing, a lot of what we're seeing, has been so in your face and over-exaggerated, almost to a point of being comical to get people to see, like, what is happening, right? And so if we allow just a judge to do this verdict on Ripple, or this one person making this lawsuit go away, or we allow them to cut a deal or whatever and not have it go to the Supreme Court, then I think that that doesn't use our government as fully as it could or as it should really. So maybe – I mean, I don't know. I don't – I'm not the smartest tool in the shed, right? I just – I'm observing these things and I'm thinking, I really believe they're trying to get people to understand what's happening and how to use our government properly. But I could be wrong. Well, no, I don't think – you're spot on, actually, because it's sort of like I said earlier, when's the last time they did anything that worked for the people? That's kind of how I look at it. It's like they like to make a lot of decisions, in particular, in the last couple of years, and I don't know that any one of those decisions they've made in the last two years has been a good one. Not one. I can even point a finger. So look at all the regulatory reforms. These are not done through our legislature. We have this other system of government based under uniform commercial codes that is an overlay of how we're supposed to be running as a constitutional republic. And I think we're – like what you're saying, Melissa, and what you said, Alan, is that we have to get to the Supreme Court. That is going to be the final decision. That's where it's got to be. I think that that's where we still have some common sense minds there. I have another question, Alan. So you know how Gary Gensler is in charge of the SEC, right, and he's stalling and he's doing all this weird stuff? Yeah. It seems as though they're trying to force Congress or, you know, to implement these policies, create these policies, right? Do their job. He's refusing to do. I think that's by design. I think that's intentional. I don't know why Gary Gensler is in there. I mean, you know, when he first got appointed to the SEC, all us Bitcoiners were like, yeah, Gary Gensler, you know, he taught at MIT. MIT, yeah. We all watched his videos. And then even some of the XRP people were like, yeah, Gary's in there. He's going to fight in the crypto space. And then he completely did a 180. And so my mind now these days, I always ask the question, why? Why? Why? First things go to it is Gary's creepy, Gary's working for the bad guys, Gary's this, Gary's that. I feed into that a little bit because I do kind of think he's a scumbag, but sorry, Gary, I don't know. But on the other hand, I think could it be that this man is so well-connected and maybe he's playing a part or being forced to play a part? I don't know. But making them do their job like they're supposed to do, why they've been elected supposedly to do these jobs. And we should not want an unelected official to make these decisions and these laws for the future of our monetary system. I mean, this is our life in the future. I totally agree. That's why I have this discussion with Elizabeth all the time. We're going through this case, right? And she's educated me so much on law. You know, you're married to an attorney for 18 years. You think I know a little bit about law. I'm a rad spy. Right. Well, we've been through some big cases together, you know. And then she'll say two or three sentences and I'll be like, oh, I wish I didn't hear that. You know, it's like I didn't want to hear that. But I did. I heard it loud and clear. The law is on their side. Yes. And the law has been created to empower government. It's just designed that way. And all this power has been given to this judge. And I use this analogy all the time, and sometimes people like it and sometimes people don't. I just think it's so absurd that we asked the Supreme Court to rule on something like abortion when if their mom and dad had had abortion, they wouldn't be alive to even make the decision. Right. Can I get an amen? Well, that analogy, it's so absurd. It's like you're just a person. You're Gary Gensler, and you don't, you think you know everything about crypto, but why is it that you know so much about crypto, but you can't find a single use case for it in our future to better all of our lives? How is it you know anything about this? Because we can all see this, plus it's like, but yet you can't. You only see the banker side of things. And for me, a judge, to try and educate a judge on what crypto is. Come on. It's absurd. Right. Unless they're married to Alan Staple. Even then, I would, yeah. Well, maybe then, but like Elizabeth's really done a 180. I'm so excited to have her on board. You guys have no idea. She has one of these minds, right? But like, nothing really bothers her. Yeah, yeah. It goes through her life. And it's like, she could care less about crypto. Always listened to me, well, for periods of time. And then this case comes along, and I hit her with a little couple of little things. She goes, wow, this is a deep case. This is serious. And then once she got a hold of it, it's like she reads it for hours and hours, and she gets to the bottom of it. And when you have that kind of analytical mind that she has and understands law to the level that she does, she's dealt with big cases. She was in a lot of, you know, a few big cases, right? This, in some ways, would be a larger case. So I'm not trying to compare with John Deaton at all. I'm not trying to say that. But what I am trying to say is that there's a lot of people who are following this case that think this is over and we're going to win tomorrow. And there's absolutely nothing that tells me it's a slam dunk. There's not one cell in my body. We just got into corruption until last hour. We just got into the fact that these people aren't ruling for the people. And there's a lot of folks that are, you know, you see them all over Twitter. They call it the crypto Twitter. And whenever I start seeing a lot of people in lockstep championing one thing or another, I get red flags. And, you know, maybe just like everybody championed Gary Gensler and, you know, Judge Torres, all these things. It's like take a step back and look at everything logically, not just in the little square, but look at everything. And, you know, ask yourself, do you, just because you believe in one specific direction that something might go if this person ruled on it, would you feel the same if they weren't going to, would you want that person to have so much power if they were going to do something that you didn't want them to do, right? And that's like kind of the reason our system is supposed to be the way that it is as to prevent those things from happening. And I kind of feel like we're in a situation where you can see them almost desperately trying to get everybody to latch onto those positions to continue fighting. Because once we stop fighting each other, once we start coming together, that's again, Alan, why I, when I found your channel, well, I found your channel after I met you at Bitcoin Ben's thing. When I listened to it, I, cause I didn't realize, like I knew you guys might've been going to do that, but I didn't find your channel for quite a little while after he met at Bitcoin Ben. And, and I'm like, this guy resonates with me because, not because of, you know, oh, he likes XRP too, right. But, you know, when I first got into XRP, everybody was like, that's the banker's coin. And, you know, I kind of, for buying it. In fact, when I first bought it, I turned around and bought it back again. And we were in like a bull run and the price went up. I lost a whole bunch of coins, whatever. And so that's one of those things where it's like, you just do your own research and you stick to your guns and do whatever. But I was happy to find somebody that was saying, you know what? We can, it's, we need to get along. We need to work together because the fact of the matter is the people that are these are developing these things. A lot of the XRP people, they were developers on Bitcoin. They believe Bitcoin also, they're not against Bitcoin. And they have worked together in the past. And I'm thinking like, there's, I mean, there's a lot of smart people in the world, but the people that are doing these types of things, you know, you really want them together, right? Or like interacting and interoperability and all of that. And so I just think you're so special of a channel. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah. You know, you never know if you're going to be any good at something until they just do it sometimes. And then what, what came across when I would watch my own videos was like, I'd be like, I've watched that. I would watch that. And that's when I knew, well, maybe I could do this. But I have, I have a lot to share with the world, but I have a lot to learn and I'm not afraid to, and I'm not afraid to be wrong and I'm not afraid to learn more. So that's really a blessing. You know, it really is because there's so many people that are like, it's got to be this coin or, you know, you're wrong about that coin. And I've been that guy. I just told the story about the Bitcoin story. And I had the same identical experience with, with XRP. I said, where's the banker's coin? And I ignored it. And then I said, well, wait a minute now. And that's how you found Bitcoin by being stupid. Like why are you being stupid about XRP? Why don't you do a little homework and figure out where they're really going with this thing? And I just thought it was, I thought it was really so absurd. There's one of my favorite stories. I got to tell this one. I'll never forget. I was driving down, I was driving my car. We used to live in Mexico and I was driving down. I could get a radio station in English and on the radio came across, yeah, Visa has banned all people from purchasing crypto with their Visa card. And MasterCard. And I'll never forget everybody and their brother saying, oh my God, it's the end. This is terrible. The sky is falling. We're done for. And I have one of those minds that like exactly what you were just saying, Melissa. It's one of those things. It's like, well, if the whole herd's going that way, what's on the other side of the curtain? Right. For me, that's where my head goes. And immediately I said to myself, wait a minute, I can grab my son. We can fly first class to Vegas, buy $10,000 worth of chips and put it all on black. And they're telling me that I can't buy crypto because it's risky and volatile. Right. I'm going to buy some. You don't even know what volatility is after I come to Vegas and told Elizabeth I blew 10 grand on the black number nine, right? Like that would be volatile. That's volatility. So when I put it in that sense, that's when I knew. From that day forward, I was like, these people are afraid of this stuff. That's right. Yeah. And they don't want it to succeed. Well, we had kind of a theme going on here, if you don't mind. I wrote it down and I've gone sleepers. Sleepers. We have sleepers all among us. And maybe Gary Gensler is a sleeper. Maybe Christopher Ray is a sleeper. Maybe Jason Lowry is a sleeper. Maybe Michael Saylor is a sleeper. Maybe Michael Saylor is a sleeper. Watch the water. But I'd love to get your opinion on the Jason Lowry thing. This is something I think I drive Melissa nuts with this because I have the thesis. Oh boy. I'm going through the thesis. I've listened to everyone, almost every one of his interviews and where he's at with this. And this is where I agree on the notion of XRP is about the liquidity, speed of transactions, instant settlement. Whereas Jason Lowry looks at and his evolution of this has been, it's a national defense technology to defend property. Yes. Because that's what a military is for, is to defend property, our land mass, our everything within our borders. That's his position right now and what he's talking to the military about. And the big light bulb moment, I had a dozen of them when I hear him speak. Yes. But one of the big ones that really resonated with me was he's so spot on with this. Right. Okay. Look at the problems that we're having with ledgers and all the securities, online security and whatnot. The common denominator with all of that is the code. Right. All of it is the connection to the internet. This is the downfall, not downfall, let's hope. It's the issue with security on any proof of stake. Right. The code can be figured out. It has an avenue of code to it where when you can get something, this is one of my favorite stories, when you try and figure, you guys ever heard of COBOL? Yes. COBOL, yeah. A programming language? Yeah. And that's what all the credit card companies use. And they ask them, why do you use such old archaic systems? And they said because the only people that know how to crack it are 70 years old. Or they're dead already. Or they're dead, right. Another reason why the system's dying. Yeah. But when you try and create new security walls and new forms or ways to secure something, you're using more code and more code and more code, which is the downfall or the hole in the dam. What he's talking about, what hit me was, well, that's the beauty of Bitcoin is because it's mechanical. Right. Right. You need to use the electricity, which is the dinosaur in the room. Right. It keeps it secure because it requires so much electricity, a nation would have to power up. And then it would be obvious that they're attacking it because of the power consumption. Right. And all the rest of it becomes its own physical, not technical breach, obvious breach. Right. And that when he said it like that, I was like, holy smokes, because that is our problem with all these, all the security that we use now. It's all just connected to the net. And then that is honorable. Well, and when you think about that and you think about rebel XRP and the, you know, cross border payments and all these other things, you want them doing that kind of stuff. You know, let Bitcoin be the daddy taking care of the family, you know what I mean? The security of it all like that. I mean, I think that when I, when I heard him say that, that did definitely perk my ears. Yes. A hundred percent. Loved it. It resonated with me. Yes, me too. I've just, I love listening to his discussions, particularly between him and Breedlove. They go down some interesting trails. Robert Breedlove is, his perspective on things is amazing. Yeah. I could sit down and talk to that guy for days. Thank you. Easily. Even, even he had come out on the last interview and says, you know what? He goes, I'm mistaken about talking about Bitcoin as a cash system. And he's with all of the discussions he's had with Jason Lowry. He says, I have to start expanding what, how I message. The notion of Bitcoin of it being more than just a cash system, a digital cash system. It is about property rights. It's second amendment, first amendment rights. Even Michael Saylor starting to come out and talk about it as more a property secured system than just a cash system. I just love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I'm so, I'm so excited about Bitcoin's future. I really am. I, I'm more, I'm more sound in my understanding of it. I'm, I know I had a great conversation. This is a good little inside story. I had a great conversation with a banker just recently, and he's been anti, anti, anti. He's coming around. He's come around to the ISO 222. He's enough of that process. But I said, well, you know, okay, so you're okay. You're starting to understand what ripple labs is trying to achieve. I said, so are you there yet with me with Bitcoin? And he literally only has probably 20 hours of research in the Bitcoin. And I said, listen, this is a couple of months ago. I said, listen, give me a favor and disprove how it would fail. I mean, it's proved to me that you can get Bitcoin to fail. And I don't care how big your army is. And I don't care how big your machine is, whatever you create in your mind, let's see how you're going to get this thing to fail. And he loves a challenge. And he came to me and he said, I think if we could get the whole world to shut electricity off for a year. And I said, well, if we had a cloud around the world, because I'm off grid and I run a node. So that wouldn't work. Right. You would have to shut my solar off. You would have to shut everything off. So when he finally captured that and he said, wow, well, then they'll just ban it legally. And I said, that's their only hope. Right. I mean, it truly is their only hope. And it's sort of like trying to ban water, really, or like the ones I like to use. Yeah, that didn't work out with TH6 too well. It didn't work out too well in China either. As far as Bitcoin is concerned. No. And marijuana use. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just say no. Yeah. They do all kinds of laws, don't they? Right. They do. They're trying to protect us, though. We need their protection. Yeah, that's right. Well, those that believe that they're protecting them, we'll believe that they can control Bitcoin. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's too secure. It's too big. Too many nodes. All around the world. Yep. It's not going to happen. I went to the XRP convention and I was sitting back and I was talking with this lady, just the sweetest lady, Teresa from Chicago. And she and I go talking and we're looking across the room and she goes, I can't say that I've ever been in a room of more intelligent people in my whole life. And I looked at her and I said, there are some brilliant minds in this room. And I said, when the smartest people in the room are doing what you're doing, you're doing something right. Right. And that's what I love about crypto. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. No scam artists. You know, they're not welcome and they don't last. You know, Sam Bateman, they just don't last. Yeah. Well, I think there's a whole other story about Sam Bateman for you too. Oh my gosh, we're going to, yes. That's a different show. We will. We are so glad. We got a couple minutes left here. Thank you for coming and being a guest on Beyond the Brink. Of course. I wanted to let our viewers know or our radio listeners know, where can they find you? Find some of your own videos. And then also, a little birdie told me that you have a new Patreon channel, which is going to allow you to kind of go a little deeper than maybe you could on YouTube. So, I mean, I know I'm signing up here. That's a Patreon worth joining right there. It is. Yeah. So where can our viewers find you? The Staple Crew on YouTube and the same on our Patreon. And there's a link underneath every video I do to my Patreon channel. And we're new to the Patreon club, if you will. So we're still trying to figure a lot of it out, but I'm going, I'm doing a deep dive on XRP currently, but I really want to be able to talk freely about what I know about banking and the backside and maybe the darker side of different things. So I'm still just trying to give a background as to who I am in the beginning of my Patreon members. Because the thing is, this is a big story. This is not like, I'm not going to be able to do it in five shows. This is a lifetime of knowledge in which my son says to me all the time. He's like, because we try and do a show together. Right. And he'd be like, yeah, well, dad, not all of us have photographic memories. Okay. I love Brent, by the way. He's awesome. I don't either. I forget. Almost. Yeah. I laugh. I always say I forget. I've forgotten more about crypto than most people know, but it's, I don't mean that in a bragging way. I mean that in a way. There's so much I've learned. And then a month goes by and you forget what you knew. You forget what you knew a month ago about it. Right. It's evolving so fast. It sure is. A hundred percent. Yeah. So, yeah, the staple crew is where you can find me. And I'm having so much fun because I've talked to my family, the two favorite people in my life, my wife and my son, into helping me with this channel. And we are doing amazing things already. My son's a writer, those of you who don't know. And Brent is, he's posting his dream for the future of all of us through blockchain on, like, a weekly presentation of pages of just what he believes and how it can change mankind. And. I love that. I can't wait to see that. He and I talk about how we're going to change mankind. We, if you know anything about my show, I don't talk about the news much. I talk about the news comes out and everyone would shake the birdcage and I stand back and I go, well, this, that's what this means that that means this, let me decipher it and only throw my two cents in after I've evaluated it. So some people get a lot from my show. It's amazing to me how many people watch my show and they comment and go, you just sat there for 15 minutes and didn't say anything. I don't know. You know, you just never know who's going to get what. It's funny. Yeah. They sat for 15 minutes and they weren't listening, I guess. Yeah. Right. Thank you. I'll be back for more. Alan. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You're known as the boat dude amongst some of my friends. The boat dude. Yeah, I've been called worse. Oh, they mean it in a loving way, actually. They really do. It's a, yeah, they, they, they love you. So we're so thankful that you came. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to talk about my show one more moment. I care about people and that's what you're going to get from my show. I care about where we're going. I don't care if it's about crypto. I don't care if it's about money. I don't care if it's about spirituality. I care about you and what your future is going to be like. And that's what's most important. And when I, I've followed you two for a decade now and I thought that's what was lacking. And what everybody told me was, well, that's who you are. And why don't you just get your own damn channel then? So that's kind of how my channel came to be. So it's still growing, which is so fortunate. Well, I like what you said earlier about you're still learning and still sharing. And that was a message I grew up with, with my, my dad used to always say, especially towards his latter years is, is about learning and teaching and teaching and learning. And you do that till you leave this, this parent, this, this dimension that we're in right now. So you go to other places. Yeah. Like that. I would have liked to have met your dad. He sounds like he was a nice man. He had quite a following. Yes. He was a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff. So we, I'm available. If you guys give me a heads up, we can talk about more specific stuff. We'd love to. Yeah. We can. I will definitely know here. Yes, we will. And I'm sure that our listeners are chomping at the bed. They're going to be like, when's Alan coming back? Yeah, definitely set up a time to have you back. Cause this was, this was fantastic. Like I said at the beginning there, there are so many things to talk to you about that you can't really, I think it kind of went, went well with, it didn't touch everything that we wanted to talk about, but it's just the, the breadth of knowledge that you have and the way that you can explain things is just, it's remarkable. And we're, we're honored that you came to be on. It's my pleasure. Yeah. Absolutely. For those of you listening on the radio, you can go to our website at Vida Broadcast Network.com and check out our YouTube channel at Vida Broadcast. You can catch this entire interview. You can visualize it. So, or if you guys just want to listen on the radio, you can go to Vida Broadcast Network.com and hit listen now. And for that, we thank you. We will see you all next time on Beyond the Break and have a great day. Yeah. Thanks Ellen. You're welcome. It was my pleasure. What is the Lightning Network? The Lightning Network allows users to send or receive Bitcoin quickly and cheaply by moving transactions off of the main blockchain. You can think of it as a little like an HOV lane on a highway. The Lightning Network is designed to make Bitcoin transactions as fast and cheap as possible. It's part of a newer class of crypto technologies known as Layer 2 blockchains, which you can think of as being a little like HOV lanes on highways. By offloading some transaction traffic to the Lightning Network's Layer 2 blockchain, the core Bitcoin blockchain, the Layer 1, can move faster. What are some of the Lightning Network's use cases? Well, Twitter allows users to send and receive Bitcoin tips via the Lightning Network. Via a Lightning Network compatible payments app called Strike, many of Twitter's million monthly active users can send Bitcoin payments to other Twitter accounts instantly and for free. El Salvador became the first nation to make Bitcoin legal tender, in part because of the desire to save Salvadorians some $400 million annually in money transfer fees. The government-created wallet, Shivo, is Lightning compatible and designed to enable seamless cross-border payments. Shivo had consistently been one of the most downloaded apps in El Salvador. A peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange called Paxful, which processes millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin transactions in emerging markets, and claims to have millions of users in Africa alone, also recently announced it will enable Lightning payments. This integration could enable fast and cheap Bitcoin payments for millions of users. Why is something like the Lightning Network necessary? When Satoshi Nakamoto first described Bitcoin in a 2008 white paper, the synonymous creator used the phrase peer-to-peer electronic cash, proposing that the cryptocurrency might one day become a popular way for people to pay for goods and services online. But as Bitcoin's value has grown over the years, the narrative has shifted. We now tend to think of Bitcoin as being more like digital gold, or as an inflation-resistant way to store wealth over time. Why did that happen? In part because it's the way the Bitcoin network is designed. Bitcoin allows two strangers anywhere to secure, send, or receive value without a credit card or payment processor in the middle. It does this using a decentralized network of computers all over the world, all of which need to achieve consensus or agree about the current state of Bitcoin's digital ledger. Nakamoto's solution to this problem was mining, which can be a time-consuming process. The Lightning Network was invented in part to help Bitcoin function more like the digital cash that Nakamoto envisioned. It processes transactions off-chain much more quickly and cheaply than Bitcoin's core blockchain, with fees that are typically fractions of a cent. Lightning transactions are also less energy-intensive than transactions on the main blockchain. While the main Bitcoin blockchain Layer 1 can typically handle fewer than 10 transactions per second, the Lightning Network, the Layer 2, can theoretically handle millions of transactions a second. How does the Lightning Network work? The Lightning Network uses smart contracts to establish off-blockchain payment channels between pairs of users. Once these payment channels are established, funds can be transferred between them almost instantly. Cleverly, the network doesn't need to create pairs between all users. For instance, if user A has a channel with user B, and user C has a channel with user B, but not user A, funds can still be freely transferred between all networked parties. Lightning addresses look like typical Bitcoin addresses, and the payment process is very similar for users. At any time, users can close their payment channels and settle their final balances on the core blockchain. Because only the opening and closing of the payment channels are recorded on the core blockchain, the entire Bitcoin network can move faster. Additionally, Lightning Network transactions can be more private than those made on the main blockchain, because Layer 1 transactions all appear on a public and transparent ledger. How can you get started with the Lightning Network? If you want to make transactions using the Lightning Network, you'll need to send some Bitcoin to a Lightning-compatible wallet. There are dozens to choose from. Popular options include both custodial and non-custodial wallets. And here's the difference. Custodial wallet options include Strike, Blue Wallet, and the Wallet of Satoshi. These tend to be good for beginners because they simplify the sending and receiving crypto by managing your private keys. If, for instance, you lose your password, you'll be able to reset it. Then there are non-custodial wallets. Those options include Moon, Breeze, Phoenix, and Zap. These wallets are user-controlled and popular with more experienced traders. Nobody but you has your private keys.