Could Russia Skirt Sanctions Using Crypto?

Welcome everybody. New exciting

you.

podcast. On cyber security. Happy Monday.

Monday.

All right. We were talking earlier about how cryptocurrency. Is not as anonymous, I guess is the right word is most people think, oh, it's recorded on the ledger. was an article that I was reading about how Russia might or adversarial countries might use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions, or we're going to talk about that. Is that still a at hand?

Definitely.

Sounds good.

Oh, yeah.

All right, Aaron, you want to go first and tell me your thoughts or you want me to kick it off?

definitely thought that it was interesting to think that, Russia could potentially, or anybody could potentially. Overcome sanctions. And I thought that the reasons that they listed. We're not having for example, they said that moving commodities on a large global scale is bound to be noticed. And then there's also the volatility. So it doesn't seem like that's something that they could do. Necessarily, but. I don't know. What do you guys think?

I think obviously the blockchain ledgers. Public. So anybody can see what wallet is moving, how much and this and that. I just don't think it's very. I guess smart. I could be wrong,

so obviously distributed ledger technology or DLT. Which is what blockchains built upon. Tracks and records everything publicly on the public record of the blockchain suit. So let's say Russia buys 10,000 Bitcoins today. You're going to see that huge transaction. You're going to see the wallet address. You're not going to really know initially who owns that wallet address without some reconnaissance, but think the point here though, is that. Unless the adversary already has the crypto in a cold wallet. That's never been used before. Then that would be harder to trace, not impossible, but still harder to trace much harder than if. A adversarial country, where to go to an exchange there. Bank backed currency, their Fiat for Bitcoin or whatever crypto they wanted. That transaction is also recorded. then there was also the talk about how much money it is too. So there might not be at the current value, the present value of. The crypto there's just not enough that would cover as well. So that's another reason why. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yeah. And it's really hard to fly under the radar. With larger amounts of crypto, it's like literally impossible to fly under the radar because you have people that for the sake of analytics, They monitor all movement across all the different blockchains. Because they're tracking whales. And using that intelligence, not even government entities, per se. These are just, people that are using this intelligence in order to help them. Determine what moves the market might make. So whenever a wheel moves something, everybody knows about it because it's being reported. Like they, actually have algorithms in place that post to Twitter automatically. Without any human intervention, when wheels make movements, these algorithms are reporting it on Twitter. If it wasn't government entity wanting to look into those things that obviously gives them that information to work from. Flying under the radar with large amounts of crypto is next to impossible.

I was thinking about why don't they just move or ditch their currency and go to the bitcoin, like. El Salvador. is that not possible?

Oh, absolutely. It's possible. Yeah, but not necessarily for, I think the point is it be used to evade sanctions? So I think that's Not the best use case. But could it be used for the public like El Salvador? And I think there's another country that adopted it recently too, but yeah, absolutely could be used for the public. And then that public adoption is only going to do what it's going to drive the price higher because it's purely supply and demand. In Bitcoin's case anyway.

There's ways that people could transfer money from these. Or a peer to peer tramper,

Yeah. But it's a different problem that it solves, but yeah, absolutely.

I was just hearing that. implemented their new debit card transfer system. Putting recently. And it seems like the biggest thing is peer to peer

transfer.

at

I think if the mass public let's say. We use rushes. Example or any country really? Let's say the public. If the mass adoption is Bitcoin, for example, It really puts more of that power in the public's hands. But the public also is going to be skeptical about the volatility of it, at least in the short term. Because have to remember the higher, the price goes, the more stable it becomes. with something like Bitcoin, the scarcity factor and how there's only so much available. That's why it's chosen one, right? For El Salvador, things like that. But my point is that. we use Russia as the use case, if more Russian citizens adopt Bitcoin, it could be at least a diversified way for them to send. An exchange Bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Yeah, for that stuff. You have the whales that have the huge amounts, that those are tracks, but for normal people, It's on the ledger. Yes. All the individual transactions, that's where it can be really valuable. If there's like oppressive rules in place or something where people can actually use. Cryptocurrency wallets as a way to quickly and easily transfer money to friends and family. you know, Outside of, whatever is going on with. The system itself.

also sidesteps any manipulation of the currency, right? Yeah. you can't print more Bitcoin out of nothing. So a country. backed fee art can be printed on demand by the issuer. And then that's where inflation comes into play and things like that. Bitcoin, really. avoids all of that. And then if, the citizens all put only 10% of their money into it. It. will skyrocket, it's just incredible with, what's being done with it.

And, you know, what's interesting too. Oftentimes we need to hear people having the conversation about crypto and cash. What you hear lot of the time it is forgotten about as one of the main reasons that Bitcoin was even introduced by Satoshi air quotes. Because was to eliminate the double spin problem. And that is rarely talked about, and it's probably not even understood by a lot of crypto investors that are jumped on. After the fact to try to make some money. But the double spending problem was a very real problem for the current financial system. When you make a transaction on a credit card or something like that, I'm not a finance person, but there's a lot of steps need to happen in order for that transaction from start to finish, to be processed and documented and closed and settled. So when you swipe that card, that transaction is far from settled. Initiate the transaction, but there's many more steps in that process that need to happen in order for that transaction to be completed. And during that time, there's a possibility, a large possibility for a double spend problem because people can, And I guess this is where like criminals can really exploit a financial system such as that. so there's probably a large degree of that, cause you have organized hackers, right? Like you have hacking groups and financial crime groups that are very organized. And I would venture to say that we probably have no real understanding of how the magnitude of that problem a high level, due to the organized crime, Probably exploits that vulnerability. And so there's a reason why the double spin problem was catalyst for Bitcoin. To solve that major issue and you don't hear much talk about it, but that double spend problem has not went away for the current financial system. It's not went away at all.

The other thing that brings me back to 2008 and the financial crisis. Is around how. The credit system works with credit scores and mortgages. People. We're able to get mortgages and they didn't have the assets to afford the mortgage if they defaulted. So let's say makes $50,000 a year in salary. It's probably not realistic for them to get approved for a 600 or an 800,000 or a million dollar house. Right. You know, So types of approvals similar to that were being done. And like you said, BJ, there's just so many different. Middlemen in this. example that it passes through. So one mistake from one of the will cause this ripple effect, with Bitcoin, it's a peer to peer transaction and you eliminate all Those middlemen.

You eliminate the possibility for high level exploits of double fans. Like were not privy to that information. It's probably kept pretty secure, but just looking at what we know from cyber security exploits and the organized hacking groups and the damage that they can inflict. Because of their organization and the high level of sophistication that they use. In their attacks. I would venture to say it doesn't make any sense that there wouldn't have been high level exploits like that, of the double spend vulnerability. So more than likely the financial system was probably very much injured before Bitcoin even came around and Bitcoin split in there, at the right time, this has continued to grow, but I would venture to say that the financial system and we saw that in 2008, when Bitcoin made its appearance, that there was major problems going on with the financial system at that time. But probably haven't gotten any better. And I heard on the news yesterday that there's like a record number of homes in America now that are valued at a million dollars or over.

That's because of the supply problem, the latest statistic here where I live, the inventory was like 160,000 or 200 homes or something like that. now it's like less than 16,000.

then you have inflation as well, which, saw firsthand the other day I went to go, I don't, I do much with pulling out cash anymore. You don't really need cash in your hand that much anymore, but I did go pull out some cash from an ATM and I was like, wow, the ATM fee went up. Like it used to be like two to two 50 or $3, maybe three 50 with $5. I was like, wow, That's pretty significant though, you know?

yeah. Well, I think that, if there's more merchants that accept Bitcoin more businesses, help fuel adoption too. You don't going back to the public usage, right? I think. A big fear is while I get this Bitcoin and then what do I do with it? There's not a lot of options. So I think if more merchants and businesses start accepting it and make it more mainstream, that all certainly helped too. But to go back to the banking example, That's still, in my opinion, a bit of a mess. And, I feel like we're on the break of another financial crisis again, because just think that borrowing and the printing of money just can't continue. It's just it's in my opinion, it's out of hand

Yeah. not sustainable right. Then at that point, no matter what anyone feels about it or their opinions about it, or their wishes And desires about the situation, if you just look. at nothing, but the facts, unsustainable, it's just, there's no way that math adds up the math doesn't add up.

The other part that's sad to me at least is, you've got people that to buy a home for the first time ever. And what the average price skyrocketing, like you said, So many homes on the market that are million dollars. How did these people that are just getting out of college? Getting a job. They're not making a million dollars a year out of college. You know what I mean? so how are they going to ever afford to buy a home

Yeah. What's the sustainable pathway for humanity, because this year is being called the great resignation. Like so many people have resigned, especially interestingly in the tech sector. So I guess it's becoming very hard to hold on to tech employees. They're leaving big tech by the swarms and going to web three projects and independent projects. A lot of people are discovering the power of AI driven tools. And I think are starting to figure out that maybe they can try to sustain their livelihoods with those tools. With the open AI projects, you can actually use AI. Personally and, the sky's the limit, right? Like the way we saw that one example where in six hours they used an ad program to generate over 40,000 new poisoned streams. So we're, coming to a convergence of all sorts of things. And then let me just tell you what's on my screen, on my phone right now also does a news article from a couple of days ago, recapping what happened, but the headline say. It's the end of the world. Cohen Google maps down for many users. It's interesting. Because we forget we look at things through the viewpoint of our current lives and our experiences, but we forget to look through the lens of history and throughout history maps have been critical to the power structure of the earth. and just how the power structure interacts with the people. Maps are always like, if you're in charge of mapping the earth, then you've got a dark degree of control over the earth. And that's just the way. It's always been right. So Google maps, as we know is a quantum AI. Google announced that it didn't make major news, but they did put their quantum AI in maps. And then deep mind added their stuff to the quantum AI in Google maps. And then Google maps merged with Google assistant, because Google assistant is now inside of Google maps. You can chat with Google assistant inside of Google maps. and then it went down the other day and, we see throughout history things about solar flares and geomagnetic storms. And interestingly in 1959, the Carrington storm, that was the last major. Geomagnetic storm slash solar flare. And the effects of that were like they say, now, if it happened today, something like that happened today that they estimate the damage would be over a trillion dollars, but I don't think they have any way to actually understand what would happen. But we're in from a natural perspective, we're in a grand solar minimum right now. And so it the sun make cycles every 11 years it has a cycle. And then once in a while it goes into like a hyper cycle kind of. And so this is the first time. That the earth has been in a grand solar minimum since that event in 1959, this is the first time. If you just look at it from a historical perspective. We're in a situation right now where we could experience something similar to what happened in the Carrington event in 1959. And during that event, There were anomalies reported where the Stoller charge was so high upon the earth. what happens on the sun affects the earth so greatly from a geomagnetic perspective that these Telegraph machines were actually operating off the aircraft. Like they had to disconnect them from power because they were being overloaded by power. they removed batteries from equipment and they were operating the equipment with no connection to batteries or power source whatsoever. Like literally solar winds. It wasn't, was operating these machines. And so now, and that was in 1959. Now we have technology that's so much more advanced than all this smart technology. Now we have a recipe for something totally different to happen. The what ifs are like, these question marks surrounding earth right now are enormous, and then that outage with Google maps the other day just really makes you think if we received. And we've been receiving a lot of solar flares. you watch the news, we've had a lot of solar flares recently and sometimes they put warnings out. About. possibility that they could affect communication equipment and different aspects of technology and satellites and power grid. But we're in a question mark area right now, right? What could happen here? With these solar flares. the smart technology, that a possibility for, Power of sustainable energy. These machines were operating without a power source without batteries.

Yeah. So if we bring it back to the finance and you know what we're talking about with. banking, right? I think the big problem is If everybody went to the bank today, withdrew their money, there wouldn't be enough money to dispense. So there'd be this huge breakdown. And I think my point in talking about, how it's going to be challenging for first time home buyers. what are they going to do? They're going to go to a bank, they're going to get a mortgage. So what I think is going to happen in my opinion would be that. Yeah, your typical 30 year mortgage is going to go away. It's going to be more like a four year or 50 year mortgage. the banks and the financial institutions are always going to find ways to give credit to the consumer. So I think could be something that happens like with the car loan to, you can't afford the car. So what does the car dealership do? Oh instead of that five-year loan, we'll stretch it to seven years or eight years. We'll get your payments down, by the way, you're not going to be paying 20 or 30,000 for that car. You're going to be in the end. If you did the math, you're going to be paying like 75,000 with all the interest and everything else. So my point is That a lot of people are going to be on this hamster wheel of more debt never paying the thing off. it's just, like you said, it's not sustainable. So I think what could happen in the future with crypto is. A mass of the banking industry reduction with smart contract technology, where it's all in automation and there's not humans making the decisions and giving credit when they shouldn't be giving credit to people that don't have the means and the assets to afford. Because when those wishes are granted, that's what causes the financial collapse because these people default. They don't mean to, but they default they lose their job for whatever reason. And they just can't sustain paying that payment anymore. So their life changes and they default on the mortgage. So then it needs to go back to whoever wrote note, right? The bank. And then the banks holding the debt, but then they're not getting enough money. So it's just this trickle up. But in snowball effect, right?

It's the Whole unsustainability, like mentioned that word and it's such a powerful word because if something's unsustainable, then you can mathematically determine what it's in a result will be. it's an end. It has an end to its path if it's unsustainable. And so when you talk about these houses and people being able to afford them, then it brings a whole new set of questions. So if someone has to be a house for 30 years, or you were saying maybe in 40 or 50, And the price of these houses has went way up. And then you have houses that are not like how long can a house stand. It's wood that rots. it's a roof that leaks and it's all plumbing and all these things that are not sustainable in themselves. When you build a house, how long can that house really stay in? And so when people are paying for a house, that's not the lifespan of that. How long is it? Really? So then again, it brings us back to everything. Just seems to have a happier ending. When you look at the lens of what is the potential here? What is the potential, the PulsePoint. That we're sitting at right now, because if an AI can tell us. In six hours, 40,000 new poisons. Can it tell us how to build houses in a much cheaper way where maybe a mortgage could be a five-year mortgage? What if that was possible? What if there were ways we could build houses. were sustainable. And what if you could pay it off in five years? What if all that is possible in the whole system?

I'm sure there's efficiencies to be gained by leveraging technology like that. I think that what's going to happen in full is just going to become rare. And I think people are going to be renting more. there is going to be more of a divide. like you said, it's going to be more leasing, more apartments, more pod living and things like that.

We're buying boats.

yeah. Or buying boats. Exactly.

found out that all the rich people had super yachts, you knew, I didn't know,

Did you hear about the topic of AI. Did you hear about the new Drone that was launched out of Australia. It was something called a bat or something. It's an AI driven fighter pilot fighter plane. let me see if I can find it, but it was pretty cool. They came out of Australia. Actually. It was announced this morning. But it was named after an Australian bat. It looks pretty crazy though.

Did you get one yet?

Oh, I wish I, I would never be able to afford it.

Craig built. One is based on their problem.

Maybe I'll get with our friend that got a 3d printer. It's called the ghost bat.

What. And is it military drone or.

Yes.

Well, you know, Craig, Here's the truth of the matter. We are at an unsustainable crossroads. We are at a place the first time in history where we can not go forward on this path. It's unsustainable completely you can't have people looking into chemical strains. And poisons, we're at a crossroads here.

Can you see the screen?

Yeah.

That's the drone.

it's all unmanned. It's basically. Your wing man.

Pretty cool.

How the advancements in AI and how these AI tools are at the fingertips of regular people, because literally you can go and find up to use these algorithms that do self coding and you don't need to write code to use these algorithms. So with that being true, you have a bunch of civilians now that have access to these AIS that are very powerful. So what's the stop is civilians with money from creating these types that only the military had before. What's the stop that.

It's like 3d printers, right? I mean, People were making all sorts of stuff with 3d printers of.

what is that about? Can you really make stuff with 3d printers? I don't know anything about this. What is this about? How does it print?

There's different kinds of 3d printers. I don't know a whole lot about them, but a lot of 3d printers use what's called filament. So filament is like a plastic, like a colored plastic. It looks almost like yarn, but hard plastic. In a real right. then they load the 3d printer with it, and then whatever you build with the 3d printer. It uses the different colors of filament to build what you it to build when you programmed it

At the same time, they're making breakthroughs. Like Every moment with quantum substances, like this graphing, that's a 2d structure. That's self forming under the right conditions. You put the right compounds in place and it forms itself you think like nanoparticle type stuff, like it literally is self forming, very inexpensive and very easy to do under the right conditions. So if you add that to 3d printers, what's the output then?

The other thing too, is with certain types of 3d printers is you could actually have it Cut things like can cut. Metal and different kinds of things. So you can fabricate these different pieces. Like you loaded almost like a schematic or instruction set of how to build stuff. And I remember a long time ago with certain 3d printers, people were making guns and weapons and skirting, since they were made of plastic, they would skirt through detectors. They would become undetectable. So there's all sorts of things that can be used good and bad with 3d printing technology. But yes, it is advancing quite rapidly

Every piece of technology and all the advancements you hear about when you factor that when you couple it with advances in quantum technology, that they're not really advanced as I would call it more like rediscoveries because this is ancient technology, but when you couple that with the advancements there, like there's a pathway for self forming, like the graphing and structure, there's a pathway that seems to be self. Unfolding that takes us to the possibility of a more sustainable system and a more sustainable future.

Yeah. You're already experimenting with that, like building houses and stuff like that. With 3d printers.

You're right here. And they successfully built one now as far as the potential it's probably, you know, It's in its infancy, but we're experimenting with it at Petronella technology group. The way that we work with. Different cybersecurity AI driven tools and applying, different aspects of machine learning and seeing these tools evolve under our watchful eyes. So we're involved with that at Petronella technology group. So it would be really hard to convince any of us that there's not. Potential there because we see it unfolding. Just in our day to day operations, we see advancements in machine learning that can sometimes be astonishing,

And honestly speaking of that too. ridiculous that. We're supposed to work like. Our entire lives to. Pay off shelter. Something that's supposed to be basic need.

Yeah. And something that causes you anxiety and fear. you know, A lot of people that kind of live paycheck to paycheck, they have an underlying sense of anxiety at all times because they know that homelessness or, not having your needs met Is a reality and it's not that far away of a reality. And that undercurrent of fear and stress really brings out the worst in people. When you're operating under conditions of extreme fear and stress, you're not your best self at all. And you're not putting your best self out there into society. And so collectively we're probably putting off harmonics that are like nails on a chalkboard, because of the undercurrent of fear and stress. So some of these advancements in technology, they could actually be a catalyst for things really improving within the species, just because the level of fear and stress can be greatly reduced.

Yeah. Valid point.

If you had a bank account right now, but how do you enough to support you and your generation for the next 20 years? You'd probably live a lot more carefree than you do as far as exploring your passions and being joyful and stuff. Instead of being stressed all the time. So then if everyone was looking at the picture, like a more colorful earth, if you just look at it from, it sounds like a bunch of. What do you call it like Hocus Pocus until you actually think of it from a scientific perspective, but everything is sound and light and waves. And so harmonics are very real they're very much real to the cosmos, so what we put out we're attracting back. As a species, we put out these harmonics that are fear-based and, just. The chaos really? And then that's, what's coming back, but through the use of advanced technology, we're seeing a pathway that maybe that can start to improve and we can start to experience better things,

Yeah, I think the point is that there's efficiencies to be gained with these different types of technologies. So many different areas.

Yeah. And relying on Those people such as yourself, Craig, who have done such a good job over the years of staying on top of this thing as it grows. Because just for an example, before we go last Friday I was sitting here pretty much almost ready to cry. 'cause I love my smart home, but my smart home broke. Like it's my pride and joy working with my smart devices and watching the machine learning, advance then it broke. And I was up almost all night trying to figure it out. And I just, I thought I had it fixed and I was so excited. And then I woke up in the morning after just a little bit of sleep and it was broke again. And I was like, oh no. And then literally after we met from your podcast, Craig suggested one, one, literally one change in setting. it was a very deep setting. I had to dig very deep. For it, I would have never known it even existed. But you suggested to me, this one setting to alter, and I did that and, oh my gosh. Ever since then, I have not had a single problem with my smart home. cannot even tell you the difference. My smart home has went from having a lag time. Like I communicate to my smart devices, there was a lag time. Sometimes there were glitches things weren't going right. And I thought it was just, part of the machine learning, no, come to find out it was all related to that problem. Because now that I fixed that setting, that I would have never known existed except. For your advice everything is flowing. In such a different way. I feel like I can barely get my words out before they're responding to me and nothing is glitching. It is working perfectly. and it's amazing. And I can see It's really gonna start growing from here because that one change is hitting. But without your years and years of experience, would have never known to change that setting. And I, would've never got to this point in my smart home, like literally it was a game changer.

So Craig is the real AI whisper.

what it is truly is that teamwork makes the dream work. I have a knack for working with these devices, but I do not have Craig's knowledge of all these years of experience that he has. do not have that. And it would take me just as many years to learn that. And I don't want to do that. So Craig is excellent for that. All about just everybody pitching in with their best. Whatever they have and that's the recipe for a perfect humanity as well. Everybody has natural gifts and talents. Like Craig's a very technical person. I'm more of artsy type, mind, creative, and, you, Erin and Blake buy her all different. But when we apply our individual gifts and talents, and we just, commit them to the team, great things can happen. Like I have a smart home that I would say is probably falling up than most smart homes because of the teamwork here.

When you're talking Craig about the new fighters A fighter jet. a drone. I totally it like. Top gun remake. So no more ice man.

Yeah. I guess I envision how it's almost like star wars, right? It's like I think the future of military. And the respect with drones. It's you know, If you've got an issue, you're going to send the drones first and then maybe one human is kinda like I'm in the back. Or just watching the stuff happen and then. Making control changes to launch more drones and things like that to reduce human casualties.

Yeah, it's definitely a game changer in many different ways.

You are absolutely right. BJ.

All right, let's go ahead and wrap it up here. Thank you everyone for joining us and feel free to join us. Live here on the zoom channel daily at noon, or you can catch the live broadcast on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube live. And if you can't join us live, we will be posting the audio on just about any podcast platform you can find. So thank you again, and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow.