EverydaySpy Podcast - IT'S OVER: The US Dollar Is Finally Collapsing | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 8

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Happy Birthday Jihi! This is a bit of a surprise for the lady and love of my life, but that's what makes birthdays fun, right!? Aside from the fact that I'm asking my poor wife to work on her special day, it's a great chance for us to talk about Ripple cryptocurrency, family traditions, and how we landed at CIA despite being such different people. And if you've ever wondered what the best college major is to become an intel officer, stick with us to the end and we'll answer that exact question! Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The BRICS trading block? Do you know what they're doing? They are actually working to create a completely new currency pegged to gold. They all want to distance themselves from the US dollar. China, Russia, India, Brazil. They want to separate themselves and they have large gold reserves. Academics and scholars, I usually disagree with them, but on this point, I think their analysis is totally right. That was such a dipshit move for the United States,

because we just showed the whole world that your money's not safe if it's in American banks. Especially considering the fact that had we not frozen their money, this war could have already been over. It's your birthday. Yay. Every year that gets a little bit less. It's your birthday and this is a really special year because I have sucked at birthdays this year.

I have absolutely been atrocious. I missed our son's 10 year birthday. Yeah. Because I was filming for History Channel. Not your fault. But it's still sucked, man. My heart broke. Yeah.

And then I missed my birthday. Yeah. For the same reason. filming again. So our February and April babies were totally missed. I tried to make up for it with our daughter's birthday this summer. And I think I only partially did it because she's so young, she doesn't understand that we've got big things coming next month. Yeah. But for her, it was still like a birthday extravaganza. I think the last couple of years have been really big for her. I mean, the fact that the first thing she asked for for her birthday is a cruise should be a

sign that we're doing something wrong I don't know if it keeps getting more expensive then yes the answer is yes for real right yeah she gets the presence on her birthday she gets gifts going into her birthday she gets presents after her birthday and then she gets these yeah we might not be doing that right well it's because we already knew that the early years are difficult because what we're trying to do is teach them the value of experience yes so we start at this shift a few years ago, which for our son made sense at his age where he gets, you know, like three physical gifts and like two experiential gifts. Yeah, big experiences.

Big experiences, right? Like going to space camp or going on a cruise or going to wherever, you know, that he gets the pick, right? And we help him decide. But when you're six and you're five, they have a very difficult time conceptualizing. I only get three LOL dolls. Right. So our daughter on the other hand has gotten to the place where she's where she gets a pile of material gifts. Yeah, from grandparents and, you know, everybody. And a pile of experiential gifts. That's true. So, but all of that to say, I sucked on my birthday.

I sucked on my son's birthday. I was kind of okay because I was at least present for Eli's birthday. Yeah. But I really wanted your birthday to be special because you kind of read me the Riot Act after I missed a couple of birthdays. Well, birthdays were a big deal in my family. So it was nothing, it wasn't an extravaganza, but it was a big deal that on the day of your birth, my mom always made a cake, you always had a couple friends over, it was celebrated with the whole family, everybody was there. So for me, it's having your family be there, and if they can't be there, having them call you and being able to say that, I mean, FaceTime with them is amazing now.

So that's what's important to me is that we are together on the birthday. birthdays were not big in my family yeah birthdays were not big i remember i had one sister angela the middle sister who always cares about tradition yes but the rest of us we didn't really we didn't care my dad didn't my stepdad didn't notice my mom didn't really care i'm for sure me and my youngest sister didn't pay any attention to it so i carried that on like all through college and everything birthdays just weren't important to me yeah and you've had to kind of break me of that because in our family, that's the tradition that you want to honor. Yes. It was very important to me. Just the little thing of, you know, making the cake every year, not getting a store bought.

I have got, I have done store bought, but I prefer the tradition of making the cake. And then as they get older, you can make the cake with them. And I just, it's just so my idea to love, right, that you're pouring into this. So my idea to buy a cake today was a bad idea. Well, my problem is that I don't eat dairy anymore. So can I buy a cake? A lot of my dessert options are kind of limited now. Can I buy the cake for the kids? Yes, absolutely. Does that break the tradition? No, because I mean, as I age also, I feel like part of the celebration is every year that I get with the kids. So I want it to be special for them. I want them to remember birthdays in general as something special that we do together, right? That's what's important to me. And I think that's

a beautiful tradition. And you know, what I really like about this is I did not come from a traditional household. And as a result of that, I did not come from a household that set traditions or honored traditions. And I never even thought about it until, I mean, honestly, you and I were dating, I still didn't think about it. You and I got engaged, didn't think about it. The first few years that we were married. The only tradition we had were Christmas movies before Christmas. And that was a great tradition. And I think for a while there, we had like a grilling tradition where we would grilled dinner on Friday night. That was an amazing tradition.

But once we had kids, I didn't, I had never once considered intentional traditions until you started bringing them up. And even then, I don't think you brought them up until maybe the kids were three or so. Because it's so hard in the beginning with kids. And I think what happened is that the whole time we were together in the beginning, and this is probably something that often happens in dating relationships that turn into marriages, I was living my traditions, and you were going along with them, right? So it was this unspoken, you were living my traditions because I just did what I did every year.

It never even occurred to me that you didn't have your own family traditions until we had to talk about it because there was a year where there was like a miss. You were working so much. You were building the business. And I was like, what about Thanksgiving? What about your birthday? And after a couple of years, you know, it came out that this is a big deal to me. Like, I am upset.

And that's when it came out that you actually didn't have traditions growing up. And I have very strong traditions. So now we need to talk about it and set, you know, what we want our life to look like. Intentional traditions. Because I also realized, you know, my grandmother passed last year. And my grandmother was, you know, the matriarch of the family. Your grandmother passed almost two years ago, I'm pretty sure. It was when we first moved to Jacksonville.

So it was a year in March. So, you know, when she passed, suddenly I realized how all of my family traditions had been tied so strongly to her. And now that she was gone, you know, the torch gets passed, right? The torch gets passed to, you know, her children and to me. And now that I have my own kids, so it's really important that we build our own for our kids to, you know, take us. gone and make theirs one day too because one day we're going to pass that torch too. It's amazing too because you can see with our children, our son is very tradition oriented just like by personality. He certainly didn't, it wasn't something that I trained him during our

lifestyle. No, that's genetic. You can thank me for that. But he's very into it. He likes not just even just the tradition of Christmas and Thanksgiving, but like the tradition of the day starts. with music and books. Yeah. And if he misses that tradition, it's like a ritual for him, right? It goes a step beyond tradition. Yeah. And it goes into that routine, that ritual.

And it's been a beautiful thing because I've had a chance to relive my own childhood, which was tradition less, through him because he's our oldest. And then our daughter, who's very much like me, she's so flexible. She doesn't really care one way or the other, right? Like, she wants to, she asks you how far away her birthday is. How far away is my birthday? Yeah. 100 days.

Okay. How far away is my birthday? Next week. Okay. Our son knows. Yeah. And he's, he's excited how he knows how far away Christmas is. He knows how far away his birthday is.

He knows how far away, you know, major holidays are and he cares because he's excited for the tradition. Fourth of July this year was the first time that they had really seen a traditional fourth of July. Yeah. Yeah. well, because we've been all over the world, you know, Fourth of July is here. So when we're overseas, it's just kind of not a thing.

Yeah. But, you know, I think it's interesting because for our son and I, we need, we want a thing to look forward to, right? And we're counting down the days or counting down the hours to the thing that we're looking forward to doing. For you and our daughter, you're looking forward to the day. Yeah. That's true.

To the next day, to the next hour. The next moment. To the next moment. Something cool is going to happen. Exactly. It's so hard for me to conceptualize. But yeah, so it's this really interesting difference in personalities that, you know, I'm, I am glad that we have these differences in our household because it helps us understand

other people better as well, right? It's funny because at CIA, I remember we always had to be really tuned into how a person reacts and how a person thinks. And you and I both work there. So we spent our work day working very hard to tune. into how somebody thought. Yeah. What does their physical body tell us about what they're thinking? What does their verbal communication tell us about what they're thinking? What does the difference, the discrepancy between their verbal and nonverbal communication tell us about what they're thinking?

But once the work day ended and we came back home, we didn't use those skills with each other for a long time. And we were always confused. Like so many married and dating and young parents out there. We were confused. Like what happened to you? Why are you acting crazy? Why are you so weird right now? When we just started applying those same spy skills to our relationship, everything changed. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we first lived together, there was the dishwasher incident. Do you remember that one? There were many dishwasher incidences when we first moved in here. But it was our first argument was the dishwasher. Because you loaded it wrong. There is no wrong way to load it. I was. Ask.

my dad and he will tell you something very different. And that took us how many days were that to come out because you were so angry that I loaded it wrong because I pack it to the brim. Any place a dish will fit, I will stick it in there and it doesn't really matter as long as the Jack can hit it. It's fine. It runs for like two hours. They're all going to get clean. You were like, the dishes will not get clean this way. And then it came out three days later with lots of questions about what's going on this dishwasher. Why are you so angry? Yeah, why are you so angry? Yeah. Yeah.

It's like somehow we can get a nuclear scientist to spill his secrets. But it takes me a few days before I admit to my childhood trauma about the dishwasher. Yeah. And I didn't grow up with a dishwasher. So for me... That's true. You were the dishwasher. Yeah.

My mom was the dishwasher. Yeah. You didn't even have chores growing up. We had chores. You were like this coddled little girl. I was the footstool of my dad. You were a bit of Cinderella. But I did have chores.

Although my mom let me pick. So I would always, you know, my analysis at the time was always, I could dust the entire house and vacuum, or I can clean the one bathroom that we have in the house. What's going to be faster? Because I want to be done. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting to me because, you know,

the conflict that we experienced from that miscommunication on traditions, on the dishwasher. Remember, you used to lock every, You still lock every door. Safety. I don't lock doors. I know you don't. I don't lock.

Most people that I meet don't lock many doors. They lock doors out of habit. Like they'll lock their car door. And they'll lock their front door. Yeah. But that doesn't mean they're locking the door between the house and the garage. Remind me again where you grew up. Rural Pennsylvania.

Yeah. I grew up in a small city where if you didn't lock your car door, somebody stole something from it. If you didn't lock your front door, somebody would walk in. and steal your stuff or you're in the backyard. That's true. It was kind of a hood city back in the day. Back in the day. It's so nice now.

It's so nice now. St. Petersburg, Florida, the city that we're talking about, is gorgeous right now. It is completely hard for me to believe that in 1992, when you were 12 years old, that place was ghetto and dangerous and everything else. Because you go there now and it's art districts, coffee houses, skyscraping condominiums,

waterfront property. Yeah. It's beautiful now. Yeah. But so many couples have these arguments because essentially there's a gap in communication. Yeah. And the gap in communication is verbal communication because there is no gap in nonverbal communication. Right.

You can absolutely tell when your spouse is lying to you. Their body language shows that you are still like this now. I can still tell when you're not there. Like when I'm talking to you, but you're somewhere else, I can see it. I can see it in your body language. When I ask if something is okay and it's not, I can still see it in your body language. Even when I send you a text message, right? I can send you a text message and I can say, how do you feel about this idea?

And if the answer I get back is something like, sure. That's actually body language because I know that you just pressed the automatic answer that pops up at the bottom of your operating system that says, you know, yes, no, sure. Sure, okay. And I just, I can tell you, just press that button. Actually, I type in Sure. Even worse. I know, because Sure is the definite like anger, like, S-U-R-E.

But we're not alone in this. We're not alone in this. There are so many dating couples, married couples, engaged couples, couples with children, second marriages. Yeah. Right? Second time dating before a second marriage. And the truth is, it's very difficult to hide your nonverbal

communication and even the people who think that they're good at it usually are not good at it because they're finding false confidence in their bad nonverbal communication what the reason so many communication gaps exist isn't because people are good at hiding what they mean it's because people are not looking at body language people are not looking to see is there extra rigidity in your partner's back they're not looking for signs that they're closed off they're not looking for signs that they feel threatened. Yeah. Right?

And what did CIA teach us? CIA taught us a very basic rubric for nonverbal communication, right? Closed? If their body, if the arms cross the body in any way, right? High, low, any way at all, right? That's a closed position. They are not receptive to you. If someone's grabbing their face or their throat in any way, that's not interest.

That's threat, right? Because this is like the part of your body that's the most vulnerable. So they're protecting those vulnerable parts. of their body. So if you see actions, if you see behaviors like that, straight rigidity, right? A straight, rigid back doesn't mean that they have fantastic posture. It means that they're on the edge of their decision making about fight or flight, right? That's why you see proper posture. So when you see your partner holding themselves in these positions, that's a clear sign that they're communicating to you non-verbally, no matter what they say,

no matter what comes out of their mouth. Yeah. Right? Yeah, but I think it's important what what you, the first thing he said was, you know, the verbal communication is lacking. So even if you learn how to read the body language, you have to go the step further verbally. Yes. Because you can tell by my body language if I'm upset, but you can't always guess without the verbal communication why I'm upset. Or how upset. Exactly. So I mean, you can tell, you know, you can come into the kitchen and immediately know that

I'm upset about something. But you don't know if I'm upset at you, if I'm upset at our six years. year old. Yeah, it's true. If I'm just upset because, you know, I was watching a TV show that was very emotional, you know, one of those tear-jurker cartoons, you know, commercials. Tear-jurker commercials. Isn't it embarrassing when you get so old that commercials affect your emotions?

Oh, my God. You can relate to so much more when you're older. And it's always, they make me cry. That's what they do. It's these commercials of like happy parents and young children. And then in the next scene, the young child's like a teenager. And then they're a grown-up and you're like, like, I want to buy Downy Fabric Soffery.

It's horrible. But you're exactly right. I mean, picking up on the nonverbal is really just the entry point for you to then introduce verbal communication. And that's not easy either, especially not in relationships where one adult, one partner is a communicator and the other partner is not. But I think what I'm getting at is just everybody would move the dial in the right direction. if we just turned on our awareness of nonverbal communication. Closed positions, threatened positions, and then of course the opposite, right, open positions.

When someone's opening up their chest, their center of energy, right? Heart, lungs, all lists, it all rests here. When somebody opens up that center of energy, they're really receptive to what you have to say. When someone leans in, right, that means that they're trying to close a distance. They're seeking that connection. So when you have that kind of behavior, you know that's

know, you know, when they nod their head, like you're nodding your head right now. Yeah. You know that there is a connection being built. You know that what's coming across is genuine. It's very hard for someone to intentionally fabricate when they are showing nonverbal cues like an open chest, head nods, and leaning in. It's hard for people to lie that way. It doesn't, it doesn't work in the cognitive brain. Right. Without a lot of training. Exactly. You'd have to actually be intentionally putting on the act. Yeah. naturally it's hard to fake so in honor of your birthday I kind of want to talk about things that make gee-he happy I kind of want to talk about things that make you smile and make you laugh because I want

to share your birthday with the world and we have a huge we have a great plan today it's all family time except for right now actually how do you feel about that you're working on your birthday that's okay you're sitting here recording with me on your birthday I'm pretty sure we threw the kids in front of iPads so we could come in here and record. So parenting fail? They're having a good time. They are having a good time. They're very happy about their iPad time and I woke up and my daughter gave me, they made me a tiny little card that said happy birthday and she'd asked me how to write 43, which is what I am? And she said, what side do the numbers go on? And then when I got the card, it said 34. So I was pretty happy about that. Gift number one. Gift number one. I'll take 34 all day.

It was so cute. So you don't feel bad about working on your birthday. Because technically I got in trouble for working on everybody else's birthday. Because when you work, you're apart from us. But right now I'm working and I'm with you. You made me a great breakfast. You already know that food, my stomach is really the weight of my heart. You found that on pretty early on.

Yeah. And luckily, that hasn't come back to bite us yet. Because you do a great job of staying fit, staying healthy. and otherwise I have put some absolutely terrible unhealthy food in front of you. Well, your cooking's gotten so much better since we started dating for sure. That's true. When we first started dating, I was basically just like a rice and chicken breast kind of guy. Oh, yeah.

I remember it was frozen chicken breast with like a slice of an onion and a wedge of cheese on top. So healthy, though. So healthy. I am certain. Not going to win a girl. No. No way. Yeah.

I remember the birthday that you got me a cookbook. Yes. That was not a subtle hint. No, I got you a cookbook, a beer making book, and a giant pot to brew the beer. And a cookbook on how to make sauces. Yes. Because all of my food was dry. Yeah.

Let me help you out. Oh my gosh. We have come a long way. Yeah. That is funny. We have come a long way. So yeah, all things that make Ghee happy. One of the things that makes Ghi happy that I've never, ever,

understood is reaching for your freaking cell phone first thing in the morning. How in the hell does that make you happy? You wake up and like I reach for your body first thing in the morning. You reach for your cell phone. Yeah. Why? Well, so I'm being weighed down by your body and I can't get out of bed. So I reach my arm over the side and I'm awake and you're snoozing. So I reach my arm over the side there and I like to read the news I wake up slowly I like to read the news first thing in the morning it helps me wake my brain up slowly I have you know the news that comes into my email boxes you know from the economist and AP news I just get those emails and I just go through the headlines and kind of see what's going on it makes me feel connected to the world it helps wake my brain up

and get it going um you know just I'm I'm slow in the morning I'm not a morning person so I can't even I can't even focus on something in the morning. Like when I open my eyes, they're like blurry and crusty. Do you open your eyes first thing in the morning and it's clear? It's clear enough to read. Wow, that is not the way I see the world. It's interesting because until we had kids, you were the one who always woke up first and would spring out of bed and say, get up and get active.

I have to roll over and be like, oh, please make me some food first. But now I feel like it's the opposite where you, I mean, you're working so hard these days, but you do tend to sleep a little longer. And then my brain, I don't necessarily want to get up and get active, but my brain wants to get a kickstart. So, yeah. But you've always, you've always tuned into the news. Yeah.

For a short period there, you would tune into social media. But then I think that used to irritate you. I think social media in general irritates you. Yeah. And I don't just mean professionally because you used to use social media to target people. But I think it just irritates you because it's so, I don't know, phony, so fake. There's some reason that it irritates you. Yeah, social media is hard for me because it's everybody living their best life.

But it's only snippets. Yeah. Right? And so no matter how I'm feeling, I'm seeing these amazing snippets of people living their best life. And all I can think about is, why aren't I in Phuket? Why aren't I in Fiji? Why don't I look beautiful? Why am I not tasting wine right now?

Of course, that's the one time of the year. Maybe that's their first vacation in five years that I'm seeing, right? The highlight reel of everybody's day. Yeah. That does suck. Yeah. But for me mentally, it's not helpful. But for me, seeing the news every morning or listening to the mood, when we used to drive

into CIA, I liked listening to NPR so I could get the news first thing in the morning. I like driving in when the BBC news was on because I want to connect. and just have an idea of what's going on in the world. Yeah. What's going on in the world on your birthday? On my birthday? What's happening today? I have no idea.

I didn't read the news today. Happy birthday to me! Today's a, I don't care what's going on because I'm having my birthday. That's because we have a whole day plan for your birthday. We're going to go paint some pottery. We're going to hang out as a family. We're going to watch a family movie. Yeah.

The kids get their Minecraft while we record a podcast. Yeah, that's so true. I know what's not going on. Spider-Man across the universe is not out yet for me to stream. That's a little sad for my birthday. Well, then let me tell you something that didn't happen on your birthday. Well, let me clarify. Let me just tell you what happened. I bought you a gift. You don't know what the gift is. I don't. No, I bought you other gifts and you know what all those gifts are. But this is a gift that I bought you that you don't know about. And I'm pretty sure you're not going to be excited.

I'm pretty sure. Surprises don't generally go over well with me. I don't know if you've noticed. So I bought you cryptocurrency for your birthday. Oh, interesting. I bought you 1,000 XRP, also known as Ripple. Okay. Cryptocurrency today.

Okay. Happy birthday. Thank you. I don't know what to do with that. You know how I feel about cryptocurrency. How do you feel about cryptocurrency? It's make-believe money. I mean, it's not fully make-believe.

But tell me what you, what do you think about cryptocurrency? So in the vein that things have value that people assign value to, then yes, it is real. But I have never been a person who has fully understood the stock market or futures or cryptocurrency because if I can't touch it in my hands, then it's not real. Yeah. So I'm just one of those old school if we traded clamshells for stuff that would be fine by me. I miss my checkbook and my register, you know. We have paper calendars all over the house for you.

We do. I like the tangible. And in the tradition that I am always trying to modernize you, I bought you cryptocurrency. So now I can learn about it. So now you can learn about it. Okay. So I bought you ripple. The reason I bought you ripple is because the recent announcement,

the king of England made a formal bill that makes cryptocurrency a core trading commodity in the banks of the UK. That's fascinating. So cryptocurrency has been on this, we've been following it for a long time. People have been asking about it for a long time. We've watched the rise and kind of decline of Bitcoin. I don't know that they're coming back from that decline. I know lots of people are going to hate hearing that. And I have lots of peers that are millionaires now because of Bitcoin.

They had more millions, though, before November of last year, I think it was. Well, it's all evolving. It's always evolving. Yeah. Cryptocurrency is always evolving, right? We made the claim, by we, I mean everyday spy, our company, made the claim almost a year and a half ago, maybe even two years ago. That cryptocurrency is never going to be something that governments get behind as long as it's

fully decentralized. because governments need to centralize the exchange of financial capital. They have to. It's how they track criminals. It's how they protect against embezzlement. It's how they secure their tax base. So as long as you fully decentralized with cryptocurrencies that nobody can track or that nobody can tax, then all the financial services of the world kind of collapsed.

And how did the United States become wealthy? How did the UK become wealthy? Their number one export is financial services. digital services you would collapse two of the largest economies in the world if true decentralized cryptocurrency ever actually happened so we made the claim that while cryptocurrency will always be something that governments resist in a decentralized fashion when the when the cryptocurrencies start to come out that are intentionally centralized that are there to facilitate the financial services that have built the united states in the uk and china and india and you know Singapore when those those

start to be born then they're going to be widely adopted yeah and that is actually happening that happened that started to happen this week something called ISO 2022 is a standardization process that formalizes how future financial transactions will happen the release of that ISO number along with the release of the of King Charles's statement about applying a bill a formal legal bill to using cryptocurrencies in the UK marketplace those two things to are driving a huge push the adoption of cryptocurrencies by first world countries. Yeah. One of the core cryptocurrencies being used for that push is the

one you now own 1000 of. Well, hooray. So Ripple XRP is what's known, they call it a stable coin. I don't know that it's actually a stable coin. I think technically it's a coin that's value is derived from another coin. I think that's technically what it is. Yeah. But regardless, it's considered to be a very reliable tool in the crypto market for handling transactions between international players. So when you want to transfer money to the UK and when the UK wants to transfer money

to you, it can be transferred almost instantaneously through coins like ripple, which is why I thought it would be good to buy for you. Yeah, and that would be amazing because transitioning between different currencies is always so time consuming. Yeah, time consuming and complex and expensive. Expensive. Right. Every time we go somewhere, where were we recently?

We were in, we were in Portugal. And we paid, I think we paid a 12% conversion rate. Because of all of the administrative processes that have to happen just to convert euros to dollars. Yeah. Right. Cryptocurrency is going to reduce that price. Take out all those administrative costs and make the transaction fully legal, fully auditable, and almost instantaneous. So I wanted you to be on the four, the least,

the leading edge of that. Now, can I continue geeking out on this for just a second? Yeah. Okay, because I like geeking out, but sometimes I go way too geek with you. I'm just thinking about the Venetian glass I'm going to buy with this cryptocurrency somehow. Next time I go to Venice. Luckily, I bought you the cryptocurrency, but I haven't taught you how to convert it into dollars yet. Well, lucky for you, I guess. So I think this will get a smile out of you. where is one of your favorite places ever that we have visited together? Together, New Zealand. New Zealand.

I knew you were going to say that first. New Zealand lives in a part of the global of the map. Remember what it's called? The Oceana. Oceana. Great job. High five. Thanks.

Remembrance. I love it. On your birthday. On your birthday. Getting the Noggin to work. So New Zealand is. is in Oceana. Ripple, the coin that I bought you, is actually tied to a coin that is being adopted as the primary currency in another Oceana countries, a country called Palau, P-A-U.

You've heard of it. Yeah. Palau. Yeah. Palau. So Palau actually is considered a protectorate of the United States. That's fascinating. Yep. So what you essentially have here and what some crypto followers are calling a test bed that the United States is using Palau as a test bed to test the widespread adoption and commercialization of a cryptocurrency to replace actual physical currency. Huh. And the primary currency that's being tied to Palau is Ripple. So essentially, Palau has its own coin backed to the US dollar.

That's technically what a stable coin is. A stable coin is a piece of cryptocurrency tied to a fee. currency, Palau has that. Now, XRP is anchored to the Palau stable coin. So essentially, your XRP that I bought you is a second generation stable coin? I don't know. It's tied to the Palau coin, which is tied to the U.S. dollar. So what's happening is the West is doubling down on tying currencies to the U.S. dollar, even tying cryptocurrencies to the U.S. dollar. Even tying cryptocurrencies to the U.S. So I wanted to kind of give you a little piece of Oceana and a little piece of modern tech and a deep geek fest dive by buying you your first cryptocurrency. But you're saying it's still tied to something tangible.

Correct. Okay. Technically, all future cryptocurrencies, again, this is how you, this is where everyday spy, this is where our company stands on cryptocurrency. cryptocurrency will never be adopted widespread unless it's tied to something tangible. Right. Because just like you were saying earlier, right, the value of something being based simply on the perceived value of people is something that's never going to be stable. It's always going to be unpredictable, right? That's what kept you from learning about the stock market. It's what kept you from learning about cryptocurrencies in the past because value derived simply from

or value derived exclusively from people guessing isn't real value. Well, and even value derived from my understanding is Bitcoin is something that's mined through a computer system. And so it's sort of tangible, but it seems so easily lost. It's not like gold, right? Something tied to gold. Gold is very difficult. I mean, you can change the properties of gold, but it's much harder than an entire computer. system going down or being you know aliens come with an AMP and then boom all your currency is gone you know it's kind of wild right yeah yeah or i mean and that's why there have been

so many just tremendous hacks of cryptocurrency because it's hard to stay ahead of it yes a criminal is always incentivized to find a vulnerability before a vulnerability is shored up when cryptocurrency like when bitcoin was at i don't even know what was it i don't know what it was at its peak i think right now it's sitting at around $12,000 or $14,000 per Bitcoin. Who wouldn't? If I was 19 years old right now and unemployed, hell yes, I would be like, I'm going to learn how to steal some Bitcoin. That's a hell of a return on investment.

If I could spend six hours. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to get a truck or bags or ski masks. Just learn how to hack a system. And boom, it's there. And you know what? Steal it from some foreigner. So it's not even against American law.

Just steal it from somebody in Russia. Steal it from somebody in Belarus and. Now you're considered an American hero, right? It's wild. But I can absolutely see why it is that people would look for that. But as we delve into this, it's really interesting because also happening on your birthday, while we in the United States and even the cryptocurrency that I just purchased for you, while all of it's pushing towards doubling down on the U.S. dollar, the BRICS. trading block?

Yeah. Do you know what they're doing? The renan. I don't think of somebody else's money. They are actually working to create a completely new currency pegged to gold. Really? Because, if you can believe this or not, the top 10 countries holding gold reserves, one of them is the United States.

We hold the largest gold reserves in the entire world. The other 10, the other nine out of the top 10, they all want to distance themselves from the U.S. dollar. four of those nine are BRICS leadership countries. China, Russia, India, Brazil. They want to separate themselves and they have large gold reserves. Makes sense. You can't say that.

It doesn't make sense for them. It doesn't, right? So you tie your currency away from the US dollar, peg it to gold instead, and all of a sudden you have less dependence on the United States. Right. And I really was so upset. I was so frustrated when we did this to Russia during the Russia-Ukraine war when we blocked their access to American accounts. Do you remember that?

Like that was such a dipshit move for the United States because we just we just orchestrated for the whole world. We just showed the whole world that your money's not safe if it's an American banks. That's the exact opposite of the message that we should be sending. So now anybody who even remotely thinks that they have a conflict with the United States now or in the next what 50 years they don't want to hold US dollars they don't want to hold their money in American banks and we we were just talking about it our in our economy is tied to financial services what the hell are we going to do when people don't want to do business with American banks because they're afraid that if they do the wrong thing we're going to lock off access to their accounts and Russia had real fiat currency they weren't in debt it wasn't a line of credit

it was their actual money yeah and then when we locked it off and we convinced European banks to do the same thing, ooh. Yeah. Like that was a bad move. That was a bad move and we're going to be paying the penalty for a while. Yeah. Well, and there are talks now about, you know, when the war is over, who's going to pay to reconstruct? Yeah. And if Ukraine wins and Russia loses, should we, you know, should the world make Russia pay for the reconstruction? And I think a lot of the consensus from various academics and scholars out there are that, no, that's a really bad idea. So academics and scholars. I usually disagree with them, but on this point, I think their analysis is totally right.

Yeah. It's such a bad idea to hold someone's money hostage and then basically steal their money out of their account that you guaranteed to then rebuild another country, especially considering the fact that had we not frozen their money, this war could have already been over. Who knows? We don't know what could have happened had the world not decided to meddle in everything going on and it's hard it's hard because you know it's hard because of all the things that make it hard yeah who's got sovereignty who doesn't have sovereignty what's what's the right direction

what's the responsibility of the democratic world to get itself engaged in in regional conflicts well and i mean what people are really looking at what the other countries are really looking at when they decide whether or not to intervene is you know is the impact on their own country right the future impact on their own country and on the world order. It's not that the United States cared so much about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. I mean, there's an aspect of that, right, where people want, you know, the right thing to be done. And somebody encroaching on another country, they feel like it's not the right thing. And so they want to protect those people. But beyond that, when they are actually looking at, do we send money? Do we send resources? Do we send weapons?

sending weapons to another country is a huge, huge decision. And that is generally made because the country that's sending the weapons thinks that if beside that their backing wins, they will be better off. Their country will be better off. The world order will be better off. Otherwise, I mean, how many conflicts around the world do we not get into, right? We don't talk about those. Yeah, like there was just a coup in each year, right?

We're not doing anything. Nobody's talking about that. I saw that at the bottom of a news article. Like, you know, it's not big news here. We're not going to get involved. Yeah. Right. There's been civil conflict in Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, or decades.

Yeah. We don't get involved. Thailand is still in flux. Yeah. My gosh. Yeah. And that's a super interesting one because that sits in the middle of Southeast Asia. And they've been a longtime ally to the east and the west.

Yeah. And yet people, the southern border of Thailand continues to be this hot spot of violence and extremism. That's a great point. So, I mean, countries pick and choose who they, who they see. and their resources too. Based on what's in their own best interest. And it's self-serving. Yeah, ultimately it's self-serving.

Wow. So then, Oceana, happy birthday. Thanks. You now own a thousand ripple coins. Now I have to read about it. And now you get to learn more about it. And we get to decide whether or not the race for gold versus the race for fiat currency versus the race for cryptocurrency.

We're going to see who's going to win. Just bought me some gold. Ooh, woo. Maybe next year. Maybe next year. Maybe next year. I'm going to use that, I think, every year. Every year.

Now, we also had a very interesting question come in from the Spy Tribe, and I wanted to get your thoughts on this. Because, again, sticking to the theme of all the things that makes Geehee happy. And the question came from a college student. Now, we get a lot of college student spy tribe members. And I have a heart for our college students because our stuff is expensive. Our training courses are expensive. Our digital courses are expensive. We both do that for a very clear reason.

And we've explained that many times to other people, right? We charge the highest possible price that we can charge, knowing that we're going to give more than the price back in value. Right. Right. So if you're buying something from us for $50, we're essentially guaranteeing that you're going to get $150 with a value out of the thing. or send it back or or just tell us and we're going to refund you and we're going to still keep it. We have an incredible like 100% money back guarantee process.

We have an incredible refund process and we do it all because it makes our life very administratively simple. You complain, here's your money back. No counter argument, nothing, right? That's just how we do business. But our stuff is so expensive that a lot of times college students can't buy it. They can't drop $1,000 to come see us in person. And it's very difficult for them to come up with, you know, even sometimes $25 to spend on a digital product. Right.

So I really like doing what we can to feed our college audience because those college students are the ones that are going to go on to become future CIA officers, future DIA officers, future entrepreneurs. So we had a question come in from the Spy Tribe from a college student asking what is the best course of study if you want to get into intelligence. If you want to work for a national security intelligence agency, not the NSA, but N.S.A. But N. Intelligence Community Partner, what's the course of study to pursue? I wanted to get your thoughts. Now that I've been in, and I met a lot of people who worked there and a lot of people during the interview process, I really think it could be anything. I think if it's something you're interested in, you should pursue it. I worked with a targeter who was a librarian.

His degree was in library, I think it's called Information Sciences. Library Sciences. Library Sciences. I think it's library sciences. Yeah. So he'd been a librarian before he came on and now he was a targeter. You know, I met a lot of people study international relations. You know, it's a very common degree.

I think that you should study what you want. And then it's really about life experience, right? It's about doing really well in your course studies. in the field that you've chosen, and then traveling and getting different experiences and work and learning a language and just showing them that you have the aptitude to learn, right? Because CIA, for the most part, unless they're hiring you for a specialized position, they train you. Yeah. You come in, they want you to have certain features, certain personality features, you know, certain, you know, like just showing them that you can learn and you are adaptable,

but then they train you. If you want to do something specific, like I was amazed when I, when I started working at the CIA and I realized that they had graphic designers and they have all the tech guys are very specialized in what they do. They have people. Cosmetologists. Cosmetologists who do disguise makeup. They have guys who are prop makers, right? I mean, you can get a fine arts degree and come in as a prop maker to make, you know, concealment devices, right? You know, NSA is the same thing. It's more specialized. So I really think, you know, it's up to you.

It should just be something that you're going to do really well in and that will give you the breadth of experience that you can show the CIA that you can come in and adapt their training. So I think you nailed it with two words, aptitude, because you're right. CIA is looking for all the intelligence community members. are looking for the aptitude to learn something new because you're always learning. When you're in the IC, when you're an intelligence officer, you're always learning.

You're learning new languages, you're learning new cultures, you're learning new cases, you're learning new security situations, you're learning about new technology, you're learning new techniques, you're learning all the time. It never stops. It's actually quite exhausting to have to learn that much. I was, I had the aptitude to learn, but I certainly prefer to coast. I am really good at coasting. I am, it takes work to learn.

So you nailed it with aptitude. And I think you also nailed it with the word adaptability. Yeah. Because you're right, they're also looking for people who can adapt. And it's funny because many times the college students who think they're the least qualified are actually the best suited for intelligence work. Yeah. The people who have an aptitude to learn.

And because of that, they get bored in one major. You were one of these people. You change your major like four times? Four times. I changed my major three times at least. Yeah. So you're in something. It's interesting.

You kind of get really good at it. You don't necessarily master it, but you get good enough at it. And you're like, I'm bored. Yeah. So let me go learn something new because the learning process is what's exciting to you. And then on the side where you are adaptable, you adapt to whatever the new thing is that you're trying to do. So you need to be part of new clubs. Let's go do it.

You need a new social network? Let's go do it, right? People harass you, criticize you. And this happens all the time in the academic world. As soon as you step out of line, criticism, harassment, I mean, everything gets hard. Just think about how hard it is. Like the bureaucratic process of changing your major in some universities. It's still very much like you have to take a physical file from one administrative building to another administrative building.

Those are hurdles. People who are adaptable, they roll through those hurdles. I got to take six months off, no problem. You're telling me I can't get this class until the summer semester, no problem, and they roll with it. That adaptability is so important because that's exactly what's going to happen when you're in the field. Yeah, and that was what I loved about the agency was our assignment changed every two to three years. So I was developing a specialized skill that I was able to hone and refine and add to as new software programs were being created. but every two to three years I got to do a completely new topic.

I got to go to a completely different place and I loved it. I loved it so much. The only piece I would add is a third element that's important about university specifically is CIA is looking for people CIA, DIA, NSA, N-R-O, N-G-A, they're all looking for people who have the tenacity to finish. Yeah. That's what they're like, do you have the tenacity to do the thing no matter how sucky and shitty it is. Yeah. And if you do, that's a big plus. And honestly, I mean, I was a 2.4 college student.

What was your GPA coming out of college? Probably like a 2.65. So think about this, right? If you go to CIA's website, you go to their homepage, they will tell you not even, don't even bother applying. Yeah. Unless you're like a 3.8 student, I think it is. They have a minimum requirement. Yeah. Don't even apply if you're not this. Yeah. But then they're actually higher. us how the hell does that happen because because we applied anyways because yeah because people apply anyways yeah right you straight up applied yeah you just straight up my name is jee boostamonte and I'm applying for a job I know I don't meet your qualifications yeah here I am anyways I was in the mode I was applying

all over the place I know I don't meet your qualifications but I can do your job that's how I felt when I was 14 my the first job I was trying to get I was 14 I wasn't old enough everybody was like you don't have any experience I'm like, I don't have a resume, but I can do your job. I'm looking at what you're doing right now. It's not that hard. Yeah. I'm like, I can stock your CBS shelves.

Yeah. No problem. Yeah. So it's interesting because so often we get stuck in the idea that we have to meet qualifications in order to be acceptable or to be accepted. Yeah. Right? When in reality, oftentimes what's happening is the bar is being set where it's at to dissuade

people who aren't courageous enough. from even trying. That's why the CIA website says you need a 3.5 or a 3.8 to apply. Because if you don't have a 3.5 or a 3.8 and you're too afraid to apply anyways, for sure you're not going to do well here. Yeah. But coming from a 2.4 college grad and a 2.7 college grad, we had a pretty awesome career there. Oh, yeah.

And we failed to meet pretty much every qualification that they put out there on the website. But I must have rocked the psychological battery because I got hired. Or you were just sick and twisted enough. Exactly. They're like, wow, she's really in the gray area. She's tired. She's in. She's going to do some terrible stuff and still be able to sleep at night.

That's the real test. Can you still sleep at night? Exactly. Thank you very much for joining us for another awesome conversation. Keep in mind that we are checking the comments on every one of these videos. So if you have a question that you want us to bring up, if there was something that we covered today that you really liked or something that we covered that you really didn't like, drop it in the comments so that you

that we can make we can bring it up in a future conversation we're going to keep having these conversations we're going to keep talking about everything from world affairs to domestic issues to parenting struggles that's just what we do here so leave your comments hit subscribe share this with a friend and we'll see you next time thanks very much everyone