Texas Politics, Crypto Regulation, and TEXITcoin's Honest Money Mission

Jay, can't you write us a better song than that? We need a jingle. I think I could, yes. Where's our jingle department? We haven't seen Eddie in forever. Have you done a wellness check on Eddie lately? I talk to him about once a week. When was the last time you talked to him? Probably three or four days ago. I'll call him a lot of times when I'm driving to McKinney. If you're Eddie and you're listening, we care about you. And we want to know you're okay. And we want a jingle. We want a new Texacoin-themed jingle for all you AI pros out there. Maybe we'll have a contest of some sort. Yeah, y'all use AI and I'll use actual instruments. We'll see who comes up. See which one we like the best. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that you win. I worry about the future of mankind. I say that as I have like, seventeen hundred AI windows open working on eighteen hundred different projects. All right, well, let's start with the basics. Bobby Gray here joining you for week one thirty seven. I don't know what happened to one thirty six or one thirty five, but here we are at one thirty seven. We haven't talked in a while. I'm still alive. I'm still here. I'm still doing my thing. I'm joined today by Jay. You'll find out why in just a little bit. um but it's been a long time since we had a talk since we've had a man-to-man and i've had a lot to talk to you guys about um and i wasn't even expecting to be here today but as luck would have it i missed the boat I was supposed to set sail on Sunday from Portugal to South America. Apparently, Americans need a visa to go to Brazil. They denied my boarding. I didn't get on the ship, and it was a big setback. I was angry. I don't get angry very often. Do you get angry? Oh, yeah. I get angry when mechanical things don't work the way they're supposed to. I'll throw a laptop out a window. That's more tech and computer. I was thinking if the can opener wasn't going the right way. Same thing. The car doesn't run. The battery went dead. I threw a tire out into the woods one time trying to change a flat tire. It took me thirty minutes to find it. As I get older, I get a little more mellow. I usually don't get angry. I was angry the other day. If my wife is listening, she was thinking that I was angry at her. And I would – I'm trying to find the words to describe that my anger was not at her and I'm struggling because she usually handles this kind of stuff. She's like OCD when it comes to travel plans and having all the stuff organized and printed out in the folders and all that. And so we didn't have our visa. I still don't have a visa. I was like, I'm an American. Let me just sit down. Give me five minutes. I don't get the visa. Then I'll get on the ship. I've got hours, hours to work this problem out. Well, here I am five days later. I even chased the boat to Tenerife Island in the Canary Islands. I even went there thinking I'd have the visa as an American. I'm an American. Give me my visa. Nope. They said, uh-uh. And that was it. And so now I'm back in Spain and I get on a plane tomorrow for South America. Plot twist. So anyway, so welcome to week one thirty seven. I'm glad I'm here because like I said, we've got a lot to talk about. And I asked Jay, amongst other people, to jump on and have this discussion with me because it's really important and it's it's time sensitive. We've got to talk about it now. while it's still fresh in everyone's mind. And of course, what we're talking about is what has happened last week, last Tuesday in these, we'll use quotes when we say elections. Do you think elections are fair? Do you think we have a legit process? I think, I think first of all, if they are fair, if there's not, if they're not being hacked and played with by people from overseas, which there is some evidence of that. We had a, You had a guest who talked about that a few weeks ago. Patrick gave us a full brain dump on just how corrupt those voting machines are. Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe that any country would have manipulated it to elect Trump. But if they're not manipulated, I think we are owned by the special interests because they're not giving us candidates we like. We're getting candidates that vote for this guy because he's not as bad as that guy. Different question. We'll get to that in a few minutes. Question number one is whether or not we actually have legitimate elections. I think the answer is probably not. Who was credited with saying if voting actually mattered, they'd make it illegal? It was Mark Twain, I think. or or the other one which is you know give me not control the nation but of control of the voting something or something i don't know i'm messing up my quotes today for sure um but but i'm skeptical right out of the gate i i think it's you know you walk up to the voting machine blah blah blah blah blah cross your fingers and that's it how could you ever know i know a guy that put people in jail from election fraud back in two thousand and four. I probably have shared stories of my old friend Michael Badnark with you guys in the past, ran for president on the Libertarian ticket in two thousand and four. You know, got his little footnote in the history books about his votes not mattering in much way whatsoever. But he got a phone call from some guys in, I think, Iowa or no, no, no, Ohio. And they go, look, man, I know you lost and you probably weren't ever expecting to win in the first place. But I just want you to know that a bunch of people from my precinct voted for you and our precinct shows zero libertarian votes. What gives? Well, they dug into it and they put a bunch of people went to jail for vote fraud. And that was twenty two years ago. So if you imagine that they could do it back then, they may be a little bit more sophisticated today or better at their tricks and games. So I can speak to that a little bit in a former occupation. I was intimately involved with the, what do they call them, the voter, the supervisor of elections office at the county where I lived in Florida, and they were very careful to be exactly right on every vote. I would depend on Alachua County to be accurate as long as that supervisor of elections was in office because they were, I mean, and friends of mine worked there on both sides of the fence, Republicans and Democrats and libertarians would volunteer their time. And they never saw any evidence that anything funny was going on in that local election. But when you start talking nationally, whole different ballgame. Yeah. And when you start talking electronic voting machines, whole different ballgame. Anyway, this is not a discussion about that. This is a discussion about Texitcoin, my favorite thing, logo up there. And so... I stop for a moment and I pause because you can think about this a bunch of different ways. One way is, what does it matter? Red, blue, it's all the same stuff. What does it matter? Two years, this guy's in, that guy's out. What does it matter? strongest force in the universe is the status quo and so like we can become kind of uh disinterested we can become uh kind of i don't know um what the right word is there Epithetic, for sure. I was thinking just not not affected by it, like not immune to it. But the other word for that, just I don't know. There's a word there that I can't find anyway. Or you can say, well, this at least matters. I mean, something major has happened recently. And whether we are expecting it or not, or hoping it went one way or the other, you know, every once in a while, the tectonic plates of the universe shift beneath our feet. And then, you know, something different happens. And I think that that happened last week. And so I want to talk about that because two years ago, exactly to this day, We had a very similar conversation based on a very similar event. And I was very lucky. I went back through our video archive. You know, we've been having these conversations for one hundred and thirty seven weeks now. I went back through the archive and I found the video from November twelve twenty twenty four. And what had happened the week before that was. Trump was elected as the next president again. And so we had a conversation back then. And I want to play that. I asked Matty to grab that and chop it down as best as he could to get it in like a five minute format. And I want him to play that because I think that it aged incredibly well. And then after we listened to that, Then we'll have a bit of a conversation about my personal views and opinions then. And of course, how I feel today. And then Jay and I will get a deep dive going on what we think that means for the future of our project. Maddie, go ahead and show us what you got. Texacoin in the time of Trump. What does that mean? I am feeling an incredible sense of national pride. Nobody, nobody felt a greater sense of excitement for the future when Trump got elected last Tuesday than me. Nobody did. I was buzzing for the next twenty four hours. My feet couldn't touch the ground. I felt great. I still feel great today. about what the future holds for us, for Americans, for our economy, for common sense. But how does this excitement and this sense of national pride and patriotism that I've gotten, surely you've gotten, many other people have as well, how does that affect the Texacoin conversation? How does Texacoin fit into that discussion? Is it time to give up? Do we say, oh, well, Trump's in office. He's going to fix everything. America is going to be great again. Texas is never going to leave. The empire continues. We're good. Utopia awaits us. We can just quit. Mission accomplished. He's going to take care of us all. Is it no longer relevant? No future is guaranteed. We don't know what the future is going to hold. Texans, our resolve is to stay vigilant. to be cautiously optimistic as we go into the future. We can't put all of our faith in one man. We have to continue to do what's necessary to take care of ourselves, our families, our communities. And so that's what we have to do today. But our conversation, you gotta remember, is about money. Our conversation is about money. It's about honest currency. If you go to about the Texacoin mission, it's all about honest money this is our mission for over sixteen years our team is has advocated for the return honest money and this tells the story of that tells the story of our digital rocket ship right so our story our mission is all about honest money why because i sent you a clip in our chat group about the federal reserve chairman saying that there's going to be a showdown President can't tell me to step down. I'm here. And the president's going, what did you say I can't do? Let's see about that. I don't know how it's going to end. I don't think going to war with the bankers is going to be a real easy thing, but that's the mission. Our mission is honest money. And what we have to remember is that when destroyers appear amongst men, When they come into civilizations, they start by destroying the money. Because money is our medium of exchange, is our arbitrary holder of value. And if we can't deal with each other honestly through honest money, then it's guns and bombs and fists. That's all we have left. And that's why they go after the money first. And that's why it's so important for our mission to address that thing head on. The thing that Bitcoin was originally started to address. Money, digital currency. Imagine a peer-to-peer currency that's a perfect medium of exchange, a perfect unit of account, and a perfect store of value, able to be used to get you what you want later. What a great thing we have at our disposal, and what a terrible thing it is that it's become so centralized and taken over now by foreign nations and big banks. That's our mission. Our mission is to give ourselves and the community that wants that, that desperately needs it, a second chance. but we're not changing the name we're not changing the mission i believe that trump is going to do a great job i believe that he's going to be up against big pharma the military industrial complex you know the bankers i think that he's going to have his hands full battling these things on almost every front and so it's our job here in texas to continue to hold on to that idea of freedom americanism those american values that we hold near and dear and stay vigilant and continue to work on our mission which is establishing an honest currency for texas around texas i think that trump is going to do a great job i hope he does i really hope he does but point is he's got one term to do a great job and he's got a lot of fires to put out but that's our mission And we're going to be ready. If things don't go well, we're ready. We're Texans. We're prepared for this stuff. We're battle-hardened. We're prepared. we're not changing our mission just because the guy that we were really hoping for get getting into office got in there that's not a reason to change the mission that's a reason to be very hopeful for the future while we continue to stay vigilant stay prepared and to continue to do what's necessary to create the bright future that we know is coming our way interesting i don't know man it was pretty good have you seen that recently I just saw it just now. I don't know if I watched it the first time. Yeah, we didn't have many people tuning in back then in the early days. I wasn't very connected, yeah. But as far as that goes, I was busy, you know, building a group, doing my thing. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. It seems like Trump was for crypto, but only his own crypto. Right. I don't know that it ever helped us any. Well, let's unpack that and this conversation. First of all, I think that video aged pretty well. I don't know why it's so pixelated. It was like it was shot in two thousand and one. Unlike a BlackBerry was saved or something. What's with the quality on that video? Man, I had a good camera back then. I had a nice microphone. It sounds like I'm all snivelly and stuffed up. Anyway, but besides the quality issue, I think the message aged really, really well. We're going to stay vigilant. We're hopeful. We know that we can't put all of our faith in one man. We know that he's going to have lots of work to do. And we're optimistic, but we know that whatever the future brings, we've got to do our part in Texas to continue to prepare for whatever the future holds, whatever that may be. For our benefits, for our family's benefits, for our community's benefits. We don't know. We never know. And we can get excited from time to time. It's fun to get caught up in it. It's, you know, it's, I think, important to be hopeful, optimistic when your guy gets in. But I think the message was spot on. We didn't bow down to the new regime. We called it the new administration. They're pro-crypto. We think that that's going to work out well for us. And it did. It created, you know, the biggest bump in crypto history ever. Bitcoin went up to, what, one hundred twenty five thousand bucks. And so our message was we're cautiously optimistic. And whatever the future holds, we're going to continue to do the right thing, work hard to establish an honest currency for and by Texans, for Texans, by Texans. And that was the message two years ago to this day. That exact message was what we talked about. That's the kind of things we cover on these calls. You know, we talk about tech, we talk about markets, we talk about adoption. We talk about all kinds of stuff, strategies, growth. But we also weighed in from time to time on current events and politics. And I didn't start Texacoin as a political movement. And, you know, we were certainly interested in the, you know, the Texit conversation. But we knew early on that we were not going to be able to guarantee Or even look somebody in the eye and tell them that we were really sure that if we were successful, that Texas was going to leave the United States. And it wasn't a political movement. And we weren't throwing all of our weight behind any particular candidate. We were working on the money problem. And so the second thing that I want to point out from that video, and I've looked for evidence to this effect from time to time. is something that goes back pretty far. And I think two years is pretty far back. I really am happy that we've got evidence from two plus years ago, two years ago exactly, a minimum, that this mission has always been about honest money. Back to the earliest days of this thing, and I pointed out on that call that we were looking at the original unchanged website. Our mission is honest money. and that we've been working on that since day one is a really important thing to stop and remember you know when people go well what happened to my investment and i lost five thousand dollars on this thing blah blah blah hey man we're working on honest money and it takes time you know this is a crypto project that revolves around the work that i've been doing for years and years in the realm of alternative complementary currencies And I'm good at that work. And we finally have the tools today to implement that part of our project. You know, at beginning it was community and then it was mining infrastructure. And now we have all those things. And now we're able to follow through on the original mission of honest money. And I think that that's a really important thing to pause and remember. So a lot of people joined us, you know, August, September, October of last year. And they're saying, where's the get rich quick, man? I showed up to get rich quick. And we say, well, this this wasn't really that. This was a an alternative community currency project that was rooted in our belief, our desire and our expectancy for an honest and accountable monetary system. And so that's the second thing that I can pinpoint from that video that's really important to be able to point back to something from two years ago and say, look, we didn't get caught up in the excitement and the hype of an election. We know that these people come and go. We know that they sometimes lie. We know sometimes that they try to do the right thing and they're met with resistance. So we know that we can't put all of our faith in a political person and a political process. And we know that our true mission, our mission that's the bedrock foundation of our project is honest money. And that's an important thing because honest money has to win. It has to be successful. And we can't imagine a future where the bankers control everything, kind of what we got today. But that's the mission. And we pointed it out from two years ago. That's my first reaction to that. The question then becomes, how did he do and what the heck happened? Because I got to be honest, I said it in that video. I was very, very excited. And I will be one of the very first to admit that I'm extremely disappointed and very much let down by what has happened. And, you know, like I said a moment ago, like sometimes you got political headwinds that prevent you from doing all the great things that you campaigned on. You walk in, you don't have control of the courts, you don't have control of the Congress, and you got a bunch of great ideas. You got no political capital. Everybody's working against you, undermining your strategy, and nothing's getting done. and that was not the case over the last two years i think we had republican controlled uh senate republican controlled house we've got republican you know leaning supreme court so we had so so well let's say republicans so republicans had anything and everything that they could have needed going for them to do what they said whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing who cares just whether or not they followed through on the things that they promised while they campaigned and I got to be honest, I'm feeling very, very let down. I'm feeling very lied to. I'm feeling very disappointed. And I'm also looking at this and saying, I don't think I'm alone. I think that the Republican Party at this point is kind of split right down the middle. You got one side saying he's doing better than ever. Wow. Everything he ever promised has been delivered and more. I actually saw a tick tock the other day with Jon Stewart, I think. And I'm not I laugh at the jokes. I don't understand the politics sometimes. But he was he showed a clip of Trump saying that he delivered on one hundred percent of his promises. Actually, it was more than that. It was more than that. A hundred percent. And I'm like, that's fun. Anyway, I can understand why the Republican Party is split. Jay, just to put you on the spot for a moment, is there any one thing in particular that stands out to you as being a shock, a surprise or a disappointment from the last two years? Disappointments for the biggest one to me is, you know, he was the we're not going to war. We're getting out of all the wars president. And here we are back smack in the middle of a war with a country that didn't attack us, at least not directly. That is the big one for me as well. it's the big one for me because we've been expecting it since man you know i don't know if you were tuned in back then during the the nine eleven days and the war on terror and like you know we eventually kind of admitted that we knew that iraq didn't have wmds and and like we're like what What did you were saying that for a really long time? Like, I remember that that's when I started paying attention to this stuff. I tried to sign up to go to war. I was that, you know, emotionally charged from the nine eleven thing. And of course, I was too old or too dumb or something like that to be enlisted back then. But I tried I tried to do my part for for that for that fight for freedom. And when they said, oh, no, no, no, there's no WMDs in Iraq. We knew that all along. What did you say? And then they start talking about, you know, who's up next in the territory. And we were all saying, man, they're going to go after Iran next. And it got delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. And I don't know why. I don't know why it didn't happen for so long. And then all of a sudden, here it is. And that was a really, really big disappointment for me because he campaigned on no new wars, on ending the ones we had. I'm going to get into office. I'm going to make a phone call. I'm going to shut down the thing that's going on in Ukraine. I have no idea what's going on anywhere. I have no idea if any of it's real. But I can tell you that that's what he said. And now they're saying that we're at war. Oh, no, it's just a little thing. It's just a battle. It's just an operation. it seems to be that we're at war again and uh that for me is by far uh the biggest disappointment and I don't know if you've got access to the comments section where you are if you've got some ideas and opinions on what it is that you were really um disappointed or let down about but Assuming that the voting is correct and real, it seems like a lot of other people across the country were upset about that as well. And so we saw not a blue wave, but a blue tsunami sweep across the country last Tuesday or so. And I don't really pay close attention to politics. I don't pay really any attention to mainstream news. Do you tune into any of that stuff? I will. Once in a while, I will listen to, like, for an hour, I'll put on MSNBC, and then I'll put on Fox. For an hour. So I can see what each side is saying. Because they'll tell the same story in a different way. The election was the funnest thing. when the first time Trump won, that was just fun to watch because MSNBC, they're going, oh man. So here's my question for you then, because I see a little bit of clip, a couple of clips here and there on my TikTok doom scrolling. And that's really it. That's the only interaction I have with mainstream media. My question is, was the battle for left, right, red, blue, was it... Was there any part of the country where it was as fiercely contested or important of a battle as it was in Texas? Or was Texas like ground zero for the nation's soul going red or blue? I think it was probably ground zero for the fact that we went blue. I think Florida is the only country I think it was a surprise there that they stayed red because they're fairly split between the retirees who run red and the collegians and stuff that run blue. But I think it was a big surprise, but I don't think in retrospect it's really that big of a surprise when the Democrats were smart enough to run, as we talked about before the video started, they were smart enough to point out that every year Abbott every election he promised to do something about property taxes and they went up. Eighty-three percent is, and you know, everybody knows the problems with Paxton. They just, both the parties are bad about they, they get these, these, um, party hacks and that's who they give you to vote for they don't give you anybody with any real vision or any real um idea of making a change and fixing things it is confusing it is confusing it's like okay you want us to vote republican right yeah and you gave us that guy as the one we're supposed to vote for like what is this a funny joke is this a trick or this is a test But then you see guys like Bernie, you know, say what you want about, you know, old blue Bernie. You know, he was the popular guy of the Democratic Party back in twenty sixteen and they ran him out. They pulled every Democratic Party trick in the book that you could to make sure that, you know, Hillary was the one getting the nomination and not that guy. And, you know, of course, I watched it happen firsthand with Ron Paul back in two thousand and eight. You know, back to Jon Stewart for a second. He had this funny bit about Ron Paul being the thirteenth floor of the presidential election. It was like they would cover these straw polls going down. You know, these debates would happen and they'd have a straw poll for whatever. And, you know, this guy came in first, either Romney or. John Kane or whatever. And and then Ron Paul was like second. And they're like, so this guy came in first and then this guy came in third. And they're like, what about the guy that came in second? You're not even talking about it. What are we just going to continue to pretend like he doesn't exist? He was the most searched man on the Internet back in two thousand and eight. And they just refused to mention him. And it's like what they say. If it's if it's not on TV, then it never happened. They just they just imagined him to be not part of the process. And of course, you know, when Election Day came, he wasn't. So I've seen it happen before. But they give us these cretins, these terrible people. And they're like, here you go. This is this is the best that we've been able to come up. And we're the state of Texas. And so, you know, the first part of my my confusion and the mystery is whether or not, you know, as a Texan, I'm seeing Texas stuff obviously in my feet. I don't see, you know, Iowa politics day and night in my in my feet. But maybe that's because it's inconsequential. My question, I guess, is was the Texas political where the Texas political races monitored and closely followed throughout the country? Or were we just seeing it a lot because we're Texans and we're in Texas? I mean, I'm on the other side of the world and that's all I'm seeing in my feed. But again, I'm from Texas, so maybe it knows. I'm here. So I mean, it was all over the place here and lots of polls going on. But back to your earlier question about You know, are there are the elections even for real? Because the Ron Paul thing brings that up. You know, you're probably too young to remember. But there was a guy named Ross Perot who ran independently for president and everybody I knew voted for him. Yet he only got nineteen percent of the vote and he got it in every state. He got exactly nineteen percent in every state. And that's the best an independent has done ever, as far as I know. Oh, and they changed the rules big time to make sure that that didn't happen again. It does not happen again, exactly. And, you know, there's a case to be made that maybe it was rigged because it sure looked like a lot of people were voting for that guy. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I was young when he clearly won the debates. Was that eighty eight or ninety two? You remember? I don't remember the year. It was quite a bit. You were quite young at the time. I'm a lot older than you. Yeah. Tell people I'm not older than God, but we played together as children. But I remember vividly because I voted for the guy because I've always been for change. I almost always vote independent. I voted independent every time I vote. I'll vote for green before I vote for a Republican or a Democrat. My thought is that the Texas races, I'm going to say races, even though we didn't actually know that at the time, you've got a ghost coming in behind you. Hi, Kogi. I'm leaving. Bye, babe. Bye. Goodbye. I say racist because we got more than than was expected. But I think it was a big national story because, you know, Texas is the second most populous state right behind California. We got a giant economy. You know, we're an extremely red state. We've been that way for many, many, many, many years, I think, forty years now. And so the possibility, which seemed ridiculous week and a half, two weeks ago, that Texas was going to not be red was like so far fetched and unmanageable, like you couldn't even have like a real discussion about it. And then these polls are creeping up and it's like, well, I can see why. Look at the weirdo that you put up there to run on the Republican ticket. Right. You know, they had all these different people like give these endorsements for the guy as well for Paxton, which were so terribly embarrassing. They're like, look, I'm going to vote with the party on this one. I can't say anything nice about the guy. But I'm going to vote party on this one. And it's like, wait, you're supposed to make us feel good about doing the same thing? You're being a total coward. Not that you've got any better options. I have no idea. I don't know anything about the other guy. But what a terrible endorsement. Anyway, it seemed far-fetched. And then all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, we go from, oh, yeah, he lost, which we were kind of starting to feel that way. And so did the governor. Like, that's... this impossibility that I don't think anybody stopped to consider. And I don't know how many other races went blue Democrat, but I hear it just wasn't, you know, the Senator or the governorship. I hear that it was counties and local offices and, you know, different things as well. Maybe the house or the Senate in Texas flipped to blue as well. I'm not sure about all. I think they all did, but I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent positive about that. I haven't, I didn't watch it that closely. I think there's another reason that Republicans had a hard time nationwide. And especially in Texas is because there's a, there's a group of Republicans that are very anti-abortion. Then there's a group that are more libertarian and more kind of live and let live. And we don't necessarily, and I'm not saying which side of that street I'm on. That's, That's my I'll keep my opinion to myself. I'm not a woman. I don't have an opinion on abortion. But I think there's a lot of people who said, you know what? This is unreasonable and we don't like it. And we're going to vote on on that issue instead of on things like. And, you know, the fiscal issue doesn't make any difference anymore. Republicans spend money just like Democrats do. Yeah. So, you know, you take away their their the issues that people like. especially libertarian and independent people. And you lose those people as voters. Did you see the clip with the Lieutenant governor talking about weed? No, we're not going to have legalized weed in Texas. If they want to vote me out of office, then they can go ahead and vote me out of office. See ya. And so, look, we had a conversation two years ago about what the new administration meant for our project. And we said, Look, it's probably good. We're hopefully optimistic, but we're going to keep doing our thing. We're going to work hard and we're going to hope for the best, plan for the worst and stay vigilant. That was the message back then. And I think that message aged very well. It's a totally different conversation, though, today, because, first of all, not only do I think a lot of people feel extremely let down by the Republican Party. And I think a lot of people are very disappointed with the state of things in the US right now, gas prices, food prices, inflation, property taxes, if you're a Texan like we are. And so you've got a whole lot of things. It's hard to point, at least from my chair, to something that's better today than it was before the new administration took office. And I think that's a real disappointment because The Republicans had everything they needed to do some really great stuff, and I don't think they did. And call it what you want. We got some people in the comments saying, but they had nuclear weapons. We can't let them have a nuke. Look, I don't know what they have. I know they lied to us about weapons of mass destruction before. Maybe they're lying to us again. Who knows? Of course, if somebody's got a missile pointed at you and you've got the ability to stop it, you would stop it, right? How do we know who's telling the truth? We have no idea. If they really had them, wouldn't they have shot them at us by now? Now that we're almost turning the whole country into glass? Didn't we take them out a year or two ago or four years ago or something? Allegedly. Anyway, I have no idea what to believe. Let me be more specific. I don't believe anything they say. Let's put it where it really is. If they say this, I'm on the other team, man. I'm going the other way. They say the earth is round. I'm pretty sure they're lying and the earth is flat. They say we went to the moon. I'm pretty sure they're lying and it was all just filmed in a studio. They're saying the plane hit the ground in Florida a week or two ago. I'm thinking it was probably a missile. These are the things that make you go, hmm. Anyway, without getting too deep into conspiracy theories, we do have a different conversation to have because when we started this project, we were looking at the current administration. and the open borders and the political crises that we had. And we said, you know, we need to start looking for the exit. Texas needs to start thinking about a national divorce. Texas needs to start thinking about becoming independent again. This whole project started Because I'm sitting there listening to Rogan one day. And Michael Malice says to Joe Rogan, what do you think about the idea of Texan? And I said, what did he say? Texan? You mean like Brexit? Yeah, let's go, man. I'm not a big fan of government, but I like less government instead of more. And I like local government instead of government far, far away. I think that if we have to choose a way to govern ourselves, that the people in that area probably know how to do it better than the guys in D.C., Nothing's a better example of that than the National Department of Education. Let's send money to Washington. They get to keep some of it. Then they send it back for our education. What's the point of that? Washington doesn't have money to stay here. Well, take your pick, man, whether it's Department of Energy or Education or whatever. health who knows they don't do a really good job they've proven it and so we can probably do it better ourselves locally i'm not saying i'm for pure anarchy i'm not saying minarchy is better than blah blah blah like we're not getting into that discussion what i'm saying is that if we govern ourselves locally we probably have a better shot of doing what the people in that geographic region want better than somebody far, far away. It's why we broke up with the Great Britain folks back in. Seventeen seventy six. Right. No taxation without representation. Well, I don't think Washington really represents Texas values. Anyway, I digress. Point is. That when this project started, it started because of the idea that if the election went a different way, we were thinking Texas is going to be looking for the exit. Open borders. We've got National Guard militia deployed down there like this can't this can't be the future. We're not going to go down with the ship. And then all of a sudden Trump got elected and people got excited. A lot of people in our community were equal parts Texas independence and Trump make America great. And so to be kind of sympathetic and not tone deaf to those parallel veins, we stopped talking about Texas. We stopped talking about Texas independence. We didn't delete it off the website. It just wasn't front and center anymore. We got a real great website now The conversation is more about honest money than it is about Texas independence. And so we didn't shelf that. It was backburnered with our fingers crossed waiting to see what happens. a great America look like? Well, two years later, I think that a lot of people are disappointed. I think some people are happy. I don't know who those people are, but or how they got to that conclusion. But we're not here to judge today. We're here to talk about what happened in the last week affects the future of Texacoin. Because back then it was, well, this is good. We're going to have a pro crypto president in office. And then, like you mentioned, that was kind of pro crypto for the family. And we saw Bitcoin jump and then we saw a lot of really, really, really obvious manipulation in the market. And we're down now, you know, we're down thirty what, thirty five percent from the highs that we saw after the election happened. and so we really have like two things that are coming our way that need to be evaluated uh you know we can't just brush them off and say ho hum sometimes we get it our way sometimes we don't number one is that you know we were really excited about having a pro crypto administration in power and we've seen a lot of sec movement towards opening up the discussion about crypto you know giving us kind of clear uh rules and a regulatory um understanding uh you know classifying this stuff not as a security which is really important issuing letters and memorandums you know making it very clear that texas coin is not a security mining is not a security etc etc And so question number one is like what a very blue Congress is going to have in store for the future of crypto. And I saw something come out the other day about what's the new Senate Banking Finance Committee person? Who's that? Yeah. No idea. Whoever gets it in the comments wins like fifty TXC or something. But I can't remember her name anyway. She's not pro crypto. She's not a crypto fan. Does that mean that everything that happened in the last two years gets reversed? No, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But we know that. We know that what we're going to experience for the next two years is not going to be anywhere close to as crypto friendly as what we had in the last two years. So that's number one. Here's number two, Elizabeth Warren. That's right. Thank you. Jan, send over a TXC address and I will send you your fifty txc right now i'll send you five hundred txc give me give me a a texacoin address and i'll send it over to you thanks jan um but here's the second question and this is the bigger one jay and i want your input on this because you're there and i'm not What does Texas going blue mean for the future of freedom and liberty in Texas and Texas coin? That is ultimately the bigger question that's on my mind today. And I don't know that there's an answer to that till we see the proof in the pudding. None of that, nobody ran on, you know, we're going to over-regulate. We're going to bring this. They all ran on, you know, we won't, moral freedom you know the freedom to women to control their own bodies however you want to look at that but they ran on those sorts of issues more than and they also ran on we're not them well let me tell you what they did run on and we're talking about hinojosa governor hinojosa I'm not as familiar with her as I am Tallarico. Nobody is. Nobody saw that coming at all. So I'm thinking about the governor, the new governor, new governor being kind of anti data center. And cryptocurrency mining is not AI data centers, but they're kind of in the same category. Big power use, big space. We don't use water the same way data centers use it. We've got a closed loop immersion cooling oil system that doesn't require any water whatsoever. We don't have water connected to our sites. I don't know if that means that we're gonna get lumped into that same conversation and maybe see a tax put on electricity consumed by data centers or what. So we know that for sure. But what I'm thinking more about is like community currencies. Is the state going blue gonna create a more favorable community currency landscape for us? And let me explain what I mean before you interject. When I started this project, I explained to people, I don't know a whole lot about crypto and I don't know really anything about network marketing. What I know is alternative currencies. This is what I testified about in US Congress back in twenty twelve. Alternative money. That was the thing that I was out there bartering with me and Eddie and our little silver and gold and copper coins. Like that's what I knew how to do. I knew how to get merchants and business owners to accept an alternative currency. And I was very good at it. And it expanded all over the country. But the places where we usually had the best traction was usually democratically controlled places. You know, small towns, rural towns, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, like these are places that, you know, hold on to those community values, support your local business owner kind of thing, reuse, recycle, recirculate. You know, so when you're thinking about more social type of causes, community currency is one that's usually, well-received. And so if you set aside the crypto stuff and you set aside the mining stuff and you get just down into really what we are, which is a digital community currency, maybe it's possible that the state going more blue or bluish or blue is going to create a more receptive environment for the idea of alternative and community currency. We can hope for that and I hope for it. Certainly the state hasn't been friendly to us as a red state by any stretch of anybody's imagination. I've never seen as much corruption in state government as I've seen since I watched what went down with us. And that's the thing is if you're supposed to be for Texans, there's twenty something thousand Texans who you're hurting right now because you won't turn loose to this idea that you want to turn us into a security. Yeah, it's just. You know, so I don't think the blue could do any worse as far as we're concerned. It is wild, too, because I've always said like we're not we're not doing crypto the way that crypto is doing crypto. We're not out there hiring influencers to go out there and pump us. We barely have ourselves on any exchanges these days. We're a community currency. That's what we are. You guys didn't care about it when I was using gold and silver and copper coins. Why do you care so much about it today when I'm using zeros and ones? Like, what's the difference, man? I had all the freedom and latitude in the world to do this barter stuff back in the day. Now I'm bartering with zeros and ones and all of a sudden it's a security. Well, it's a hundred and fifty million dollars. The numbers are bigger than they were back then. They saw that big number and they went, somebody's got to be doing something wrong. And we need to get paid. We're going to we're going to make a lot of money. Let's find a way to get paid off this. Yep. And so that's what I've been yelling and screaming. We're a community currency. Well, you know, people in the Democrat side of the aisle usually are more receptive to those ideas. And so as we get into this next phase of our project with tools and the community that we've got, the resources that we have, technology, all that stuff, it makes it very possible for us to get the alternative community currency side of this thing going faster. Maybe we'll see some tailwind with the new bluish state. Big question, though, is what it really means for borders and freedom and liberty. And at the heart of the question is, us saying and people saying, Patrick said it a couple of weeks ago on our Honest Money Live. When freedom goes in Texas, it's gone from the country. And so, you know, is this like a pendulum swinging back from people being extremely disappointed over the last two years? Or is this, you know, one of the final nails in the coffin of freedom in America? Because if we let it go in Texas and we see it, you know, go a different way. And I'm broadly speculating in words and using language that's I don't think accurate for the way I feel. I'm talking now using like Republican terminology and like all Democrats are evil and all Republicans are good. Like, I don't believe that in any way whatsoever. I think that you're probably right there with me as well. You know, voting independent or libertarian. Or just being completely outside or disenfranchised by the political process after years and years and years of being let down and lied to, that's really a better way of describing um you know my personal opinion on this whole thing so so as i talk about oh my gosh freedom is gone from america because the blue guys are in now i don't really think that represents what i actually think i i think it's totally different than that but i know that a lot of people in our community do think that And so the question ultimately is whether or not we lost Texas. Did we lose that Texas independent spirit, that Texas ever vigilant attitude? And is it gonna go a different direction? Is the Texas that we were thinking of when we started Texacoin still in existence today? One of my good friends that I met when I first moved here There's a lawyer over in Fort Worth. I won't say his name and get him in any trouble. But he told me when we first met and started, he mentioned some politics. He was a Texas Democrat. And a Texas Democrat is not a California Democrat. He owns firearms. He goes hunting. He's anti-gun control. But he tends to lean a little more left than the Republican Party. So hopefully that's who we've got. Because when we go to the center, in my personal opinion, we go to the center, that's prosperity usually. Bill Clinton, for all the things people don't like about him, we had a balanced budget during his presidency. And why is that? Because he ran as a kind of far-left guy, but he ended up being kind of centrist, at least in how he behaved. And hopefully that's what we'll get with Tallarico and Hinojosa. They may have run on a little more far left agenda, but maybe we'll see that they're more centrist. And, you know, the best thing that could happen is for neither party to be in control and just have deadlock, in my opinion. And nothing get done. Yeah. Don't do anything. Just leave everybody alone. Matty, you've been hanging out there in the background. Anything to add to the discussion and conversation? You're in Missouri, so you're in a little different viewpoint, I would think. There he is. Yeah, well, I mean, I agree with what you guys said about the war being unpopular and Trump, you know, another... point to harp on is that Trump really didn't represent the true ideals of crypto. Real crypto is about holding your own keys and avoiding middlemen, being different than the banks and what came before. And Trump coin and all that seems like just another extraction attempt. I'm really proud of like what Bobby has built and what the community's built here in Texas. And yeah, like I still think we have a good shot because there are people like me and many others who continue to care about real crypto, even if the exchanges are trying to shift the definition to gambling and to prediction markets which is also gambling and they're trying to max extract you know we saw binance uh you know fell down uh and people you know withdrew you know after a six billion dollar hack people withdrew five or ten billion dollars from there because you know they want something better so Well, right on. And to remind everyone that we're going to continue to stand our ground. We're going to continue to stay vigilant. We're going to continue to do the right thing. We don't know what the future holds. We know that it's uncertain. We know that it's unpredictable. We know that we can be let down by people. We know that promises get broken all the time. And I think that Texitcoin has done a pretty good job of embodying the ideals of Texas. The spirit of freedom and liberty and independence is still alive and well in our project. you know we're going to be hopeful for the next two or four years we're going to be cautiously optimistic we're going to continue to prepare for whatever may come our way to take care of ourselves and our families and our communities and we're going to continue to work hard to make honest money a real viable option for Texans and you know we'll keep our fingers crossed we'll keep know keep our hearts and our minds and our eyes open and uh and we'll update you from time to time if we see things uh happening or changing or pointing us a particular way but uh but for now very interesting results from the last week and uh and we will see how it affects our uh project and affects our chances for success as we continue into this last couple uh months now of waiting for a decision from the alj that's looking through the tssb evidence now so that's our story for tonight we're out of time jay thank you so much for joining thanks for your contributions Can I make a quick plug? Sure. If you or anybody you know is really interested in what's happened over the last eight or nine months, go back and watch week one-thirty-five of this broadcast on that Thursday because it's the best synopsis. Bobby, you did an amazing job of putting together everything that's happened and everything that you and the team have all put together to kind of go forward. I think it's probably the best synopsis that you could get of what's happening. People who, you know, not everybody's watching these every week. So let's get the word out. If you want to catch up, this is the best way. Go watch week one, thirty five from whatever two weeks ago on Thursday's date was. Yeah. I think it was introduction to minors or something is the name of that is the title on YouTube. Yeah. anyway yeah i just wanted to plug that i think that's very i think that's probably one of the best tools we have now right now to get to give people real information about where we are and who we are Yeah, week one thirty five, we did a bit of a deep dive into looking back at the challenges that we've faced over the last six, seven, eight, nine months and how far we've come, even given those challenges and roadblocks. Like I said before, guys, this project's always been about honest money. It's been about honest money since day one. And honest money doesn't quit. It doesn't pivot. It doesn't give up. And it certainly doesn't run and hide from people. you know these beasts that are not quite as scary when you get to see them up close they're um they know what they are we don't need to get into it but hello out there to my friends at the sec and tssb thanks for tuning in and bobby gray joined here with jay thanks so much um for another edition of texacoin update what's today thursday thursday week one thirty seven Two years ago, we talked about how we were optimistic for the future. Today, we're talking about how we're optimistic for the future. But it is our responsibility to make that optimism a reality. We cannot do it without each other. That's what a community currency is all about. It has no value whatsoever unless you participate and make it valuable. Jay, you accepted down there at the studio. I've heard you've been trading stuff for crypto and I appreciate that. Thank you for that. And thank you to all the other people out there that have continued to work success. I'm getting a call. I'm saying goodbye. You guys have a great night and we'll see you next week. Here, brother. well I'm just hanging