The Tesla Protests Come for Cybertruck Owners

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I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are the 404 Media co-founders Sam Cole.

Hello, Manuel Mayberg.

Hey, what's up?

And Jason Kebler.

Hello, hello.

Reminder, a week from now, well, Monday, we're going to have our party at South by Southwest.

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Okay.

So let's go with the first story.

Facebook Cybertruck Owners.

I can't believe I botched the headline.

I got the cadence all wrong.

Facebook Cybertruck Owners Group copes with relentless mockery like I'm about to after reading that.

I mean, the headline kind of explains itself and we'll get into that.

But first of all, Jason, what is this broader context of, whoa,

these protests against Tesla and Cybertrucks and Musk, they've really taken off in the past week.

Like, what's the context that we're coming into this with?

Yeah, so, I mean, the context is that people are mad that Elon Musk is destroying the federal government, you know, firing people, has aligned himself with the far right in various countries in the United States, is sort of an unelected.

I guess self-appointed bureaucrat who in many cases is like self-dealing in the federal government.

Like there's this big story recently about how Starlink is going to take over this critical FAA communications contract from Verizon.

And that, I mean, that's just like, there's news every single day.

And so people have been thinking, like, how can we push back against what is happening?

Because Democrats and Congress are not doing a very good job pushing back against this.

And so there's been this movement called the Tesla takedown protests, where people are protesting at Tesla dealerships, mostly on weekends, it seems, like Tesla showrooms and Tesla dealerships, and they're just picketing out front.

But there's also been kind of like

some defacement occurring, either as part of this or as just like other types of self-done protests.

So

there was someone in Colorado who threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership.

For example, in Massachusetts, someone lit a Tesla supercharger on fire uh there's been a lot of like graffitiing at various places that i think there were nine people arrested at a tesla takedown protest in manhattan over the weekend and so these are really growing like these protests are really growing and i think part of the

well the entire point behind it is that a huge amount of elon musk's power and net worth is wrapped up in tesla and it's a publicly traded company the stock has actually been cratering over the last couple of weeks.

Sales have plummeted in Europe by like sales have plummeted in Europe.

I'm very curious to see what sales are going to look like in the United States next time,

you know, this is

next time they report.

And then there's also just like this idea that a lot of Elon Musk's power is derived from Tesla, and Tesla's stock valuation is really high,

not because it is a super profitable car company, but because it has this promise of being like a robo-taxi company, a robotics company, an AI company.

And all of that is very, very speculative.

And so Tesla is not, like, I wouldn't call it a meme stock necessarily, but a lot of people are sort of investing in Tesla as a way of investing in Elon Musk.

And so the thought is if you can like tank Tesla, you can kind of take a lot of power away from Elon Musk.

So that's kind of like the broader context here.

Super briefly,

do you think that is accurate?

Or maybe,

like, is that accurate?

Like, if people attack Tesla, it could take power away from Musk, or is it like, I don't know, the company is getting so big and now he's in government and he has Starlink and all this, like, it may not be wholly effective.

And I'm not saying

these people shouldn't be protesting.

They can protest, of course, about whatever they want.

But like, do you think it could be effective?

Or is it hard to say yet?

So last week, the really good podcast, Tech Won't Save Us, had an entire episode about this where they had on the author of a book called, I believe it's called Ludicrous, and it's about Tesla.

And I thought that that was a very interesting podcast.

If you're interested in going like deep on this,

I mean, the thought is that like a lot, like Elon Musk doesn't have a lot of liquid assets.

His biggest path to liquidity is through selling Tesla stock.

And it's like, he has a lot of money kind of like stuck in Twitter, which is now a private company.

He has a lot of money stuck in SpaceX, which is a private company.

And so it's not, it's not very liquid.

And so

like Elon Musk is going to remain an incredibly powerful person regardless.

I think that SpaceX on its own is a massive, massive company that is currently like the United States's only way of getting to space.

Well, I guess now we have Blue Origin and some other ones, but they're mainly the ones that are doing U.S.

government satellite launches and taking astronauts to the space station.

And that has remained the case for a while.

And so I think also Starlink

is becoming increasingly important, both like geopolitically, but also as a consumer product.

Like it's being taken up by a lot of people in rural areas.

And so I don't think that you can like tank Elon Musk entirely by tanking Tesla, but it would certainly help a lot.

I

think, yeah.

Sure.

So there's all that context.

People are understandably very annoyed at Musk and are targeting Tesla very fairly and cybertrucks as well.

You then go and find this Facebook group specifically for cybertruck owners.

And you go in there.

And I think you said there are broadly two types of post.

What are those those two types, basically?

That's funny.

So there's two types of posts in the Facebook Cybertruck Owners group.

One is people talking about like strangers flicking them off or writing on their cyber trucks.

Like these cyber trucks attract dirt a lot of the time and like salt and things like that.

So people are like writing things in them like with their fingers and people like just sort of messing with cybertrucks.

And we'll talk a lot about that.

And then the other type is like people who own construction companies or roofing companies who have wrapped them using it's like vinyl wrap, like where you change the color of the car and they basically put like advertisements for the like roofing company on there.

So there's been like some mega wraps and stuff like that.

Right.

But there's,

and I don't fully understand why, but there's like a type of guy who is buying these and they're a small business owner which is great but they're all

they're all buying wraps for their cyber trucks like why i mean i guess you don't know why that's a thing but it's a thing apparently in this group well it is but i think also it's like

a lot of the protests and ad hoc like fuck tesla sentiment has been directed at cyber trucks in particular.

And I think there's a few reasons for that.

It's like, one, they're ridiculous vehicles.

Like, they're just gigantic.

You know, they're not even allowed in Europe because they're too large.

And so there's been this movement in the United States to have like larger and larger and larger SUVs, which are very dangerous for pedestrians, first and foremost.

It's like, you're way more likely to be killed if you're a biker or a pedestrian if you're hit by an SUV than you are.

a smaller car.

And so that, that's not great.

But also it's like the cyber truck

is bulletproof or it like he's advertised it as being like has bulletproof glass.

Like he's advertised it as essentially like a tank that can keep you isolated from other people.

And

you kind of like sit in this like moving fortress.

And I think that there, people don't like that, first of all.

Like, I don't like that.

I don't like seeing cyber trucks around and be like, who, who is this?

Why are you so much better than me?

Because you think you're cool because you have a tank or whatever.

And then there's also the fact that cybertrucks were released after elon musk becomes became a gigantic asshole and dickhead like there's no plausible deniability in the same way there is with a potentially with a tesla even though lots of owners now are trying to cover up their ownership either with those stickers in

i think somebody tweeting from san francisco says there's a lot of these stickers saying like i bought it before we all knew about him or then something i just shared in our chat is that it looks like some tesla owners are putting different vehicle branding on their Teslas.

So there's a Honda logo and stuff to make it look like a different brand of car so it can blend in.

But you're right.

And like Cybertruck is like unambiguously Musk.

Like you like, you basically have to be a Musk fanboy or an extreme edge case to own one of these vehicles.

So you can see why people would target them.

Right.

I mean, for many years, if you bought an electronic

an electric vehicle at all, all, you were probably buying a Tesla because they go the fastest, they have the best charging infrastructure, like the incentives to the tax incentives and things to buy them were very good.

So I know and have met a lot of people who have like Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Model Y because they were like, oh, I want to protect the environment, blah, blah, blah.

And a lot of those people are very regretful at this point.

point because they didn't know what Elon Musk was going to become.

And I think you can argue whether

they should have seen the signs earlier or not.

But if you're buying a cyber truck,

you're sort of depth, you're like definitely aligning with Elon Musk's broader worldview at this point.

And so a lot of the anger that's been directed at Tesla and Tesla owners has been directed in this first wave at cyber truck owners.

And so, I mean, that's like a long way of saying there's a, there's a, this Facebook group where cyber truck owners are bitching to each other constantly about how people are mean to them how people are flicking them off how people are writing cyber cuck on their uh

teslas their cyber chode was another one that's good people are putting like nazi car

um what's the other one test it's not test nazi but it's

There's like a few different like

swastika swastikar.

Yeah.

There's some of swastikars.

And it's like a lot of people just coping with like, how often does this happen to you?

And a lot of people are saying that,

you know, they definitely are getting flicked off pretty often.

I think acts of like where people are actually like vandalizing their cars in some way are a little bit more rare, but they definitely engender the most conversation on this Facebook group.

And so there's lots of people talking about it.

And

it's a mix between people who sort of lean into it and say that they enjoy being a villain and people who are like, I just want to drive to work or my wife or my husband really doesn't like that when we're driving, people like honk at us and flick us off and stuff.

And so now we need to get rid of our car because my spouse is mad at me.

Right.

And to be clear.

The people uploading these photos or videos or whatever into this Facebook group, they are the owners themselves.

Or as you say, maybe their spouse is the owner or the driver or whatever.

So

you mentioned that then there's almost two reasons why they're doing it as well.

Like they kind of want to flex and revel in being a villain, or they're sort of,

I don't know, just being really sad about it and asking each other,

what's sort of the conversations in response to that?

Are people then pitching in and going, yeah, it's happening to me too, and this sucks?

Or is anybody engaging with,

you know, the incredibly obvious and fair argument the Musk sucks?

Is anybody engaging with that or is it more about their own vehicles?

Some of them are like, wow, I really didn't bargain for this.

And some people are saying, I don't,

I don't always agree with Elon or I wish he wouldn't do this.

But I would say that a lot of people are now seeing it as like

an identity symbol where they're saying, I'm all in with Elon.

I'm all in with Trump.

You know, cry harder harder libs.

A lot of the discussion in there is like

about the type of cars that are flicking them off.

So a lot of times there'll be a video or photo and they'll say like, this person driving a Ford fiesta flicked me off.

They must be poor because a Ford Fiesta is inexpensive.

Right.

They are really telling on themselves by bringing up the other car when the other car doesn't matter.

It's the car you're driving.

Okay.

Exactly, exactly.

And then, I mean, the other, the other thing that I think is very important to talk about is, yes, it is the Cybertruck owners who are uploading these.

And the way that they're uploading them is they're using

this feature on Tesla cars called Sentry,

which is when the car is parked, you can turn it into like a stationary surveillance camera situation.

because every Tesla car has a bunch of camera outward-facing cameras on it.

And so

they're just always filming.

And like a ring camera, you can go back and look at the footage.

And so

there's a lot of people who are posting videos of people

drawing on their cars.

There's one incredible video of a guy who walks up with a bunch of craft singles, like the little cheese slices, and he starts throwing cheese slices onto the truck's windshield.

And,

you know, this guy was actually filming with his cell phone.

You could see him filming with his cell phone.

And then people in this group were screenshotting his face and talking about trying to use facial recognition on him, which is crazy.

I have not seen any,

I've seen a lot of people say we should use facial recognition on these people, but I have not seen a positively identified person that was done using facial recognition.

However, there was one case in Texas where someone, it was kind of an intense road rage incident, so I like hesitate to defend this but basically like another driver got out of his car at a stoplight and flicked off the cyber truck owner they filmed it with all of the cameras that exist on the cyber truck and he was wearing the shirt of his employer and so they then like looked up on LinkedIn that employer found him on a like group photo that was uploaded to LinkedIn and then complained to his employer and they claim that they got him fired.

I don't know if that's accurate or not, but

it was covered by like the local news in Texas, that entire incident.

And so I guess it's just like, we don't condone anything here, just reporting, just reporting.

But like, if you're going to fuck with a Tesla in some way, just know that they're always recording.

I always think about that with Teslas.

When I walk by them, it just feels like walking by a big camera to me.

It's like they're covered in, they're covered in cameras.

So I always think about it.

They're covered in cameras and they're facing every direction.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's like, I don't know.

It's like, I'm always, I'm notoriously not an amazing driver, which probably would surprise no one.

And I always think about this when I'm like parking pretty tight next to a Tesla.

I'm like, if I nick this thing,

they're going to see me do it.

And it's going to be on camera.

Or just, you know, when people vandalize, people were joining us when.

Elon Musk like years ago was kind of starting down this path and people were like, fuck Teslas and vandalizing them or keying them.

I always thought that was really bold because it's like, they can see you do that.

It's on video.

Just very different from a normal car, obviously.

Yeah.

Jason, I think just last thing, like what happens now?

I was going to ask, does it escalate?

But you actually opened with someone throwing a Molotov cocktail.

So I don't know.

It's a big mess all around.

But like, what do you think happens now?

Do we just see more of these?

Or I would say that the backlash to Tesla in general is still increasing.

It's like every weekend, I think they've been doing these Tesla takeover protests for maybe three weekends now.

And I feel like each weekend, they get more and more intense.

There's more people involved.

And I think also just sort of like the casual acts of flicking off cyber trucks and stuff.

This is something that people I know in my life.

were already like,

I hate cyber trucks.

I always flick them off just of their own volition.

They've told me this before I even wrote this article.

So, I think that this is becoming another part of the culture war, more or less.

And so, I think it's going to continue escalating.

I mean, I don't know where this all goes.

I could see acts of violence and things like that.

I mean, certainly not condoning them, but

you have people lighting superchargers on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails at dealerships.

Like,

it's pretty intense already.

And I think that there's no indication that Musk is going to slow down or that the temperature is going to come down on this anytime soon.

I don't know.

What do y'all think?

I mean, broadly agree that

every day that Doge does something else and fires more federal workers or government gets made

ironically more inefficient,

it's an easy target, you know?

Sam, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I don't, I agree.

I don't see it getting more chilled anytime soon.

I was thinking of, it's like, what's the craziest thing that could escalate, this could escalate into?

And it's like, there's this company that came out of China, I think yesterday, they announced that they're making a drone car.

So a drone open, a hatch opens on your roof and a drone comes out.

I was like, what if they start putting those in cyber trucks?

It's for, it's for obviously for recording, but it's like, I'm going to drone strike the guy who cut me off type vibe um i have a lot of opinions about big cars in general um i think cars have gotten less safe in general so the cyber truck divorced from the culture war i find to be confusing um

but you know it's because it's wrapped up in this stuff that's what people are talking about so yeah i think it's funny that um

It's called a cyber truck because it was referencing cyberpunk, right?

And

the whole idea is that it's built like a tank because it imagines this future where you, the person who can afford a cyber truck, is driving through, you know, these crime-infested cities where criminals are on every corner trying to harm you.

And the only way you can survive is if you have this armored car that looks like a tank.

And when he introduced that, people are like, you're nuts.

It's like, nobody cares about you or your car, and you don't need this.

And like, cities are safe, and the world is safe, and there's no need for this but like somehow he managed to create a situation where it's like yes like maybe if you have a cyber truck people will hate you and will want to throw molotov cocktails at your car it's just like i don't know he he created the car for the world he wants to see and then in a way

like that world came about you know yeah i mean he's manifested it and i mean i'll bring up another podcast i was listening i think to trash future the other day, and they were talking about all these billionaires with their bunkers and things like that.

And you have all of these billionaires that have been planning for the apocalypse because they're like, oh, the apocalypse is coming.

But like, they are the ones bringing it about.

And that's, that's really scary.

I was just going to say, Sam said, like, cars are getting less safe and they've gotten so much less safe for pedestrians and for bikers and potentially like more safe for the people in them.

And that's like it's such a huge problem where it's just like this individualistic society where it's like, fuck you, I have a tank and I can run you over if I want to.

And there's a lot of that sentiment in this Facebook group as well.

People are like, we need to film these people who are flicking us off and identify them and report them to their employers and things like that.

And then there's.

There was one thread where they were discussing how do we respond to these protests?

And people were like, let's all bring our cyber trucks down and encircle the protesters with them and that's like really scary um well but like make like a violent biker gang of cyber trucks basically that'll go down well yeah i mean people are like sort of out like openly discussing like

let's intimidate them with our large vehicles which like literally happened in charlottesville you know it's like someone died that way which is horrifying to think that people are like we could do it again with our big stupid cars Yeah,

for sure.

Well, we'll keep an eye on that.

And unfortunately, I'm sure it will escalate in some form.

But we'll leave that there.

When we come back, we're going to take a hard pivot and talk about the lovely tropical island nation of Palau and how it is actually helping US traders circumvent, bypass, skirt crypto laws in the US.

We'll be right back after this

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All right, and we are back.

This is one I wrote.

The headline is: Buying a $250 residency card from a tropical island, let me bypass US crypto laws.

So, as mentioned before the break, this is related to the Republic of Palau, which is a country in Micronesia, near Indonesia and the Philippines, very, very small population.

And

the

president of Palau and this company we're going to talk about, they were thinking of new ways to bring money.

into the country.

And you could do the Singapore model, which is you bring in millions and millions of people, but they didn't want to do that.

They were kind of screwed over by COVID when what I did the tourism industry.

So they

came up with this idea of launching a digital

residency where you could basically remotely become a resident

of Palau.

But before I go into this, has anyone heard of the Estonia one?

I feel like, Jason, you might have heard of that, where Estonia said it was going to do this sort of thing.

Yeah, it was like a digital residency card, except I don't think they sent, I think they just sent you like a digital certificate there, whereas you got like an actual physical card here, which I think makes it more real.

Yes.

So the Estonia one was years ago at this point, and I was like, oh, look, you can technically become a digital resident and you can open a company based, I'm doing air quotes for people not watching on YouTube, based in Estonia, Estonia, and you can make your company that way.

That is similar here, but it's way more crypto-focused.

And yes, as you said, they give you a physical ID, which I guess I'll try and hold up to the camera now for YouTube videos.

The worst photo I've ever taken of myself, and you can see it on the article in the show notes.

Really, really tired and not having my glasses on because they said you can't do that.

You know, it's like a passport photo.

Wait, should we have palau trivia very quickly like before before we get into it so palau is my middle name first and foremost not from palau uh but it's my mom's name uh and it means palace in catalon

uh which is what they speak in barcelona just so you know uh survivor palau was one of the first places that did they did survivor on and wait really that's okay i mean it was like maybe it was like the third or fourth season maybe like it was pretty early on uh and that's it's only those are its claims to fame that's that's all i know about it and now they offer digital residency those are the claims of fame and bypassing u.s crypto laws so whereas the estonia one was about making a company this one was like hey we'll send you the and actually to be it's not just the id there's also this all of this web-free stuff where you put your identity on the blockchain blah blah blah i did not even mention that in the article because it's basically irrelevant because there's all of this future-facing stuff that's like, it's not real.

You know what I mean?

But what is real is the ID card that they send you in the mail.

So they say you can use this ID card for rentals.

I know maybe use it at Airbnb or something like that, checking for hotels.

And they have all of these other plans to let you have like a residential address in Palau as well.

And I'll keep an eye on that.

The main thing, and they advertise this explicitly on the website to get the ID with a company called rns.id.

They say you can use it for KYC, know your customer.

And this is where you go to a website, like a crypto exchange, and you verify your identity, right?

If you want to sell Bitcoin or whatever, you have to go to the site, you give them, I don't know, your passport or your driver's license,

you tell them where you are.

And that's so, you know,

it's for anti-money laundering laws, but also investigators can be like, Well, there's really bad, suspicious stuff here.

Here's a subpoena or a warrant to Binance or whoever, give us the ID of that user.

This is incredibly standard, obviously, not just in the normal financial industry, but increasingly cryptocurrency as well.

Um, people who trade crypto don't really like that, it seems.

You know, they like to send their Bitcoin or their Ethereum or their Monero or whatever

without linking their ID to it.

And you are actually not able to use some exchanges in the US.

One called QCoin, KU coin, you can't use that based on the Seychelles because they were told to get out of New York State, for example.

You can't, without

verifying your identity, access

unlimited or near-unlimited trading or very large amounts, or that sort of thing.

So if you're a US trader and you want to withdraw a million dollars of cryptocurrency every single day from an exchange that you're not actually allowed to use because you're based in the US, you can get the Palau card to do that, basically.

And I've watched a ton of YouTube videos where people are saying this explicitly.

Like, this isn't me interpreting the products.

This is the product.

And that's what it's for.

And it's what people are talking.

They're like, use this hack, like quote unquote hack to get around KYC laws, right yeah so the the id people themselves uh they're saying use it for kyc all of these people on youtube are saying like you can use this to bypass us crypto laws by using it for kyc so

i found that interesting i'm really into kyc stuff especially when you know well more than a few months ago at this point, maybe a year ago, I guess, but we did that story about how some underground website was developing photos of fake IDs with allegedly neural networks.

And, oh, whoa, here's a fake ID to create an account.

It's basically the same thing, but the account's not fake.

It's very real.

I'm holding it in my hand, but it's from this government.

It's just like giving them out, basically,

it seems.

So I sent some money to this company.

I did give it accurate information.

You know, I gave it my real name.

real shipping address,

all of that sort of thing, because I didn't, well, I didn't want to actually commit fraud myself.

Obviously, we always have to stay within the law.

And I wasn't really testing that part of it.

It was more, what can I do with this ID?

So I do that.

A few weeks later, it arrives in the mail.

It comes in a very regal blue and gold

envelope, which is nice.

That arrives and then got too busy to write about it for months and then finally got round to it.

But the last bit of the puzzle for me was taking it and seeing if you could actually do this on exchanges.

You know, in the same way we did that with the neural network generated

ID document.

It was, I just made an account, this case on QCoin, because that's what people were talking about.

gave it my ID, said I was from Palau.

It was like, well, what region of the world are you from?

What country are you from?

You select Palau, you select the ID,

you send them a photo it then does some facial recognition which you know is really standard on any of these sorts of services right um both sort of grey market or entirely legitimate and um i don't know maybe 15 20 minutes later something like that it said your identity has been verified you can now withdraw a million dollars from um this account if you have a million obviously it's more uh it allows you to transfer great sums of wealth um very very quickly, you know?

So I thought it was very interesting that, yes, like it works on KuCoin,

but there's some of the, some of the bigger ones just straight up say, we're not taking a Palau digital residency card, right?

Yeah.

So

I pinged two of the main exchanges in the world, Binance and Kraken, who have all had their own problems, you know, in various degrees, Binance, especially.

But But I wanted to ask them: hey, people in the US, traders, are specifically buying this ID to bypass KYC.

Would you allow this on the platform?

Do you allow this on the platform?

And I was kind of surprised in that both Binance and Kraken said, we've already banned this.

Like, they already say,

or heavily suggest, that it could be such an issue for KYC that they don't allow people to sign up to it.

And Kraken even went a step further and they said their concern was that the Palau ID could be obtained by sanctioned entities.

You know, that is people on the or entities on US sanction list or whatever.

And to be clear, I haven't seen any evidence that's actually happened, but I did email the ID company again and I asked.

Kraken says this, and I asked, has a sanctioned entity ever been given a Palau ID?

And they didn't respond, which,

I don't know.

I feel like you could respond to that quite easily, considering responses to my earlier emails.

But yeah, even though people are using this,

the big exchanges were like, we don't want anything to do with it, essentially, which I found interesting.

I think also,

I haven't followed this that closely, but I think you've followed it a little bit more closely.

Trump was elected with the support of a lot of crypto bros in the United States and a lot of crypto money.

And he's talked about like bailing out Bitcoin, which we don't need to get into.

But I'm curious if you think that Trump's approach to KYC

is going to touch crypto in some way or if you've looked into that.

Well, I think that a lot of people in crypto hope it does.

As you say,

Trump has generally been a very pro

crypto president.

Most recently, with the further announcements, I guess, of like a strategic crypto reserve, right?

Which has hinted at before, but then said it again

more recently.

I think posted a tweet about it, and then was it a few minutes later, tweeted, I mean, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum, because the price wasn't going up, and then the price went up when he actually made a post naming the cryptocurrencies.

And of course, the cryptocurrency industry has poured a ton of money into Trump and to getting him elected.

So I think the industry

really hopes that more people basically get involved in crypto.

And if it's this way, it's this way.

If it's another way, it can do that as well.

But one of the people I spoke to, one of these U.S.

traders, one of the YouTubers, a guy called Ben from DeFi Rebels, he said he was concerned that more big exchanges would ban

the Palau ID.

But then he said, quote, with a pro-crypto administration now in the US, we might see some more exchanges start allowing non-KYC trading again.

And

he's probably right, or he's right in that might happen.

That would also be totally crazy.

Like to go from this space where

people have to give their ID to exchange cryptocurrencies because then, of course, the FBI or law enforcement or anyone else can come in and stop money laundering to like completely get rid of that would be insane.

Um, and I don't even mean from a personal perspective, I almost mean just more in what the impact could be, and I mean, it could even delegitimize the industry again.

I don't really know, um,

but that's what people are hoping for, absolutely.

Um, all right, let's leave that there.

I will say, if you know anything else about KYC or bypasses or or anything like that, I'm always interested.

So, please reach out.

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