Crypto jumps back up, Americans are more illiterate and who is the world's richest man?

0:28This is the story of the one. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's Friday the 13th! Friday, December 13th, 2024. Jason may not be here, but Brianna is. What's up, Brianna? Hey. You're much lovelier than, and you look lovely there in your studio at home than Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, by the way.

1:17Yeah, hopefully. I hope so. Although I am a little tired, so maybe I'm putting on the Jason look. That's what kids do to you, you know? they send you home you got to pick them up early oh god i remember the days that still happens my eight-year-old has it every now and then he's bad yeah oh he's a he's the worst kind of sick he's like me like men you know like one little stuffing oh i'm not feeling good dad he's a big baby suck it up suck it up then i'm the same way i'm like if i don't get a knock on wood i shouldn't say that. I'm not going to say that out loud, but when I am sick, which is not that often, I'm definitely a big baby.

1:57I think men are worse. Yep. Yeah. I never have time to be sick. So yeah, exactly. Try not to be. So we hope everyone is doing well, wherever, whenever, however you're listening here on Right About Now. We've got your weekly business news of the week and all kinds of good stuff. I'm going to start with the good news. So I've gotten into the crypto thing. And let me just say this, this is not a financial advice. Please go to your financial advisor for risk counsel, risk tolerance, and you know, how much you can afford to lose. So that's not for me to determine. I just want you to have a little fun with me testing the market.

2:40Brianna had something to say there. I'm not sure what. Just laughing. I thought it was funny that you said like how much you're willing to lose. Yeah. Well, you never know or when, how it's all about, Hey, you cannot make any shots you don't take. So there you have it. I have been putting in a couple thousand dollars every week or two, just taking from other investments, doing it and like taking, you know, moving over to the crypto. Now that we have a crypto friendly president coming into office and I am not the expert. Chris, who is on Escapade in Houston, is more of the quote expert in house.

3:25But, you know, you can learn a lot. So I'm on the Kraken app. The names of this stuff, it like doesn't help with some of their legitimacy sometimes. Like I'm on that Kraken. It starts with a K. So I'll give them some free support. Maybe they should be a sponsor. That would be a good one for Natalie to reach out to, get the Kraken in here. Anyway, I'm on there. Very easy to buy and sell. They make it super easy to take your money, let me tell you. So one click away, your bank account, whatever. You got your wallet going on. And, again, much better than college football lately. So I, you know, I quit a bit on Collegeville probably 10 years ago.

4:08So this is not a recent thing. But I will say it's riding the wave. And it's been an interesting week with crypto because I'm riding it. You know, I've bought, I probably have like 20 coins that I'm in now or different crypto, whatever. There's a lot of terminology again here. So I've been buying them. XRP, that's what you need to get on. Let me go ahead and tell you that's the one. That one I bought for like 40 cents. it's up to like 250. So that's helping the old cause a lot. While some of these other coins are dragging a little bit, I'm smacking them across the room going, get your shit together.

4:43The old XRP up. But here's the thing. Monday and Tuesday, this is what happens with crypto. For no real, at least no reason that I understand, we took an old dip, like 20%, like off the top. And And they say they do that because the big investors, like, start, they sell something, they kind of create this swirl. And people, like the smaller buyers, like the people that have, you know,$300,$400,$500, you cut a few hundred dollars, but there's a lot of them, so it's a lot of money. They get nervous, they sell out of everything. As soon as they see it start dropping. So they say they do that on purpose because then the big investors swoop in on the dip.

5:26Buy the dip. Chris has said that a lot. And so I just watched it. I didn't buy or sell. Just watch it because I know there's too many positives in this space happening that I knew the dip was temporary. Oh, we're back, baby. We're back hard here today on the record day. I just finished reading a book all about like financial investing. And yeah, it's very interesting, like how anything that can happen, like probably like when big stuff in the news happens, things dip down or they jump, they skyrocket. Yep. And so the entire market was down. I mean, a lot of the ones I had were down 10 to 20 percent Monday and Tuesday.

6:05I'm just going, all right, whatever. Again, I have in here what I can afford to lose. I don't want to lose it. I don't like to lose. But I'm not like I'm not, you know, jeopardizing my my my kids future here on on the old Kraken. But I will say this. So the entire market here today, we recorded on a Wednesday. So it is Friday the 13th for you when you're listening, hopefully, because you do listen on record day. We know our release day. We know it. Our loyal ones do. The entire market is up 6 % today. And let's just say I got 19 % up, 20 % up, 10%, 12%. Like I'm averaging like a 10.2 % up on every one of the ones that I own just today alone.

6:50And I'm just going to tell you that XRP is the one you want to get on. It's$2.43. It's expected to like double or triple here like next year. So we're all in on that one. XRP, Ripple. And don't ask. Don't be sitting there. Somebody's listening and judging already. They're going, this guy's not a crypto expert. I am not a Crispo expert. I'm just telling you, if I was betting on certain coins, and I do like to read a lot. I research everything. My wife, whenever we're going on vacations, I do all the reviews. I read every one of them. There'll be 4 ,322 reviews on TripAdvisor. I read 4 ,100 of them.

7:31And so knowledge absorption, I am good at. So I've been reading a lot, absorbing a lot, trying to learn a lot, because I like to make a lot. And so far, so good. We're up to about six grand. I put in about 3 ,500 and we're right about 5 ,800 today. That's over about a month. So I've almost doubled. You know, that's not, hey, not typical. These results are not typical. But when you're the crypto heavy guy like me, you know, you get lucky. No idea. I sometimes choose the names because I like the name of it. It's a brand marketing guy. I'm like, that's a pretty good braining decision. Oh, my gosh.

8:17You're just picking crypto because you're like, oh, that one sounds good. Chris will tell me if you, but then I pick the one of the three that he gives me based on if I like the name. Yeah. You know, then I'll go read some of the data. And, hey, here's the trick. Don't go to the first page of the search results on something. Go to like page five. Because the first page, here's my strategy. is the first page has been let's just call it bought which means they may not be given they might be giving you certain tips because they want you to take it as the sort of amateur hour investor so i go to page five of the search results and see what they say about certain coins hey just an odd tactic don't know but so far so good up like 80 so suck it crypto is so interesting to me because like there's a whole demographic of people that like won't accept it as oh yeah real currency i don't know if i accept it or not i just accept that people smarter than me are standing behind it and holding it up to be a good investment and there's yeah there's so much money now in it by the bigger like bank and like institutions that i'm like okay if these guys could be in it.

9:38I can, you know, I need to be in this. It's not going to go to zero. Yeah. And again, you got to only bet or, or invest whatever you want to call it. Gamble, invest, whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy, uh, what you can afford to lose. Yep. A hundred percent. What are you getting in Brianna? You got to get in on this game. Guys, I have gotten my account on Coinbase, which was the one that Chris recommended all the way to like the point where you have to like log into your bank account, but I don't know if I should say this on the podcast. I just don't know my passwords to anything. So I'm like, well, I can't log in because I don't know my password.

10:17It's just auto saved. Mason on our team. And I had this discussion yesterday. We were doing something. The amount of time that I spend like looking up passwords and like dealing with like password management. And yeah, I know there's apps for that now, but they don't all solve all the issues. It's like, it's a pain in the ass. This two factor stuff. I get it. It's security. He's protecting us. I don't want all my shit taken, but like, damn. How could it happen in 2024? Can we solve the password stuff? Can we use retina? Like something that is only identified by us. You know, I'd probably give a blood sample to like, like in the morning, like a finger prick.

10:55Most people are babies about that. I don't care about this. Give me that finger prick. If I could, if that would give me clear unlimited passwords for the week, I'll prick the finger. Oh my gosh. I would not. I would not. And also, I need all of your passwords, too. So I can't be poking your finger every time I need you to sign into something. Oh, damn it. All right. Let's figure that out. But, yeah, no. I mean, that's honestly my only hang-up. And it's just like I just need to sit down for 10 minutes and do it. But, you know, I have other things going on. But you got to do it. Like when you wake up in the night, you need to, like, you know, and you can't go back to sleep.

11:32At least you do something productive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Get in on that money. Well, what I've been working on every time I wake up and pick up my phone is I have a client right now that I'm really honed in on growing their social media. So every time I log in anything, I'm just like trying to grow their social media. We'll allow that. We'll allow that. Kind of keep the bills paid. This will be allowed. What's happening in the news? So a few different things. Looks like the big grocery store companies are suing each other. Albertsons and Kroger, they were going to do a merger. And it sounds like, according to this article from NBR, on Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Oregon blocked the$24.6 billion deal, just basically saying it would monopolize the grocery industry and reduce competition, which would harm shoppers.

12:29So that was on Tuesday. As soon as that merger was blocked by the judge, Albertsons abandoned the merger and filed a lawsuit against Kroger. So, interesting. You know, we don't even really have Kroger's or Albertsons around here. Like Kroger's in other parts of South Carolina, Albertsons might be, but I don't think so. So this, like I'm speaking like pure, like local, like impact, very little. I do understand these are two of the largest chains. I, you know. Oh, who knows? What's your reaction to this? Like, do you think they should block it? I mean, we had an Albertsons where I lived in California, and it was fine.

13:15It says Albertsons owns Safeway and Vons. Kroger owns Ralph's, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, and King Shopper. So you might recognize some of those names. So I think that's where it's more impactful. That's right. Kroger does own a bunch of the other names. That's right. I forgot that. I don't want Alberson's messing up my hair's teeter now. I know. That's not jam. So, all right. This does impact me. Damn it. It does. It does. I don't know.

13:48The whole competition argument is a hard one to wrap your head around. And I do think choice is a good thing. I would need to see the list of like all grocery stores across the country, all the brand names that fall under each one of these. If there's obviously Kroger has multiple and think about what that would mean. Yeah. Well, I don't like the government getting involved in business for the most part. And here's what their argument for the merger was that they could only together, only as a merged conglomerate, Kroger and Albertsons, only then would they be able to survive competing against Walmart, Costco, Amazon, and all of those.

14:40Yeah, and that's a good point. I mean, Amazon and Walmart, between.com and brick and mortar for Walmart, they have such scale. So to say that this puts them at some competitive advantage over them is hard to believe. I mean, who has more scale than Amazon or Walmart? So I don't think it – this is where I'd have to get into the data a little bit more. and but now that they're like throwing mud at each other so fast it's like that i don't know that most people have a lot of tolerance for it and it's like it just seems so fucking petty like well it is interesting here at the end of this article it says the fdc's case prevailed in u.s district court delivering a big win uh to the outgoing biden administration who made tougher scrutiny of mergers a central plank of their administration um yeah let's see i i would be curious what like trump's position on this is something tells me he wouldn't have fought it being more pro-business and probably more thoughtful of that in that walmart amazon everything else reality so yeah we'll see where it goes i think we can all agree that groceries costs too much for the most part.

16:06So anything that can get it cheaper, if I, here's how I would pragmatically, I am for this or against this, if it will lower grocery costs, depending, you tell me which side it is. I'll support that because, Hey, we can't do what the independent center is trying to do. And that's further the American dream. If our grocery costs keep going up. We talk about the American dream a lot and all I know and I consider we're more well off than most Americans, but we feel it. I mean, it's expensive. I go to the grocery store. I feel like I walk in and it's like my I got a$75 bill like just to grab the shopping cart.

16:52Oh, yeah. I can't get out of there. I have four things in the cart and it's like uh 43.79 what yeah I went into the grocery store last week and the brand of mayonnaise that I like to buy is almost nine dollars for a container and so I sat there and I was like hey I have a coupon for this let me find it and I was like oh my gosh like this is crazy like I'm having to like coupon but get my groceries cheaper and i feel like we are definitely living the american dream and even then it's like they're it's still tight i ain't too proud to use a coupon especially i'm not pulling out a 50 cent coupon but i've seen like but four or three four dollars off i'll put that in my pocket yeah i mean yeah you know i'll here's what will happen i'm not too proud to use it but i fucking forget it every time i got i walk out of the store or get home like and i dig in my pocket or whatever i did with it that's how they get you you know if not in the habit of like i don't have the man remember that woman that'd be in line in the shopping store they bring out the wallet you know like that full of coupons like a butt and you know i was probably i haven't seen that in a long time but i would probably i didn't make fun of that i was more annoyed because like i was like oh god we gotta wait on her to use her coupons that was i didn't It was not judging.

18:14It was more just like, we all want to get through the line as fast as possible. Yeah, it's going to be me. Yeah. If groceries go up anymore. That thing adds up there. It adds up. So whatever brings grocery store costs down lower, I will vote for that side of it. We'll just keep it that simple. Yep. The American dream feels increasingly more complex in 2024. Yeah. Hopefully it gets easier in 2025. We'll see. If it will, if the Independence Center has anything to do with it, go check out our partner, IndependenceCenter.org. Again, it's not about the right. It's not about the left. It's not like blue.

18:54It's not about red, all that shit. None of that matters. Here's what matters. All that matters is that policy impacts your pocketbook in a positive way. And they're helping bring studies, surveys, voter data that kind of remove all the party bullshit and bring it to the people, which is what we need. Go to independentstarter.org, sign up for that newsletter. You'll be thankful that you did. And let's get the politics out of the way. Let's get the policies at the forefront. What's next? Elon Musk, who we talked about, I think, last week on Weekly Business News, that we were talking about him not getting this paycheck.

19:35And then now we're talking about this week. He has surpassed the$400 billion net worth mark. Wow. Yeah. So this is mostly due to SpaceX. You know, it says, well, this is an article from NBC News, and the value in Tesla has gone up. It's Musk's privately held stake in SpaceX that has catapulted his wealth beyond this threshold of$400 billion. it says that spacex is the most valuable private startup in the world geez i mean in one way i'm like why is it worse so much than another way i get it because space is sort of the next frontier and where a lot of money spent and a lot of like security with like Like U.S.

20:28I don't get it. I mean, I think it's back to a lot of the technology, the propulsion, rocket propulsion, all that stuff. I think the, I don't know, patents and everything that goes into whatever it takes. And the fact that, I don't know, maybe we are going to colonize somewhere one day. And it's hard to know the economics, though, of why it's so valuable. Like, where is their revenue made? That's past my pay grade. I think it's contracts with the government. And the fact that the government and NASA are pretty much relying on SpaceX now in a lot of ways. And you got to also remember, one trip up, baby, is like$10 million.

21:15It costs a lot of money to bring all that together. and all the fuel and everything else you that gets i mean you talk about up in smoke like jokingly but like is there anything more up in smoke than a rocket ship taking off it's just like when it's all the money that's spent making that happen and but all but what we don't realize is all the satellites all the stuff that keeps us secure there's a lot of stuff that happens in space with that we're probably a little myself certainly included ignorant to yeah keep us protected and control some of our military stuff so i can't totally get my head around what makes it worth 300 billion or whatever but it's crazy it's hard for me to even like imagine what like people way smarter than me have figured out like how to put satellites up there and like control all sorts of things yeah i they might be uh the ones sending all these crazy drones everywhere that shit that stuff's crazy like i understanding how what the most developed country in the world has things flying around that we don't know who and what it is i yeah come on now like we got all this technology you can't and we can't shoot those i mean i know it's illegal like shoot a drone down i think obviously no i think it is airspace you can't you're not like for a for me or you to shoot a drone down i think it's illegal but the government can shoot one of those things like get out there and shoot it down and take it apart and figure out where it came from so the drones so numerous sightings of drones have been reported hovering all over New Jersey is that what you're referencing yeah okay so local and federal law enforcement have worked together to find some answers but it's still like kind of a mystery I hadn't heard of this yeah it's crazy and they're all over it but it's they and I read an article like right before we came in i debated bringing it up but we kind of were talking about spaceships and satellites and all that stuff so it read they assume now that it's adversarial i'm like great this is the same thing that happened with that balloon remember yeah around it's like we never got all the answers on that balloon either other than it was china and got shot down and somehow it was drifting over here a weather balloon shooting shooting down a drone is illegal see i told you yeah because you know why you know why i know i got my shotgun out to shoot one out that was over our house a couple weeks like a couple weeks ago it was because we had a huge parade here in greenville and there was one that was just hovering over our house because we're right downtown and it was bothering me being right in my sort of airspace over my house and i went out there i was going to shoot it and my wife quickly corrected me and said you know it's illegal to shoot a drone now i'm like you're you're kidding right it's kind of crazy that that's illegal especially on your own property because they can be they have cameras on them so they can be taking pictures but i guess i mean i don't know in the air so that would be used to be the argument but i'm like well what keeps some weirdos from just flying your drones right up in your shit you know like or what if you have like a property out somewhere and if i had a property out somewhere let's just say my wife wouldn't stop me if i didn't live in downtown greenville let's just say that drone would have seen about a thousand pieces.

24:58I would have been like, kids, you got a gift for Christmas. It's called a jigsaw puzzle. It's 1 ,500 pieces. Oh, look, it's a DJI drone. You just got to put it back together. Yeah, that's like flying at the top of my house, like sitting like 30 feet up. And I'm like, I knew he wasn't like, he'd care less about anything we were doing. And we were doing nothing but sitting inside watching TV. but I heard it and then but still what if you were like walking around your house naked I might have been but you know I gave him a little show

25:35I was naked when I had a shotgun out oh god I'm kidding sort of but no no one needs that visual yeah I know shotgun are you kidding hey I'm like 25 pounds around here I got a one pack come on now Oh, gosh. But, yeah, that drone stuff in New Jersey, does it not blow your mind that we don't know what that is or who's causing it? It's a little weird, yeah, and that the FBI is saying, like, hey, if you have any information, please report it to us. You're the FBI. You're supposed to know. Like, come on, man. It's going to sit flying around. Oh, me. but luckily Elon back to the whole article is worth 400 billion.

26:26Congratulations. I was worrying about where his next billion was going to come from and good for him, man. It's a lot of fucking money. I mean, what do you can do with 400? I would take, I was telling Sawyer before we launched, I would take one of those. Yeah. One bill, one bill. You'd be all right. Yeah. Right. A hundred, a hundred million. Was it nobody? A thousand million is what a billion. You wouldn't even notice. Yeah. You wouldn't even notice. It's not, you know, a million here, a million there. A lot of money. That's why what we're doing during the election. That's how much money there is to be made, you know?

27:02Like that's why this Kraken app is going to do it. You know, we're going to a billion, baby. It's that or, I mean, for all of our listeners out there, there's so many different ways to make a million dollars and to launch, you know, businesses or drive your business forward or 4X your business in 2025. Yes. And we know a marketing agency that can help with that. Oh, yes, we do. Radical.company. But you know what? Do you know how we're able to do it? Because we stay energized. You know how we stay energized? Exponent. Exponent. Yes, exponent. Hey, this isn't energy. This is fusion energy. You notice we're talking rocket ships.

27:44We're talking nuclear power. And we're talking fusion energy. Zero sugar, plant-powered, adaptogens, nootropics, electrolytes, all the stuff you want, none of the stuff you don't. X marks the spot, exponent. This is the Sector C. They got all the coolest names. Sector C here. We got Eclipse. Everyone's favorite is the blue ones at the office. It's like blue raspberry or something. This is lemon, lime, and arms. We tried those new flavors on air. I'm ready for this. Sari and I were talking the other day. We're ready for those new flavors to come out. Strawberry, lemon, stuff, whatever. all kinds of new stuff.

28:19It can't be giving away trade secrets, but all kinds of flavors coming out. And again, the best part is, and I've been bad about this. So, you know, I drink a lot of energy drinks. I just don't like coffee really. And so got to get that pep, but you need it to be healthy. Don't need all the bad stuff. Got to stop. You got to wake up and read the labels. My good friend, Jet Smiley tells me that, you know, you got to do that. So you read the labels and you go to exponent, drink exponent.com as well as on instagram go give them some love and look i only promote the products that i like and that i actually use and there's no bigger user of energy drinks than this guy so where do you think all this energy comes from oh i want one of those right now i had a ice cold orange one yesterday afternoon and it just really helped me get there's some vodka in No, I was at work.

29:16Was there some vodka in it? What's your point? Yes. Well, what's the final article today? A growing number of U.S. adults are lacking literacy skills. Kind of a scary one coming to us from NBC News. It says, according to a study of adults by the National Center for Education Statistics, 28 % of U.S. adults now perform at the lowest measured literacy levels, up 19 % in 2017. Let's see. It means we're using our phones too much. Yeah, I think that's what it is, right? Or it's the YouTube nation, right? You're watching everything. You're not reading anything. If you're watching YouTube, that's fine.

30:08Just make sure you're watching the Radcast Network YouTube channel. That's right. You got to look that up. You got to see all the shows on our network. But I will say my wife would probably – her school ranks like one of the top 10 or 20 in the whole state. So she would call that out while also going – this doesn't surprise her, I'm sure.

30:37It's sad, though. Yeah. Like what? Why is it? It makes you want to know the underlying reasons for this. Is it because of some variable? You know what I you know what I would consider? And I don't have all of the research on this, but how much of this is because of immigration? So maybe they are not illiterate. Maybe they just English is their second language. And so maybe they're scoring low on these tests because it says that those are the lowest levels struggle with tasks like reading instructions, filling out forms or managing simple calculations. So I'd be curious to see if there's any data on that.

31:21Yeah. What said whether when asked about potential causes for the decline, Carr stated that it's difficult to say. so for the pun intended he didn't have the answer he couldn't read it out loud oh sorry that's the worst quote I know it's like I read that I had a double take like even when I said it out loud I was like is this a joke did he say pun intended after it like what's the reason for the decline Ah, you'll read about it later. I couldn't really, I couldn't read the report. Oh, geez. Who knows? So the, I do think unrelated, related.

32:12Reforming exactly how and what we learned that better match the world we live in today is something I could get behind. I have had this discussion with my wife. And it's not because I feel like what she does and what teachers and administrators are doing every day is not highly important. I just think there could be a better alignment to what are the skills and learning that you need in the classroom. I think it's somewhat related to this. I mean, literacy and understanding the language, though, is a little different than what I'm suggesting. But it might go hand in hand in some ways because we evolve and maybe we need to teach it differently.

32:55I don't know. That's past my pay grade on how to teach it. I just think what we learn, though, needs to evolve with where AI and all the other things that are happening are taking us so that we are productive. Oh, I totally agree. And I think that there's we have so much data and we have so much information. And there's no excuse for us not to be reforming the way that we're teaching things and giving students the best, you know, access to information and access to help and, you know, mental health resources and, you know, all of these different like resources that we have full access to with, you know, ChatGPT and AI and everything that exists now.

33:40And just making sure that, you know, young people also have that access and know where to find help and know, you know, how to how to learn maybe for their own personality or their learning style. I think that there is so many ways that we can adapt to better serve our children. So I have big opinions on this. Yes. Agreed. Oh, lastly, I want to say today, you know, it's the biggest news story in the U.S. has been the shooting and killing of the United Healthcare CEO. And that story is so, you know, we do one time a week. When we move to more, you know, multiple day news story, we'll probably cover more of that.