ferdi1

Yesterday and today are two very important days in the Netherlands.

On May 5 we celebrate that we live in freedom in the Netherlands. We celebrate that in 1945 we were liberated from the German occupation in Europe and the Japanese occupation in Asia, and since then we have been free from war.

May 5 is also a day to reflect on the importance of freedom and to realise that freedom is vulnerable. World War II did not end world war. On a daily basis people are still fighting with each other, fighting for freedom. May 5 is the day of thinking about freedom in the world.

On May 4 at 08:00 PM we have 2 minutes of silence for all the victims that fell during the war and their families. This year of course a very special year: it was 75 years ago and we still live in a quarantine.

Amsterdam is a special place to remember the fallen and every year all the officials are coming to the capital to lay flowers at the national memorial: de DAM in the centre.

The Prime Minister will lay a wreath, besides the king and queen, the Amsterdam major, besides a lot of official World War II bodies and survivors/ survivors' family members.

The following picture shows you how it normally looks when this “wreath laying” takes place; more than 20,000 people together:

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The royal family laying a wreath

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All Flags hang at half mast

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This is the way it looked last night:

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In addition to the King and Queen, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema and Gerdi Verbeet, the chairman of the National Committee on 4 and 5 May, were also present.

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It never happened before that a Royalty spoke at this ceremony. King Willem Alexander was the first one and spoke about the following:

In deze uitzonderlijke maanden hebben we allemaal een deel van onze vrijheid moeten opgeven”, zei koning Willem-Alexander maandag bij de Nationale Dodenherdenking op de Dam in Amsterdam, die vanwege de Corona Crisis voor het eerst in de geschiedenis zonder publiek plaatsvond. „Sinds de oorlog hebben we deze situatie niet gekend.

Translated:

In these exceptional months we all had to give up part of our freedom,” said King Willem-Alexander on Monday at the National Remembrance Day on Dam Square in Amsterdam, which took place without an audience for the first time in history due to the corona crisis. “We have not known this situation since the war.

The 2 minutes of silence are very important and is a moment still done 75 years after the War. Life in the Netherlands stops for 2 minutes, even delivery halts:

Picture was shot by somebody, showing a delivery boy, waiting for 2 minutes before delivering the dinner somewhere.

5th of May, today, traditionally is day of celebration. Many Festivals all through the Netherlands and many street fairs. Well, .... none like that this year:

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Bevrijdingspop (Liberation Festival) in Haarlem, the Netherlands

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Due to Covid-19 we have had many first offs and well, this 2020

Liberation Day is not different. We are free though. Forgive but never forget.

Very surreal; normally you see all these people on the screen, or in real life if you attend a ceremony and now, empty ... Which in a way is good, what makes it even stranger. Freedom ... we still have our freedom, although it is most of the day covered by the same 4 walls... 1 difference with the freedom talked about in this document, this is by free will ! ! !

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Very outspoken, very active, very XRPCommunity; not going to beat around the bush: Matt Hamilton at the interview table. The friendly bearded “always laughing” UK guy, that I have met a couple times, starting in 2018 when we had a meet-up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with a couple people from Ripple, with at least a mention for .... David Schwartz ! ! !

I actually was able to make some good pictures, in my opinion, at the meet-up.

So Matt Hamilton, who is this guy:

XRPTwin:

How did you get involved into crypto when, how , why ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

I used to run a web-development company and we ran our own datacenter. One of the guys who worked with me, Scott, had started mining Bitcoin. I'd heard of Bitcoin and looked at it, but dismissed it. Any spare CPU power I had was working on the Folding @home project. This must have been around 2015 or so. He has asked me if I minded him running the mining equipment at work, which I was fine with. He went through several iterations of mining hardware, but eventually gave up trying to keep up as was getting harder and harder to stay profitable.

He sold all his BTC and bought XRP. As a thank you for me letting him mine at work, he gave me some XRP.... that was kind of my start.

XRPTwin:

Why Ripple, why XRP ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

It was what Scott gave me, so that was the first one. I certainly liked the whole idea of the DEX and the ability to represent any asset on the XRP Ledger and being able to convert from one to another in a decentralised manner.

The 'pathfinding' feature was really cool. The fact I could trade banana for shoes, say, just seemed amazing.

XRPTwin: Best of both worlds Matt:

Source

XRPTwin:

When did the serious research start ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

I was working for a startup company developing a health, fitness, and nutrition tracking system. They ran out of money and suddenly ceased development and I needed to find something else to do. Whilst I was wondering what to do next, I was trying to brush up on my skills. I wanted to learn Node.js and remembered the XRP that Scott had given me. I wondered if I could write an automated system to trade on the XRP Ledger DEX. That started my main research into finance, cryptocurrencies and machine learning / AI. Before long I was doing a FinTech course at Oxford University and was contemplating going full time into FinTech. But the crypto market then came crashing down. I then took a job at IBM instead.

XRPTwin:

When did you not only want to be an investor but also active in the XRPCommunity ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

They kind of happened at the same time. I had always been involved in online communities related to open source software and so I knew the value of community. I was looking to see what I could offer back to the community.

XRPTwin:

6 sentences about your caravan adventure when you came to the XRP Meet-up in Amsterdam ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

Ha! That was great fun :) Many years ago I converted a big Iveco van into a motorhome myself. The plan was to live in it. But I then met my wife and had kids etc, and that never happened. Although we travelled a lot around in the big van. I eventually sold it to my nephew as it was pretty big and we were not using it like use used to. I had been paying back a loan to my father for some money I borrowed when we bought our house. The month I finished paying off that loan, someone I knew locally happened to be selling a smaller VW T5 camper. I would need to take a loan out to buy it, but the repayments turned out to be the exact amount I had been paying my father back... so I thought it was a sign I should buy the van! So I did! And It drove so much nicer than my big old Iveco... and had cruise control and an amazing stereo system. A few weeks later the XRP meet-up in Amsterdam was announced. I wanted to go on a trip, so drove on over! The pricing on the Euro-Tunnel is cheaper if you are just away for one night. So I crossed over at 00:30 on the first day, went to the XRP Meet-up, then crossed back at 23:50 the next day.

XRPTwin: Well, a little over 6 sentences, but will let it slide this

time ! ! !

XRPTwin:

What research do you like the most: Ripple/ XRP ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

I think I'm more interested in XRP. Ripple are great, but it is mainly second guessing what they will do. No-one knows. Everyone just starts drawing conclusions from unrelated data.

XRPTwin:

What do you expect from 2020 ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

No idea! The world is a strange place right now! (XRPTwin: and this is how Matt looked like answering that question) ! ! !

XRPTwin:

A tweet is a success when ...... ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

Someone replies back that they learned something new.

XRPTwin:

When Matt grows up he wants to be ..... ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

Living in a cabin somewhere that I built.

Source ; just a little idea @ Matt ? ! ?

XRPTwin:

Anything to add..... ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

Corona: We've seen massive amounts of money being printed by governments. Clearly this is not sustainable, and I'm really not sure where things go from here. Many people see Bitcoin as a safe haven immune to inflation. But we saw the price of Bitcoin drop with the money printing. So It think some people may realise that Bitcoin is not that special in reality. And with that realisation they might then start to look at other assets like XRP that have actual utility beyond just a “store of value”.

XRPTwin:

The quick round with single word(s) questions, what do you think about:

PolySign ? ? ?

ODL gaining traction in current corridors ? ? ?

IPO Ripple ? ? ?

DeFi ? ? ?

BOA rumours ? ? ?

US Regulations ? ? ?

Matt Hamilton:

PolySign: Some great minds, but they seem to have been under cover for so long. Have they missed the market?

ODL gaining traction in current corridors:

Awesome! Now we just need some additional companies using it. The great thing is Metcalfes Law states the value of a network goes up my the square of the number of participants. So I feel we are on the cusp of this really taking off.

IPO Ripple:

I don't have any real feelings about this. I think it is being done to get a more 'traditional' valuation on the company, ie it is being done as a technicality rather than necessity.

DeFi:

In some ways this is getting interesting, but in many ways seems to just be recreating the fractional banking system we currently have.

BOA rumours:

No idea... not been following any of that.

US Regulations:

They certainly seem to be taking their time! The US is being left behind the rest of the world in this regards. I think Corona virus is showing just how broken the US healthcare and financial systems are. When all the dust settles from Corona I think the US will be nowhere near as dominant as it has previously been in financial influence.

Well, thank you Matt, for taking the time. Really interesting and let's see if some of your answers will come to fruition if applicable.

Before leaving you, please share your social medial credentials .... eh wait ... I can do that for you:

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Thank you ! ! !

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Previous Interview: The LEGION is COMING

Next Interview: You like him or ....... part I

So, we wanted to finish the LEGO transporter today ... was a good day for a finishing project. One more week of quarantine, but this was going to be a good day for LEGO (and running a mile, but that is for another day) ! ! !

This is how the transporter looks like, also with the blue car on top of it ...

We really like the car and the functionality is already visible:

https://youtu.be/UWcgRMjyoGo

Really nice to see how it works , turning buttons and things start to move ! ! !

This is how it really started. As you can see, not too many parts left anymore, still enough to get going ! ! !

Started with a new part, that we had to build on. Got bigger and bigger ! ! !

Really focused building. Somebody R E A L L Y wanted to finish the transporter ! ! !

Learning once again to make everything symmetrical. Good lessons to learn while having a lot of fun.

Getting there .... Couple crazy pictures .... Hey daddy, I can see you, through the car ...

AND .....

DONE ! ! !

Really happy we have finished it .... although finished. Little part is still missing ! ! ! But this is presentable .... and playable ! ! !

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As I already shared on Twitter, May is going to my 1 Mile a DAY month. This of course does NOT mean I want to do just 1 Mile a day, but I want to do 1 Mile runs 31 days in a row + extra whatever I feel like.

I asked people to join, did not get anybody to respond, but that is fine. People have all day to think about it, so they can run their first mile today ! ! !

Running may not be the correct word; it can also be walking a mile per day, if YOU want to do so. This could be walking the dog, then you probably already did the challenge for a couple months already. The challenge though, is 1 mile a day, for 31 days ...

Not only for finishing up a challenge, or pushing myself, but also:

1. Pushing/ Challenging myself
2. Staying Fit/ Healthy
3. Doing exercises with family (my son in my case)
4. Getting some alone time, if number 3 is not applicable
5. Going outside during Quarantine and Staying alone
6. Loosing Weight .... (may be difficult)
7. Having fun
8. Time to think

Well, that is a nice list of things why running/ walking/ doing a mile a day is a nice plan ! ! !

To give one Mulligan, you can run 2 miles on 1 day, if it happens you are not able to run a mile on a particular day

Mulligan: second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder. So if you are not able to run one day, make it up but this can only happen ones ....

Number 8, time to think, is always a fun one. I am already thinking what I will declare the rest of the months this year ... have some new ideas.

If you want to join, shoot me a DM (link) and I will mention you in a next blog. I will create 1 blog for this Challenge, will write something every day, BUT will only issue it every other day/ week; will think of the frequency.

Would be fun if you join.

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The picture is a hint, the title is a hint ... The XRPCommunity has a researcher that is a serious OG; very knowledgable and an absolute follow on Twitter , on coil, on all platforms ! ! ! Of course talking about: IamLegion @Paisan26849860 on Twitter and IamLegion on Coil

Over 15K followers on Twitter, 361 followers on Coil .... almost a follower per day/ per year .... whatever that means ! ! ! But, don't get me wrong, 365 followers on Coil is a monster amount ! ! !

Send out a tremendous amount of Tweets out, whether retweeted, answered or own content – over 50K – and is widely known for sharing and spreading the XRP Word. Many YouTubers, from The Bearable Guy to Alex Cobb, to Brad Kimes to Crypto Eri ... let's not forget Kevin Cage and Digital Asset Investor and Jungle Inc. have used tweets from this thorough researcher

Let's not wait longer and let's find out who this is, without finding out TOO much ! ! !

IAMLegion is a 44-year old Danish guy who left his job in 2015; had been in the banking sector over 11 years. 11 years of a changing industry ... changes go very slow as the industry is very bulky ... signatures needed at every level at every department and if somebody can say no at a certain level, CAN say NO I write, he/ she will. Changes go slow, but they do happen ! ! !

So .....

XRPTwin:

How did You get involved in Crypto when, how , why ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

While I was in the bank, I had missed a couple of opportunities. I had bought some ”Fingerprint stocks” for about 2,9 DKK (Danish Kroners), and when it hit about 29 DKK, I thought: ”better not be too greedy, after all its x10 the initial investment”, only to watch it moon to 570 DKK.

Now I started to look for the next investment opportunity. I remembered my luck in December 2017, when I bought 100$ worth of Crypto (XRP) for 0.99$/XRP and sold it jan 2018 for 2,9$/XRP, all without knowing much about Ripple/XRP. So, I went back online to found out, what was going on in the Crypto world.

*(*XRPTwin: The OG's in the Community know that December 2017 was THE killer month, IAMLegion did really well, selling @ 2,9$ At the moment of writing – if he would buy today, his original investment would be 19 times bigger ! ! !)

XRPTwin:

Why XRP ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

My first encounter was on Youtube with ”ToTheLifeBoats”, where a guy with glasses was talking about Temenos and TAS. I was hooked. I saw all his videos, and they just made a lot of sense. Since then, I have tried to find as much information about Ripple and XRP as possible.

Today I have zero doubt, that Ripple is a unique company, and that XRP is the Global Standard.

XRPTwin: Although Sam has many people that do not follow him/ watch him/ give him credits for his work, I also believe SamIam has contributed a lot to the XRPCommunity ... he has educated many ! ! !)

XRPTwin:

Favorite research you did and found ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

Favorite research is about SIA, because of their size (developed RTGS systems for 19 central banks). Probably also the ones behind TIPS along with Bank of Italy. Working with Hyperledger/R3/Ripple/Ethereum.

(XRPTwin: A lot of information I would like to comment on:

SiaGroup: Subsidiary of CDP Equity – is European leader in the design, creation and management of technology infrastructures and services for Financial Institutions, Central Banks, Corporates and the Public Sector, in the areas of Card & Merchant Solutions, Digital Payment Solutions and Capital Market & Network Solutions (Source)

RTGS systems : Real-time gross settlement systems

TIPS: TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) is a new market infrastructure service launched by the Eurosystem in November 2018. It enables payment service providers to offer fund transfers to their customers in real time and around the clock, every day of the year. ...

(Source)

Hyperledger: Umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools, started in December 2015 by the Linux Foundation, and has received contributions from IBM, Intel and SAP Ariba, to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers (Source)

R3: An enterprise blockchain software firm working with a broad ecosystem of more than 300 participants across multiple industries from both the private and public sectors to develop blockchain applications on Corda, an open-source blockchain platform, and Corda Enterprise, a commercial version of Corda for enterprise usage (Source)

XRPTwin:

Bank of America is a hot topic, what do you think about that ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

https://youtu.be/fZTdY4nNNBI

XRPTwin:

The coolest thing that happened this year ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

The coolest thing in 2020 has not happend yet.

The coolest thing that has happened is

1. ILP launch

2. Ripple/Xpring working towards DeFi products

3. MoneyGram deal

4. Ripple working with QNT + ETH projects

XRPTwin: Once again some additional information:

ILP: InterLedger Protocol – designed to solve a pressing issue in the blockchain space; the ability of a decentralized app to purchase resources without being restricted to a particular blockchain network. The InterLedger Protocol aims at creating a universal network for sending value, and it would be independent of any company or currency (Source)

Xpring: New initiative by Ripple that will invest in, incubate, acquire and provide grants to companies and projects run by proven entrepreneurs (Source)

DeFi: Abbreviation of the phrase decentralized finance which generally refers to the digital assets and financial smart contracts, protocols, and decentralized applications (DApps) built on Ethereum. In simpler terms, it's financial software built on the blockchain that can be pieced together like Money Legos (Source)

MoneyGram: MoneyGram is a global provider of innovative money transfer and payment services. (Source)

QNT: Quant Technology which allows organisations to benefit from blockchain through a single, simple-to-use gateway that eliminates the need to integrate multiple individual blockchain gateways, saving time and money. (Source)

ETH: Ethereum: open source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction-based state transitions. (For what it is worth) (Source)

XRPTwin:

What do you expect from 2020 ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

I expect/hope for two things: Regulation regarding XRP and SBI “flipping the switch” in regards MoneyTap.

XRPTwin:

What can we expect from you in 2020 ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

Not much, since most of the topics have been covered many times. Will try to keep with current events and share the information, that I find interesting. So not much change.

XRPTwin:

Research is a success when ...... ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

When you help people seeing “the Big Picture”, and it turns out later, that it helped changed peoples lives for the better in a profound way

XRPTwin:

Does Corona help Crypto or slowdown ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

Both ... In some areas it will slow down the work that has been done. In other areas it will speed up, like policy and regulation, since there is a “push” for a cashless society ! ! !

XRPTwin:

How many hours a day, you think about XRP and how many hours are dedicated to Ripple , XRP ? ? ?

IAMLegion:

50%

\=====================================================sorry, I may have have a quick round of single word(s) question, what do you think about:

\=====================================================

XRPTwin:

Polysign

ODL gaining traction in current corridors

IPO Ripple

DeFi

BOA rumors

US Regulations

Swift

Coil

IAMLegion:

Polysign: Hopefully gonna help with getting institutional investors into xrp in a big way.

ODL gaining traction in current corridors: The (MoneyGram) liquidity is going to accelerate in a way, what is going to blow peoples mind. Same way with the number of new Ripple customers. Look at the way SWIFT grew over the years to get a sense of it ! ! !

IPO Ripple: Not sure. Maybe the big banks are going to end up owning Ripple. Like Citi, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan or perhaps the BlackRock's and Vanguard's of this world

DeFi: 1 word: GameCHANGER ! ! !

Swift: RippleNet is already connected to SWIFT through Santander, and there is going to be more connections/usage between the 2 networks in the future. Ripple might even become a SWIFT member one day ...

Coil: An amazing platform for an alternative method for creators to monetize their content online ... like this post Subscribers get even more info following the 100 + 20 rule. Instantaneous micropayments is something we are heading ! ! !

So a nice interview with a very interesting XRPCommunity Member ... If you did not know him yet .... you DO by now ! ! !

Please follow him on Twitter and Coil if you do not do that yet ... it will be a gateway to great amounts of information ! ! !

Twitter: IAMLegion

Coil: IAMLegion

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Previous Interview: Socks make a (Wo)Man ! ! !

Next Interview: It's HAMMER(TOE) TIME ! ! !

A long title for the one thing that Tuesday is going to look like ! ! !

This is where we started

The car we have at the moment, does NOT resemble a transporter yet, so we promised each other, when Noah is going to bed tonight, it will be shaped MUCH MORE like a car than what it does at the moment ! ! !

Lego always offers opportunities to test. The book exactly shows you what to do, so this was the test for Noah and of course .... who am I fooling ! ! !

Are these the correct pieces or .....

Hmmmmm .... little drawing time ... but just one drawing by dad and son and back to it ! ! !

The interesting fact, everything turns and rotates , really nice:

https://youtu.be/I6iyRbhkfUQ

Still busy on the bodywork, which is not good enough for the goal we have today: recognizing the actual form of a car ! ! !

We had a little break in between as daddy had to do some other things and Noah also had to do some other things himself. After dinner we moved on and I cannot say we did not make moves ! ! !

The final is picture did it for us ..... we actually were building a car ... a transporter. It was forming well and the dancing , the hand clapping, kissing, Noah really likes it ! ! !

Tomorrow we are going to create a lot of the rest of the car ... if we can get it all in, going to be fun ! ! !

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