Do you think this game will ever come to america anytime soon? I have really been wanting to play it but it seems like such a hassle to even make an account to be able to download the game. They dont allow americans to sign up and play i guess. It looks like such a good call of duty game, i think Activision could be making a lot of money off of it releasing it in america. if thats what they are worried about even with it being free I dont know i just really want to play it.

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

President Donald Trump announced he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the virus and will begin their quarantine and recovery process immediately. The news comes after it was announced that close presidential aide Hope Hicks tested positive Wednesday evening.
Megathread Part I

Submissions that may interest you

SUBMISSION	DOMAIN
Trump, first lady to quarantine after top aide tests positive for coronavirus	thehill.com
Trump flew to New Jersey for a fundraiser, reportedly after learning Hope Hicks had COVID-19 symptoms	theweek.com
Putin says Trump's 'inherent vitality' will see him through COVID-19	reuters.com
Trump in 'quarantine process' after top aide gets COVID-19	sfgate.com
Trump in ‘Quarantine Process' After Top Aide Gets COVID-19	nbcwashington.com
President Donald Trump, first lady to quarantine after top aide tests positive for COVID-19	upi.com
Trump in ‘quarantine process’ after top aide gets COVID-19	bostonherald.com
Trump's positive Covid-19 test throws country into fresh upheaval	amp.cnn.com
Putin offers Trump wishes of 'sincere support' after positive coronavirus test	thehill.com
Trump tests positive for COVID-19: What happens if the president cannot perform his duties?	wftv.com
President Trump and first lady Melania test positive for COVID-19	cbsnews.com
Fears for Joe Biden after Trump tests positive for Covid	theguardian.com
Trump's positive Covid test was a surprise that many saw coming	theguardian.com
Biden Will Get Urgent COVID-19 Test After Trump’s Diagnosis, Says Report	thedailybeast.com
Vice President Mike Pence and second lady test negative for coronavirus following Trump's positive diagnosis	cnbc.com
VP Mike Pence tests negative and 'remains in good heath,' after Trump tests positive for COVID-19	timesunion.com
The Finance 202: Stock futures dive on the news that Trump has coronavirus	washingtonpost.com
Putin wished Trump a speedy recovery after his COVID-19 diagnosis, and said his 'innate vitality' will see him through	businessinsider.com
Mike Pence and wife Karen test negative for coronavirus after Trump diagnosis	independent.co.uk
China’s state media outlet mocks Trump for contracting coronavirus	nypost.com
Inb4 trump has now "contracted" coronavirus cos his team knew he f****d up the first debate that bad that any further appearance would be detrimental to his campaign.	sbs.com.au
Putin says Trump's 'inherent vitality' will see him through COVID-19	reuters.com
Mike Pence and wife Karen test negative for coronavirus after Trump diagnosis	independent.co.uk
Trump tests positive for COVID-19: Pence tests negative, Biden reportedly getting test	usatoday.com
Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic	npr.org
Trump's coronavirus diagnosis presents America with new clear, present dangers	axios.com
Biden to get tested Friday morning following Trump COVID-19 positive test: report	thehill.com
The virus spares no one’: World reacts to Trump’s positive coronavirus test	washingtonpost.com
Shock, sympathy, mockery: World reacts to Trump infection - CBC News	cbc.ca
Trump’s Covid diagnosis renews testing debate on Capitol Hill	politico.com
Mike Pence, who will assume the presidency if Trump is incapacitated, has tested negative for COVID-19	businessinsider.com
Biden wishes Trump, first lady 'swift recovery' after positive COVID-19 tests	thehill.com
MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell Shouts Out Unproven COVID-19 'Cure' To Trump	huffpost.com
Age, obesity put Trump at high risk for severe coronavirus infection	axios.com
Chinese state media mocks Trump's positive virus test: 'Paid the price for his gamble to play down' pandemic	thehill.com
Older, overweight and male: Trump's COVID risk factors make him vulnerable	reuters.com
President Trump’s positive Covid-19 test throws country into fresh upheaval	mercurynews.com
Trump’s Covid-19 Diagnosis Reshapes Election a Month From Vote	bloomberg.com
MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell Shouts Out Unproven COVID-19 ‘Cure’ To Trump	m.huffpost.com
Trump’s positive coronavirus test will keep him out of swing states he hasn't visited yet	independent.co.uk
QAnon Believers Think Trump Got COVID On Purpose Because of Course They Do - QAnon followers believe the virus is fake, but also that Trump has it. And they're "dangerously hype" about it.	vice.com
Biden says he's 'praying for the health and safety" of Trump after the president's COVID-19 diagnosis	businessinsider.com
Keller: Will Voters Punish Trump For Deriding Coronavirus Precautions?	boston.cbslocal.com
‘Wear A God Damn Mask,’ Joe Kennedy Tweets While Wishing Trump Fast Covid Recovery	boston.cbslocal.com
New York Times slammed for suggesting Trump might not remain on ballot after coronavirus diagnosis	foxnews.com
Trump joked while people suffered with Covid. Well, is now the time to stop?	theguardian.com
Pence, second lady test negative for coronavirus after Trump's positive result	thehill.com
Coronavirus: Pelosi says Trump’s failure to wear masks at rallies was ‘brazen invitation’	independent.co.uk
Fox's Kilmeade: Trump could serve as positive example if he beats COVID while in 'danger age' of 74	thehill.com
White House wanted to keep Hope Hicks's positive COVID-19 test private: report	thehill.com
Trump experiencing ‘mild symptoms’ after coronavirus diagnosis	cnbc.com
Trump experiencing 'mild symptoms' after coronavirus diagnosis	cnbc.com
Trump’s strange pre-spin on his coronavirus diagnosis: It came from military, police who want to ‘hug’ and ‘kiss’ you	washingtonpost.com
Minnesota congressmen traveled with Trump before, after Duluth rally and positive COVID-19 test	duluthnewstribune.com
White House official: Trump experiencing ‘mild’ symptoms of coronavirus after positive test	apnews.com
Putin sends Trump a telegram offering ‘sincere support’ after positive coronavirus test	marketwatch.com
RNC chair Ronna McDaniel has tested positive for coronavirus following Trump diagnosis	independent.co.uk
Trump’s Behavior Was ‘Brazen Invitation’ for the Coronavirus, Pelosi Says	thedailybeast.com
Trump, first lady positive for virus; he has 'mild symptoms'	apnews.com
Trump, first lady positive for virus; he has ‘mild symptoms’	apnews.com
Donald Trump has 'mild symptoms' after contracting coronavirus	news.sky.com
President Donald Trump's coronavirus infection draws international sympathy and a degree of schadenfreude	eu.usatoday.com
Gretchen Whitmer: Donald Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis 'wakeup call to every single American'	freep.com
Kushner, Ivanka Trump test negative for COVID-19	thehill.com
Tracking Trump: Where the president was and who he came in contact with before announcing his positive coronavirus test	marketwatch.com
Of Course Donald Trump Got Covid	newrepublic.com
Trump has ‘mild symptoms’ after testing positive for COVID-19	wkow.com
Trump and Melania test positive for Covid.	foxnews.com
Leftists Cheer News Trump, Hope Hicks Infected With COVID-19: ‘I Hope They Both Die’	dailywire.com
White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas reacts to Trump's coronavirus diagnosis, says 'zero reason to panic'	foxnews.com
Piers Morgan rips mockery of Trump after contracting COVID-19: 'No better than the man they loathe'	thehill.com
Trump Has ‘Mild Symptoms’ After He and First Lady Test Positive for COVID-19	nbcnewyork.com
US stocks slump after Trump tests positive for virus	bostonglobe.com
Trump’s test shows how Covid-19 might threaten Barrett confirmation	rollcall.com
UK bookmakers stop taking bets on US election after Trump gets Covid-19	edition.cnn.com
WATCH: Trump ignored the science and his own experts on coronavirus — now he's tested positive for COVID-19, while more than 200,000 Americans have died	businessinsider.com
Pelosi: Trump Flouting COVID-19 Guidelines Was 'A Brazen Invitation For This To Happen' - The president, who said he tested positive early Friday, has downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic, even as more than 200,000 Americans have died.	huffpost.com
Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett tests negative for coronavirus	thehill.com
Trump’s pre-spin seems to blame military, police interactions for coronavirus diagnosis	washingtonpost.com
How Many People Has Donald Trump Already Infected With COVID-19?	vanityfair.com
Concern over Biden's possible exposure to COVID-19 after Trump tests positive	abcnews.go.com
RNC chairwoman tests positive for coronavirus after she was with President Trump, who has COVID	nydailynews.com
Donald Trump's Positive COVID-19 Announcement Becomes His Most Liked Tweet Ever	newsweek.com
Hicks, hubris and not a lot of masks: the week Trump caught Covid	theguardian.com
'We continue to pray': Joe Biden offers thoughts, prayers to President Trump for speedy recovery after coronavirus test	usatoday.com
Nancy Pelosi says Trump’s behavior was ‘brazen invitation’ after COVID-19 infection	nypost.com
Pelosi says Trump's actions were a 'brazen invitation' for a positive COVID-19 test, calls his diagnosis 'very sad' and 'tragic'	businessinsider.com
Conspiracy theorists believe Trump is using COVID results to postpone the election — Many online are calling b.s. amid the shocking news.	dailydot.com
A Steelworker Who Sat In The Debate Hall On Trump’s Positive Coronavirus Test: “It’s Frustrating”	buzzfeednews.com
President Trump showing mild symptoms after testing positive for COVID-19: officials	nydailynews.com
Mitch McConnell says the next presidential debate could be held remotely via videoconference after Trump tests positive for COVID-19	businessinsider.com
Trump experiencing mild Covid symptoms: Why the first week matters	nbcnews.com
Trump had close contact with "dozens" on trip after White House learned he was exposed to COVID-19. Trump traveled to a fundraiser after Hope Hicks already tested positive and he was "feeling poorly"	salon.com
Trump Kept Regular Schedule After Learning Close Aide Had Covid	bloomberg.com
Map: President Trump’s travels the week he tested positive for Covid-19	nbcnews.com
QAnon, the far-right, and some left-wingers are all spreading conspiracies about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis	businessinsider.com
GOP donors panic after coming close to Trump at fundraiser hours before his positive Covid-19 test	cnbc.com
Trump experiencing "mild symptoms" of the Coronavirus	newsday.com
Biden, Harris express wishes for speedy 'recovery' after Trump's positive coronavirus test	foxnews.com
Trump and Melania 'paid the price': Chinese propaganda mocks president after COVID-19 diagnosis - The editor-in-chief of one of China's state-run media outlets suggested that President Donald Trump and the US first lady, Melania Trump, "paid the price" by contracting the coronavirus.	businessinsider.com
Putin sends Trump a telegram to wish him speedy recovery from COVID-19: agencies cite Kremlin (Reuters)	reuters.com
Trump coronavirus: Pence ‘praying for full recovery’ of president and first Lady Melania after positive test	independent.co.uk
After Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, Trump, Biden appearances in Arizona next week unclear	azcentral.com
Trump’s coronavirus infection is an indictment of his approach to the pandemic - The diagnosis is another reminder of his administration’s failure on Covid-19.	vox.com
“No one knows where this is going to go”: Pandemonium inside the White House as Trump contracts COVID-19	vanityfair.com
Trump experiencing mild symptoms from COVID-19	telegraph.co.uk
Judge Amy Coney Barrett tests negative for COVID-19 after Trump contracts virus	nydailynews.com
President Trump apparently has COVID-19	thebulletin.org
Stocks Fall After Trump Tests Positive for Covid-19	nytimes.com
Twitter users predicted Trump's October COVID-19 diagnosis	dailydot.com
White House learned of Hicks's positive test before Trump left for fundraiser: Meadows	thehill.com
[GOP donors 'freaking out' after coming close to Trump at fundraiser hours before his positive Covid-19 test](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/gop-donors-panic-after-coming-close-to-trump-at-fundraiser-hours-before-positive-covid-19-test.html?__source=sharebar	twitter&par=sharebar)
Chris Wallace Says He's Getting Tested for Coronavirus After Being Exposed to Trump During Debate — "I don't think there's any question it's going to raise questions again about how seriously the president has taken the coronavirus," Wallace said Friday.	people.com
Trump's Covid diagnosis upends campaign, presents challenge for Biden — "This election isn't about Trump getting Covid, it's about America getting Covid," one Democratic strategist said.	nbcnews.com
Trump tests positive for COVID-19: Trump 'feeling mild symptoms,' but 'energetic'; Bidens praying for Trumps - live updates	usatoday.com
At 74 and obese, Covid-19 could be very serious for Donald Trump	telegraph.co.uk
John Cleese Revels in Donald Trump's COVID-19 Diagnosis — The 'Monty Python' icon has made it clear in the past he is not a fan of the president's and often criticizes him via social media.	hollywoodreporter.com
What Trump’s Positive Coronavirus Test Means for the Presidential Campaign	newyorker.com
Pelosi: Trump Flouting COVID-19 Guidelines Was ‘A Brazen Invitation For This To Happen’	m.huffpost.com
The Surprising Leftists Who Actually Wished Trump Well After COVID Diagnosis	townhall.com
How Will Trump’s Positive COVID-19 Test Affect The Election?	fivethirtyeight.com
Trump campaign did not notify Biden of positive coronavirus test	thehill.com
President Trump has ‘mild symptoms’ after testing positive for the coronavirus	opb.org
Trump downplayed Hope Hicks' Covid diagnosis on Fox hours before announcing he also tested positive	cnn.com
Mary Trump Slams President After Coronavirus Diagnosis: ‘Wear a F*cking Mask’	thedailybeast.com
Trump's age and weight could put him at higher risk for severe coronavirus infection	cbsnews.com
Will Trump’s COVID-19 Infection Change the Way He Manages the Pandemic? It Didn’t for the Leaders of Brazil and the U.K.	time.com
Trump's busy week before his positive Covid-19 test – in pictures - US news	theguardian.com
Timeline of Donald Trump’s activities in week coronavirus hit home	mlive.com
Global stocks fall, dollar gains after Trump gets coronavirus	uk.reuters.com
The latest coronavirus test results for Trump’s advisers and allies	washingtonpost.com
Sen Rob Portman, Rep Jim Jordan, Jon Husted will get COVID tests after being around Donald Trump	beaconjournal.com
Trump’s coronavirus infection is the result of his deadly, foolish recklessness	latimes.com
Positive! Trump’s Covid Bungling Now Takes a Personal Toll	thenation.com
Boris Johnson, who almost died of covid-19, wishes Trump a ‘speedy recovery’	washingtonpost.com
Did President Trump Refer to the Coronavirus as a 'Hoax'?	snopes.com
The world was already in chaos before Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, and now there is more uncertainty than ever	businessinsider.com
Joe Biden has tested negative for coronavirus after Trump tests positive	vox.com
Trump says he and first lady have tested positive for the coronavirus	washingtonpost.com
Trump has coronavirus: Biden tests negative for COVID-19 after sharing debate stage with president - WATCH LIVE	abc7ny.com
'Not a Tragic Accident—A Crime Scene': Critics Say Trump Covid Diagnosis a 'Culmination' of His Deadly Pandemic Response	commondreams.org
After Trump's Positive Test, Here's The Status Of The Line Of Succession	npr.org
Trump suggested US troops or police were to blame for infecting White House staff just before he tested positive for COVID-19	businessinsider.com
Democratic nominee Joe Biden tests negative for coronavirus after potential exposure, Trump's diagnosis	cnbc.com
Schumer demands Senate coronavirus testing program after Trump diagnosis	thehill.com
Flights for Donald Trump's Wisconsin rallies canceled after president tests positive for COVID-19	madison.com
Joe Biden tests negative for coronavirus after Trump tests positive	businessinsider.com
Trump's coronavirus diagnosis guarantees this election will be about everything he has tried to avoid	cnn.com
The stock market's fear gauge surges 12% after President Trump tests positive for COVID-19	news.sky.com
Trump Team Knew of Hicks’ Positive Test—but Went Ahead With Golf Club Fundraiser	thedailybeast.com
InfoWars’ DeAnna Lorraine Claims ‘the Left’ May Have Given Trump COVID-19 Through His Debate Mic	rightwingwatch.org
Getting COVID-19 Is Probably Not a Brilliant Ploy for Sympathy That Will Boost Trump’s Reelection Chances	slate.com
House Probe Into Trump's Failed Covid-19 Response Shows "Unprecedented, Coordinated" Political Interference	commondreams.org
This Republican senator is the early leader for worst take on Trump's coronavirus diagnosis	cnn.com
Chris McDonald ‘Wouldn’t Put it Past’ Democrats to Infect Trump With COVID-19 to Stop the Presidential Debates	rightwingwatch.org
Trump supporter potentially exposed to COVID-19 from RNC chair's visit	cincinnati.com
GOP senator on Judiciary panel tests positive for Covid-19 days after meeting with Trump's nominee	cnn.com
Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario sets new record with 732 reported cases; Trump, first lady test positive for virus; Biden tests negative	thestar.com
[Politico] Trump coronavirus diagnosis leaves lawmakers exposed	politico.com
RNC chair Ronna McDaniel says she has COVID-19, hours after Trump	6abc.com
Nancy Pelosi Says Donald Trump's Actions Were 'Brazen Invitation' to Catch COVID	newsweek.com
Trump Has Repeatedly Downplayed COVID-19. What Will He Do Now That He Has It?	buzzfeednews.com
No, Trump Isn’t Faking COVID In A Master Scheme To Vanquish Biden	talkingpointsmemo.com
Trump Could Only Ignore the Reality of Coronavirus for So Long	jacobinmag.com
Trump’s ‘positive for COVID-19’ tweet is his most ‘liked’ post ever	marketwatch.com
Trump’s refusal to wear a face mask is a catastrophe A face mask might have protected Trump — and the people around him — from the coronavirus.	vox.com
Schumer says Trump coronavirus diagnosis shows what happens 'when you ignore science'	foxnews.com
Sen. Mike Lee, who met with Trump Supreme Court pick Amy Coney Barrett, tests positive for COVID-19	usatoday.com
Nancy Pelosi says continuity of government is ‘always in place’ after Trump tests positive for Covid-19	cnbc.com
Naomi Klein: I Fear Trump Will Exploit His COVID Infection to Further Destabilize the Election	democracynow.org
PolitiFact - Trump’s health and COVID-19: Here’s what we know	politifact.com
Confusion, concern infiltrate White House after Trump’s positive test	politico.com
Putin, Who Has Spent Almost Six Months In Isolation To Avoid The Coronavirus, Sent Trump A Get Well Note	buzzfeednews.com
Trumpworld delighted in cruelty. Now that Trump has COVID, it demands empathy.	businessinsider.com
Where Trump went (and who he was with) leading up to his coronavirus diagnosis	politico.com
Biden tests negative for COVID-19, reminds folks to 'wear a mask' after being mocked by Trump for mask at debate	usatoday.com

TLDR; EGLX.to is the single best pure-eSports play in the world.

Look I have an incredible track record of getting lucky picking stocks in the new reddit dominated market (PLTR, U, AI, BB, etc) and I want to tell you all about my next big one: Enthusiast Gaming.
While our community has nearly quadrupled in size, I still believe EGLX is one of the most underappreciated plays out there.
Since writing my first DD on EGLX, a few things have transpired:

• The stock has gone up like 80%.
• EGLX signed a massive deal with Samsung and Samsung will be the official sponsor of their 7 eSports teams.
• EGLX has strengthened their balance sheet by $50M, taking care of the cash risk I identified in the original DD.
• The stock price has formed some significant resistance, and has a solid foundation above $6.
• Call of Duty has had their best year in franchise history, and was crowned the best selling game of 2020 -> Great news for a company who owns 1 of 12 professional COD esports licenses.
• One of EGLX's streamers, xQc, found his way to the top of WSB... indicating people on that forum follow EGLX, but they just don't know it yet.
• Their recent bought deal is set to conclude this week, and I am hoping for big news on their Nasdaq application to follow shortly thereafter.
• Last and probably least, I was personally right again and won big again, in both BB and GME. And yes I realized my gains in both. So for whatever it's worth, I have proven my track record again.

Get in before the Nasdaq listing if you like money.
Positions: I currently have 40% of my portfolio in Enthusiast Gaming.
I hope the mods don't mind, but I wanted to repost this DD I wrote about a month ago, because it seems like none of the noobs know about the Enthusiast Gaming eSports revolution. So here it is below:
---------------------------------------------------------
LINK to original post - POSTED JAN 6TH 2020:
Greetings friendos.
It's 12:20 AM where I live and since I can't sleep, I have decided to finally write a DD on Enthusiast Gaming that I have been thinking about for some time... EGLX is a stock that I believe can make you 5-20x gains in the next year. I have been watching this stock since like $1.50 during the darkest days of COVID, and I am kicking myself for not getting in until $4 just before Christmas. But I am now a proud shareholder preaching the gospel.
What the eff do I know?
For some background information on my own stock picking prowess and why my ideas might be worth considering, I previously wrote super early DD's on Palantir, Telos and C3ai before making money in all 3 of them. I have a large number of people who have sent me thank you messages on reddit for my DD's on those companies.

PLTR - I was in at 10.50 Telos - I was in at 20 C3ai - I was in at 95

​
As a final qualifying note, in addition to getting incredibly lucky at picking random stocks, I also work in the gaming and digital marketing spaces, and I believe that I am somewhat qualified to comment on the merits of an esports and influencer company such as EGLX.

Who the heck is Enthusiast Gaming?

Enthusiast Gaming is a giant network of websites, esports teams and streaming influencers in the gaming space. Actually, they proclaim to be the single largest esports platform in North America. As of yesterday, they have officially announced that all of their collective followings put them in the top 100 web companies operating in America. Note, the only downside here is that they are getting that number from a huge number of mid sized platforms, not one single super popular site like twitch or youtube.
>Source: https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/news/

Does anyone even watch video games?

Yes. They do and will continue to. Actually us North Americans are very late to the party. The League of Legends world championship is already as popular as the super bowl. These viewers are coming primarily from Asia.
>Facts: https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/league-of-legends-vs-superbowl-viewer-numbers
Furthermore, the hyper focus on gaming as a cultural cornerstone is in fact coming to North America. I hope you don't actually need convincing on this point, but here is a fact for you:
Prior to COVID, studies were already showed that over 90% of all children in America were gaming in some capacity.
>Source: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/video-games-saints-or-psychopaths-082814#:~:text=More%20than%2090%20percent%20of%20American%20kids%20play%20video%20games,of%20Americans%20over%2050%20play.
Now for comparison, most of us now adults grew up while gaming became a thing. If you are a similar age to me, you know when we were growing up, it was like 20-40% of boys gamed, and maybe 1-5% of girls gamed. This dramatic cultural shift is staggering. Obviously, this trend has been solidified this year with COVID. These gamers will and are translating to not only playing, but also watching games. That's Amazon's Twitch platform is growing fast AF. Watching video games is big big big money.
>Twitch facts: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-viewership-grows-faster-than-previously-forecast-2020-9#:~:text=That's%20a%2026.2%25%20increase%20from,gaming%20streams%20are%20gaining%20popularity.&text=We%20forecast%20that%20the%20number,next%20year%2C%20to%2044.0%20million.

Who are their competitors?

Actually this is where I think it gets particularly interesting. As a huge gamer and esports believer, I have been looking to find esports investments, but having a real hard time finding pure esports plays. There aren't many companies out there to invest in that are strictly set to capitalize on esports. Frankly, most of the stocks I have found are seemingly doing dick all. I would encourage you to google esports companies. You will mostly find a bunch of garbo sounding companies that are somehow valued at $25m-$50m market cap, but their websites are broken and aren't even up-to-date. Really the only "esports" companies to invest in are the tech majors like Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook, and the video game companies like Sony, Nintendo, ATVI, EA etc. Sure these are all great companies, but none of them are strictly focused on esports and none of them are new or cheap enough to turn into a ten bagger.
*** IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, THIS NEXT ARTICLE IS IMPORTANT**\*
Forbes recently released a report on the top 10 most valuable esports companies. Obviously, EGLX is on the list, or I wouldn't be mentioning it. But get this, EGLX is not only the ONLY publicly listed company that forbes identified, but they also have the highest revenue by a long shot.
>SORCERY: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/12/05/the-most-valuable-esports-companies-2020/?sh=2e4769ae73d0
EGLX is honestly positioned as the supreme pure esports play in the world right now.

Who the hell is leading this little company?

Well my number one most important metric when assessing a little random undiscovered company is who is captaining the ship? The best way to tell if a small cap stock is a scam or the real deal is to see who is involved. In fact, the biggest reason I chose to invest in the above mentioned companies was because of who was leading them (PLTR = Theil, C3.ai = microsoft ties and the dude from oracle, Telos = a former US general)
Good news of course, EGLX has an A+ grade with leadership legitimacy.
Adrian Montgomery, the former CEO of the Aquilini Sports and Entertainment (AKA THE VANCOUVER CANUCKS) is running EGLX. These guys are the real deal and they aren't fuckin about in some scam company. If they can run the Canucks, they can run an esports team.

But how do they profit?

EGLX does not own games or huge streaming platforms like twitch. So you may be wondering how they actually make money? INFLUENCER MARKETING. That's how. They are generating money through ad placements and influencer marketing on their huge platform. (And remember, they are in the top 100 US online companies in terms of reach.)
Facebook and Google are already soaking up ungodly amounts of money through online advertising and taking over the world. But paid ad placements only go so far. I don't know of a good source off hand, but I am telling you subjectively that influencer marketing is one of the "next big things". Companies are paying people with major social followings to review and talk about their shit. This is a very very big industry. I truly believe influencers are going to overtake hollywood and MSM. You shall see... No sources here. Pure opinion.

Is it actually making money?

Shit loads actually. This year EGLX is talking about increasing their total revenue from $9m last year to $120m this year for like a 1100% annual revenue increase. Obviously, if their proforma numbers turn out to be bogus the stock will collapse. But, referring to the fact that the owners of the Canucks are running this company, I am hoping we are not all being lied to and frauded out of our money.
https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/financial-statements/

How do you know I will make the tendies though?

***IF YOU ARE SKIMMING, ALSO READ THIS PART**\*
EGLX is currently trading at a $450m CAD or about $300M USD market cap. That is absolute peanuts compared to any other hype stock in the memesphere. With $120m annual revenue, that puts them at about a 3x price to sales ratio, which really isn't that bad at all for even a boring a blue chip. For a growth stock, it is extremely low.
But if you dig into their investor presentation, they are actually claiming they will raise their Revenue Per User from $0.40 to $3 in the next 2 years, or a nearly 750% revenue increase, not accounting for growth in the size of their social reach. If you include reach growth, it could be nearly 10 times revenue growth. By that point, the current market cap would be a fraction of their annual sales.
This stock is absurdly undervalued if the promises being made by the leadership come true.
>Go look: https://www.enthusiastgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/EG-Presentation-November-2020-Nov-27.pdf

Final Fun facts:

- They own the best Overwatch team.
- They own the Seattle Call of Duty team, which happens to be among the nerdiest cities in America.
- They claim to have the best Fortnite players, but idk that game is trash so I couldn't really say if it's true or not.
But wait there's more!
Saved the best info for last.
The stock tripled in the past month. Why?
Because EGLX is still only trading on the TSX and they have applied to list on the US stock exchange.
They have appointed KPMG as the auditor for the application, and having nice big reputable firm involved certainly increases the odds it will get approved. Furthermore, I actually emailed their investor relations folks and asked when they expect to hit the US markets. Surprisingly, they responded and told me they expect their application to be approved Q1 2021.
Once this puppy hits wallstreet, I see it breaking $1B USD in no time, which would be a 3x return. $3B-$5B doesn't seem unreasonable if the current market insanity persists through 2021.
We have the opportunity to get in on this company before those darned Americans pump it to the moon.
CANADIANS HAVE THE UPPER HAND IN THE STONK MARKET FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OUR DAMN LIVES. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT.
--
PS: Risks. Risks. I think it's almost certain that these guys will issue more shares to raise some capital. They are kinda acting like the want to pump their own stock with unnecessary positive announcements, and honestly, they are pretty low on cash. Think they only have $9m on hand or something small like that. Too lazy to look it up again. Just watch out for dilution. My bet is that they will do it after listing on the US exchanges and mooning. But honestly I am not too worried in the long run because they need the cash to compete in this space.
PSS: More risks. If the us exchange application gets denied it will be bad bad news for my TFSA.

Smash Bros is truly an incredible celebration of gaming, and just in its playable characters represents a wide variety of genres, including 2D platformers (Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Kirby, Ice Climber, Sonic), 3D platformers (Mario and Sonic again, Banjo-Kazooie) action-adventure (The Legend of Zelda), Metroidvania (Metroid, Castlevania), Shoot’em up/rail shooter (Star Fox), RPGs (Pokémon, Earthbound, Xenoblade, Final Fantasy, persona, Dragon Quest), racing (F-Zero), turn-based strategy (Fire Emblem), 2D shooters (Kid Icarus, Mega Man), third-person shooters (Kid Icarus:Uprising, Splatoon), minigame collection/party game (WarioWare), real-time strategy (Pikmin), stealth (Metal Gear), life sim (Animal Crossing), sports (Punch-Out), maze games (Pac-Man) fighting games (Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, ARMS), beat’em ups (Bayonetta). Sandbox/survival (Minecraft), and other games with non-conventional genres (Game &Watch, ROB, Wii Fit, Duck Hunt).
Yet, there are still many genres that are completely, or almost completely absent, whether they are lacking in Nintendo’s catalog, or simply because they haven’t got a chance yet. So I thought I’d take a look at some of them and try to give a few examples of characters, first-or-third party, who could fill that hole. For third parties, I’ll try to find the franchise that is to its genre what Street Fighter is to fighting games, or Final Fantasy is to RPGs, since I feel for third parties Smash usually goes with classic icons or games that have otherwise made a huge impact.
I’m also not saying any of these characters are even remotely likely, or even that I want them, in fact many of them aren’t. I’m also not saying these are the only characters that could possibly represent their genres, these are just my thoughts. I’ll try to find other things each characters have going for them, though. And hey, this could get you thinking about characters you didn’t know you wanted.
This list also includes some genres that are technically represented, but I feel not satisfactorily. Mostly those who are only represented as spin-offs from a franchise of different genre. You’ll see what I mean.
Puzzle games
Here’s an example. Yes, we do have Dr. Mario, but that’s just a Mario spin-off. 90% of Doc’s moveset is still taken from the platformer games. There isn’t even a Dr. Mario stage! So, if we wanted to include a pure puzzle IP, which could it be?
Well, for the Nintendo side, I think the best choice would be Lip from Panel de Pon, also known as Puzzle League. PL was a mainstay of Nintendo consoles for a long time, and was the premier first-party puzzler, and there’s still a lot of fondness for it now. References to it abound in the Smash series since Melee. Unfortunately, Lip is basically non-existent outside of Japan. NoA deemed the original too girly, so changed the games to feature more MANLY IPs like Yoshi. After a while even Japan stopped putting Lip in the games, and there hasn’t been a new full PL game since 2007. It did receive sort of a resurgence last year as Nintendo released the Japanese original worldwide through NSO.
Aside from Lip, there are several more recent Nintendo puzzlers that could get a rep. The Brain Age series is undoubtedly important and used to be huge. You could make the argument that it, not PL, is Nintendo’s premier puzzle series, and it is even still going. But its protagonist, Dr. Kawashima is already an At. Mallow from the Pushmo series and Box-Boy from the eponymous series are both acclaimed and popular with four games each. More recently yet are Snip and Clip, the stars of Snipperclips.
Now for the third-party side, the undeniable king of puzzle games is Tetris. Problem is, Tetris doesn’t have characters. I’ve seen people suggest a literal Tetris block as a character, and at this point, I wouldn’t put it past Sakurai, but for the sake of argument, let's keep looking. The other most iconic puzzle game series might be PopCap’s Bejeweled series, but that suffers from the same problem (Colorful gems for Smash?). Looking further still we have Sega’s Puyo Puyo series, which is very popular in Japan, and has been around since the early 90s. This series actually has identifiable characters, such as protagonist Arle Nadja.
Puzzle games aren’t just about matching 3, though. They come in a variety of formats. Usually they are quick and bite-sized, which makes them perfect for mobile, and the most iconic mobile puzzler (Other than Bejeweled-but-with-candy) is Angry Birds and the main bird Red could be a great mobile rep.
TLDR:
First-party: Lip (Puzzle League), Dr. kawashima (Brain Age), Mallow (Pushmo), Box-Boy, Snip and Clip
Third-party: Tetris Block (?), Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo), Red (Angry Birds)
First-person shooter
Again, yes, we do have Metroid Prime reps in the game, but that is a spin-off of a non-FPS franchise. And there is debate over whether it is an FPS or an action-adventure game (I mean, it can be both, but whatever). If we wanted a pure FPS rep who would it be? Nintendo doesn’t really have its own FPS series, so let’s just skip to third-party.
There are two series that I think can be called the most iconic FPSs. The first is DOOM, represented by Doom Slayer, so influential to the genre they were at one point called Doom clones. The series dates back from 1993 and is still going strong with popular acclaimed releases. The series has a great presence in Nintendo consoles and is a popular request. Unfortunately, it’s not very popular in Japan. The other is Halo, represented by Master Chief, the Xbox’s flagship series and one that redefined FPSs away from Doom clones. Both characters are owned by Microsoft now, but they wouldn’t be the first or second Microsoft-owned characters in the game.
Other good candidates include Doom’s sister and predecessor series Wolfenstein (BJ Blackowitz), the highly influential Half-Life (Gordon Freeman), and the mega-blockbuster Call of Duty (soldier? I don’t know CoD), but these are series you add after Doom or Halo.
TLDR:
First-party: none
Third party: Doom Slayer, Master Chief.
Adventure games
In case you don’t know, adventure games don’t refer to games like Zelda, which is an action-adventure game. You might know this genre better as point and click adventure games, though of course, they don’t need to be point-and-click. They could be text based, have regular controls or be what you call visual novels.
Nintendo has a few of these, but none very well-known. The two most notable both released for the Famicom Disk System: Shin Onigashima and the Famicom Detective Club duology, both of which received a Super Famicom remake and then nothing more. Though Japan-only and short-lived, both are fondly remembered, and Nintendo actually references them both quite a bit, almost as much as other retro NES games. Of the two, FDC is the most likely to get a Smash rep. In fact, Sakurai even said he wanted to include FDC protagonist Ayumi in Melee, but thought she’d be too unknown in the West. What’s more, the series is being revived this year with remakes of both games coming to the Switch (but only in Japan). Other than those, Nintendo had a couple of adventure series on the DS, Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk, but they weren’t very popular, and they are in that limbo of not being old enough to be nostalgic retro classics, and not new enough to be relevant. Speaking of new, Nintendo published a new adventure IP just last week, Buddy Mission BOND, but it’s probably too new. It’s also, naturally, Japan-only.
On the third-party side, the adventure genre doesn’t have an undisputed king, but there are three series that I’d argue come close: King’s Quest, Monkey Island and Myst. This last one doesn’t really have a character, but the other two have quite memorable mascots: King’s Quest has the gallant King Graham, and Monkey Island has Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate! King’s Quest is older, arguably more influential, has more games and is more relevant, with a fairly recent reboot, but MI is my personal pick. Unfortunately it’s owned by Disney, so… yeah. Not that it matters, because I don’t think either franchise was even released in Japan. Adventure games are heavily language-based, and especially in the early days, were very hard to localize. So just as we never got to enjoy Shin Onigashima and FDC, Japan never got to enjoy Monkey Island, though I think the new King’s Quest might have been released there. Anyway these would be “literally who?”s to Japanese fans, and frankly, to a lot of newer Western fans as well.
Luckily, there is one salvation for the genre. The Ace Attorney series is popular in both sides of the Pacific, it’s owned by Capcom, who’s already involved in Smash, it’s very popular with Nintendo’s fanbase and Phoenix has even already been in a fighting game. I wouldn’t call it the “Street Fighter of adventure games” but it’s probably the only one we’re gonna get.
TLDR:
First-party: Ayumi (Famicom Detective Club), Donbe & Hikari (Shin Onigashima)
Third-party: Phoenix (Ace Attorney), Graham (King’s Quest), Guybrush (Monkey Island)
Survival horror
Nintendo doesn’t have much in the way of horror games. Their only real foray into the genre was Eternal Darkness back in 2002. And though that was an acclaimed cult classic, it doesn’t seem Nintendo is interested enough in the series to do anything with it. On the other hand, we have the Fatal Frame series, which is in a weird spot. It isn’t technically owned by Nintendo, but Nintendo owns every game since the fourth, will continue to own every future game, and Koei Tecmo even said the future of the series is in Nintendo’s hands. Nintendo basically owns the series in practice if not legally. It seems to be in a similar spot to Bayonetta. Regardless, Nintendo is for sure more likely to use it than Eternal Darkness. It already has an AT!
Now for third-party this is easy: Resident Evil. Some of these other genres are pretty debatable, but there is no arguing over what series is the Street Fighter of horror games. No other horror series even comes close to it in terms of popularity, acclaim, influence, impact and even connection with Nintendo. I guess we could throw a bone to Silent Hill as a distant second, but if there is going to be a third-party horror rep, I think we can all agree on RE. It’s actually Capcom’s most successful series, far more than MegaMan or Street Fighter.
TLDR:
First-party: a Fatal Frame rep, Alexandra (Eternal Darkness)
Third-party: a Resident Evil rep
Rhythm games
Nintendo has quite a few rhythm games under its belt. The Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents series is great but kinda dead. The Daigasso! Series never came to America, but its popular in Japan, and has a recognizable main character in the form of Barbara the Bat. She is actually pretty popular herself, appearing in various merchandise and even had her own Twitter account. I wouldn’t discount her. But Nintendo’s biggest rhythm series is undoubtedly Rhythm Heaven. Many people actually expect it to be the next Nintendo Ip to be added, if there is one. It doesn’t have a real main character but there are a few possible choices, primarily the Chorus Kids and Karate Joe. Rhythm Heaven also has all original music, which sidesteps one very ironic big problem of rhythm games in Smash: despite being all about music, they’d probably be able to bring none, since most use licensed music.
On the third-party series, I feel the rhythm genre has two big icons: Guitar Hero from the West, and Dance Dance Revolution from the East. Good news: they both have characters that could rep them in Smash. Bad news: can you name any? Both series have the problem of the games themselves being super iconic, but the characters? Not really. Guitar Hero could be repped by Johnny Napalm, basically the series mascot. He has been in every game, was on the cover for the first one, and has a distinctive appearance. But how many people could tell who he is? Especially if Smash just called him “Johnny”. Can you imagine? “Hey guys, they added Johnny to Smash!” Dance Dance Revolution doesn’t fare much better. Its series mascot is Disco. You know… Disco! Super memorable character. I guess he’d be the first unambiguous black character in Smash, which is cool. Both series also have a problem of not being super relevant. Guitar Hero oversaturated the market, crashed and hasn’t been seen since 2015. DDR is still going, but is now mostly played by aficionados, the big new casual dance game is Just Dance which… doesn’t have characters, so it doesn’t help us either.
For an influential third-party game with recognizable characters we have to turn to Parappa the Rapper, which is actually credited as the first rhythm game, so it has the impact down. Unfortunately, its owned by Sony, who I doubt will collaborate. Actually PSASBR had Parappa, so I guess it beat Smash to the punch on the rhythm game representation. For a third-party game with recognizable characters that is popular and from a company that is willing to collaborate… uhm… Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin and its mascot, Don-chan! I guess we’re stretching from my goal of finding THE rhythm game rep but, we have to work with what we got.
TLDR:
First-party: Karate Joe or Chorus Kids (Rhythm heaven), Barbara the Bat (Daigasso! Band Brothers)
Third-party: Johnny Napalm (Guitar Hero), Disco (DDR), Parappa the Rapper, Don-Chan (Taiko no Tatsujin)
Real-time strategy
“But hey!” You’ll say “Isn’t Pikmin an RTS?” Yes, it is! But it’s a very unconventional RTS. Most people use RTS to refer to the type of game that follows the template of Dune 2, so to cover my ass (and because I thought it’s be interesting), let’s talk about it. Pikmin is already Nintendo’s sole RTS series so let’s just talk third-party.
There are plenty of popular RTS franchises, and I’m not sure one stands too much taller than the others, but if I were to choose, I’d go with either Command & Conquer or StarCraft, both very popular and influential. Both also have popular, recognizable mascots, although interestingly, in both cases, not the hero, but the villain: Command & Conquer has Kane, and StarCraft has Kerrigan. C&C is not in a super hot place (though it just got a remaster), and I’m not sure if it’s well-known in Japan, but everybody knows what a sensation StarCraft is in Japan’s neighbor South Korea. Also fun fact: not only did both games receive a port to the N64, in BOTH cases, the port was published by Nintendo. So hey, it’s not the wildest idea in this post.
TLDR:
Kane (Command & Conquer), Kerrigan (StarCraft)
Also if you’re asking, why StarCraft as an RTS rep and not Warcraft, well…
MMORPGs and Western RPGs
MMOs are a huge part of gaming, and the undisputed king is World of Warcraft. WoW has quite a few characters like Arthas or Jaina, but it is incredibly difficult to really set one character to represent the game. Even a generic playable avatar wouldn’t work, since the player can have wildly different races and abilities. No one character could properly represent the game. Now, you could argue WoW is a spin-off of the non-MMO series Warcraft, and if I don’t count Dr. Mario as a true puzzle rep for this reason, then WoW can’t be a MMO rep. Fair, if we want a pure MMO series, the next best thing would be EverQuest, though I have no idea who could represent it.
Another important game in the genre is Ultima Online, although like WoW is a spin-off of a regular RPG, but since all RPGs in Smash are JRPGS, let’s use this opportunity to talk about the WRPGs. The Avatar or Lord British from Ultima would be great representatives. The Ultima series was at one point the most important RPG, and even influenced Dragon Quest, but it’s been quite dead for two decades. A more relevant and popularly-request option is the Elder Scrolls, particularly Skyrim’s Dragonborn. ES is no modern phenomenon either, it goes way back to 1994, so its both classic and relevant.
TLDR:
A WoW rep, an EverQuest rep, the Avatar or Lord British (Ultima), Dragonborn (Elder Scrolls)
Tower defense
Capping off this overly-long post with a genre for which Nintendo actually has a golden opportunity: Dillon from Dillon’s Rolling Western. DRW is one of the rare tower defense games that also features a recognizable player character that you can control like in an action game, and therefore, quite easy to put in Smash. Not sure if the series has a future, but the character seems to be one of the most popular to come off the 3DS-era eshop.
For third-party, I’m not sure the tower defense genre has a king, but the most popular might be Plants vs Zombies, and if we can get Piranha Plant, why not Peashooter?
Edit: Commenter suggested Crazy Dave for PvZ instead, which makes more sense
TLDR:
First party: Dillon
Third-party: Peashooter (Plants vs Zombies)
Well, I’m gonna stop here. Obviously there are many genres and sub-genres, but to me these are the biggest missing. What other genres do you want to see repped? Roguelikes? MOBAs? Hero shooters? Or do you think another character that I didn’t mention should rep these ones? Or do you feel like some of the genres already in Smash could use better representation? Do you think Animal Crossing is more of a social sim, so for a true life sim rep we’d need The Sims in Smash? Do you think Bayonetta is um ackshually a hack-n-slash so for a beat’em up rep we’d need someone from Double Dragon, Final Fight or Streets of Rage? Do you think Punch-Out isn’t really a sports game so John Madden needs to tackle the fight? Comment away

RoyalRoad
First
Next
Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having.
However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So they started digging through wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be.
"Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies.
"Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?"
"No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated.
Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they can't use any commodity either.
Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard.
The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah was discovering, is that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system.
No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold.
Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect.
It had to be built on trust.
"That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on... everything you need."
"Hmm well we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true.
"Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate.
"Well.. well they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Also, who knows maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud.
"I doubt it, the government keeps a lot of secrets about how the dollar is produced and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS, but now that they know, it makes the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. We should probably invent our own money and track it all like a debit card system does."
"Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point..." Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it."
"I'm not sure, I need to think about this more," Sarah said, tired, "and I hate that name."
They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name.
With her financial prospects looking up, Sarah’s social ones did as well.
She even went out on a couple dates.
Sarah did not think of her as an unattractive woman. Before, when she was employed at the startup, she’d gotten plenty of attention from the men who she worked with, and there was some harmless flirting and teasing but nothing she had any intention of pursuing.
There was a certain type of people who would hit on their coworkers, especially in the sausage fest of the Bay Area startup culture. It wasn’t always unpleasant, but as the saying goes, for her, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
After the startup shut down, she hadn’t really kept in touch with any of her former coworkers. Being constantly stressed about finances and job searching also chipped away at her normally active social life.
Now that Sarah had total financial freedom, that whole world opened back up to her.
Unfortunately, once her dates had gotten to know her and knew what she did for a living, it seemed like they were more interested in the alien traders she worked with than they were in her. She even had to politely excuse herself after one particularly fascinated date asked her a battery of questions that made her feel more like she was being interviewed by a TV station than… an actual date.
Then again, she thought, at least it was nice to start looking again.
It had been a month after the spaceport opening, and Sarah noticed that it had become a little less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more people offloading their fruits for alien goods.
After the initial rush, the spaceport had to control the volume of people entering to sell items, so they started issuing trader licenses. Luckily, Sarah and Jen had gotten to know some of the people in charge of the spaceport, and they were considered regulars and grandfathered into the trader licensing deal, at a small fixed percentage of profits of course.
The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of...anything you want them to. The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump.
Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that life expectancy was lowered by half before its inhabitants found a solution:
They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place.
Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them.
It was a massive hit.
Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and... bury them in a landfill.
At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong.
Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turns out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They don't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after!
Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations willing to buy them.
Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters so they could lobby for looser emission standards for their cars on the other hand.
Today, all ten landing pads were occupied, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there.
"Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo.
Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The family owned fruit company he works for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins.
But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to who he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22 year old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them so they wouldn't have to run the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere.
"Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one and they freak out," Benny said back, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret, "Zarko showed me a video and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen".
"I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on Youtube. Some of the human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized of course.
"No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes... "Is it gonna be a thing?"
"Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low quality box wine.
"Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days."
Luckily Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!"
"Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!"
"Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?"
"Alright alright we'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some good extra filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time.
"Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth.
As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?"
"Yes." "God yes." They said in unison.
"We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!"
"And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added.
Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley so junior can launder all this crap."
"We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value."
"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop."
"Good cop bad cop?"
"Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-"
"Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious.
"Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits."
"What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked.
"That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about."
"But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed.
"Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished.
"Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step.
"Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board.
"BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code."
"Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically."
"Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it."
They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliche was a good choice after all.
"Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised.
"C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number..."
Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code...etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers.
Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards.
"Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number."
"Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it.
"Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before."
"Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked the question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes-
"Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?"
"Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started.
"Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long long line of questions they just can't deal with right now.
Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.")
"Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his own costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services.
"Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking."
"No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy."
"Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien shit."
"Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits."

Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders.
It wasn't easy. Some of the traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of an unified network of currency debiting, because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been.
Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen.
"We are officially in business."
In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat.
Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account.
Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that means that one day Sarah could simply deposit a large number of credits in her own account and buy all the goods from Zarko, or potentially the other traders.
That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat.
After all, they don't want to be a fruit company or a Bohor air filter vendor.
They want to be a bank.
"Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it.
Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory.
"It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions."
Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here.
"Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens.
"Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!"
Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation.
"Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low and they need time to make more."
Bargaining! There we go, that's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her hands in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple weeks ago.
"Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits."
They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was gonna take just as long, Sarah wondered.
Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was gonna be a long day.
Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right?
Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water.
It was a good day.
Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups were now more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet.
Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a number of people who were ready to help out if they'd gotten into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware.
Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business.
They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town.
Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively.
There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true.
Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began.
For the people in the office, it's also where the greatest financial revolution in the galaxy was about to start.
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