"I was in the air force... I take my oath to the Constitution seriously... Uphold the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. And I didn't understand... we have domestic enemies. And every war, every war, that we have been a part of has been manipulated."

"'The Creature from Jekyll Island'... It's a serious book of the history of the Federal Reserve... I was honestly depressed because... the inevitable outcome of that is Marxism... Bitcoin is the answer to this problem. And then it gave me hope..."

-Kimberly

Resources:

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin

Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life by Lisa Cron

Please email questions/comments to Tali@OrangeHatter.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Market Kids Short

Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

Today, you will listen to part two of my conversation with Kimberly.

That, that's exactly, that's exactly my dilemma right now with my kids.

So you know, Scott and I, we went to brand name schools.

We thought that was the right thing to do and we have invested a lot of time and

energy and money into getting our kids to follow that, at least over the first

at least 15 years of homeschooling them.

And now I'm afraid to tell, give them any advice because I feel like my

advice may or may not be relevant two years from now or three years from now.

And I just tell them right now, listen, nobody has the right answers for you.

You just got to follow what your heart is telling you.

And if that means you go right into business, and you don't go

to college, then you got to do what your heart is telling you.

Because honestly, nobody can tell you what the right steps are anymore.

Right?

And that whole AI thing is crazy.

You used to have to hire copywriters, and you have to have editors and

all those, AI can do all of that.

They can do coding now.

They can do art.

Like, why would people go and spend all that time learning art when you

can just tell your AI, you know, create this thing, and then just...

right out of thin air kind of thing, you know, because I have one

girl who's very interested in art.

I'm like, I don't know what to tell you.

Go study.

Don't go study.

I don't know what to tell you.

But you know, I do want to relate something interesting that I just read.

It was a book called "Story or Die."

"Story or Die."

Okay.

There's a quote in there that's from a...

Social Neuroscientist or something, and they were saying how a lot of people

believe that the reason human beings are on the top of the food chain,

because we have the opposable thumbs.

Truthfully, the reason that we are on top of the food chain is due

to our ability to work together.

It's actually social intelligence that puts us on the top of the food chain.

So, I feel like that's one thing I can tell my kids, which is...

best skill set is learn how to work with people, because machines can

never substitute you for that, right?

Every other skill they can substitute.

They can do engineering.

They can do, you know, whatever art, and writing, and coding,

and things like that, but they, machines will never become human.

And human are human because of their social skills.

So that [is the] best the advice I can give them today.

Hopefully that's correct...

and go into Bitcoin!

And I tell my kids that.

They're not all completely convinced, but we tell it to them so much,

that they just kind of, at some point, just roll their eyes.

They're like, "we know!"

You know.

I'm like, no, no, you don't know.

You don't understand how important it is.

So you said that it took a long time from when your friend told you about Bitcoin

to where you were confident in Bitcoin.

Like, how did that, how did that journey, what did that look like?

What did you do to continue to learn about Bitcoin and become more convinced that

it's the protocol that you value, rather than the investment part that you value?

Well, so initially, like, when I...

bitcoin was the on ramp, right?

You had to get, you to buy the bitcoin in order to buy the

other cryptocurrency, right?

And bitcoin was the first, so it was the slowest, and it didn't have, you

know, the number of transactions.

And it used up all the, you know, so much energy...

and there's all these stories about bitcoin, right?

And then there was all these use cases for, for the other these

other cryptocurrencies and all these things that it was going to do.

But I think I just, I just kept reading.

I, I came across this book.

So...

it was because of Bitcoin.

So, I'm, like, on, I'm getting on YouTube, right, to learn

about Bitcoin cryptocurrencies.

And I ended up listening to Robert Kiyosaki, "Rich man, Poor dad."

Do you know, do you know...

I do know him.

Yeah.

Rich dad, poor dad.

I've had his, I've followed him, and not like recently, but I

mean, like, you know, 20 years ago, like I had his books, and I paid

attention to what he was saying.

I did a course with him.

Anyway, so I got on his YouTube channel, and he started talking about this book.

It's called "The Creature from Jekyll Island."

Have you read that book?

It's about the creation of the federal reserve.

And he pulled, he shows it, and he's got it all tabbed and highlighted.

And you can tell, like, he has really studied this book.

I was really intrigued.

So I got it, and I read it.

I mean, it's a 500 page book.

It's a serious book of the history of the Federal Reserve, you know...

our in the monetary system of the United States...

what we have done.

Right?

When I came out of that, I had such an understanding.

I was honestly depressed because, um, he takes a very conspiratorial viewpoint

of all that has happened and transpired.

And, and the inevitable outcome of that is Marxism, right?

And, and we're on that road.

I was like, how do you, how do you get out of that?

So I ended up on that.

And then at the same time, I'm learning about Bitcoin, right?

And at some point it's like, oh, okay.

Now I get it.

Bitcoin is the answer to this problem.

And then it gave me hope, right?

So then, like, well, okay, this gives me hope.

There's a potential solution to the Federal Reserve and this endless

printing of money and this money that's not backed by anything, right?

And so now it's a matter of understanding more and more about Bitcoin.

Well, does it do what it really says it does?

Is it, can it fail?

Can the system fail?

What makes the system work?

Is it really limited?

Could somebody change it?

I don't know.

You just keep reading and learning and eventually you're like, I

ended up fully kind of grasping it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That sounds really similar to what my husband went through.

Because I remember, I remember nights when he was reading that book.

And he would get so angry.

He'd be like, Tali, can you believe?

And I'll be like, Scott, I'm trying to go to sleep.

Your husband was in the air force or the army, right?

He was in the army.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was in the air force.

So, I mean, you know, I take my oath to the Constitution seriously, right?

Uphold the constitution against enemies foreign domestic.

And I didn't understand, we, we have domestic enemies.

And every war, every war, that we have been a part of has been manipulated.

Right?

By the, by the Fed or by the bank, or I ... it by the bankers, but by, you know,

other interests, other interests, right?

Not, not patriotism, not what's good for Americans.

And if you have fought, if you have fought in that, it's really heartbreaking.

It is, it is, absolutely.

And he would agree with you 100%, and I'm sure you guys would be able

to talk about that book forever.

But he was absolutely, like, he started from that, and that was

before we ever heard about Bitcoin.

This was several years back.

And he also got really depressed.

Exactly like what you said, he was so depressed.

He's like, "there is no hope.

Everything is against us."

Until he started hearing, I think it was Preston Pysh who was,whose podcast he

was listening to, the investors podcast.

And he kept hearing Preston talk about Bitcoin.

That's when he was elbowing me, going, "Hey, Tali, this Bitcoin thing

might be a, might be the solution."

I'm like, "I don't have time.

Stop bugging me.

You know, I'm trying to homeschool the kids.

What are you doing?"

When was this?

What year was this?

Oh my goodness.

When he first started poking me about Bitcoin?

It was several years back, four years back, maybe...

four or five years back.

So before 2020.

We didn't know who to ask.

Back then, if you listen to a podcast, that seems very far away.

It's not like you can call them up and go, "Hey, I heard this on your podcast.

Can you explain that to me more?"

It's not like talking to a fellow bitcoiner, where you go,

"can you explain this to me?"

So, it was like, just far away things.

So he started reading books, and the more he read, the more hopeful he got.

Because like you, he was so depressed when he read the Jekyll Island book.

And he kept learning and the more he learned, the more hopeful he got, and the

more he was trying to bug me about that.

So it took him two years, two years, of elbowing me, before

I said, "the heck, fine.

Just tell me what the heck this thing is."

Right?

And so, when that happened, we were in the middle of COVID.

So probably around the same time, but we, he started two years before that,

trying to get me to be on board with him.

And he didn't invest in it back then, because we were both still unsure of it.

Like, we knew it was the thing, and we suspected that it could be a hope for

us, but we didn't have anybody in our social circle that gave us confidence.

So, it wasn't until we, he made that game, the HODL UP game, and got me

on board, and I started reading, and I was like, "Okay, I'm on board.

What do we do?"

And at that point, it was 2020, I think, and we still didn't

know how to get involved.

And all these wallet things that they were talking about...

well, like, conceptually, we understand that, but physically, what does that mean?

And when we went to our local meetup, it was a crypto investment club.

So they told us some things, but they were talking about Cardano, and they were

talking about Ethereum, and they were talking about all these other cryptos.

And we're like, "we don't even know what those things are.

We, we, we're having a tough time just understanding what Bitcoin is."

But they were like, "oh, no, but you need to invest in Cardano."

I'm like, "I don't know what that is."

So it's COVID.

And our 20th, 20th, uh, wedding anniversary was coming up.

And he said, "what do you want to do?"

And I said...

and our anniversary is in November.

And I said, "Scott, we either stop talking about Bitcoin or we go check it out.

And we actually do something about it."

And so, we decided to go to the 2022, last year, 2022 Bitcoin conference

for our wedding anniversary.

And there was the first time we were able to talk to people,

face-to-face, who were Bitcoiners.

And that's how we finally decided, okay, we can be a part of this space.

But it took that long.

So that was 2022.

He started three, four years before that.

That's why we're so passionate about bringing this knowledge to people, because

we were so ready and willing to learn, but we didn't have people around us that

could explain it to us eyeball-to-eyeball.

So, my pastor friend, he literally talked me through how to buy it.

Like, he's like, "okay, go to this website".

You know, and then, "this is how you're", you know, "you have to get

connected to your bank account."

Okay.

So I did that.

And then he's like...

taught, taught me how to buy it, you know?

And I bought, I bought like, you know, 50 dollars' worth.

And then, and then he taught...

showed me what wallet to get, "download this wallet."

And then he helped me actually move the money off the exchange onto the wallet.

I was like, "what?

Oh my gosh."

Right?

Like, "is it gonna show up?"

He's like," just do five dollars."

Yeah, exactly.

And that's what, that's what we did, too.

Yeah.

He literally held my hand through the entire process.

Can you imagine if you were already interested, but he wasn't there?

Oh yeah, that's what made me think of that...

when you told me, when you're talking about your story, because

yeah, I had somebody that was literally telling me what to do.

Yeah, somebody you trusted.

Somebody you trusted walking you through it.

And that gives people so much more conviction than reading

something or watching something and intellectually understanding it.

Because one of the things that we did, was we, we would go on YouTube

and we would research, like, wallets.

But it wasn't one wallet.

It was, like, 10 different wallets, all different names, some of

them were lightning, some of them were on chain, and there were so

many nuances, it paralyzed us.

We didn't know which way to go.

We're like, "there're 10 wallets, how do we, how do we choose?"

You know, and then if we were paralyzed, we did nothing.

Right, oh yeah.

I still, I'm still kind of there, right?

Like I, I have one cold wallet, and I really want to, I need another one.

And I, and I know what has been recommended to me.

And then I was at the conference.

There was one, a new one that was on the market.

And I was like, "well, that looks pretty good.

And it looks like the user interface might be good."

You know, start reading reviews.

And I don't do anything.

Because there's so many choices...

Thank you for joining us today.

We will continue this conversation tomorrow.

Be sure to come back and hear the rest.