From Law to Bitcoin with Jacqui: "Bitcoin is not a scam. It's... legit." - Part 2

Tali: 00:00:00

Hi everybody, welcome to Orange Hatter.

Tali: 00:00:02

Today you'll listen to part two of my conversation with Jacqui.

Jacqui: 00:00:07

As an author, I've created different books and resources for

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individuals to, uh, to have access to.

Jacqui: 00:00:14

And as a lawyer, I felt it was really important, both for my own daughter to

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know, as well as for other families, because our, our goal in looking at this

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is not just, not to play with it, but to use it, and to have it support us.

Jacqui: 00:00:29

And so, but if...

Jacqui: 00:00:31

I know, I know as, and, and I'll, I'll say this as a woman and as a lawyer,

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even though I'm very intelligent, I'm not always financially smart...

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in the past.

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And so I had to learn how to handle my own finances, and I had to learn

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how to be fiscally responsible, because I wasn't taught this.

Jacqui: 00:00:51

It wasn't until I learned about Bitcoin and this whole community that I started

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getting excited about figuring out, okay, what do I want to do with this?

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And, you know, financial future.

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So that's why this was very important for me.

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And that's why, you know, I, I started my talk show, to help

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people learn more about it.

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And I wrote different books, because I really thought that there

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had been a gap in my own outlook.

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And I wanted, and as I realized that that was a deficiency in where what I

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had been exploring, I wanted to help others kind of awaken and just understand

Jacqui: 00:01:28

that it's not, it's not that difficult.

Jacqui: 00:01:30

It's okay.

Tali: 00:01:31

Yeah.

Tali: 00:01:32

That's so, so needed right now.

Tali: 00:01:34

I think that a lot of women are in the same place.

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And it's sort of a silent handicap, because we don't

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necessarily talk about it openly.

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So I wanna go back to a statement that you made earlier, about how you came across

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Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general...

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was when you said you were planning for your retirement.

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Now, typically when people talk about planning for retirement, you

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are thinking 401k, you know, Roth IRA and maybe a mutual fund, or

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maybe you have some collection of stocks, right, that you've chosen

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or somebody else has chosen for you.

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Or maybe even real estate, like rental properties where you're

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getting passive income, hopefully.

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So what made you look outside that basket and start examining

Tali: 00:02:22

cryptocurrency and Bitcoin?

Jacqui: 00:02:24

Yeah.

Jacqui: 00:02:24

So I do wanna say there is risk in everything you do.

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So you, if you are investing in any cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, whatever.

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I, again, you know, I don't wanna have people kind of be upset with me.

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You have to be willing to lose anything you put in.

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But on the flip side...

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and that's true with stocks, too.

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That's true with traditional businesses, too.

Jacqui: 00:02:46

I'm both a, an attorney as well as a teacher.

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So, you know, when I first started in my teaching space...

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I'm a special educator for at least another year...

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so when I first started, you know, different people came to the school

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and said, hey, you need to open this up, you need to do this.

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And I thought, okay, fine.

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You know?

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And I just kind of let them manage and do.

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And then I was looking at the growth of it, and I thought,

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this is not doing very well.

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You know, I need to think twice about this.

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And so, you know, I made some personal decisions.

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I decided to pull out some of the funds that I had put into my IRA.

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And I'm not saying that anyone else should do what I did, because

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it's your own personal journey.

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And you have to make sure that you're not putting your money for...

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anything that you're gonna be investing in...

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in that you need for your food or your mortgage or your kids' education.

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You know, be strategic and be wise about this.

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But I decided to pull out, from my IRA, certain amount of funds,

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so I could become a Bitcoin miner.

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Because I felt that the, the daily drop of my Bitcoin would be a

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wiser investment than where it was.

Jacqui: 00:03:53

Now there's, without getting too technical, in March next spring, there's

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gonna be what's called a halving.

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So you know those that might wanna learn more about Bitcoin

Jacqui: 00:04:02

mining, you can reach out to me.

Jacqui: 00:04:04

There's a lot of things that you need to know when you're...

Jacqui: 00:04:06

become a Bitcoin miner.

Jacqui: 00:04:08

But I only became that after I had invested in Bitcoin on exchanges, you

Jacqui: 00:04:14

know, through the traditional way.

Jacqui: 00:04:16

And then I started to...

Jacqui: 00:04:18

I wasn't, when I was younger, I wasn't interested in stocks.

Jacqui: 00:04:21

It just felt boring to me.

Jacqui: 00:04:23

You know?

Jacqui: 00:04:24

So, so again, it wasn't until I learned about decentralized finance

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and Bitcoin and the purpose behind it and how it was helping people take

Jacqui: 00:04:34

control, and also that the cost of transferring from one person to another...

Jacqui: 00:04:39

BItcoin, you know, like in transactions was so small in comparison to some of

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the other bank wire type of options.

Jacqui: 00:04:46

You know, I just was exploring more and more.

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And so those are, those are the, the reasons why I looked at this

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from the retirement perspective.

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'Cause I was...

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there's a technical term if, if listeners don't know, it's called hodl.

Jacqui: 00:04:59

I was gonna hold onto my Bitcoin and not spend it.

Jacqui: 00:05:04

So I was looking at holding onto it.

Jacqui: 00:05:07

So in the long-term, wherever it was, whether it was high, whether it was low,

Jacqui: 00:05:12

that would be my long-term growth plan.

Jacqui: 00:05:15

So, you know, again, but that was a personal choice.

Jacqui: 00:05:18

Everyone has to make their own.

Jacqui: 00:05:20

I definitely believe in...

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diversify.

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I think that that, you know, is probably good advice to give to

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anyone, but everyone needs to figure out what do you want in your basket?

Jacqui: 00:05:29

And I think in everyone's basket, again, personal opinion, you

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should think about Bitcoin.

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Because Bitcoin is being used in IRAs now.

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It's being used, you know, in ETFs.

Jacqui: 00:05:41

I mean, again, there's a lot of financial products that are using Bitcoins.

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So it's becoming, it has always been mainstream, but it...

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when I say always, it's been around for over 13 years.

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Major companies were dabbling in it.

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They just weren't public about their dabble.

Jacqui: 00:05:58

So now people are becoming more public about the fact that they

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are getting involved with it.

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And as a result of that, that's why different governments and

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entities are looking at regulations.

Jacqui: 00:06:10

Just because, again, personal opinion, they want their hand in the pie.

Jacqui: 00:06:14

But you know, again, it's, there's, there's many levels to

Jacqui: 00:06:17

this and that's what's exciting about kind of exploring it.

Tali: 00:06:20

Yeah, definitely.

Tali: 00:06:21

Thank you for, for the explanation.

Tali: 00:06:24

I think that a lot of people can really relate to that thinking process, because

Tali: 00:06:30

we all want to have a secure future.

Tali: 00:06:32

You work so hard for decades, and you want to be able to retire and not

Tali: 00:06:37

have to worry about a groceries bill.

Tali: 00:06:38

Right?

Tali: 00:06:39

And with inflation going on the way that it is, there are some people who

Tali: 00:06:44

are on fixed income who are worried.

Tali: 00:06:46

So I wanna, I wanna ask you about Bitcoin mining, because, um, some

Tali: 00:06:51

of our audience out there probably don't really understand what that is.

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And for, for a person to go from, let me explore Bitcoin, to it's a real

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thing, to you know what, I'm gonna be part of the ecosystem, and in fact

Tali: 00:07:05

I'm going to invest in the mining machine and then become even a more

Tali: 00:07:09

integrated part of the Bitcoin protocol.

Tali: 00:07:13

I mean, that journey...

Tali: 00:07:15

I mean, you really believe in it, right?

Tali: 00:07:17

Otherwise you wouldn't be participating in it.

Tali: 00:07:19

And so can you talk a little bit more about just that journey, where you

Tali: 00:07:23

went from I've heard about Bitcoin, to I'm gonna buy some, to actually,

Tali: 00:07:29

I'm gonna be a part of the protocol?

Jacqui: 00:07:30

Yeah, it's been a, I like to get my hands, I say dirty, but from the

Jacqui: 00:07:34

perspective of understanding the tech side, even though I'm not very technical.

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I also, just as an add-on to that, recently bought a node.

Jacqui: 00:07:43

And nodes are part of the process of verifying Bitcoin.

Jacqui: 00:07:48

And they're not miners, but they're part of the the process.

Jacqui: 00:07:52

So, uh, and on the, my node...

Jacqui: 00:07:54

I'm, I'm looking at it right now...

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it has my Bitcoin wallet.

Jacqui: 00:07:57

It has a lightning wallet, which is a whole 'nother area that we can talk about,

Jacqui: 00:08:02

you know, down the road if you want.

Jacqui: 00:08:03

It has a Bitcoin point-of-sale type of platform, so that way, if I was to sell

Jacqui: 00:08:10

my book on it, "the Bitcoin Cinderella", which I'll talk about in a second.

Jacqui: 00:08:14

It's available on Amazon, but if I wanted to sell it on a Bitcoin

Jacqui: 00:08:18

marketplace, then people would be able to buy it in that marketplace.

Jacqui: 00:08:23

The Bitcoin, consider it like a currency.

Jacqui: 00:08:26

If someone's buying the book, it would drop into the point-of-sale.

Jacqui: 00:08:29

So think of it like MasterCard or PayPal or one of those others, and then it

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would go from that over to my wallet.

Jacqui: 00:08:36

So it's no different than a traditional bank, where if you buy something,

Jacqui: 00:08:41

okay, well let's use Amazon.

Jacqui: 00:08:42

You buy something from Amazon, you use PayPal, you know the, the person who has

Jacqui: 00:08:47

the product gets paid, and then, you know, goes over to the bank account at that...

Jacqui: 00:08:52

and so it's like a whole ecosystem stream.

Jacqui: 00:08:56

That ties into, you know, actually why I became a, a miner is because I realized

Jacqui: 00:09:02

that as people were obtaining Bitcoin...

Jacqui: 00:09:06

those Bitcoin that you buy on platforms, the exchanges,

Jacqui: 00:09:11

have to be created somewhere.

Jacqui: 00:09:13

And 'cause they're not being created on the exchanges, that is the

Jacqui: 00:09:16

public marketplace for where you as a consumer will obtain the coin.

Jacqui: 00:09:22

Um, it sort of was like going to a bank and saying, okay, I want, I have $10.

Jacqui: 00:09:26

Give me, you know, exchange.

Jacqui: 00:09:27

But it's a little bit different.

Jacqui: 00:09:29

But you know, just think of it like that.

Jacqui: 00:09:30

So it has to originate somewhere.

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And in the United States, we have the Treasury, they print the money.

Jacqui: 00:09:37

For Bitcoin, it gets mined.

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And in order for it to get mined, it has to be, the mathematical

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equation has to be solved.

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And the, it's, it's, there's a lot of technical things that get into solving it.

Jacqui: 00:09:51

But when the, the equation is solved, then whichever rig solves

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that mathematical equation, it gets rewarded, because it solved it.

Jacqui: 00:10:00

And so it gets a small drop into a wallet, and then the Bitcoin that is mined,

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it's sent over to whoever's buying it.

Jacqui: 00:10:09

And there's also, part of this is verification of the system,

Jacqui: 00:10:13

because the mining verifies that the transaction is real.

Jacqui: 00:10:16

So there's no double spending.

Jacqui: 00:10:18

So that's also important, because there's checks and

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balances within the system and...

Jacqui: 00:10:23

you know, a lot of technical checks and balances.

Jacqui: 00:10:26

But that's the other reason why the blockchain has grown so much.

Jacqui: 00:10:30

It's so, I wanna, I'll use the word vested, even though

Jacqui: 00:10:34

my not be the right word.

Jacqui: 00:10:35

There's too many transactions going through now, that it won't disappear.

Jacqui: 00:10:39

It won't fall down, so to speak.

Tali: 00:10:43

Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.

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If the discussion with our guest resonated with you and you would

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like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the

Tali: 00:10:54

Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club.

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The meetup link is in the show notes.

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Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and

Tali: 00:11:02

benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them.