From 2017 Hearsay to Pandemic Study: Jules on Bitcoin - Part 1

Tali: 00:00:00

Welcome everyone to Orange Hatter.

Tali: 00:00:02

I am so excited to have Jules here with me and we're going to just dive right

Tali: 00:00:06

into her Bitcoin story and I hope that everyone will find something that they

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can identify with and hopefully encourage some of you who are sitting on the fence

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about Bitcoin to hop off the fence and walk, take one step closer to the Bitcoin

Tali: 00:00:20

rabbit hole and find out more about it.

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So welcome Jules.

Tali: 00:00:24

Thank you so much for coming to the show.

Tali: 00:00:26

Thanks for having me.

Tali: 00:00:27

I'm going to dive right in, and I'm going to ask you a question I ask

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everyone, which is how did you come across Bitcoin in the first place?

Jules: 00:00:35

So during the pandemic, I saw that there was so much money printing going on

Jules: 00:00:41

and just felt like something's not right.

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And I just started questioning where's this money coming from?

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And I don't remember the exact moment, but somehow I found out about

Jules: 00:00:52

Bitcoin, just started studying it.

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And I was fascinated by it.

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And then we also saw like the stock market go up like crazy and all

Jules: 00:01:01

the mom and pop shops closing down.

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It just felt like something was not right and just started kind of

Jules: 00:01:07

looking around and questioning things.

Tali: 00:01:09

Mm hmm.

Tali: 00:01:10

So when you first came across the word Bitcoin, Do you have some idea

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of whether it was through the media, like some kind of news article or just

Tali: 00:01:19

conversation that you overheard at work or, you know, at the grocery store?

Jules: 00:01:25

So I had, I had heard about Bitcoin before in like 2017

Jules: 00:01:29

when it was going up like crazy.

Jules: 00:01:31

So I knew about it, but never really took the time to find out

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much about it during the pandemic.

Jules: 00:01:36

I was looking more into like real store value because I knew that this Money thing

Jules: 00:01:41

is, is just, you know, very manipulated.

Jules: 00:01:45

And so I think when I started looking to where can I make sure I can store

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my value, my, my, my wealth, you know, I started looking into gold,

Jules: 00:01:52

you know, just like hard commodities.

Jules: 00:01:54

I've realized that Bitcoin is actually like a very hard commodity.

Jules: 00:01:57

You know, I wish I remembered the exact moment.

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But I mean, it must be like these podcasts and by that time in

Jules: 00:02:03

2020, there was a lot of material.

Jules: 00:02:05

Um, so I think it was just like, you know, just like listening to some podcasts.

Jules: 00:02:09

I'm just like asking people.

Jules: 00:02:10

I just asked everyone I knew what do you know about bitcoin?

Jules: 00:02:12

There's so many other aspects of bitcoin that it was very appealing to me.

Jules: 00:02:16

You know, we're talking about like the freedom aspect, the censorship

Jules: 00:02:19

resistant aspect, just Being sovereign, being self sovereign, all those things

Jules: 00:02:24

kind of all aligned and those are the parts of Bitcoin that I really love.

Tali: 00:02:29

And then you mentioned that you like the freedom aspect of it

Tali: 00:02:32

and the censorship free aspect of it.

Tali: 00:02:35

Can you elaborate on that and just explain to the audience what

Tali: 00:02:37

that means to you personally?

Jules: 00:02:40

I guess the fact that you can, I mean, if we are talking about KYC and

Jules: 00:02:44

non KYC, so KYC is know your customer.

Jules: 00:02:48

And basically when you buy Bitcoin through exchanges, you have to, you

Jules: 00:02:53

know, give your, all your information.

Jules: 00:02:56

Sometimes you have to even do like a selfie, but what Bitcoin

Jules: 00:03:00

was originally created to do was to do was to make peer to peer

Jules: 00:03:05

transactions without intermediaries.

Jules: 00:03:07

So, for example, like, I can send you Bitcoin without going through a

Jules: 00:03:11

bank, um, we can change that without asking for permission or without

Jules: 00:03:14

someone saying, Oh, you can't do that.

Jules: 00:03:16

A lot of people kind of correlate this as like, you know, criminals use it.

Jules: 00:03:21

And that's one way, but criminals also use cash.

Jules: 00:03:24

And actually criminals, actually a lot of money laundering through banks, which

Jules: 00:03:28

It's like very well, like it's documented.

Jules: 00:03:31

So, um, I don't think that's a fair criticism.

Jules: 00:03:33

So yeah, so freedom of, uh, transacting without asking for permission is

Jules: 00:03:38

pretty important to me and I think it should be important for everybody

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and for, especially for our children.

Jules: 00:03:44

They don't think about it.

Jules: 00:03:45

I think that's something that we need to teach our kids.

Tali: 00:03:48

Yeah.

Tali: 00:03:49

I feel like our children have been trained really well by our system to accept

Tali: 00:03:54

authority and that they're supposed to follow rules that were laid out for them.

Tali: 00:03:58

And they've actually been trained to not.

Tali: 00:04:02

Question authority.

Tali: 00:04:04

So I remember when so my kids were homeschooled, but years and years ago,

Tali: 00:04:09

I did put my oldest one in preschool.

Tali: 00:04:12

And I remember specifically after she had gone for a year, I asked to sit

Tali: 00:04:18

in one of their Like the entire day, like from drop off to pick up just

Tali: 00:04:23

to see what they're actually doing because everybody told me it was so

Tali: 00:04:26

important that they were socialized.

Tali: 00:04:28

And the main thing I observed was the kids were taught to walk in lines and with your

Tali: 00:04:35

mouth shut and from one room to another, they were ushered and repeat that message.

Tali: 00:04:39

It was so clear over and over again, drilled into their mind.

Tali: 00:04:43

These were three year olds.

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When you come to school, you form lines, you walk on lines.

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that are marked on the, on the floor and your, your mouth is closed.

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You get to the room and you sit on designated carpet squares

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and your mouth is closed.

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When you have social time, you go out to the playground.

Tali: 00:05:02

But when you come back, you line up again.

Tali: 00:05:04

Again, you're following a line.

Tali: 00:05:06

Literally, it's like a visible line.

Tali: 00:05:07

You're walking a line.

Tali: 00:05:09

You're not to veer off and your mouth is closed.

Tali: 00:05:11

That is drilled into them from the time they're three years old.

Jules: 00:05:16

Yeah.

Jules: 00:05:16

I listened to your podcast with.

Jules: 00:05:19

And that was very inspiring.

Jules: 00:05:20

And that's one of the reasons why I decided to do the, uh, summer camp.

Jules: 00:05:24

I wish I did it, you know, I didn't really realize that it's

Jules: 00:05:28

a better way of teaching kids.

Tali: 00:05:30

Well,

Tali: 00:05:31

I think as long as you're involved.

Tali: 00:05:33

in the kids lives and you're teaching them.

Tali: 00:05:36

It doesn't have to be all day long, like the way we did it.

Tali: 00:05:39

You know, kids are so smart.

Tali: 00:05:42

Kids are so, so smart these days.

Tali: 00:05:44

You don't need, you don't need quantity of time, really.

Tali: 00:05:47

As long as you're involved, I think they're good.

Tali: 00:05:49

You have mentioned that it took you from curiosity to listen to some podcasts.

Tali: 00:05:54

to reading some books and just continually asking questions of the

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people who are in your social circle.

Tali: 00:06:01

And then you found someone's husband who was able to answer some questions for you.

Tali: 00:06:06

How long did that take and how did it change how you view life, how you approach

Tali: 00:06:12

everyday life during that process?

Tali: 00:06:14

Can you go into a little bit about that?

Jules: 00:06:16

I think it just made me see everything in a different lens.

Jules: 00:06:20

Just for example, the monetary system.

Jules: 00:06:23

We never questioned it.

Jules: 00:06:25

I was an econ major, never thought about what is money.

Jules: 00:06:29

What is this policy doing?

Jules: 00:06:31

Uh, how is, uh, you know, this creating inflation and making our lives really bad?

Jules: 00:06:35

You know, the whole notion of like, we need, we all just have to work

Jules: 00:06:38

harder to buy the same thing to afford the same things because of inflation.

Jules: 00:06:43

And just, just start kind of opening my eyes to not just the money or.

Jules: 00:06:48

I view rules and government, but just everything like my job and education.

Jules: 00:06:54

Yeah, it was just like everything.

Jules: 00:06:56

I started seeing things differently.

Jules: 00:06:58

I was in employment defense for maybe the most recent six years of my legal

Jules: 00:07:07

career, especially in California.

Jules: 00:07:09

The way that the legal system is set up is it's very bad incentives.

Jules: 00:07:13

Most of the cases that I had, um, 99% were meritless.

Jules: 00:07:17

And they, the plaintiff's lawyers knew it, but they still file trying to get

Jules: 00:07:22

settlement money on the employer side.

Jules: 00:07:24

We know that these cases don't have merit, but also there's incentive

Jules: 00:07:28

to kind of keep the cases going for their fees for the, uh, yeah.

Jules: 00:07:32

So I mean, it's just like bad incentives on both sides.

Jules: 00:07:36

I just felt like this is kind of like part of the fiat problem.

Jules: 00:07:40

We're just incentivized to just, you know, earn money, make money.

Jules: 00:07:45

There's not real value being added to society.

Jules: 00:07:48

So, and this is kind of, you know, as I was going through the

Jules: 00:07:51

rabbit hole, just realized like, I don't want to be part of this.

Jules: 00:07:54

And, and that's kind of why eventually I just took the step of getting out of it.

Jules: 00:08:01

You know, I think about my colleagues at my law firm and they're all

Jules: 00:08:04

really good people and smart and, you know, but they're, they're forced

Jules: 00:08:08

to like do this, be in the system, you know, because this is the system

Jules: 00:08:12

we're in and, and, um, I don't know.

Jules: 00:08:16

I mean, we're just so trained to think like this is how it is.

Jules: 00:08:19

Right.

Jules: 00:08:20

Versus why, why are we here?

Jules: 00:08:23

And we're just like forced to like have this job because that's why we went to

Jules: 00:08:27

law school and, and we passed the bar and like, you know, studied incredibly

Jules: 00:08:31

hard to, you know, pass this exam.

Jules: 00:08:34

And, and that's what we're expected to do.

Jules: 00:08:35

And this whole system is just not really creating much value for

Jules: 00:08:40

anybody, but it's like the system that we're stuck in is unfortunate

Jules: 00:08:44

until, until things get better.

Jules: 00:08:46

Right.

Jules: 00:08:46

Yeah.

Jules: 00:08:47

That's exactly how I feel.

Jules: 00:08:49

It's just not just about money.

Jules: 00:08:51

It's, it's about thing.

Jules: 00:08:54

I think we've just been kind of brainwashed to, and, um, yeah, I think

Jules: 00:08:58

that like, just this whole journey has encouraged, has taught me to like, see

Jules: 00:09:04

things differently, question everything.

Tali: 00:09:06

Yeah.

Tali: 00:09:06

Yeah.

Tali: 00:09:07

And I think seeing.

Tali: 00:09:08

And seeing it from the Bitcoin point of view opens, at least it has

Tali: 00:09:12

opened my eyes to a lot of things that are happening and things that I

Tali: 00:09:15

took for granted that I accepted as truth I'm starting to question now.

Tali: 00:09:19

And I think that's for me anyway, it's one of the biggest pluses of

Tali: 00:09:24

getting into the Bitcoin space.

Tali: 00:09:26

Thank you for joining us today.

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We will continue this conversation tomorrow.

Tali: 00:09:30

Be sure to come back and hear the rest.