A Financial Planner's Bitcoin Journey: Kimberly’s Experience - part 2

Tali: 00:00:00

Hi, everyone.

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Welcome to Orange Hatter.

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

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

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

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

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

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at least 15 years of homeschooling them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Right?

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And that whole AI thing is crazy.

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

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all those, AI can do all of that.

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They can do coding now.

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They can do art.

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

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

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

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girl who's very interested in art.

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

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Go study.

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Don't go study.

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I don't know what to tell you.

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

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It was a book called "Story or Die."

Kimberly: 00:01:16

"Story or Die."

Kimberly: 00:01:17

Okay.

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

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

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

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because we have the opposable thumbs.

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

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to our ability to work together.

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

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

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

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never substitute you for that, right?

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Every other skill they can substitute.

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They can do engineering.

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

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

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And human are human because of their social skills.

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

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Hopefully that's correct...

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and go into Bitcoin!

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And I tell my kids that.

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

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

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They're like, "we know!"

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You know.

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

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You don't understand how important it is.

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

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to where you were confident in Bitcoin.

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

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

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

Kimberly: 00:02:42

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

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bitcoin was the on ramp, right?

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

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other cryptocurrency, right?

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

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know, the number of transactions.

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

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

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

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

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But I think I just, I just kept reading.

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I, I came across this book.

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So...

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it was because of Bitcoin.

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

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about Bitcoin cryptocurrencies.

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

Kimberly: 00:03:24

Do you know, do you know...

Tali: 00:03:26

I do know him.

Tali: 00:03:26

Yeah.

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Rich dad, poor dad.

Kimberly: 00:03:28

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

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

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attention to what he was saying.

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I did a course with him.

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

Kimberly: 00:03:44

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

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Have you read that book?

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It's about the creation of the federal reserve.

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

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

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I was really intrigued.

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So I got it, and I read it.

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I mean, it's a 500 page book.

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

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

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what we have done.

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Right?

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

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

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of all that has happened and transpired.

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

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And, and we're on that road.

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

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So I ended up on that.

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

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

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Now I get it.

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Bitcoin is the answer to this problem.

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And then it gave me hope, right?

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

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

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

Kimberly: 00:04:55

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

Kimberly: 00:04:58

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

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Is it, can it fail?

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Can the system fail?

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What makes the system work?

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Is it really limited?

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Could somebody change it?

Kimberly: 00:05:07

I don't know.

Kimberly: 00:05:07

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

Kimberly: 00:05:10

ended up fully kind of grasping it.

Tali: 00:05:13

Yeah.

Tali: 00:05:13

Yeah.

Tali: 00:05:14

That sounds really similar to what my husband went through.

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

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And he would get so angry.

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

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

Kimberly: 00:05:27

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

Tali: 00:05:29

He was in the army.

Tali: 00:05:30

Yeah.

Kimberly: 00:05:31

Yeah.

Kimberly: 00:05:31

I was in the air force.

Kimberly: 00:05:32

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

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Uphold the constitution against enemies foreign domestic.

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

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

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Right?

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

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other interests, other interests, right?

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

Kimberly: 00:06:02

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

Tali: 00:06:06

It is, it is, absolutely.

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

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to talk about that book forever.

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

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before we ever heard about Bitcoin.

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This was several years back.

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And he also got really depressed.

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Exactly like what you said, he was so depressed.

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He's like, "there is no hope.

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Everything is against us."

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

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was listening to, the investors podcast.

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And he kept hearing Preston talk about Bitcoin.

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

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might be a, might be the solution."

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

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Stop bugging me.

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

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What are you doing?"

Kimberly: 00:06:48

When was this?

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What year was this?

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Oh my goodness.

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When he first started poking me about Bitcoin?

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

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four or five years back.

Kimberly: 00:06:57

So before 2020.

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We didn't know who to ask.

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

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

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Can you explain that to me more?"

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

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"can you explain this to me?"

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So, it was like, just far away things.

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

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

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

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more he was trying to bug me about that.

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

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I said, "the heck, fine.

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Just tell me what the heck this thing is."

Tali: 00:07:35

Right?

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

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

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trying to get me to be on board with him.

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

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

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

Tali: 00:08:00

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

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

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What do we do?"

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

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know how to get involved.

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

Tali: 00:08:15

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

Tali: 00:08:19

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

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

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

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

Tali: 00:08:30

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

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

Tali: 00:08:36

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

Tali: 00:08:37

So it's COVID.

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

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

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And I said...

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and our anniversary is in November.

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

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And we actually do something about it."

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

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for our wedding anniversary.

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

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face-to-face, who were Bitcoiners.

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

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But it took that long.

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So that was 2022.

Tali: 00:09:09

He started three, four years before that.

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

Tali: 00:09:15

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

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could explain it to us eyeball-to-eyeball.

Kimberly: 00:09:22

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

Kimberly: 00:09:28

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

Kimberly: 00:09:31

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

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connected to your bank account."

Kimberly: 00:09:34

Okay.

Kimberly: 00:09:35

So I did that.

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And then he's like...

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

Kimberly: 00:09:38

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

Kimberly: 00:09:41

And then, and then he taught...

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

Kimberly: 00:09:46

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

Kimberly: 00:09:51

I was like, "what?

Kimberly: 00:09:52

Oh my gosh."

Kimberly: 00:09:54

Right?

Kimberly: 00:09:54

Like, "is it gonna show up?"

Kimberly: 00:09:56

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

Tali: 00:09:58

Yeah, exactly.

Tali: 00:09:59

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

Tali: 00:10:00

Yeah.

Kimberly: 00:10:01

He literally held my hand through the entire process.

Tali: 00:10:04

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

Kimberly: 00:10:08

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

Kimberly: 00:10:10

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

Kimberly: 00:10:13

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

Tali: 00:10:15

Yeah, somebody you trusted.

Tali: 00:10:17

Somebody you trusted walking you through it.

Tali: 00:10:19

And that gives people so much more conviction than reading

Tali: 00:10:23

something or watching something and intellectually understanding it.

Tali: 00:10:27

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

Tali: 00:10:30

and we would research, like, wallets.

Tali: 00:10:32

But it wasn't one wallet.

Tali: 00:10:33

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

Tali: 00:10:36

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

Tali: 00:10:39

many nuances, it paralyzed us.

Tali: 00:10:42

We didn't know which way to go.

Tali: 00:10:43

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

Tali: 00:10:46

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

Kimberly: 00:10:49

Right, oh yeah.

Kimberly: 00:10:50

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

Kimberly: 00:10:54

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

Kimberly: 00:10:59

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

Kimberly: 00:11:02

And then I was at the conference.

Kimberly: 00:11:04

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

Kimberly: 00:11:06

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

Kimberly: 00:11:08

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

Kimberly: 00:11:10

You know, start reading reviews.

Kimberly: 00:11:13

And I don't do anything.

Tali: 00:11:15

Because there's so many choices...

Tali: 00:11:17

Thank you for joining us today.

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We will continue this conversation tomorrow.

Tali: 00:11:22

Be sure to come back and hear the rest.