Episode 48
From Jazz Grooves to Digital Gold: A Music Family's Bitcoin Journey - part 2
In this episode:
Financial Fees: Sarah mentions the high fees immigrants often pay when sending money home, and how Bitcoin can reduce these fees dramatically.
Practical Benefits: Sarah shares a personal example of moving college funds for her kids from traditional banking to Bitcoin to counter inflation.
Breaking Down Barriers: Sarah and Tali discuss the misconception that one needs to fully grasp Bitcoin's technical side before adopting it.
Start Young: Sarah emphasizes the advantage of introducing children to Bitcoin early, and likens it to the advantage had by the first kids to use computers.
Sarah's info:
Contact - sarahabranscum@gmail.com
Apps to earn sats -
Smiles (this is the step app that you get rewarded in sats for walking throughout the day)
Sudoku- 'it's a number's game' (from Viker)
Missing Letters (from Viker)
To learn more about Bitcoin: Join the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. Visit https://www.meetup.com/womensbitcoinreadingclubwithorangehatter
Please email questions/comments to Tali@orangehatter.com
Remember: Knowledge is empowerment! 🍊🎩
Mentioned in this episode:
Free Market Kids Short
Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.
Transcript
Hi everyone.
Tali:Welcome to Orange Hatter.
Tali:Today you're listening to part two of my conversation with Sarah.
... Sarah:he was like, "Bitcoin fixes this."
... Sarah:He kept saying that.
... Sarah:"Bitcoin fixes this!"
... Sarah:And I'm just like, that is so cool.
... Sarah:And then the, I think the one kind of fact that really struck me, or the one use
... Sarah:case that really struck me with Bitcoin specifically was when people send money
... Sarah:remittances across borders from the US.
... Sarah:'cause where we live actually, in both of the major cities that I,
... Sarah:I've lived in as an adult, there have been large immigrant populations.
... Sarah:A lot of times people displaced by horrible catastrophes like war or
... Sarah:oppression or civil war or something like that, or they just can't work.
... Sarah:Like there's a huge Guatemalan population in our city.
... Sarah:And they've come here because they can't really work in their
... Sarah:country and they send money home.
... Sarah:But Jason was explaining to me that when he, when they send their
... Sarah:money home, they work really hard.
... Sarah:Here, and oftentimes they're working jobs that don't pay very well, but
... Sarah:they're living modestly, they're saving up money, and then they're going and
... Sarah:sending thousands of it home every month to help support their family.
... Sarah:But in order to do that, just the, the structure of how the
... Sarah:financial system works, they're paying 15 to 20% to send that home.
... Sarah:And it just breaks my heart to see people working really, really
... Sarah:hard and then having to pay this fee to banks or to regulators to
... Sarah:get this money to people home.
... Sarah:And I, and Jason says, Bitcoin fixes that where.
... Sarah:They can just transfer their hard-earned dollars into Bitcoin and instantly.
... Sarah:Now with the newer technologies, as this technology is developing, they can
... Sarah:instantly send it back home to their parents, to their siblings, sometimes
... Sarah:to their wives and children with minimal fractional fees, fractions of a penny.
... Sarah:They get to keep more of that hard-earned money, and that
... Sarah:just gave me such a vision.
... Sarah:How it can be used in people's day by day.
... Sarah:And so he got more interested in the technology side.
... Sarah:Things like you hear in terms of like people who are mining, people
... Sarah:who are verifying the network, you know, like all this technology side.
... Sarah:And I, and I haven't really dove, dove into that as much, but I'm really excited
... Sarah:about the implications for people.
... Sarah:Where Bitcoin really can change their day, their daily lives,
... Sarah:their quality of life today.
... Sarah:And for us, just the long-term security of Bitcoin.
... Sarah:The fact that, for example, to get a real practical example, Talia, oh, and I, yeah,
... Sarah:I, we have three kids as I mentioned.
... Sarah:And just like every good parent, we opened a college fund for them.
... Sarah:Right.
... Sarah:I forget what it was.
... Sarah:College advantage, you know, we sat with our banker, we opened a college fund and
... Sarah:we put a good amount of money into it.
... Sarah:And then when we combined inflation, the inflation and just, we were making
... Sarah:almost nothing on this college fund.
... Sarah:It was literally just a place to hold this money that we we're depositing every.
... Sarah:You know, whatever.
... Sarah:And we started to realize that that's just not really a safe
... Sarah:place to store that money.
... Sarah:Like the government program that was put in place so that we could earn
... Sarah:money for our supposedly earn money for our three kids to go pay for college
... Sarah:in 20 years was really no better than us putting it in a mattress in cash.
... Sarah:And even that is worse than transferring all that money into
... Sarah:Bitcoin, which is not inflationary.
... Sarah:In fact, it's, it just seems to keep exponentially like growing in value and
... Sarah:it is not centralized or connected to the government and not subject to any
... Sarah:kind of policies that our government might institute in the future.
... Sarah:As like, I still feel like, I still feel like our government's probably.
... Sarah:Trying to do the best they can.
... Sarah:It doesn't seem, it seems like, oh, oftentimes somebody gets, somebody gets
... Sarah:the short end of the stick, somebody gets screwed, and we just don't want
... Sarah:our hard earned money in this college fund to be something that gets devalued
... Sarah:because of inflation, and they're trying to control inflation, so they just, Take
... Sarah:it away or devalue it inadvertently.
... Sarah:So we've, we just pulled all that and we've transitioned our savings
... Sarah:into something that we truly feel is technologically safer than the,
... Sarah:the traditional finance system.
... Sarah:So that's like the long-winded answer of like, these like reasons why
... Sarah:Bitcoin became a big part of our life.
... Sarah:Financially speaking and also like purpose speaking, like just it gives
... Sarah:me some excitement about having like, I don't know, a role to play
... Sarah:in making people's lives better.
... Sarah:And why we've kind of put our eggs in that basket as well because it just, it
... Sarah:seems trust, it seems more trustworthy and it holds its store of value in a
... Sarah:way that we have not seen our, like traditional finances, you know, doing.
... Sarah:So that's where we went and started with a need with the pandemic,
... Sarah:like a perceived need of like, the system is broken and there's this
... Sarah:new, new tool that can fix it.
... Sarah:That's where we are.
Tali:Yeah.
Tali:Thank you so much for that.
Tali:That's, that's so helpful to be able to visualize how it's practically useful.
Tali:I think a lot of people get a little bit intimidated by the technology side
Tali:and then they, they kind of keep away and they're looking from the sidelines
Tali:because they don't understand and they think that they must understand
Tali:all the technical ins and outs of Bitcoin before they can participate.
Sarah:Yes, exactly.
Sarah:Well, I mean, it's similar to...
Sarah:my children take piano.
Sarah:And in the beginning we started by, we were, we played them some Rachmaninoff,
Sarah:you know, Rachmaninoff's, very, like, super impressive piano pieces.
Sarah:And my intention was to inspire them, look what you could do.
Sarah:This is amazing.
Sarah:And it just scared them.
Sarah:Like, they enjoyed the music.
Sarah:They ran around like crazy people, but it was like, I could never do that because we
Sarah:played a video and they saw this guy like going crazy on the piano and, but instead
Sarah:of it sounding like crazy like they do, it was like beautiful and impressive and
Sarah:instead, you know, so we kind of have, we pivoted and instead we're playing them.
Sarah:You know, like simple like children's songs that people are having fun playing
Sarah:piano or you know, even like Disney songs that super fun, but they're, they're
Sarah:fun in, they connect with their world.
Sarah:They're applicable to my seven year old and they're not like, I'm sure
Sarah:everybody that was playing those songs could also play the hard stuff, but
Sarah:they don't have to, like, you can enter at a level that is for your use case.
Sarah:Like, like I mentioned, Jason did go deep dive.
Sarah:He did get, you know, going into the like master's level of, he would
Sarah:disagree, he would say he is not like mastering anything, but he went
Sarah:farther into the technological stuff.
Sarah:Like, he got intrigued by the hardware and the kind of, he got really excited
Sarah:about the idea that he could play a part in helping to build this infrastructure.
Sarah:I never wanted to go into banking.
Sarah:Like, I don't, I never really cared to know like how my check transitions into
Sarah:like money, like, you know, so that's just where I was like, okay, like I'm fine.
Sarah:I'm truly okay just using this tool for how it applies to my life my day by day.
Sarah:But it is, but intellectually it is exciting to know that it is such an
Sarah:open technology can move into it and learn it if they're excited about
Sarah:that, you know, like, and that's getting more and more apparent.
Sarah:I do think that as the technology, as more people use it, it is
Sarah:becoming more accessible for people to pick their level of engagement
Sarah:and use, you know, like that's.
Sarah:That's pretty cool to watch it develop in that way, you know?
Sarah:Yeah.
Sarah:I'm never like, for instance, the analogy that somebody used once that
Sarah:I finally like kind of clicked was, if you wanted to, you could run your own
Sarah:internet server, like you can run your own, you can have your own email server.
Sarah:You know, it can be like, I could have like a, you know, me@sarah.co or
Sarah:whatever, you know, like, but I don't have to like, I don't have to do that.
Sarah:And perfectly happy using Gmail.
Sarah:So, but there are people who do want to, for a variety of reasons.
Sarah:They want the control.
Sarah:They're more concerned, they're particularly concerned about like
Sarah:privacy or availability of bandwidth.
Sarah:Like for whatever reason.
Sarah:There are classes, there are tools to learn how to do that, but
Sarah:I've just chosen not to do that.
Sarah:And frankly, the vast majority of our world has chosen not to do that.
Sarah:So yeah, there are different entry levels and there are different destinations
Sarah:and purposes, which is super cool.
Sarah:It almost lends itself to more of like even more trustworthiness
Sarah:of the, the technology.
Sarah:So, but it, but it also makes me excited that like we are getting in,
Sarah:at the beginning when I think of like my kids, And like you mentioned, like
Sarah:I want them to be familiar with this terminology, with this vocabulary, with
Sarah:this technology in their day by day now.
Sarah:Learning it kind of alongside learning how to manage money in
Sarah:general and currency in general.
Sarah:Because they're gonna be leaps and bounds ahead of the people who are jumping on
Sarah:in 10 years and in 20 years, when it is much more standard, much more universal.
Sarah:Kind of like the kids who were the first kids on the block to have computers.
Sarah:They're the ones who were ahead of the curve when they went to college.
Tali:Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.
Tali:If the discussion with our guest resonated with you and you would
Tali:like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the
Tali:Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club.
Tali:The meetup link is in the show notes.
Tali:Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and
Tali:benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them.
