Elly:

If you just want security of using a financial system that is not controlled by any jurisdiction then Bitcoin is for you. I like to compare it to using public transport versus having your own car. If there's a hurricane, you really want to have your own car. You don't want to wait for a bus when there's a hurricane coming.

Tali:

Hey everybody. Welcome to Orange Hatter.

Aleia:

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Tali:

Hi, Ellie. Thank you so much for joining us on Orange Hatter. I can't wait to dive into your Bitcoin journey and find out all about your background. Welcome to the show.

Elly:

Thank you, Tali. I'm so glad to be here. Looking forward to our conversation.

Tali:

Let's start by just sharing a little bit about your background, where Did you grow up maybe your educational background, professional, just a little bit.

Elly:

Okay, great. So I grew up in Germany. My mom and dad still live there. My siblings live in Germany and Switzerland. I actually got to see them this summer, which I'm really excited I got to do that. But I moved to Texas when I wanted to pursue a PhD in nanotechnology and that was 15 years ago. So 15 years ago, I moved to Texas to pursue a PhD in nanotechnology. And that's where I met my husband and now we have two children and we still live in Texas. Nanotechnology is really exciting to me still. I finished my degree, but I could talk about nanotechnology all day because there is just something exciting about how the world works at a scale where it's smaller than what you can see in an optical microscope. But you can still make things And measure things and observe things about what you made. So I innovated in nanotechnology. I made computer chips out of materials other than silicon. So most of our phones and computers have silicon chips in them. And I was motivated by just the need for innovation in that space. We just need better chips and better technologies that are not necessarily made out of silicon. So I made graphene based chips. And graphene is a material that is made out of carbon and it's just a single atomic layer of carbon and conducts electricity really well. And you can make transistors out of it. And a transistor is just a switch. It can generate a zero into one. And that's all that computers know, zeros and ones. I learned about Bitcoin during graduate school. And I learned about it just the same way that people learn about it now through articles. I believe it was a Slashdot article at the time. Just learned that there was a white paper that someone suggested to make scarce digital asset. So you know how all the files on a computer are infinitely copyable and people try to enforce copyright, but you really can't. So Bitcoin just cleverly used hash functions to create something that cannot be multiplied in all infinity. That there is a limited amount of it. And it's not that the file itself is limited. You can infinitely copy the Bitcoin blockchain, but what is limited is the information in it is the ledger itself. And how transactions are recorded in it in a way that the transactions can't be faked or copied or multiplied. I just, at the time, I thought it was really clever. I thought it was really unique. I had never seen anything like that before. I hadn't quite understood all the implications or all the properties of it at the time. But. It's just like any other innovation or technology where you think, Huh, this is really interesting. Maybe I should look into it a little bit later. Gavin Andreessen set up a Bitcoin faucet where anybody could go to that website and as long as they have a wallet with a valid Bitcoin address, they can get free Bitcoin sent to their address. There's nothing to lose there, so I decided to take advantage of that. That's how I got my first Bitcoin on my wallet. The wallet came with a setting where you can mine Bitcoin. So you just flip a switch, and it uses your computer's CPU to calculate hash functions. and mine Bitcoin. So that's what I did too. It really exhausted your CPU though. So I couldn't really work on my computer while it was mining. I could just mine overnight and then work on my PhD during the day. So that's what I did. All of this is 2011 ish, it's early on, but there's already an exchange that's up and running, that was Mt. Gox at the time, an exchange out of Japan, that was, a little bit later on spectacularly imploded. But so since there was an exchange, there was already pricing information and I noticed, oh, the price is going up. Maybe it's worth it to convert some of my own savings into Bitcoin. And I did that. And it wasn't much cause I was a student and I, I didn't have significant funds to convert, but I felt like even if I just put in 20, maybe it will be worth something down the road. And that was my entry to Bitcoin. And it's been a while. So I've had a chance to learn more about What Bitcoin is, how it works, the math behind it, what are hash functions, how do they make sure that Bitcoin is secure, that our transactions are going to be processed, even though there's no one that is really responsible for processing those transactions. It's just the free market that decides which transactions get processed and which aren't. And I've learned more about I've markets. I've learned more about how money works in the U. S. More about fiat and the banking system and history. There's just a lot to learn when you start being interested in, why is there inflation and things like that, that I just hadn't had the interest to do before. Because my interest was mostly in science and not the monetary system. But once you start learning about Bitcoin, one of the side effects of that is learning about how the monetary system works and that helps you make this financial decisions down the road too. So that was my journey into Bitcoin. Lately I've become more interested in sharing my story and contributing to Bitcoin events such as meetups or conferences, I help organize the Atlanta Bitcoin conference, for example, where you and I got to meet. So that was a very special occasion. I homeschool my children and I teach them about Bitcoin if they want to hear about it, if they don't, that's up to them and I have become more interested in how Bitcoin mining affects both the energy industry as well as the semiconductor industry, because that is where I used to innovate in. And now I'm seeing that when I first started my PhD, all we had was consumer electronics, computers. We tried to make computers better, faster, more powerful. And that's what I was trying to achieve with my graphene chips. But when you have a problem, like you're trying to make better computers and that problem has the same constraints and the same just when you're trying to solve the same problem for 10 years, it's hard to truly innovate What we have been doing is mostly optimize. So we've had Silicon chips 20 years ago, and we've optimized those Silicon chips and our computers have gotten better. But it's only been optimization. It hasn't been real innovation. Nobody has put graphene chips into their computers yet. Nobody is really deviating from the path of just making silicon chips smaller and when it comes to Bitcoin mining, you're really solving for a different set of problems than when you're building computers. Because when you're mining, you're doing one calculation over and over. It's much simpler than playing Netflix or, video games or whatever, web browsing, things like that are much more complicated and need much more powerful chips. So in Bitcoin mining, you really don't need chips that are that versatile or powerful. All you need is chips that consume less electricity because a miner just wants to have fewer costs, just spend less on electricity and get more calculations out in a short period of time. So they need to be fast, but they don't need to be powerful and They don't need to be small either, because you can just build a huge facility in the middle of Texas and have your calculations done there. It really doesn't need to fit in your pocket like a phone does. You're really solving for a different set of problems. So you can make chips very differently. You can innovate in whole different ways. And that makes me excited because that opens doors to innovation that will benefit our computers eventually too. And I haven't had a chance to go back into research and I haven't worked in a lab since I graduated with my degree, but I'm just excited for all the potential that's there and I do hope that more people talk about it more people get interested in making chips for Bitcoin mining and maybe If I get a chance, I can see that as a path to contributing in that space besides just talking about it

Tali:

That's really fascinating. And what a unique perspective to look at Bitcoin from your point of view when you're researching nanotechnology. I'm just curious, going back to all those years ago when you were first exposed to Bitcoin, you mentioned that you were immediately attracted by the fact that the basic fundamentals were valuable. And I'm just wondering, from your point of view of a PhD student with limited funds, but really at the cutting edge of technology development, what did you see was a parallel between the innovation of Bitcoin and what you were trying to do?

Elly:

So Bitcoin was an innovation in software and I was an experimental scientist in hardware, so there wasn't really a whole lot of overlap that I saw from the very beginning. I saw that you needed hardware to do the math in Bitcoin, but I haven't quite connected the dots of how Bitcoin mining could drive innovation and semiconductors at the time. I was just trying to make consumer electronics better. I saw Bitcoin as entirely separate from or just another. interesting development in the world, but not really something that applied to my research at the time. Now I can see the connection a lot clearer but at the time I didn't really see the connection. What I did see at the time, or what I believe drew me to Bitcoin, was that It wasn't just someone who decided that Bitcoin should be valuable or that Bitcoin should have certain properties. The properties of Bitcoin really emerge from the code and the math itself and it's like gold in that gold is just a physical element. Nobody decided that gold should have certain properties. It had the properties first, and then people decided that those are valuable and useful. And, code really doesn't know that it's money either. All it knows that It's an irreversible function. You know how 3 times 5 is 15, and then 15 divided by 5 is 3, that's a reversible function, it goes both ways. Hash functions are not like that. Once you hash, which a hashing algorithm is just a very systematic scramble of data, any data. Once you scramble it and you develop that fingerprint hash, it cannot be unscrambled. You cannot deduce from the hash what the original file was, what the original data was. But You can prove what data was scrambled because you can re scramble it and you will get the same hash number. And that's just a really clever way of making things inscribed in digital stone. It's, it makes an unalterable, or, you can still alter the files, but it becomes very clear when the file was altered. Everybody can double check and rehash a file to see if it was altered. And it's just a really cool way of making things last forever. It's hard to know for me when exactly I understood that piece of the puzzle, but it's just cool that the properties of Bitcoin come out of the math. And then we decide that those properties are valuable, and that's why it has value. It's not because someone told us that the dollar bill has value and, or we all agreed, it's not even a group phenomenon that we as a group decided that it has value. It's the properties itself incentivize us to think that it has value because those are the types of properties that we look for when we look for something of value. not alterable.

Tali:

I think for people who are not computer scientists, for example myself it's really hard for us to wrap our head around what you're saying about the SHA function. You mentioned that there's a YouTube video that demonstrates this with pen and pencil.

Elly:

that's right. Since hash functions or hash algorithms are really just math, you can do math with pen and pencil. So there is a YouTube video that you're gonna put in the show notes that demonstrates, and you don't even need to understand, what the person is calculating. I think it's just fascinating to see that it can be done with pencil and paper. You don't actually need computers to do that calculation for you. It's a calculation that's fairly simple for computers to do. It's not that simple for humans, but it is doable. You can do it with pencil and paper. And yeah, SHA 256 just stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm and the 256 for bits. So all it does is any file that is on your computer that can be a video, that can be a photo, it can be an Excel file, anything that's a file, it takes up more or less space on your hard drive, right? Like a video takes up more space than a picture. That's just because. The way that your computer stores it is not as a picture as a video, it stores it as a long string of zeros and ones, and the video just has more zeros and ones, it's a longer number. tHe zeros and ones can then be converted back. So the picture is converted to 1s can be converted back to the picture. But once you have the 0s and 1s, you break them up into what the SHA 256 algorithm does, is it breaks it up into chunks of 256 bits each, and systematically scrambles them together. to then get the result that's 256 bits. So all the information is lost from the picture, all you get is that number, and that number is like a fingerprint of the original file. So you cannot extract the original file out of that hash in the end. But it is just a number, and 256 bits is not very large, so it can sit on your hard drive. And As a fingerprint of that file, which is why anybody who has a terabyte hard drive can download the entire history of all Bitcoin transactions to said hard drive. And, having a copy around just signals to the rest of the network that this is valuable. So if 40, 000 people have a copy of the ledger, the financial ledger of Bitcoin, then if someone tries to cheat and say, Oh, no, it was actually, I actually own 10 Bitcoin when they don't. There's a very easy way to double check that, because if they have those 10 bitcoins, then the file would look different, it would have a different hash, but 40, 000 people have proof that the hash is what it is yeah, it's cool that way.

Tali:

Yeah, see most of what you said went over my head, but I know that to a lot of people out there who understand higher mathematics it makes perfect sense because it did for Scott. He was trying to explain the same thing to me and not my, how my brain thinks, but I appreciate people like you and Scott who can get into the technical nitty gritty and explain it. So thank you for sharing that. In terms of application, so we were talking nitty gritty about the algorithm of Bitcoin and why it's so valuable in that the intrinsic Characteristics of that algorithm is what we deem valuable to be used as a money standard. So if we jump back a little farther and look at Bitcoin from more of a functionality point of view how has your life or even just perspective on life or just viewpoints changed since you have been in the Bitcoin space?

Elly:

I think Bitcoin has made me more hopeful. And it's anytime I hear about innovation that happens, people coming up with new ideas, coming up with ideas that solve real problems, it makes me more hopeful for humanity. And Bitcoin just solves a lot of the problems that our monetary system has. Inflation is just one of them. Just real life, just transferring money to another country and how cumbersome and difficult and expensive that can be. And Bitcoin solves that problem by just making it easy and the, the costs, there is a cost associated with it because you need to incentivize miners to include your transactions in their blocks. But other than that, it's not, it's not an arbitrary profit that someone has. I think that would be it. One is that Bitcoin really makes me hopeful. And the other is Bitcoin has spurred my interest or has guided my interest towards things like the monetary system and how the banking system works, why fiat creates so many problems. Those are things that I just haven't had a chance to think about before I ever got interested in Bitcoin. And I think that having that knowledge now. does help me understand the world a little bit better.

Tali:

So the first thing you mentioned was it Bitcoin has made you more hopeful. In order for you to be more hopeful, you had to be in a darker place before. So can you just expand a little bit about your mindset before Bitcoin and maybe compare your experience growing up in Germany versus what you're witnessing in the U. S. in the last 15 years.

Elly:

I don't know how to answer that question because, just growing up as a child, you don't think a lot about money other than just that it's limited and you have to budget for things, but money as a whole how do we deal with it? How are we affected by things like inflation? That's just and budgeting too, is just something that you get a whole different perspective on just by being an adult and having to manage and plan for things differently. So what makes me hopeful is more of a global scale hopeful for people who find themselves in hyperinflation situations, people who find themselves in unfavorable political situations who may need to up and leave and with Bitcoin, they, all they need to do is memorize their password and they don't need to bring anything. They can flee naked across the border and still have all their funds available to them. So that's really what I mean by it makes me hopeful because it really helps people in, real life situations. Um, the The way that it's helped me is just that. It's a nest egg, it's great to have just a little bit of backup and just something that I don't have to worry about but it's I haven't been in that situation where I've had to flee the country and start over somewhere entirely new with it nothing, so I haven't even used Bitcoin for remittances, but I know that a lot of people, remittances are just part of their lives and that's how they keep their family alive in a different part of the world. And having to pay fees every time you send money is. Just taking away money from your family. And that's really not necessary. And I am glad that there is a technology out there that allows you to send the full amount of value. I'm glad that it's just available to people. If the Western Union works for you, great, but if you want the better option, there is a better option if your bank works well for you. Great. If you have investment strategies that work for you that's also great. You don't have to own Bitcoin to have a nest egg. You don't have to own Bitcoin to send money abroad, but it does make things easier in some ways or better. It's just a better solution. You don't need anyone's permission to use the system. I've had a bank account close that I didn't want closed. My bank just informed me that they closed my bank account. That's not something that will happen to you in Bitcoin. You know, Once you have Bitcoin on your address, nobody can close your address. You're just not at the mercy of someone else's decision making. You take self responsibility and that's just something that as an adult is important to do and just to take responsibility for your own life and your own finances. And I like to compare it to using public transport versus having your own car. It's like public transport might be it's great that this is a service that's provided to you and if that works for your life, great. If there's a hurricane, you really want to have your own car. You don't want to wait for a bus when there's a hurricane coming. And if there's no hurricanes in your life That's fantastic. But hurricanes can and do happen. Financial political instability can and does happen. I know we live in a country where we feel like things are relatively stable, even though we experienced things like inflation and housing crisis. And there are financial crises, so it is nice to have at least. a fraction of your savings in a place that is unaffected by those potential financial future crises, but you don't have to, it's okay. If you feel perfectly fine with using a financial system that other people control then that's fine. But if you are, I don't know, a control freak, or if you just want that, the extra little bit of security of using a financial system that is not controlled by any jurisdiction then Bitcoin is for you.

Tali:

I Love the analogy of the public transportation versus your own car. it's a double edged sword when you're talking about owning something yourself, right? So you have full control of your car, but you need to maintain it. And so in my mind, like we were just talking about our car troubles earlier before we started recording, I recently lost the car because we neglected to maintain it properly. We ran out of oil and the engine died. And what are our options? The car is totaled. So in the same way, if we have Bitcoin in my mind, the oil is like, education, keep yourself informed, listen to podcasts like this, listen to other Bitcoin podcasts, keep informed. That's like putting oil in your engine, right? Because if you lose your Bitcoin, there is no third party for you to go to and say, Hey, I forgot my password, can you please reset it? No, when your engine dies, like my car did, it's totaled. If you don't take the necessary measures to stay informed, to be educated, and you lose your Bitcoin, it's gone. So it's a double edged sword. And like you said, whichever one you choose, it's completely up to you. But know that there is another option outside of the current fiat system.

Elly:

For a lot of us who don't just keep savings in dollars and hardly anybody does anymore because there's retirement accounts and there's real estate and for those you need to be educated on those too and that takes work too. There are financial services for any other investment or financial security vehicle. There are resources for Bitcoin where you can just work with a financial advisor that understands Bitcoin and then they can handle it for you. there are companies that will set up a multi sig wallet for you and help. draft all the documents that you need to inherit your Bitcoin to the next generation. There's people who will walk you through the process of securing your Bitcoin where you really don't need to know or be worried about messing it up because they handle it for you. There is help out there. You don't have to do everything yourself. If you don't even have the time or interest or ability or financial or technical expertise to see through the jungle that is Bitcoin, you don't have to if all you understand is that. Here is a monetary system. Here is a place to have a piece of your savings be independent of human decision making, you of banks, governments. Brokers, anybody, if you want that to just be secured by code, then find someone who can set up a wallet for you. Just put in as much as you feel you want to protect and be done with it. You don't really have to keep maintaining that knowledge. As long as you have the password associated with your wallet, You're good, and if you do find yourself In a situation where you need to access those funds then there's services for that too. And you can just contact them. They'll help you recover and access them. So they're there are financial services out there for Bitcoiners is what I'm trying to say. And you don't have to, unless you're very interested in it, you can be your, you could take the responsibility and be your own financial service provider. But there are financial service providers in the Bitcoin space too. And ,they're open to, to help anyone who needs that help and the community is great, too. So it's not just financial services. It's there's also bitcoin has network and just a lot of people who are who've gone through the self education and all of that and who are happy to answer questions I'm always happy to answer questions if people want to understand the technical background better or just practically how, like, where do I even buy Bitcoin? What do I do with it after I buy it? There are a lot of people who are happy to help without you even needing to pay them for their help. So,

Tali:

Entering the Bitcoin space is even just over the last year. There is so much innovation happening in this space to make Bitcoin more user friendly, to make it more accessible. And I just can't even begin to imagine how difficult it was 11 years ago when it was less visible, and I feel like you almost have to be in a very niche group of people in order to have exposure to it to correctly possess it, acquire it and hold it. But right now There are Bitcoin meetups popping up everywhere. It's much more visible. People are so open to sharing their knowledge. And there's tons and tons of educational materials out there. So you can either delegate it by using one of the financial services you mentioned or you can completely self custody and there's a lot of help for doing that as well.

Elly:

Back in the day when I first heard about Bitcoin, self custody was the only way to have Bitcoin. And I have to say that I don't think it's just me, but downloading a wallet and typing a wallet address somewhere wasn't that hard. we're used to, downloading programs and files from the computer. It's, It's easier than online banking. The wallet tells you what you need to do. you download it, you open it, it tells you, write down these 12 words. You write them down on a piece of paper. Congratulations. You, have now completely cryptographically secured your funds. It gives you an address to send it to. And it tells you, put in that address, if you ever need money to send to it. And if you're ever at an impasse where you're like I don't know what to do with my address. I don't know how to get the Bitcoin back out of my address. Then there, there's a community that will help you answer those questions, or a service that will help you answer that question. Understanding how it works technically is one thing, but using it is really quite simple, and I know swiping a credit card is simple too, but, And for Bitcoin, it's scanning a QR code. It's not that hard. people have built technologies that make it quite easy.

Tali:

Yeah, for sure. I think in the beginning Scott and I, it was a trust factor because we did not understand it. We didn't want to trust it and we were just getting used to online banking back then. We used to, bring a check, a physical check into a physical building and hand it to a live person to deposit our check, but then suddenly we could just take a picture of it with our phone and it took me a long time just to trust that part. So now that

Elly:

I understand, but it's really interesting in that bringing a physical check to a location is less secure than taking a picture. So it's interesting that we trusted a system that wasn't very secure, where your identity can be stolen, where, checks can be stolen, that happened to me, my checkbook was stolen, and here's the technology that, yeah, it takes a while to understand it. But it's really more secure than any of the other systems that we have available to us.

Tali:

so you've been in this space for quite a while are all your family members on board? Have your orange pill? All of them?

Elly:

No, not at all. They know that this is something that's available to them and they don't trust it. They just don't think it has value. They don't think that they need it. They are happy with their banks and their investments and retirement accounts and everything else that they've, that they're happy with the way that they manage their money. So they don't feel the need to incorporate Bitcoin into their strategy or use it for anything because credit cards are easy enough. They don't need to have yet another way to transact. And that's really the case. If public transportation works just fine you don't really need to go research what car is best for your family, how to maintain it how to drive a car, learn how to drive a car. Once you drive a car, it's second nature, it's but if the public transportation system works for you, there is just, yeah it's like that. And it's like the rest of our family is using buses and we're driving a car and they're, we also use the bus, right? We still have bank accounts and credit cards and all that so all they see is that we also have a car, but they don't need a car. So they don't care. And, we tell them that we're available to, to answer their questions if they need to, or if they complain about inflation, then we say I know there's inflation on the bus, but there's no inflation in the car. It's really up to you it's your choice to not have a car. We can help teach, how to drive a car. We can help you with how to, purchase a car. we can help with onboarding, we can help with maintenance, we can help with everything. But if that's not something that you're interested in because your current system, you're happy with how you are doing things currently, then that's your choice. You're an adult. You make your own choices.

Tali:

Yeah, everybody should have the freedom to choose. And that's part of why Bitcoin is so valuable because you get to choose to participate versus our current system. You're told that you must participate.

Elly:

we choose to participate in Bitcoin, but we also choose to participate in the fiat system because of certain conveniences that it affords us, right? So while we're actively making that choice, for most people, that's not an active choice to make. And if buses become unavailable, if the, fiat system doesn't work anymore for a lot of people, that would mean a huge inconvenience, if not, just really life altering. Whereas for us, it would be no big deal, because we have that other option to transact in a different currency. And that's, it's good to have.

Tali:

Yeah, definitely. So you have two kids and you mentioned before that if they want to learn about Bitcoin, you'll teach them and if they don't, that's okay, too. But you guys actually worked together and developed a very interesting game to explain it to them. The Bitcoin block, the blockchain would you like to talk a little bit about that?

Elly:

Yeah, I'm happy to. Since my kids are homeschooled, they find different ways to explore academic topics or anything that they're interested in, and so my son happens to be just very interested in math and all the different ways that you can express math and show math and how you can make art with math how you can visualize or illustrate things. He really plays with math I would say. He was just playing around with all the different ways to solve for the trinomial expansion. And he came up with a way to. make a cube, because it's a cubic equation, so you should be able to show it as a cube. So he made a cube and then he split it up into smaller pieces that are then the different terms in the trinomial expansion. And we 3D printed the pieces with the correct dimensions and we played around with it. And everybody we showed this to thought it was a really fun way to assemble a cube out of smaller pieces. And even if they don't understand the math behind it, or it's just blocks that assemble into a cube. So since we noticed how much fun it is to play around with it, we thought it might be fun to have the pieces made out of plexiglass so that they're colorful and beautiful and see through. And we still 3D print the holder, the cube holder out of PLA, but that 3D puzzle is now available for sale. we actually sell those cubes now so that other families can also enjoy assembling a cube out of pieces and it's a really fun 3D puzzle. But we've also noticed that The cube can be a really valuable teaching tool to understand what a Bitcoin block is like, That it has a finite size, that it's filled with transactions that are gathered from mempool which is just a general pool of transactions. So if you have a Bitcoin transaction, you just communicate it to the network. And then from all of the available transactions, a miner would then assemble one block that has a limited size and they have an incentive to only include transactions that, that carry the highest fees with them. So our little Cube 3D puzzle became teaching tool to show or illustrate how miners go about assembling a Bitcoin block out of transactions and it's really analogous to, the block template being the holder and the little acrylic pieces being the transactions, it all fits together to make one block of a finite size. It's helped, we've taken the puzzle to the Atlanta Bitcoin Conference and I've used it to illustrate how Bitcoin mining works in talks that I've given at conferences and podcasts that I've participated in. And generally the feedback that I've gotten is that people understand Bitcoin a little bit better now that they have seen a visual representation of what the files look like when Bitcoin miners assemble them. And if you are not the technical type, but you like beautiful, mathematical art pieces, or just a visual way to illustrate a complex phenomenon. It's just really cool. ,since my son designed it originally he's, and he helps. And it's been great. The kids both help with putting the kits together in, into a box, we box each puzzle still ourselves. We 3D print the pieces ourselves. Each is really unique that way that the acrylic pieces are the same across all the puzzles and we've had them made professionally but a lot of the assembly is still homemade and it's great to involve the kids in the little business, even though, you know, it's not paying the bills, but It's a great teaching tool for how to run a business. How does the world work like that? We need to pay taxes for each cube that we sell that we need to pay our suppliers that make our acrylic blocks. That there's a cost associated with it, that there's shipping costs associated with it, that there's work associated with assembling the kits. And that we do want to price it in the way that we make a profit in the end, even if we pay the kids some fraction as a commission for their design and their contribution to making the final product. So in a way, it's become a homeschool project that's, that I feel that is very valuable in preparing you for being an adult and how do businesses work, but at the same time, other families get to enjoy the puzzle playing around with it, learning about Bitcoin and the process. There's still more to do, we don't really have a storefront, you still have to just contact me and tell me that you want a cube and I'll mail one to you, but that's a work in progress and one day I'm sure we'll have an online store and you can order a cube from there and it's gonna be more streamlined.

Tali:

Right now if they're interested in checking it out, they just go to your Instagram page and all the information will be in the show notes. Any last recommendations for women who are still sitting on the fence about Bitcoin?

Elly:

My last recommendation? I think it's okay to sit on the fence. You don't have to make decisions right away. If you feel like you need to learn more before you can make a decision, if you feel like you need to talk to a friend or someone go to a meetup, see if you can talk to someone and you can answer your questions. There's a lot of YouTube videos that, that are very helpful. If you have specific questions, there's telegram groups and there's even groups that are just for women. If you don't want things to be mansplained to you then there's that. But if you feel like you don't really have questions and you don't really want to get involved in Bitcoin, that's perfectly fine too. And this that's your choice and that's great. But I do want to encourage people who have at least a little bit of a curiosity, which I don't know why anyone would listen to your podcast if they weren't at least a little bit curious about Bitcoin. Maybe they just like you and they're your friend. That's cool too. But if you're at least a little bit curious about Bitcoin just find a way to maybe just buy a little bit of Bitcoin. And download the Bitcoin wallet and download the little bit of Bitcoin that you bought onto your wallet and do nothing else. Just literally nothing else. Just check back a year later and see if your Bitcoin is worth more now. Or learn more about it and if you feel like it is the future, then feel free to put in more money if that's or take it back out if you feel like it didn't do anything for you and you don't really want to keep one more option around for your money, That's fine too. We're all juggling a lot of things in our minds all the time. Decluttering that way is fine as far as I'm concerned. So it's like closing a credit card account that you're not really using anyways. And you're just paying, I don't know. So yeah, that's my opinion anyways.

Tali:

It's true. It's their own choice and everybody has a different journey to walk and everybody has their own timing for coming to Bitcoin or not coming to Bitcoin. Thank you so much for sitting with us today and sharing all of your stories. I'm sure that people who need to hear it will hear it. I really believe people are brought to stories that they need to listen to. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Elly:

Oh, it was so much fun. Thank you, Tali.

Tali:

Thanks for joining us today If the discussion with our guests resonated with you and you would like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them. Until next time, bye!