Welcome everyone to Orange Hatter. I am so excited to have Jules here with me and we're going to just dive right into her Bitcoin story and I hope that everyone will find something that they can identify with and hopefully encourage some of you who are sitting on the fence about Bitcoin to hop off the fence and walk, take one step closer to the Bitcoin rabbit hole and find out more about it. So welcome Jules. Thank you so much for coming to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm going to dive right in, and I'm going to ask you a question I ask everyone, which is how did you come across Bitcoin in the first place?

So during the pandemic, I saw that there was so much money printing going on and just felt like something's not right. And I just started questioning where's this money coming from? And I don't remember the exact moment, but somehow I found out about Bitcoin, just started studying it. And I was fascinated by it. And then we also saw like the stock market go up like crazy and all the mom and pop shops closing down. It just felt like something was not right and just started kind of looking around and questioning things.

Mm hmm. So when you first came across the word Bitcoin, Do you have some idea of whether it was through the media, like some kind of news article or just conversation that you overheard at work or, you know, at the grocery store?

So I had, I had heard about Bitcoin before in like 2017 when it was going up like crazy. So I knew about it, but never really took the time to find out much about it during the pandemic. I was looking more into like real store value because I knew that this Money thing is, is just, you know, very manipulated. And so I think when I started looking to where can I make sure I can store my value, my, my, my wealth, you know, I started looking into gold, you know, just like hard commodities. I've realized that Bitcoin is actually like a very hard commodity. You know, I wish I remembered the exact moment. But I mean, it must be like these podcasts and by that time in 2020, there was a lot of material. Um, so I think it was just like, you know, just like listening to some podcasts. I'm just like asking people. I just asked everyone I knew what do you know about bitcoin? There's so many other aspects of bitcoin that it was very appealing to me. You know, we're talking about like the freedom aspect, the censorship resistant aspect, just Being sovereign, being self sovereign, all those things kind of all aligned and those are the parts of Bitcoin that I really love.

And then you mentioned that you like the freedom aspect of it and the censorship free aspect of it. Can you elaborate on that and just explain to the audience what that means to you personally?

I guess the fact that you can, I mean, if we are talking about KYC and non KYC, so KYC is know your customer. And basically when you buy Bitcoin through exchanges, you have to, you know, give your, all your information. Sometimes you have to even do like a selfie, but what Bitcoin was originally created to do was to do was to make peer to peer transactions without intermediaries. So, for example, like, I can send you Bitcoin without going through a bank, um, we can change that without asking for permission or without someone saying, Oh, you can't do that. A lot of people kind of correlate this as like, you know, criminals use it. And that's one way, but criminals also use cash. And actually criminals, actually a lot of money laundering through banks, which It's like very well, like it's documented. So, um, I don't think that's a fair criticism. So yeah, so freedom of, uh, transacting without asking for permission is pretty important to me and I think it should be important for everybody and for, especially for our children. They don't think about it. I think that's something that we need to teach our kids.

Yeah. I feel like our children have been trained really well by our system to accept authority and that they're supposed to follow rules that were laid out for them. And they've actually been trained to not. Question authority. So I remember when so my kids were homeschooled, but years and years ago, I did put my oldest one in preschool. And I remember specifically after she had gone for a year, I asked to sit in one of their Like the entire day, like from drop off to pick up just to see what they're actually doing because everybody told me it was so important that they were socialized. And the main thing I observed was the kids were taught to walk in lines and with your mouth shut and from one room to another, they were ushered and repeat that message. It was so clear over and over again, drilled into their mind. These were three year olds. When you come to school, you form lines, you walk on lines. that are marked on the, on the floor and your, your mouth is closed. You get to the room and you sit on designated carpet squares and your mouth is closed. When you have social time, you go out to the playground. But when you come back, you line up again. Again, you're following a line. Literally, it's like a visible line. You're walking a line. You're not to veer off and your mouth is closed. That is drilled into them from the time they're three years old.

Yeah. I listened to your podcast with. And that was very inspiring. And that's one of the reasons why I decided to do the, uh, summer camp. I wish I did it, you know, I didn't really realize that it's a better way of teaching kids.

Well, I think as long as you're involved. in the kids lives and you're teaching them. It doesn't have to be all day long, like the way we did it. You know, kids are so smart. Kids are so, so smart these days. You don't need, you don't need quantity of time, really. As long as you're involved, I think they're good. You have mentioned that it took you from curiosity to listen to some podcasts. to reading some books and just continually asking questions of the people who are in your social circle. And then you found someone's husband who was able to answer some questions for you. How long did that take and how did it change how you view life, how you approach everyday life during that process? Can you go into a little bit about that?

I think it just made me see everything in a different lens. Just for example, the monetary system. We never questioned it. I was an econ major, never thought about what is money. What is this policy doing? Uh, how is, uh, you know, this creating inflation and making our lives really bad? You know, the whole notion of like, we need, we all just have to work harder to buy the same thing to afford the same things because of inflation. And just, just start kind of opening my eyes to not just the money or. I view rules and government, but just everything like my job and education. Yeah, it was just like everything. I started seeing things differently. I was in employment defense for maybe the most recent six years of my legal career, especially in California. The way that the legal system is set up is it's very bad incentives. Most of the cases that I had, um, 99% were meritless. And they, the plaintiff's lawyers knew it, but they still file trying to get settlement money on the employer side. We know that these cases don't have merit, but also there's incentive to kind of keep the cases going for their fees for the, uh, yeah. So I mean, it's just like bad incentives on both sides. I just felt like this is kind of like part of the fiat problem. We're just incentivized to just, you know, earn money, make money. There's not real value being added to society. So, and this is kind of, you know, as I was going through the rabbit hole, just realized like, I don't want to be part of this. And, and that's kind of why eventually I just took the step of getting out of it. You know, I think about my colleagues at my law firm and they're all really good people and smart and, you know, but they're, they're forced to like do this, be in the system, you know, because this is the system we're in and, and, um, I don't know. I mean, we're just so trained to think like this is how it is. Right. Versus why, why are we here? And we're just like forced to like have this job because that's why we went to law school and, and we passed the bar and like, you know, studied incredibly hard to, you know, pass this exam. And, and that's what we're expected to do. And this whole system is just not really creating much value for anybody, but it's like the system that we're stuck in is unfortunate until, until things get better. Right. Yeah. That's exactly how I feel. It's just not just about money. It's, it's about thing. I think we've just been kind of brainwashed to, and, um, yeah, I think that like, just this whole journey has encouraged, has taught me to like, see things differently, question everything.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think seeing. And seeing it from the Bitcoin point of view opens, at least it has opened my eyes to a lot of things that are happening and things that I took for granted that I accepted as truth I'm starting to question now. And I think that's for me anyway, it's one of the biggest pluses of getting into the Bitcoin space. Thank you for joining us today. We will continue this conversation tomorrow. Be sure to come back and hear the rest. See you next time.