Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's show. Tali and I sit down with a couple of very active Bitcoiners and homeschoolers, Elly and Asher Pembroke. They're wonderful people who embrace self custody of education. I think you're going to really enjoy this chat. Note, for those that are new to the show, we don't actually have sponsors. Tali and I have a company, free market kids. If you want to support us, please check out our materials there, especially the Bitcoin mining game, huddle up and with that, sit back and enjoy this very thoughtful discussion with Elly and Asher. All right, this is exciting we, we have a couple of guests today and we're going to talk about Bitcoin homeschoolers and they have a really unique background. We have Elly and Asher. They're the ones that helped us realize what TabConf was all about. We'll get into that in a second, but, let's just go ahead and jump right in. So. Welcome guys. I, I would I think a lot of people who we're going to reach out to haven't met you yet because you guys, obviously, if you're in the more technical side of the Bitcoin. There are people in that community that know you, but we're coming at this purely from a homeschooling standpoint. So maybe before we get into some of the details with TabConf and the homeschooling, the things that connected us, if you guys wouldn't mind doing a real quick introduction on yourselves and maybe how you got into Bitcoin.

Yeah. Thank you, Scott, for having us on the show.

I'm Asher and this is Elly. we met in, grad school and that's when I started getting interested in Bitcoin. I'd read the white paper and I was really intrigued by the, the connection to energy because we were both in physics. so we were getting our, our, our doctorates and, and I was doing space weather, she was doing nano-physics.

I actually from Germany, I was born in Russia, grew up in Germany and came to Texas for grad school, which is where I met Asher. And it's a tale as old as time. We have two children now, we homeschooled them, and it was in grad school where we were both working on our science degrees when we first heard about Bitcoin, thought it was intriguing and interesting. We thought the technical specifications, the code was sound, was well designed, and we, while we didn't understand all the implications and all the details of it, we thought it was important enough. That it's worth looking into and around that time that we first heard about Bitcoin, Gavin Andreessen had a website up where all you needed to have is a Bitcoin client with a Bitcoin address and he would send you a free Bitcoin. He called it the Bitcoin faucet. So with nothing to lose. I thought that might be, yeah. A good way to get our first Bitcoin.

Cool. Yeah. Just for the audience, Tali and I had this really cool opportunity to, to hang out with Elly and Asher for a few days in Atlanta and their technical background is to me, really interesting. Tali and

I

came from a very different aspect of this and the level of detail that they can get into on Bitcoin is just awesome. It's just really, it's really cool. That's not the purpose of this, we're going to focus on the homeschooling side. So can, let's, let's transition to how we got to Atlanta. What's going on first, let's maybe tell everybody who doesn't know yet. What is like at a high level, what is TabConf? And then specifically, what was the panel that led two non technical people like, like Tali and myself to this conference?

Yeah, so the Atlanta Bitcoin Conference is a technical conference that's started by Michael Tidwell, and it's, it's a, it's a very unusual conference in that it allows the it's sort of self organizing, so it's split up into villages, and the village leaders are allowed to basically control the schedule of events for their for, for their domain. So it has a pleb dev village. It has a lightning village. And Elly and I had were interested in creating a space where people who were used to coming to more technical conferences could be comfortable also, bringing their kids and having activities and things for, for them to do.

So when you say villages, I don't think it make it is clear what you mean by that. So it's just different rooms. There's four different spaces that each have a stage and that is organized or, you know, the schedule is filled by the people who are responsible for those stages. And Asher and I were responsible for one of the rooms and one of the stages. While the other three, including the main stage, focus on top down, front you know, talks that are given with an audience that just listens, which is a good way of learning, but it's not everybody's way of learning. And we decided that it would be great to have a space where learning happens a bit differently. It happens by experience, by implementing the things that you've learned. Buying something with Lightning, playing games, having conversations, talking about things other than how Bitcoin works technically, which is what most of the other stages are about. And Just a way to build community and have fun and learn about Bitcoin, but at the same time, make it accessible for the people that we're building this hyper bitcoinized world for, who are our children. And if our children can get an idea for how Bitcoin makes the world a better place and that it's fun and that you can experience it and not just learn about it from some speaker on the stage, then. Maybe we can build a world that where Bitcoin is just normal part of.

Well, hats off to you guys because I, Tali and I feel very passionate. I probably should just let her speak for herself, but we, when we talk with people at other meetups when we travel, we always ask them, make this a family event, bring your pre coiner or non coiner, whatever you want to call your significant other or your kid. Bring your friend, bring someone who's not yet already in the space. So hats off to you guys for trying to create that and it's, you guys have done that. Did two years in a row, three years in a row now that you're the organizers for the Next Gen Village?

So Tapcons has been going on for six years and it's our second year in a row to have a room dedicated to the next generation and experiential learning. And I want to say that we couldn't do it without awesome contributors such as yourselves. I'm so glad that demoed your game. Huddle up and we're just so grateful that there's people like you, people like Andy Schroeder, people that contribute what they have built to the space that really makes it what it is. Well, we

appreciate the opportunity. We had a blast. We want to come back. So this again, this is, this is a podcast focused on the homeschooling You. Invited us to come out to speak on a homeschooling panel, which is just like, I, it didn't make any sense to me. I'm like, this is a technical conference and there's a homeschooling panel, but there was a lot of interest, like as you just looked at throughout the day, I didn't, I mean, I didn't spend a lot of time in the others just because of what we were doing to, to make sure things in the room are going smoothly. But my impression was that this was, this was a pretty well received breakout session, if you will. So, I mean, that's the purpose of the, the, this podcast is we want to reach other people. There are a lot of people out there that have questions, their, their families, they're planning to have a family and they're thinking about homeschooling, or maybe they already have children and they are considering homeschooling there was a lot of interest in like, wow, how do I do this? I'm interested in this, you know, why should I do this? So to me there, that was my impression, but so I'd like to like, first of all, what, what inspired you to, to have a homeschooling panel at a technical conference? And then secondly, tell us, like, did it, did it meet your expectations? What did you learn from it? Get into what your thought process here. Yeah.

So it begins with us being homeschoolers and. We homeschool our two children, and we, the freedom that it offers us helps us bring our children to PAPCOM, so they're always involved, they're involved in creating the space and leading some of the workshops giving a talk, and They are as much part of Capcom as we are. So

it felt very natural to, to do. Having, taking them to many other conferences and, and interacting with other other people who have, who, who are in Bitcoin have kids, but usually don't bring them along. It became pretty clear that just the, the other things that are associated with Bitcoin in terms of self sovereignty And you know, autonomy, those things resonate very well with, with with homeschooling. So I've never met a single Bitcoiner who, who wanted to put their kids in school. It's always sort of like, like, Oh, I would homeschool if I could, but I can't, you know? And yeah, so it was, I think it was just a very natural consequence of, of that.

The, there are a lot of values that are overlapping between Bitcoiners and homeschoolers. And you're right in that. The response was surprisingly positive, or I wasn't surprised that it was positive, but I, I did not expect there to be people, the, the audience filled and standing room filled and, you know, people trying to get into the room just to hear three families They, Bitcoin, what brought the, how they homeschool, what brought them to homeschooling their kids, how they, they have started and how it's going. And it's, it was, I'm so glad that we did this panel because it did, I feel like it was a good representation and showed people that even if you have very similar values, you can still homeschool in very different ways. And those are all. Good ways to homeschool there, there's no single right or wrong way to homeschool. So,

so what would be, one or two for those that didn't have the benefit of being in that? Well, well, let me say this. I have, they released yet the video, they recorded that session, right? Is that out yet?

The video is not out yet, but it is being edited. So in the court, usually all the videos of all the talks and panels are out before next year's TAPCON. So it can be released throughout the year. And we can never tell.

So what we should

do is as a follow up to this, when it is released, let us know, because we can go back into the show notes later. And we can add that there. So since that's not available, can you highlight one or two takeaways from the panel to give the audience a taste? For example, what did, what were the one or two things that you would say you took away from that discussion? Was there anything that really stood out to you one way or another?

What stood out to me is, what I've mentioned already, is that you can have. All the families that were on stage had very similar values, were all very freedom loving families, were both, both had reasons for running towards something, but also running away from something, so. We, we all agreed that it's worth keeping our children out of the public school system. And we all agreed that homeschooling them would give them advantages and opportunities that they wouldn't have had in a public school system. But what homeschooling actually looked like for the three families whether it was very structured or not very structured, whether. That we lived on the homestead or in the city, whether we focused on skills that are more for survival or more for technical patient, I don't know how to say, ability there, what, what do you end up focusing on is what's important to the parents and the children themselves and Can lead to great education for the children, no matter how

it was done. That's true. I mean, it's permissionless. Right, Tali? Did you have any thoughts on that? I mean, I think that's pretty accurate. The three families up there absolutely had the same values. I agree with that. And in terms of different styles, I don't know if you did that on purpose. Or not when you were picking out your panelists, but the variety of how people do it, it's really up to, it's really up to you to decide what to, what you want the curriculum environment to be, what you want the and everything. I mean, I, I actually appreciated the fact that not everybody on stage agreed with each other. Everybody agreed with the principle of freedom. Everybody agreed with self custody and the education, but how you apply that to your family, what you thought best for your kids. That was up to you as a parent to decide and, and I think the fact that we didn't all agree with each other was actually a benefit of that panel. I, I, what do you think, Tali? Any thoughts? Well, my

thoughts are... A little bit sort of going past what we discussed in the panel, I was just thinking as you guys were talking about it, that in a, a homeschooling journey, it's very possible that we'll start out with one style, whether it's very structured or unstructured and throughout time. Based on what we observed, new things we're learning, what we're seeing, what works and doesn't work with our children, we can adapt. So in the homeschooling journey, which I'll just roughly say is about 12 years or so, you, you can kind of go in and out of the structure versus unstructured, homestead versus city kind of thing, and overall still just provide an exceptional education that cannot be replicated in a public or private

school setting. Yes. And opportunity costs to anything, right? There's we're trying to give, every parent is trying to give their kids the best opportunities. And the best nurturing that they can, but there, there's, you can't possibly provide them with everything. So there is a picking and choosing that's going on and it does change over time as well. Like you said, Tali, but in the end the children will grow into adults. And if they have learned that they can. Go out and find their own sources and their own learning material and they can learn anything and pick up any skill that they want, then we've done our

job. So as you look forward to next year, based on the success of this year, what, what are your thoughts on what you want to do next? Because you hit a nerve with this, you hit like a pretty strong theme with this I think that's pretty neat and it takes, it takes a lot of effort to put, to organize events. It takes, time to do that. What are your thoughts? You guys put a lot of work, a lot of effort into making that successful. We got a lot out of it and I think the others in the audience do. What do you, what are your thoughts now as you think about next year? What do you want to, what do you want to do to build on your momentum?

Well, for me One goal is, is to get more kids involved in families. The kids can bring their parents to but People are

still hesitant to bring their families, unfortunately. So we, we want to encourage people to bring

their families. Yeah. And we kind of plan around the space. We allocate the amount of space relative to how many people, how much interest we receive. So if, if your listeners. start, pinging us on X or wherever it would be great to, to get a better sense because there are larger there's a lot of activities we could do especially around you know, hands on experiences, like explaining how different mechanisms within Bitcoin and, and layer two or three stuff. I there's, there's a lot of other things we could do if we knew beforehand who was going to be there. I should

say that we plan to run the NextGen Village again next year. Absolutely. I think it's always well received, so this will be our third year in a row running it. And like I said, it can't be what it is without great contributors. We do try to provide activities and. Workshops and things to do for people of all ages. If someone has a great idea, great activity A workshop that they would like to run, a skill they would like to teach.

For example so the last couple of years, our, our son, he's, he has been giving talks on, specifically on Digital logic and he's, he's nine years old. He's, he's he's very Let's just say gifted at, at doing things with his, his, his mind that we're not, or I don't believe I'm personally capable of keeping up with him anymore. So ironically, like, I, I guess this is kind of a point on how our different styles of homeschooling. So due to this, this sort of this opportunity that, that that we have to be flexible. We're, we're I wasn't able to actually be on the panel. I sort of came in at the very beginning, but I sort of anticipated that my son might need more attention from me. So I kind of sort of counted on the fact that something might happen and he might need my, my attention. So. Sure enough, within like five minutes of the panel starting, I had to run out of the room Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So so yeah, I had to step out with to, to tend to him. Mm hmm.

And I'm glad you did that way. I was able to stay on the panel and continue the conversation.

So so we, so every year we make sure that we, he has time to prepare for, for the talk that he's going to give. And and he's always very excited about that. And it was funny, like that morning I asked him, like you know, as for, I woke him up and I was like, we, you know, it's your time for the talk. And, and are you nervous? And he's like, No, I'm not nervous. I've done it before. You know, this is his third, or it was his third or fourth talk at a conference and it was just, it's become natural to him. My daughter also, our daughter also gave a talk last year on on

designing 3D printing projects in

Tinkercad. And,

She chose not to give a talk this year. Yeah.

And then another activity we do is this mining pool activity where we, we, we've developed and designed this, this puzzle, this 3d cube that so between my son and I, he sort of was, he was studying cubic equations and we wanted to, I wanted a way to visualize what he was doing in his, in his mind. And so we built this thing. And we started playing with it and realized like, this is a really good analog for, for, to teach people about mining and sort of the, the the considerations that miners take into account when they construct a block. In terms of in terms of maximizing profit fees and so forth. So that's become a really, you know, a mainstay of the, of the village is that we have this huge, you know, literal mining pool of little colorful transactions. And it's great to see how people assemble their blocks and, and and then we pay out in sats for their. For their solutions if they generate a valid, if they generate a valid block within the block size limit, then we, we actually pay them an equivalent number.

Can you go a little deeper on this? I'm glad you're hitting on this. I want to get to it later because I, I feel that there are some people. Who just don't learn the same way as, as others in terms of like, for me, I learned a lot about Bitcoin through podcasts and books. And one of the reasons that Tali has said multiple times that she's even in the Bitcoin space now is because I was trying to explain to her things with physical, I was using Mahjong tiles at the time, but we've graduated now to the full game that you guys were talking about. I think there's two aspects of it. First of all, it, it attests to. How creative you can be as a homeschooling parent, because you, if you look at this as a lesson for your son, think of all the things he learned way beyond whatever it is, I mean, he's learned how to manufacture design source like he's, and now he has to present that to other people. There's a whole host of skills that as a parent, you have helped him to develop. The second thing is when you look at that. I think this, this is one of the things going back to the way that the villages were organized. It was, it's a, it's a, just for those that don't know, you had this like a corridor with several rooms, like conference rooms off to the side and they're all labeled village. So it's entirely possible people were at that conference and had no idea what they could have experienced in the rooms. And I think this, this cube Which I'm going to ask you to describe a little bit more detail, just this is a way can reach a lot of other people who are less technical to physically show, let them play with the, let them try to get things in there and then make an analogy and say, this is, this is what's going on when they're trying to, when a miner is trying to fit quote unquote transactions into a block and making a decision about what to do and the constraints and all the things that are involved with it. It's a really cool teaching tool, but not just for kids. You could reach other people with that, but yeah. So we're not doing a

video.

I agree with you, Scott. And this is a teaching tool that I've used since in other contexts. I've taught a course on Bitcoin 101 that is supposed to introduce non technical people to Bitcoin. And the best feedback that I've received is I understand Bitcoin a little bit better now, now that I've played with a cube and that's why we're doing this. It's not why we came up with it in the first place. The Atcher already explained how the idea was born. And when, once we had rearranged the different blocks within the block template, we noticed that it's actually just fun to play with. It, even without the Bitcoin explanation behind it, it's fun for children to stack the blocks. It's fun for adults to assemble a three dimensional puzzle until it forms a cube. Definitely something that's so much fun that we thought that our family should not be the only ones that benefit from being able to play with it. And that's how we had the acrylic blocks professionally made. And we ordered a hundred sets and started selling them in addition to just playing it. So you can buy a set yourself from our Instagram page, you can just message me and I'll mail you a set and find out for yourself how miners put transactions into the block template to create a valid Bitcoin

block.

Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah.

And to the point about it being a an educational resource for our children, it's, you know, we don't, we don't, we basically sell them at cost. But Silas, our son, he gets a little commission every time we sell one. And he's there, he's he's very proud of his work and, and he helps assemble and, and his sister they assemble every block together and they package them and and so we've. We put them to work, I hope, whenever

you say that. Yeah, it's part of why we decided to have them be available for purchase is because we wanted to introduce our children to what it's like to run a company, to have a product that sells, to have to package it and mail it and all the, and pay taxes on it and get a commission. These are all skills that they are learning early on. And even if our little company is not. Exactly pitting the belts around our house, it's still worth it for that educational element of running a company that early on in their lives.

Yeah, there's so many things to learn with that. It's just, so folks, what this thing looks like, if I could describe, I can't do it justice, it, these acrylic blocks are different sizes and they're translucent. So we. They have a light board set up so you set this out and it's like a whole series of matrix looking different colors staring back at you in the, and your, your job is to assemble those into a cube and if they don't fit, that means your transaction is too large and it, the, you can't mind that block. So it's very visually attractive, like it grabs people's attention and I think it's pretty I think people want to play with it just because of that. They don't even know what they're learning, they just like to... Go play in stack with the cubes, but

so so children tend to be very intuitive about it, and they, they just want to start they don't even want to hear an explanation of how you should go about completing this 3d puzzle versus adults. tend to want to know, why am I doing this? What, what's the background? How is it, how does it relate to Bitcoin? And we've had, yeah, a lot of engineers actually really enjoy the puzzle. So a lot of the blocks have sold as kind of a Christmas gift for the engineer and the family. That's awesome. We've just been putting together 3D puzzles. They're

awesome. We need to, we'll get the, make sure we'll put a link. You guys can give it to us and before we get to the end of the show, we'll ask you guys for, to give out your Instagram or whatever other information we can do to have people reach out to you and support you. But one of the last things that I wanted to ask about was just what else would you, it can be resources, it could be just your advice on anything, like just general advice. What would, if you were talking to a family that. There was a, the, the couple is they're, they're Bitcoiners and they're, they're either have young kids or they're thinking about starting a family. For each of you, what would be your one or two pieces of advice or recommendations or resources that you would recommend to them as they're considering this journey?

In terms of I think the, the, the guiding light in how we approach things is that Our attention is the most valuable thing that they can have. Regardless of how we're, we're deploying that. So just being, you know, sometimes we may feel like a sounding board when Silas is going off on the, you know, some theorem that he's proving. And we don't understand it, but we're just there, you know, present. And that's enough for, for him. Or then for us, let's so, It's easy to say like, Oh, you've read this list of, you know, here's this list of specific things, but like for, so because of their, they sort of tend towards science and, and art. We, we follow a lot of YouTubers who are in in, in that vein. So so there's probably a hundred channels that we could, we could list there.

Yeah, that's just to say that there are so many free resources out there to teach your child about almost any topic. And what I hear for, from most parents who tend to agree that an individualized education is probably the best that they could provide for their child, they just feel like they couldn't do it. Because it feels like too much work for them or too difficult, or they just need to know all of these things that they then impart on their children. And that's simply not true. There's so much out there through the internet. We really have access to the best educational materials and there's no need to be an expert in all fields in order to provide your child with. The best education that they can have my advice would be that you can do it. You don't need to have a degree. You don't need to be a teacher. We're both not teachers and maybe a teacher would be able to give our children a better education, but it's, it's really good enough. The, and

I would say that doing it now is way easier than it's ever been. There are new things, for example You've probably talked about chatgbt before on the show, but this is like one of those things it's a machine learning AI resource. That is, is there's a free version of it but it's something that the kids are always using now you know, before bed, they want to play with it, they want to ask it questions about, you know, Minecraft and things like that so they get a sense of what it, what it can, what it can do because they have domain knowledge but that's a thing that they wouldn't be, have access to if they were in a school, they, they, I think it depends on the school, but, but yeah, it basically breaks most curriculums that are, Bye. Geared towards testing because they can answer, you know even tests to get into law school like it's, it's better at, at that sort of thing. So it's sort of I think we are moving into this era where education is basically already free. It's just people haven't realized that they can, that it's up to them to decide what, what resources to, to, to leverage. But, but that requires the freedom to make those choices and that's the biggest, that's the hardest

step. Yeah. I mean, you're better to look, teach them how to use the technology that's coming then to try to like tell them that, no, you can't use that. And then they're, now they're behind all the others that are out there who do know how to use it. Yeah. I can attest, I, I mean, Tali did, I say we homeschooled, she's the one that had the hardest, the hardest job in, in this. So, you know, I'm very. We're very grateful that you're, you guys have chosen to homeschool, it's hard work, but I think it's, definitely worth it and definitely grateful that you're willing to even go further than that to continue to try to organize things like the homeschooling panel at TabConf. So thank you guys for, for continuing to do that. So how is there anything else that you, that I, that we missed that we want to get to before I ask you how people can reach out to you and how they can support you?

Come see us at TabConf next year.

And bring their kids, and bring their kids, right? Or their

spouse. And bring your kids and spouse.

Yes.

All right. So how do people reach you then? What is it, so how do I find this cube? If I wanted to ask you questions, is it, is it, do you guys prefer Twitter or Telegram, just kind of tell folks how, how you prefer to be reached out to?

Twitter is a good way to reach us. The cube. It's found on Instagram, you can put in a link, it's the Pembroke Creative LLC on Instagram. I'm Elly Pembroke on Twitter.

I'm Asher P. on Twitter.

And we're usually pretty responsive to direct messages.

Well thanks for being available guys, Tali did you have any final thoughts as we wrap up? You ready to go back to Atlanta?

Well I'm just sitting here thinking about ways of reaching children of Bitcoiners. In that room, you know, I don't know if we need to conclude this, but I was like, it would be really cool if we could have children who have been through a few years of homeschooling answer questions maybe from the audience, from the parents were thinking about homeschooling.

Holly, you and I really think like I next year I want to do a homeschoolers panel where it's not the parents that are on the panel, but it's the children that are on the panel.

Yeah, I think that's a really great idea. And then and then another thought that I had was if we, and it depends on the age of the kids, right, because if they're super young and they're coming in, then that's, that's a one, that's one approach. But when you're having middle school kids come in or older, that's a completely different approach. But if we were to do something like, like you already had some version of it, which is if you solve the puzzle, we send you SADS. Yeah. But if we did lessons, lesson games, I guess, or games with lessons and they earn SATs, then could we also set up a table of trinkets and say, okay, this trinket, you know, like a pretty eraser or a sticker or a lollipop or something cost, I don't know, 50 SATs, and then they have to buy a trophy. The trinket with the stats that they just received so they can not only receive, but also send like that exercise might be kind of fun. Yeah, just something like, you know, M& M's or lollipop or something.

You guys are going to create a circular economy in the next gen village. Right, exactly.

There's a great Andy Schroeder had, had this amazing demo of he has this little bicycle that you ride and, and you ride it for five minutes and you earn about 10 stats. Which is, is priced at basically what an American home spend on electricity. And it was a great way to like show how cheap power has gotten, but you know, you could take those SATs and then go buy like a sticker at the next table. So

cool. Yeah. We had things available for sale, but that was more in the hundred K SATs range so maybe something for less than that. Would be, that's a great idea, Tali, and a lot of Bitcoiners did, are just starting families. They're just having babies. They really maybe need something that even their babies would enjoy. And we had teethers available for sale, but we really need to think more about how can we Support families that are just starting out and

yeah. All right, guys. It's been a, it's been a pleasure. For everybody listening, reach out to these guys. You have to check out this cube. It's, it's very cool. If nothing else, just to, to show off to your friends, if you, even if you don't feel like doing a, a 3d puzzle, thank you guys so much for spending some time with us and we can't wait to see you guys again at whatever the next meetup or conference is.