YouSaid · the spoken record

Natalie Brunell

lines on the record: 57
first: 2025-11-26
most recent: 2025-11-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Oh my gosh, well, for Preston, thank you so much. I love you and your family so, so, so much. You're so, so, so kind. Thank you for welcoming me into the space. I remember when I met you in person at Safenine's dinner. Okay, guys, wait, quick story. I went to that first Bitcoin conference. I didn't know a soul. I got kicked out of every event that Paula and I tried to go into. It was like, you're not on the list. Okay. But I did pay for Safe Bedine's dinner because I wanted to ask him to come on my show. And I met Preston Push. I still have his business card. He was with that. You were with Russell, I believe. Russell. Yeah. And I just introduced myself and you said you would come on the podcast. And so like, it's crazy to think of all that's changed since then. But I just thank you for always being so kind to me. You've taught me so much and I really look up to you, not just as someone who's so successful in the space, but also as the family man that you are. You have a beautiful family. And thank you for the kind words about the book.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He talks about even just one of the critical minerals gallium, how that's like you'd extract a tiny bit of it out of an aluminum industry that we don't have anymore because we offshored all of our aluminum. So we would have to first rebuild all of our aluminum power and then we would get a tiny bit of gallium from it, which is needed for a bunch of different things. And it's like, we don't have any of this. You have to rebuild it over 20 years. And how are we going to do that? Obviously, they're going to have to print money and they're going to print to buy commodities and real goods, which means that U.S. treasuries actually aren't worth anything. The commodities and the stuff is worth something. So, you need Bitcoin to protect yourself.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People not really having the mental capacity or the skills to go back to work to what put together these little widgets that are going to go into missiles. Not to mention that those industries, we don't have the regulatory like environment that any of those facilities and operations would be easily built here. We offshored literally everything. We're like go to other countries, produce it there, send it back to us. It's like, okay, well now we've hollowed out our entire country. I had a guest on who I'm going to be sharing Arno Bertrand. Do you know him? He's a geopolitical analyst, very, very popular.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, truly, I mean, and now that I understand some of these more complex aspects of the shifts in our geopolitical environment and in our economy really truly at the base layer as they try to print more money in order to finance these massive deficits, it's like if I didn't understand Bitcoin, I would have very little hope like so many people do because that's, I mean, you've mentioned it on my last show, right? Where we're moving with artificial intelligence, displacing more and more jobs”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's why I think we need more outlets that are down the middle, you know, really truly apolitical and a money that's apolitical because both sides are just leading us into total chaos.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10 days and we need years to build it back up. And so what does actually back the dollar? Because it seems like our military, the industrial, you know, the industry that created all of those great things that once made us so powerful and so strong has been completely hollowed out and offshored and we can't just turn on a light switch and reverse 30 years of what we have done offshoring everything, right? We've financialized the economy and we spent eight trillion dollars on foreign conflicts that have let us nowhere that have just inflated away the purchasing power of the average working class person. Meanwhile, China was focused on actually building up its industries and subsidizing workers to have skills like welding and electrical work and building up these industries and energy infrastructures so they're now far ahead of us and they have a monopoly over refining rare earths. And I mean, it's just like, I think the hubris from our political leaders on both sides is just absolutely insane.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“China and other countries when it comes to the actual stuff, the real goods that make the equipment that we need. And I love that he's been highlighting our lack of leverage now in critical minerals and rare earth elements that go into every EV and cell phone and military equipment, radar systems, fighter jets, missiles. We're in a position and I didn't realize this until... Know we can't go to war, we can't project conventional power that we once did because we're going to deplete everything that we have in a matter of, you know,”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It's crazy. Well, I really want to give credit to Luke Roman because Luke has really helped me connect the dots along with you about all of this and how we kind of think of the US dollars backed by the US military. Well, what's the US military backed by? Right, because we rely so much now.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, Natalie Brunel's primer on Bitcoin is a must-read for Americans who want to survive the developing financial crisis and come out of it with millions. Straightforward and to the point, this is precisely the kind of book investors need today. So I'm thankful for his endorsement.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Critical minerals and infrastructure, and we can't just build that back up overnight and all the trillions of dollars that we've spent on wars. And I just find it fascinating to people who literally come from military backgrounds who say, hey, why are we going out and fighting all these people? Like, why are we spending trillions to kill people? We can actually create a more peaceful system if we focus on fixing the money of all things. And so he read the book. Actually, he just read the book. And so he texted me this morning. So I'm going to read a book.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Colonel McGregor is my most listened to guest, and you guys have very interesting connections with your military background and experience. I feel like he speaks to a lot of the things that you have shared as well when it comes to the military industrial complex and how hollowed out, you know, we are at this point, how dependent we are on countries like China.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like no one else I've ever seen. I mean, it's just we're so lucky to have these people. And that's why I've said before. I mean, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong on the right team because you guys are all brilliant. I mean, I respect you all so much. So yeah, I've been very blessed.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I ended up leaving my job, taking a chance. I had no clue what would happen, but I've just learned so much from you, from Lynn Alden, who's so just thoughtful and methodical. And it's one of the reasons why I really wanted to send an early copy of the manuscript to her because I take it as a huge responsibility now that I'm on my own as a disseminator of information. Like I need to make sure it's airtight. I don't want someone to read it who's brilliant and has market experience and say that's not actually how it works. That's not actually how it works. So she got something wrong. I wanted it to be accurate even though it's highly simplified. And so Lynn read my book. Jeff Booth, who explains so thoughtfully this paradigm shift we're going through and how inflation and deflation actually work and what it means for the future. And Michael Saylor, who has just incredible experience running a public company and is such a student of history himself and can whip out an analogy or a reference from history.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then it just kind of took off and had a life of its own. I didn't realize that there was such an audience for this type of content. And then I kept going. And so over the years, I've had the chance to do more than 300 interviews in this space, which is just incredible, amazing.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So for me, I was like, I wanted to put kind of a human face to the Bitcoiners that I was following. It's like, okay. You're talking about the money and you're talking about the technology, but like, who are you people? Like, where did you come from? So I started reached out and I wanted to hear, you know, the life stories of you and Jeff and Lynn and Michael Saylor and all the people who influenced my journey. I wanted to know where they came from, what they wanted to be when they grew up, what made them realize that money's broken, what made them realize that Bitcoin is a great solution. And so I was planning on just doing a couple of episodes, like 12 episodes and then calling it a day and returning to my news career. Oh, yeah”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't realize that at the very beginning of my story, I didn't set out for this to be my full-time career. I didn't even know that something like that would be possible. All I wanted was to learn about Bitcoin from the people who I was following and studying and whose works I had read or listened to. I just wanted to hear their backstories because for me, I don't know if you're like this or any of your viewers or listeners, but I've always found biographies and autobiographies to be incredibly inspiring, especially people who were like rags to riches stories or overcame incredible obstacles. I love hearing those stories. I'm like, wow, if he can do it or she can do it, I can do it.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is so tough. This is like a 10 way tie. I mean, you're one of my favorite guests, first of all. I always learn so much from you. I'll share who I feel like just off the top of my head, who I've learned the most from because I highly recommend people listen to these episodes.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come, I didn't learn the history of money? How come I didn't learn about how our banking system actually works? Because that actually does empower you. And so I really encourage people to read because I just didn't read enough. And then I went on this crazy journey, as so many of us probably did, right? I mean, you've known it for a while because you were an investor for so long. I didn't. Like I did not read books about economics or monetary history. But when I did, they really opened my eyes.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Angle, and you know, I was always a really good student because my immigrant parents would get really mad if I got a B. So I had to get A's, but I never learned this. I learned like. History through the lens of wars and battles and empires rising and falling, but never how money affected all of these things, how currency changed, how currency affected these things, the creation of the central bank and different banks of the different nations, like lords of easy money and the lords of finance, I think those are the two books that I also quote in Bitcoin is for everyone. I mean, those are the types of things where I'm like, how come I didn't learn this in school?”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capital and capital accumulation, dropping your time preference, accumulating capital so that you can use it for something productive in the future. That's really the basis of capitalism and the importance of property rights to be at the core of that. Because if you don't have property rights intact, you lose so many of your other freedoms and so many freedoms kind of are second and third order effects from actually being able to hold and control your property. And so I just I think I had to relearn all the things I learned in school. I had to kind of unpack it from a different”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess I would have to say Austrian economics You would have reversed time 10 years and said to me, hey, so there's this thing called Keynesian economics versus Austrian economics. I'd be like, I have no idea what you just said. I have literally no clue. And those are the types of things I tried to leave out of the book because I did want to make it really approachable for the average person. But just this idea, again, that really does focus on.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you wouldn't just get to rely on your scale and access to cheap credit and your connections to policymakers in order to grow. You would have to compete based on actual value. And so I hate to look out there and see things like the fast fashion and like all the stuff that's made really fast and easy and cheap as opposed to like 100 years ago when things were so quality and we saw it in our buildings and in clothing and in like everything felt like it was more quality, right? And it lasted longer. And now we live in this highly fiat, you know, just corrupted world where everything just feels like it has no real value to it, but a few companies have extracted so much wealth from all of us. And I just, I want to reverse that and place it on its head. And I think Bitcoin's the best solution to do that.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We see all these monopolies springing up. It's like we have big pharma and big food and big tech. I actually don't think that those would have as easy of a time rising up and existing in a capitalistic system with actual hard money with something like Bitcoin at the base layer because there would be more competition.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't exist in a fantasy world where I think everyone's just going to own Bitcoin, right? There are going to be companies. There's going to be real estate. I just want the values to come closer to reality. And I want the economy to be built on something truly of merit, something that we can truly gauge prices with as opposed to what I believe to be a very chaotic mix of asset classes where I don't think the valuations reflect reality anymore, especially when it comes to like these stocks where we're completely untethered from earnings and fundamentals. It's literally just based on liquidity. And I think Stanley Druckenmiller even said that in the 2010s. It's like we are untethered. It's all based on what the Federal Reserve does and the liquidity in the system. That's not real value. And you always do such a great job of talking about how there's really no more biodiversity.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Energy to anything else that's in the space because I believe that Bitcoin is the solution. And, you know, I am for Bitcoin. I'm not against anything else. And I think that when you start to speak negatively about, you know, pick a company, pick a stock, pick a crypto, you're just kind of inviting antagonism and you're inviting a debate that I don't want to take part in. If people want to experiment, I think that they should go on a journey. It's one that I think will end in the same conclusion that I came to, which is that Bitcoin is where you want your money. But I just felt like I really wanted this book to be laser focused on Bitcoin. So I don't even, you know, it's like that saying like, I don't even think about you. No, I think this is about crypto.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that Bitcoin is foundational. It's just a transformative technology that once again, it fulfills the ultimate properties that make for good money that you can save in over the long term. And I really do focus more on the store of value, especially in the beginning of the book. But then I also expanded out to why it is also a great medium of exchange that allows us to reduce some of the frictions and the gatekeepers and the costs that exist in our current payment systems. But I really wanted to make a conscious focus on Bitcoin. I specifically talk only about Bitcoin. I don't give.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So many other problems that people face in oppressive regimes and authoritarian countries with inflation crises and currency crises far worse than we've ever seen here in the US.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Political violence as the result, and she talks about how the government, it's still a kind of a relic of colonialism really what they've done with the money there and the CFA franc where the French treasury actually controls the currency in many countries in Africa and they can devalue people's savings by 50 100% overnight. And that's people's times that just evaporates. Like you can't get it back. And so she's fighting for people to be able to save in Bitcoin in a hard asset that can't be controlled by the government and to root out the corruption that she's seen in the government. These are very powerful stories. I think Alex Gladstein says it well. Check your financial privilege because as many problems as we have here in the West.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, two of my favorites are in the book Farita and Roya. I loved their stories. They're such passionate fighters for freedom and empowerment. Roya, I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with her story. I've had her on the show, Alex Gladstein has written about her, but she was the first female tech CEO in Afghanistan and paid her female workers in Bitcoin and even guaranteed that they would not lose money on the Bitcoin that they earned if the price was volatile. And that has allowed many of them to not just achieve financial freedom, but also just achieve freedom in the sense that they aren't tied to a banking system that requires for a man to open an account for them. They were able to use it. Some of them in order to flee when the Taliban took over again. Like it truly is a freedom technology. And that's how FRIDA positions it as well. She's from Togo, but she fleed because of persecution and her family, you know, have been outspoken advocates for freedom and for democracy and their family has faced, you know,”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess everyone's okay with the data centers, you know, slurping up energy. Like, it's a reality that we have to think about these things. And I think, again, like you just, you have to break it down simply to the average person because they'll hear these headlines and they get mad at the companies and they don't actually realize what's happening, what it takes, the supply, the demand, the resources. And I'm trying to connect those dots for people in a more approachable way because as you can see, I mean, that's one of the biggest conversations right now. How are we going to not just, you know, stabilize the grid, but grow it, grow it in a way that meets the demand that we're going to have from all these data centers in an artificial intelligence driven world. And we're not there yet. And we've really put that on the back burner over the last 20 years. And we can't just like wave our hands and suddenly build up all this infrastructure. It doesn't come from thin air like the way that we can print units in the system. We have to build things. We have to have the skilled labor. We have to have, you know, the connections to the energy and can't transport it. We have to think about all of these inputs. And I think so many of”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that kind of fundamental lesson, I think already kind of you take a step back and you realize, oh, this is something that is way, way bigger than myself and bigger of a concept that I have to dig into because people can just say, oh, something uses too much energy. Well, how does it use that energy? Why does it use that energy? And when you dig in, one of the things I share in that chapter is not only does Bitcoin, not even use that much energy, especially when you compare it to other industries. And I show kind of the pie chart of different industries, but also the way that it uses it actually moves us into a world where we can have more abundance of resources of energy, be able to deploy electricity in even remote places, capture things like stranded or wasted energy, like moves us into a more energy abundant world. And we need energy. I mean, we see it daily. I think it's funny that now some of the headlines about energy use for Bitcoin have faded because AI is going to use a lot of energy.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I love that Bitcoin actually changed my perspective on and opened my eyes to the importance of energy itself, like energy is the currency of the universe. And I never really thought about it and how important it is and where our electricity actually comes from, right? I mean, people. Conflate energy and electricity. And we don't realize that it's what you mentioned on my show, right? And what Luke Roman writes about, it doesn't come from the light switch. There's a whole industry and process that has so many different inputs and energy really is the most important. It's that first input that defines everything and defines so many of the costs of everything that we have. And Bitcoin is tied to energy and it is the one thing that nobody can print. You cannot create it. You cannot destroy it.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To choosing every single word that really went into this book. And it was a very time consuming but very just amazing, rewarding process because I really think that we got it right. Like this is the book that I hope everyone starts their journey with. And again, they're fantastic books in the space. I hope mine serves as maybe an appetizer for the Bitcoin standard, the big print, inventing Bitcoin, the broken money. I just really wanted this amazing entry point that someone could say, okay, I get it now. I still have to learn more. It's not like this is the be-all end-all. You really need to dig in more because some of these topics are so complex. But I wanted to be a really approachable entry point.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who doesn't have a degree in economics or engineering, finance, like you really have to break it down and distill it in a way that's going to make sense to them and resonate with them? So I feel like, A, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants because I've read every single book in the space. Some of them several times. And so I wanted to pull out sort of the lessons and what resonated with me most from sort of each of those works and just give my own spin, my own kind of analogies to them. And also I have to say like no one does anything great alone. And I had a phenomenal team more of feeling my book agent and Alison Gustopson, who's an incredible writer and editor. We literally had Zoom calls every single week where we poured over every chapter, every word. I mean, words are my currency in the communication industry. And like we wanted to make sure, does this word have the wrong connotation? Will people read it this way, this way? Like, you have no idea how much time went in.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This book was the most challenging but rewarding project of my entire career. You know, TV news journalism, I've been accustomed to writing two minute scripts. Like two minutes is actually a luxury in television. Usually I'd have to say the full story in about a minute to a minute and a half. Having 200 pages, you would think that that's kind of a luxury. But still, Bitcoin is so complicated. I mean, people spend years studying it, and it took me years to really, really learn it. So you have to come up with the right analogies that simplify it. And for the average person who's busy.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That came before in other forms of money. That's like the whole message is for the first time in human history, we have a form of money where the average person can start to accumulate apolitical, globally traded capital to start to have a seat at the table and plan for their lives, their families, drop their time preference. And that's what makes me so excited and also why I think that it's so important to share this message with the average person who feels left behind.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like if you're in a great place, you use it as a tool to get more information and improve yourself, create businesses. But if you're in a bad place, you use it to vent your frustration and probably find scapegoats and find other people, misery loves company. And we're in this very, very divided. And I think just like a place of mental angst where people just feel so resentful and frustrated of how far they've, you know, fallen behind. And it's not your fault. Like part of the book is saying like you are working hard. I'm acknowledging the fact that like you have put in this work and you deserve to feel like you have control over your time and your future. And that's what Bitcoin offers you. And, you know, Bitcoin is, in my opinion, the best solution, but it's really just representative, a good form of money that allows you to save for the future because it cannot be debased because it is scarce, because it is divisible, because it is portable, because answers to all of these defects.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm actually trying to do the opposite because I think the thing that people most need is a feeling of I can do this. The future can be better than the present. I can make it. I can achieve. I can empower myself. And that's really ultimately kind of the underlying message of the book is like it's not too late and you can take control over your time again. And that's what I think is what money allows us to do is control our time again. When we feel this constant pressure on our backs, you've actually talked about this, I think on my show before or another show. I think it's led to so much of the decay morally that we see in society when every single member of the household has pressure on them to provide. And it never feels like enough. Now you need three incomes for what you used to be able to afford on one income. And you see us getting more and more divided and negative online. And we all use social media, I think as this tool.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's interesting what you're alluding to because I do say Bitcoin is hope a lot, right? It's this antidote. It's this ultimate solution. But it's so funny, human nature. Like you can tell someone, hey, don't worry, everything's going to be great. And they'll sort of just like shrug and not pay attention. Tell them that the world is on fire and something bad is about to happen and you have their full undivided attention. And believe me, I know that really well from working in news because if it bleeds, it leads. And it's like you can really sell panic.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It. It's like we don't really understand what value actually is. I think prices have just been completely detached from reality. And so I'm trying to break that down in a simple way that the average person can sit back like I did when I learned about Bitcoin and say, oh my gosh, I had no idea. I didn't realize. And now I need to figure out a way to empower myself in a system where your money is a melting ice cube.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think it's important to help people understand what is actually happening with our money and the fact that the money supply is constantly being expanded is not just a problem, but it's something that you can see when you look across asset classes. You can see how stocks have just skyrocketed homes have skyrocketed, but paychecks haven't. And so we need to recognize that disconnect and then dig into what's actually happening because this is why the average person can't save for the future. And, you know, you might celebrate that, hey, well, I've been saving in my home, right? A lot of people have used real estate to create wealth or build their family nest egg, but have you really made a lot when you look at the money supply and how much that's increased? Like if you actually zoom in, have you just been treading water and now you have to pay more in maintenance costs and property taxes? And, you know, when you go to sell, you're just going to have to buy another over-inflated, you know, expensive home that's not really worth.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't think about it at all. In fact, the years of 2010 to 2020 saw like an average of less than 2% inflation. And yet all of these things became so much more expensive in that decade. Cost of homes, stock valuations went crazy healthcare costs, healthcare premiums, insurance. And it's like, wait, what happened here? Because you're telling me that inflation is around 2%, but my cost of living went up 40, 50%. There's a disconnect here.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capital. And when the capital is essentially government IOUs from an issuer that's $38 trillion in debt, that's not a system that you can really build upon and trust, right? And so, but we've created this mirage that this is the system and we've created this idea that treasuries should underpin the entire system. It's completely debt driven and that's why we have to print all this money just to keep the ball rolling and it just gets harder and harder for the average person to sort of make it. And so my book at the very beginning focuses a lot on just what is inflation. And I've shared before actually that when I was a reporter, we would share the CPI number, right? And it was kind of an afterthought. I didn't.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I do want to say I think a lot of people feel frustrated with capitalism because they associate it with sort of the greed that they think they see in corporations and the wealth concentration, but we really haven't had capitalism because capitalism means that risk is born by those who take it and it's not socialized to us. All of all the rest of us, the hard workers in the middle class, so to speak, it would actually be a very, very different system if we saw capitalism. We wouldn't have the bailouts. We wouldn't have the constant balance sheet interventions. We wouldn't have a system that essentially protects the incumbents and those at the core at the expense of everyone else. So I just want to say to people, what I realized is I didn't even understand capitalism because I thought we had it here and we don't. And you always do such a great job of talking about this as well. And capitalism is actually the best system that protects our rights and also creates opportunities for human flourishing and abundance and the most productivity. But you have to start with.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the top, at the core of that system, at the expense of everyone else, it privatizes the gains and socializes all the losses, and the average person is left holding the bag, just like my parents were. And it's like, this is not capitalism. This is not representative of the American dream. We need something that's going to address and strike at the heart of that corruption. And I didn't realize that the solution actually did exist, which is Bitcoin. And so when I did finally come to the conclusion that we have a solution that we can all embrace and it's the most accessible form of capital for the average person to empower themselves economically, that's when I started to realize like this is might be my calling because my whole background has pretty much primed me and set me up for this, not just my family's experience, but also spending 10 years reporting and communicating and doing stories. Like this is what I'm now meant to do. I have to share and spread the message of Bitcoin.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the cost of education, the cost of healthcare, housing was becoming so out of reach for more and more people. And so I could relate to a lot of the people I interviewed, but you're absolutely right. There were many instances where I would start digging and I would start following the money. And my stories were not able to always err because there were very powerful, influential people who had access and who I think that some of the networks did not want to scare off or upset. And so my story, some of them didn't air. And that was very, very frustrating because it happened not just once in my career, but a few times where I worked really hard on some investigations. And those stories never saw the light of day or they were later reported on by someone else, by a network that was willing to cover it. But again, it's like, it really does represent the overall system, though, where it protects the incumbents. It protects those.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. I was reporting on all the symptoms and I was interviewing families that felt so much like I was interviewing my mom and dad. Just like, what is going on? This is really unfair. I'm working harder than ever. Why can't I afford?”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I understand why people are crying out for fixes that come from the government because where else is the fix supposed to come from, right? You associate these massive corporations with greed and you think, well, someone has to come in and regulate it or prevent that from growing and happening and empower the average person. I didn't realize that it was the system itself that was so corrupted, that we had a monopoly over money that led to this incredible wealth concentration and caused the average worker to be left out and taxed through inflation. And until I learned that, I really didn't feel a lot of hope for the future. And I felt just as disillusioned by capitalism as so many people do today.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can just see it. And it really devastated me. And I saw where the world was going and I graduated into that recession. And I thought, where is the American dream? Where is this promise that, oh, you go to the school, you get the good grades? And where's that job waiting for me so that I can pay off my student loan debt? And it wasn't there. And I think that really did spark a fire in me to want to become an investigative journalist because as you know, in the wake of the great financial crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement quickly rose up. And I really resonated with it. I thought absolutely we do. Why are there some people at the very top who have made so, so, so much money? And the average person that has been productive and paid their taxes and they just wanted to, you know, provide for their families, they're the ones losing their homes, but these bankers are getting bailed out. No one's going to jail. Like, this is not fair. And someone needs to come in and fix it and maybe redistribute the wealth. And that's where, I mean, I look back now and”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You described it. I mean, rug pull is exactly what happened and what it felt like for millions of Americans around the country. Because, you know, like I said before, my parents played by all the rules. And then suddenly they were filing for bankruptcy. My dad had had a good job. He was an electrician. My mom actually worked for a bank, but then she wanted to start her own business. And it all just so quickly fell apart. My parents are, I've heard a lot of immigrant parents be similar in this way. They were filled with so much shame. They didn't even want to share how bad it was. Yeah.”
2025-11-26 · We Study Billionaires · BTC255: Bitcoin Is For Everyone w/ Natalie Brunell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT