Natalie Brunell Podcast Transcript
Natalie Brunell joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Natalie Brunell. Natalie Brunell is a podcast host, educator, and media commentator in the Bitcoin space. Her popular show, Coin Stories Podcast, feature interviews with Bitcoin thought leaders, and cover headlines related to finance and economic issues facing society.
Coin Stories is the top woman hosted Bitcoin education podcast in the world. Previously, Natalie was an award-winning TV journalist and investigative reporter. For more than 10 years, she covered in depth local and national news topics and holds a regional news Emmy for breaking news coverage, as well as multiple Emmy nominations for investigative news stories.
Well, good afternoon, Natalie. Welcome to the show!
[00:00:56] Natalie Brunell: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:57] Brian Thomas: Thank you and I appreciate you making the time. I know you’re a busy lady traveling the world doing many interviews yourself working in the Crypto space, Fintech space as I like to call it, but thank you again. And we’re just going to jump right into these questions. So, we can get your story out to our global audience.
Natalie, you’ve got quite the career in journalism, broadcast media, you’re a producer, an entrepreneur, educator, the list goes on, and now you’re the influencer, podcast, producer and host of Coin Stories.
Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:32] Natalie Brunell: Sure. That’s very, very kind of you. You know, it’s interesting that I’m now passionate about decentralized money because decentralized media is how I was able to really pursue my passion and get out in front of a wider audience than when I was working in news.
I was always a passionate storyteller. I wanted to work in news because when I was a young girl, I was a first-generation immigrant from Poland and my family always had the news on and television and movies in general to augment their English skills. So, I always looked at the world through a four angled lens and I thought stories were so beautiful and hopeful and allowed you to learn a lot.
So, I wanted to go off and become a television, news anchor or host, looked up to Barbara Walters and Oprah, Diane Sawyer, but the media industry changed as I was pursuing that career. Even just when I went off to college, all of a sudden everything was transforming into the digital world and television had to compete with online news outlets and YouTube was sprouting up.
And so, things were becoming a little bit splintered, and people were starting to create their own channels and networks. And it’s really interesting because I come from background where, I think as an immigrant, I had a fear of authority and I wanted to play by all the rules, so I didn’t venture out and start one of those accounts early.
I wasn’t one of the first pioneers of YouTube. I really had a very traditional path pursuing legacy media. And I worked for more than 10 years in journalism. I worked my way up from tiny little TV markets all the way up to national working as a national correspondent for various networks.
And along the way one thing that I realized was that there was a lot of pain and and struggle that the average American was facing, including my own family. My family immigrated here and then lost everything in the great financial crisis and had to start over. And I was witnessing a lot of the same with the people I was interviewing, that there was a sense of frustration, that things were getting more expensive, that they couldn’t afford the cost-of-living real estate, college education, retirement.
And so, I just wondered, why is this in the country that represents economic opportunity and the American dream? And so, it wasn’t until I learned about Bitcoin that I finally understood the deeper issues within our financial system and banking and the fact that our money is no longer backed by anything. We really have no restraint when it comes to printing more units. And so, I became super passionate and I didn’t have a way to dive into that passion in my work as a journalist. So, I started a podcast on the side, and it turned into my full time job.
It goes to show that if you have an idea, If you have a voice and it resonates with an audience, you can really create a career for yourself. And I’m very grateful that now I get to focus so much on these topics that I think are so important, financial education, Bitcoin and so forth. And I’m using my old career skill set, but in such a different way.
[00:04:19] Brian Thomas: I love your story and I love stories of people that have moved here, immigrated here to this country. I’m like a third-generation immigrant, but like you Natalie seen so many changes in the last, I would say 20 years for me, but recently it’ll last probably 10, 5, 10 years incredibly where, the dollar was backed by silver.
If you recall back in 1964 and that’s been gone, and you saw on some of the charts. 90 percent of the value of the dollar is now gone. And we can talk about this later offline, but, with the whole BRICS thing starting up as well, will that mean the dollar no longer be that reserve currency?
And it gives me a little bit of pause because I want this country still to be the greatest country on earth. And I think that’s slowly eroding. Thank you for sharing your story. I love it. And we’re going to jump into the next question. Natalie, I’ve interviewed hundreds of executives, entrepreneurs, especially out of the Silicon Valley area, working in traditional industries, including legacy finance, wall street, FinTech, et cetera.
Could you share with us the how and why of your story in the DeFi and Bitcoin space?
[00:05:21] Natalie Brunell: Yeah, for me, it’s really about education. I think that financial literacy is really lacking and I went to some of the best schools and I certainly was someone that was passionate about education in terms of just getting good grades and, being able to get a career where I try to achieve financial security for myself Also to really justify the sacrifice that my parents made by immigrating and taking this big risk.
But I realized that I got to a certain point, and I had never really learned about how our banking system works, how money printing works, what our dollar is or was backed by. And I found that things that people are the most frustrated about in society, the things that are causing the most struggle are the result of a broken financial system that benefits the few at the expense of everyone else.
And so I really had to take a step back and go into a zone that was a little uncomfortable because I realized that what I thought I knew I didn’t. And some of the things I thought I, I knew it was just, it was outright wrong, and I had to reteach myself and really go down this knowledge journey to understand the history of money and really how important it is in all of our functions day to day, something that you mentioned earlier about this shift 20 years, I feel like.
There’s this complacency where everyone accepts this idea that everything just gets more expensive or, the things that are most important, the cost of healthcare and getting a college degree, being able to retire and the home that you live in. And so it’s really leaving generations out.
I mean, young people today, they don’t even see this idea of having a family as being possible because of how expensive the world is and being able to afford a home on even two incomes feels out of reach. So, there’s something really wrong with that system, and we really need to question it. We really need to peel back those layers and not only identify that problem instead of turning to just politics because that’s what I think a lot of people right now are trying to do.
They’re making it a left or right issue when it’s far deeper than that. But also. We have to examine solutions. I think we need to be solutions forward. Once we identify the problem, what can we do to fix it? And so, for me, it was identifying the problems being the global financial system, how it’s really structured and then Bitcoin being this potential fix, not an easy fix, not an overnight fix, but certainly one that can address some of the deepest fundamental issues that we all face locally and in the U. S. economy, as well as globally.
[00:07:37] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And thank you for unpacking all that. That’s awesome. You’ve got some great perspectives on the financial world and how Bitcoin is really a model we can look to potentially and move in that direction. Obviously, you saw that some members of Congress recently passed, or they have a bill on the table anyway, passed the, I think the House Judicial Committee on not letting the Fed create a Central Bank Digital Currency, which is scary because there’s benefits obviously to it, right?
But at the same time, when somebody can control all your money, it makes a big difference. So, I hope you’re following that closely. I certainly am. But thank you for sharing. And we’re going to move on to the next question here. Natalie, as you know, I’m a soundbite, but like to ask you, our audience would love to know if you have any other books or apps or maybe an NFT project that you might be launching here in the near future.
[00:08:28] Natalie Brunell: I’m definitely thinking about what kind of. book might make sense. There are a lot of wonderful ones in the space, so I wouldn’t want to step on any toes. But you know, I definitely have some thoughts that I would like to get out there, especially for the general audience. I really relate to the folks out there who look at Bitcoin and this whole space and they think it’s intimidating and complicated and they just haven’t taken that next step to really go down the rabbit hole, so to speak. I was just as skeptical when I first started and all I wish is that I could go back in time and really kick myself and push myself toward educating myself and peeling apart some of the doubts that I had. Because it really is the transformative technology.
And I think that sometimes those only come around once in our lives. And we actually have the chance to experience too. We had the internet, which transformed the way that we communicate and do business. And now Bitcoin, I think we’ll do the same for money. In addition to my podcast, which is called Coin Stories, I am also going to be working on some educational videos that are just going to be meant to provide that one-on-one fundamental education. Maybe that’ll turn into a book someday as well, but I really just want to get the 101 concepts out there to people who don’t have that, again, computer science or engineering or financial expertise or background just so they understand the potential and power of this technology.
So… Coin Stories, Podcast, a video series that’s going to be upcoming. And I’m very active on social media sites like X and Twitter, where I have a lot of my audience as well.
[00:09:51] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing and we’ll absolutely be following you in all your endeavors in that media space. Just love it Honestly, I love to follow you on Twitter. You’ve got quite an audience there and we’re going to continue to grow that for you because we’re going to get you exposed to my audience. I think together. We’ll make a more powerful audience to get your story and show out there. So, thank you. You’re welcome.
Last question of the day, Natalie, we’re technology publication platform podcast, especially emerging tech, right? We want to ask you if you’re leveraging any of that new and emerging technologies in your business. And if not, maybe there’s a cool tool or app that you’re using today you found useful.
[00:10:29] Natalie Brunell: For me, I’m really excited to play around with Bitcoin’s lightning network. And so, I’m actually going to upgrade my Bitcoin node to be a lightning node as well. And I just love being able to help people download their first lightning wallet and send them Satoshi’s, which are fractions of Bitcoin, wherever they are.
It’s so powerful that we now have a tool where you can send value across the world for really fractions of a penny. And it settles at lightning speed. We’ve never had anything like that. Our current banking system has a lot of middlemen. And even though it appears, when you make a purchase, maybe with your debit card, that the settlement happens right then and there.
It actually doesn’t. On the back end, the banks take weeks or sometimes even months to settle. If you’re making an international Payment, it’s even harder and there are lots of remittance fees. And so, Bitcoin is really empowering the ability to have a protocol that really could become a base layer, global payment infrastructure.
And I think it’s so exciting. So I’ve been using the lightning network. That’s the tool that I’m most excited about right now.
[00:11:30] Brian Thomas: That’s so awesome. Thank you for sharing. And I love these podcasts where we get into the nerdy techie part of things and what you’ve done a little bit here.
And I certainly appreciate that. And I know my audience does as well. And Natalie, this has been an awesome conversation today. Of course, it’s just a soundbite, but we definitely have to have you back on for part two, because there’s some things that we talked about today that we could really dive into more.
And I’m looking forward to that. And last but not least, it was such a pleasure having you on today, Natalie, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:11:59] Natalie Brunell: Thank you so much for having me and I hope I get to connect with you and your audience again soon.
[00:12:03] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Natalie Brunell Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the her podcast page.
