THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 26

Right. So the more that we can provide information and learn from it, the better. And people are a little desperate these days because the economy is kind of in trouble. Kind of? Kind of.

Credit card debt statistics

So off an MSN article, nationwide Americans owe 807 billion across 506 million credit cards. I see that daily. And of course, state to state, it’s different, right? So New Jersey is like the most in-debt state with an average of 78, 72 per card holder, whereas Connecticut, our neighbor, is number two with 77, 21 in outstanding debt. And the lowest of all states is Kentucky, where the average credit card debt is 54, 41.

And I have to believe that it has a lot to do with costs, right? The average cost of living in states are very different, and I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. 33 per gallon. That was the average. That was last week?

Saving money on gas

Correct. Okay. And we had touched a little bit on it last show. Sure. And so what I did is the sponsor of this show Cambridge Credit Counseling, they have a free education wellness center.

And I went to look for information about dealing with high energy costs, and there’s an article that talks just about this. So we had talked before the show, and you give this kind of advice when you’re counseling people all the time. So can you give our listeners some of the savings measures that are in this article? Certainly. Ease your pain at the pump, right?

That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s right. Ease your pain at the pump. Yeah. Well, obviously, there’s old-fashioned ways of saving on gas.

You carpool. We mentioned this last week, if you could carpool with coworkers who live nearby. A lot of us have been out of work for the last two years, or I shouldn’t say out of work, but out of the office working from home. So essentially, the gas price increase really hitting us a little bit harder than a lot of us would have thought had we were still working from home. Absolutely.

So if you can carpool, find someone that might work close by you, go back and forth, take turns with that. Public transportation is a big one. I’m not certain of the increase. I can imagine what Uber might cost today versus a few months ago. Actually, I just saw that them, Lyft, anybody that’s in that space, they’re adding a fuel surcharge now.

They should. Rightfully so. They have to. They have to. So that’s interesting to know.

So as far as using public transportation, a lot of those apps will give you the cost prior to you ordering that. So that’s something you can look into ahead of time, and I certainly encourage consumers to do something like that. Here’s a big one. Walk. It’s good for you.

It’s good for your health. It’s good for your wallet. You know, the spring is here. We have more daylight now. I mean, if you can walk to work, great, but if there’s a store right down the street, a convenience store, you need a gallon of milk, kill two birds with one stone.

Go get your milk, walk, get your steps in. Get your motion going. Ride a bike. So speaking of riding bikes, this is funny. My granddaughter and I have decided to ride bikes.

I’m 50. She’s six. Yep. Yeah. So she’s going to teach me.

All right. Get me off those training wheels, Gordon. I love it. I love it. The show, it’s all about financial wellness, financial empowerment, financial wisdom.

Sponsor message and scam warning

That’s definitely the place to go. So we’re going to take a break. We’ll be right back. Hi, I’m Crisper Viale, President of Cambridge Credit Counseling. Have you been receiving possible scammer phone calls or emails about your student loans, or mortgage, or rent, or any other calls suggesting they’re about money you owe?

Before you respond, call us at 1-800-CAMBRIDGE and talk to one of our certified counselors. There are lots of scammers gaining illegal access to credit reports these days, and it can be difficult to separate the scammers from legitimate services like ours, where the counseling is truly free and where we work with you to create a plan to pay down your debt safely and responsibly. Call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE today to find out how we can help you. 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back.

Real people real problem crypto scam

This is The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. io coming on the show. And before we speak with him, we have a Real People, Real Problems segment of somebody that reached out to Cambridge about cryptocurrency. Is that correct?

Right. And funnily enough, just recently, we did receive an email, and by no means are we experts at cryptocurrency, so everyone’s learning daily. And I did get an email the other day that I’d like to share, and then I’m sure Ben could shed some light on this. That’s why we’re talking about it. We need to get people some education on this whole system.

It starts with, I’ve been investing some of my money for quite some time and took a gamble with cryptocurrency investment deal that turned out to be a scam. This all started during the pandemic when cryptocurrency became something bigger than it ever was at the time. So many different coins coming out. I took loans out to recoup from the depleted funds. So I still pay bills and support my well-being.

To fall for this investment scam definitely took a turn for the worst, since a lot of the money I saved up just disappeared right in front of me, right before my eyes. Any help to reduce my interest rates or payments would be appreciated. So luckily, as a certified credit counselor, I was certainly able to look at the credit card situation and help them reduce their monthly payments and reduce their interest rates to get out of the debt in a reasonable timeframe. But when it comes to the loss of the investment, that is certainly something that’s way out of our hands. And it’s a gamble, or I wouldn’t say it.

A gamble, but who do you trust? No, it is a gamble. We’ve talked about this. We even brought it up last week on the show that the concern is you’ve got fantasy sports now. You’ve got all these sports books, people using credit cards.

That’s nothing new to counseling people. People have gotten themselves in trouble using credit cards for things that typically are either risky or they’re hoping that are going to turn into changing their lives, right? Cryptocurrency is, it’s unique and it’s new and people don’t understand it, but yet they’re seeing a lot of headlines of people making a ton of money because they got into something early. So what does that lead to? It’s just like the stock market.

You’ve got to know what you’re doing. You have to be educated. And while there are advisors out there, you still need to know at least the basics so that when someone’s giving you advice, you can at least sift through the main points of dealing with that. And again, we always talk about this. Using credit cards for things like gambling, like investing is a very dangerous road to go down.

As a counselor at Cambridge, it doesn’t matter how they got the debt, you’re going to help them in any way that you can. But a huge piece of advice is not to use credit cards for these types of things. Absolutely. You’re going to invest, it should come from savings and you have to be willing to lose it. On a credit card, not only could you lose it, but you’re going to pay a very high interest if you don’t deal with the debt that you’ve created.

Sure. And I’m thankful that I, at least I got the opportunity to help this consumer with the credit card debt. And I’m even more thankful for Ben to be here today to shed some light and help lead us in the right direction and just give us some education on something that, as we’ve already stated, is pretty much a foreign language to us. So it’s exciting having Ben here and hopefully we can learn something. So we’re going to take a break.

Break and cohost introduction

Coming up, we’re going to have Ben Noble, our guest, to talk about cryptocurrency part two. We’ll be right back. Hey all, it’s Tina Marie and you might know me as Gordon Oliver’s co-pilot for The Cambridge Connection every Saturday morning. What you might not know is that I’ve known Gordie for a really long time and as a certified credit counselor at Cambridge Credit Counseling for over 20 years, I am thrilled to join Gordie every week to share and chat about real people with real financial problems, along with many success stories, both myself and all of the counselors at Cambridge Credit have been a part of. We know it takes a village of support and inspiration if someone is struggling financially.

So it’s nice to know if that person is you, that you’re not alone out there. m. right here on WHMP for The Cambridge Connection because Gordie and I, we are here to help you have a better relationship with your money and hopefully make you smile. Right Gordie? Couldn’t have said it better myself, Tina Marie.

Welcoming guest Ben Noble

Welcome back. This is The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and it is a pleasure to welcome our special guest, Ben Noble, who is returning. Last week, he was on the show talking about the basics of cryptocurrency. io.

Ben, thank you so much again for joining us. Thanks for having me back. Hi, Ben. Thanks for coming back. Welcome.

So last week, we dabbled into the basics of cryptocurrency. And again, because this is, even though it’s not new, brand new, it’s very new and very uncertain area for many, many people. Yet, you see that there’s hype around it. You see that it looks like it’s here to stay. So let’s start with, if you’re going to invest, and again, I disclaimed this before and I’m going to do it again.

Crypto wallets and security

We are not giving financial advice on this show. We’re just talking about the basics and if you want to get into investing in cryptocurrency, there’s certain things that will be very helpful for you to get started. So, talking about investing in cryptocurrency, can you explain to our listeners what a wallet is? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So this is a common misconception because a lot of individuals will go to Coinbase and purchase their cryptocurrency, but they’re not maintaining custody of it. And what that means is essentially centralized exchanges or exchanges like Coinbase have a vault, if you will, of these cryptocurrencies that you’re purchasing from them. So to maintain a wallet is to create a address that is unique to yourself. And so a lot of times people will do this through browser wallets like Metamask or a hardware wallet like Ledger. And this is a copy of the blockchain that you’re maintaining and your cryptographic key that is unique to yourself and creating an identifier for you to participate in this ecosystem.

So when you’re purchasing cryptocurrency to actually then participate in the blockchain, you have to move those assets off the centralized exchange into your wallet. And then from there, you can interface directly with anybody else who has a crypto wallet in the world. If they provide me whatever that cryptographic key is that says this is your wallet, I can plug that in. I can just put however much Ethereum, Bitcoin, whatever, and click send and it’s going to go to them. No middlemen whatsoever.

And this is what makes blockchain super interesting is cutting out all the intermediaries that are checking and validating those transactions. And instead, it’s this computational system that’s handling it for you. So as an example, when you deposit even cash into an ATM, there’s still a waiting period for that to be available, even if it’s the end of the day. Or if you deposit a check on a Friday, it’s typically not available to that next business day, which is a Monday. In this space, it’s instantaneous, a transaction without any of that hold up.

You’re not waiting for it to clear, so to speak. Correct. And when you think about that as an extension of however much money transacts on a daily basis, so we’re talking billions, trillions of dollars moving from place to place. And the amount of float that happens in between these, we have a very inefficient system of moving money around. And sometimes the further the distance, the longer the money can take to clear.

Or if the banks don’t have really great relationships, there can be complications with sending and receiving funds with things like Bitcoin, Ethereum. You have transactions that can clear in minutes to at max, maybe an hour. And that’s still so, so much better than what we have already. So on a protection standpoint, I always have to get into this because I know even educating myself, there’s a lot of warnings about how people can get into your wallet and the things to do and what not to do. Can you spend a couple minutes just talking about if you are going to manage one of these wallets or they talk about it being a cold wallet where it’s not connected to the internet and there’s ones that are connected to the internet.

I see on social media where there are promoters asking you to drop your code or handle so they can send you free coins or be entered in contests. So can you spend just a couple minutes talking about the to dos and the not to dos when you’re dealing with a wallet? Sure. So providing your wallet address is generally considered safe. At very most, what you’re doing is you’re exposing and identifying yourself as the wallet holder.

So if somebody wants to be anonymous, that’s obviously not going to happen if, you know, you know that my name is Ben and this is my wallet address that I’m sending to you. So that’s kind of your first risk, but that’s palatable for most people. The cryptography, the security component here is really rooted in what we call a seed phrase and that’s a seed phrase. There’s a series of words that are essentially like a code that help decipher who owns the wallet and that is something that you do not want to give. You write it down in a book, you throw it in a vault somewhere, you only drudge that up if you like, let’s say I cleared my browser and lost my password to my wallet.

I can use that seed phrase anywhere in the world and essentially recover my wallet. But if somebody else gets a hold of that seed phrase, they can secure control of your wallet and then you’re in deep trouble. So that’s another issue, if you will. However, it’s very, very complicated. Nobody’s just going to guess these seed phrases.

They’re set up in such a way that it’s very, very complicated and it would take a great amount of computational strength to decipher and crack that code. The other thing is when you are interfacing in what we call Web3 and that is when you have like a browser wallet or your ledger plugged in and you’re logging into like a decentralized website that says connect your wallet here, you have to be very careful because you can assign permissions that say, I’m going to allow what I’m connecting to, to transact on my behalf or to spend money in my wallet in a certain way. This generally doesn’t happen without you having to click buttons, but you know how people are. Terms and condition things roll through and they just blindly hit accept and what they don’t realize they’re doing is actually submitting a transaction on the blockchain. So the best thing is just to be very patient.

If you’re dipping into kind of the unknown, just knowing where those pitfalls are will protect you greatly. io and that’s important information. We’re talking about cryptocurrency. Right now we’re talking about the safety part of it, about making sure that you do things properly. So if you are a novice at cryptocurrency, a coin base is a place where you can safely not have to worry about that kind of protection?

Sort of. You lose the autonomy of being able to transact with wherever you want because this is a centralized organization. They have regulatory powers that say where you can and cannot send money, which for most people is fine. They also ensure the deposits up to a certain amount. But if you have an exceptionally large holding of cryptocurrency, you may not want to trust their vault to maintain that wealth.

So for most listeners, I don’t think that would be of paramount importance. However, if you do want the more secure option, having a hardware wallet is generally considered probably the safest route to go. Phase one, you’re learning it’s okay to have a service like that, but phase two is really to get to that autonomy by having and managing your own wallet and knowing what you’re doing. Correct. Obviously, if it’s like petty cash or, you know, a little bit here and there and you’re just kind of experimenting, that’s generally the way to go.

And a lot of people won’t even navigate off Coinbase. And if there’s issues, they have a support desk, all that stuff. It makes people very, very comfortable with interfacing. That’s not necessarily going to get you involved into the world of like NFTs and Web3 and all these other funky decentralized exchange, Uniswap world. But many people are not ready for that yet.

Ukraine cryptocurrency donations

Yeah. Look, I’m educating myself. I’m not even close to ready for that. And that’s why I appreciate so much that you’re on here, because people really need to hear this and maybe that will stimulate them starting to get educated on it. I saw a headline that in the Russia-Ukraine war, that Ukraine is accepting Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies for donations.

Can you walk through that? Have you seen that activity or understand that that’s happening? Yeah, we’re in the craziest timeline, aren’t we? That a meme coin, Doge, is being used to essentially help a place like Ukraine that’s going through something very traumatic at the moment. And so, Ethereum and Bitcoin donations have been piling in.

I have a couple of friends who have set up decentralized collections and donations. But that is a wallet that’s custodialized and has been confirmed as custodialized by the government of Ukraine. And they are kind of impact tracking and showing where that money is being allocated. So it’s very, very interesting. But it is a part of the value that we’re seeing with cryptocurrency.

And like I said, they’re in conflict. They cannot wait to receive those funds and then put those funds to work. Cryptocurrency allows us to get that money to them faster. And it allows for people to semi-anonymously donate from anywhere in the world. So, you know, it’s not just here in the United States, it’s everywhere.

Anybody who has access to that crypto wallet could be pumping money into the Ukraine to help them defend themselves. So we can assume that that’s a safe transaction? Yes, it’s a safe transaction. And there’s been a number of different security professionals to make sure that the Twitter, the tweet that was put out with those wallet addresses was verified. They weren’t hacked.

Ben’s projects and NFTs

That is a crypto wallet that is maintained by Ukraine. Let’s get into what you’re doing now. I know isn’t a lot of your company’s direction public relations and you’re very into NFTs. You want to talk about what you’re doing these days? Oh, yeah.

No, we’ve been doing a little bit of everything for a while now. And so I’m still working on the infrastructure side and have my roots in the deep tech. But we’re getting more playful as we enter the world of NFTs. I’m working on a few projects, one that’s in augmented reality called Azumi, another one that’s a play to earn components called Kingdoms of Curiopia. And we have film conversations where we’re talking about using NFTs to bootstrap independent films.

I’m involved in the music scene. It’s really just one of these renaissances that comes from being able to have digital scarcity. And that’s what NFTs have brought to the table. Blockchain helps us transact with digital cash and NFTs are digitizing everything else and through cryptography, creating digital DNA that allows us to identify and create scarcity for items in what we call the metaverse. What’s incredible to me is it’s an actual movement, right?

This is just changing the world completely. It’s rewiring the internet as we know it. So if you look at what the internet is, it’s kind of a wild, wild west of data where you’re placing all of your information in these server farms that are maintained by Amazon, Google, et cetera. And so there’s a lot of authoritarian control over that information. How it gets produced.

Blockchain has really kind of opened up the vault and said anybody can participate in this network, run a node, be a part of this computational network, but also they can start creating and doing things where they have a unique identifier of what they’ve placed on the internet versus what we experience right now on the web is you put an image up, there’s no way for me to tell if that’s actually your image. You got it from your mom, you copy pasted it from something else, and so that’s really, really interesting. If you could, because of your experience and where you got started from where you got to today, if you could give a few pieces of advice to our listeners about how to actually move forward with this, how to get involved, are there resources that are helpful? And of course, please share where they can follow you and find you, obviously, because you’re participating in social media. So can you give a few pieces of advice and then let us know where we can find you?

Sure. So my best advice is to very, to curate who you follow and take time to educate yourself and read what you can on websites like Coinbase, anything that has kind of an air of professionalism around it, that they’ve taken time to cultivate educational resources, and Coinbase is one of them, Coinmarketcap is another. Those are good places to start. It’s okay to take a couple months to really get your head around it before diving in, but also experiment with what you’re willing to lose. And I would say social media has really been the catalyst for this, specifically Twitter.

We played a lot in 2017 and read it in areas like that. I think Twitter is where it’s at now, and if you want to find me and see what I’m posting about, I’m at the NFTs, and that’s spelled T-E-A-S-E on Twitter, and I’m one of those guys that posts about NFTs quite a lot. But there’s other people that I’m following that you’re welcome to follow as well that would be very helpful for anybody starting their journey. That’s incredible. And what I saw on Coinbase, too, is not only can you get education, but they actually offer incentives of giving you some small shares of some of these cryptocurrencies for educating yourself.

Closing thanks and show wrap up

So I thought that that was excellent because it incentivizes people to go through those modules. That’s correct. And I’d be remiss to mention their competitors like Kraken and Gemini and some of the other ones that are out there that are doing an equally good job. Coinbase just has kind of the name right now, and I think it’s the most familiar platform. Ben, listen, thank you so much for joining us.

This information is just, I can’t even put a value on it, and we appreciate you spending the time last week and this week with us. And as things develop, I’d hope that we could have you back on the show to maybe do current events, kind of get people up to speed on what’s going on as this develops. So would you join us again in the future? Absolutely. Well, we really appreciate your time today.

Thanks, Ben. Yeah, my pleasure. Tina Marie, we’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back to wrap up the show. This is The Cambridge Connection.

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io. Welcome back, everyone. This is The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. And another 28 minutes has gone by, Tina.

Come and gone again. Come and gone again. What an incredible show. This information is so important. And I’m going to repeat the quote that I said last week, because it’s very fitting.

Learning how cryptocurrency works is like learning a new language. It is incredibly difficult at the beginning, but once it clicks, it will stick with you forever. And that’s from Alawali Daniel. And you know what? That’s something we all need to keep in mind.

Without a doubt. Yes. Huge thank you to our producers, Leah and Lisa. As you see, an expert like Ben Noble, we have great experts coming on this show to help you, our listeners, with all things financial wellness, all things financial wisdom. com, go to podcasts, you can listen to us on SoundCloud, or anywhere where you listen to your favorite podcasts.

And once again, we want you to be part of this conversation. org. And if you need help with your credit card and unsecured debts, feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.