nonfiction authors and books. this holiday you will see coverage from several recent book fairs and festivals including texas, boston, and wisconsin festivals as well as programs with republican senator ben bax of nebraska. retired general stanley mcchrystal and many other offers. also this weekend on our afterwards program pulitzer prize-winning journalist josc antonio vargas reflects on living in the united states as an undocumented immigrant. those are a few of the programs you will see this thanksgiving weekend on book tv on c-span2. for the complete schedule visit booktv.org. >>. >> now joining us on book tv is naomi brockwell. naomi brockwell, who is ãb girl? >> apparently it's me. [laughter] >> what does that mean? >> many years ago i got

involved in big coin, loved it and love the idea of competing currencies. i fell madly in love with it. i started a series making educational videos about this and then i made a music video where i did a cover of an uptown girl and the name stuck. there's nothing i could do to shake it. i'm happy to be associated with it in any way people want to associate me. >> you written a children's book which we will get to in a minute but why such a fan of big coin? >> i fell in love with it because i love the idea of the private sector coming up with money having competing currencies. having enough monopoly on the money supply for a long time with no innovation. suddenly big coin comes along and created a currency for the digital age and digital currency and created the global currency for global marketplace. that's a revolution. they figured out how to make

digital asset and be able to reproduce. to me it's been a fascinating journey where i get to enter a lot of conferences i work full time with my shows talking about tech and big coin and the more i learn about it the more i realize that this is the freedom, the revolution for people and it's a freedom revolution because i don't think we've taken the biggest steps towards freedom in the last hundred years that big coin because we created something that gives people back financial autonomy. you no longer need commission to make purchases. you no longer need commission to have a bank account. you have currencies that the government can control and that's really exciting. especially for countries where you have really hopeful people leaving the country. you have dictators. people stopping in the streets.

>> is there a downside to big coin? >> there's a downside to any sort of tech. i think tech is mutual and it's the people that use it you have to assess.obviously with any revolutionary tech you will have people who want to use it for their own means. you have people who want to make purchase anonymously. we have to keep in mind that bitcoin is a tiny fraction of the money laundering marketplace. the drug marketplace. the vast majority of ãbthat get sold for the u.s. dollar. you don't see many people condemning the u.s. dollar. it is an awful source of terrorist but it is also an amazing hope for everyday people who know what bitcoin is. >> what is a block chain? the block chain is the particle on hitting bitcoin. it's what makes it comfortable to have us have digital access

that can't be reproduced. think of it like a legit system. like a magic ledger that when one person comes down it appears all these different ledgers all over the world. so what happens is people making mistakes with notarizing things. if you have all these people who are verifying that what you are writing down is corrupt and then appearing simultaneously all over the world you have an account that can't be erased. you can put information down that nobody can get rid of. it's a really great resource that's now being applied to all kinds of different sectors. >> how many types of bitcoin are there? >> there a lot of different types of digital currencies. >> bitcoin is a brand?>> bitcoin was the original crypto currency that created and the

block chain. since then people have used the same block chain technology and created a whole slot of ã >> i think it's also used as a generic. a lot of people use it out in the substitute of saying crypto currency. when we say this is a bit coin revolution i think what people are referring to is the block chain revolution or digital currency revolution because there are really exciting things coming out not just in bit coin there are a lot of really cool things being done. >> how many crypto currencies are currently being developed are out there? >> it's very hard to know because it's easy for people to create their own currencies. create their own tokens. i would say there are thousands at least of currencies out there but the thing with money is you need a network of that. if people don't use these

things as money. unless you have a lot of people using them. there are a few very predominant coins out there such as bitcoin comic bitcoin cash, there are a few that people go through that are doing some very exciting things. then there are lots of really bad ones that no one is looking at and some of them are disingenuous so you gotta be careful out there. >> is a marketplace. >> it's a marketplace and at the moment there is very little regulation in that marketplace. it's up to the individual to take response ability and not invest more than they are willing to lose. this is a brand-new territory for people discovering for the first time.i think it's really important for people to do due diligence to research products before jumping in with everything they have. i really encourage everyone who asks questions about this you need to research it. if you don't feel you understand it enough maybe

don't get involved. it's not for everyone. those who want to understand it and learn more it's a very exciting world and i encourage people to pique their curiosity and see what's out there because it's a really exciting landscape. >> is a threat to the sovereignty of the nation's? >> it could be potentially. that's why it was initially created. you actually look at the white paper and you see a lot of writing back and forth and email threads about why it was created. it was created as a way to segment the government control of money and came about just after the top bailouts. he had government bailing out all over these big banks and you had people being disillusioned. what is the government doing for our money? we know that we are losing money every year with inflation anyway. so if you're putting your money in the bank and thinking it's safe it's not because is disappearing. every single year you got a little bit of that less of that

value. bitcoin came around with a lot of people angry at the system and angry at why we are bailing out all these big banks. they should be taking responsibility for their decisions and someone came up with this idea someone by the name of ãbprocess white paper and we don't actually know the real identity. >> do you have suspicions? >> i think we all have suspicions but i don't really like to say anything. i think it's very important that this anonymity remains because what tends to happen is we idealize ãbwe idolize people and put them on his pedestal and create focal points. governments will slander and having someone who wants to remain anonymous is that it's can give you a lot of freedom and protect your money more than the government is protecting your money and i think it's important to keep that anonymity. >> in your children's book is fred the big bad government.

>> you can read an analogy into that. it's potentially the big bad government. building bit coin was more about normalizing bitcoin. we wrote it at a time when no one was talking about it. anytime you did hear anything about it it was about money launderers and the drug dealers and inside people. that's the only time the words would come up. i go home back to australia i live in new york now but i go back there and i'd be during the bitcoin and people say i don't i've never heard of that. the children's book was a way for us to normalize the work. get in their everyday vernacular. it was about saying this is how the tech side works. it's about saying this is something you can use in your everyday lives the same way use the computer, the same way you use your visa debit cards. you don't need to understand the ins and outs of how it works. you just need to know it's

there and a lot of tools for understanding how it works and it's very easy to use. it's getting people talking about it. getting it normalized. i think it's a good way of introducing people at a young age without pumping them with details they don't need to know about. >> here's the book cover "billy's bitcoin", naomi brockwell, who is your writing partner? >> jason katz field, he is an amazing artist. he now lives in new york. he is an artist with the longest running comic strip in australia called jim jenae because he's one of the most prominent so we had a lot of fun putting it together. >> thank you for joining us on booktv. >> thank you so much for having me. >> coming up thanksgiving weekend on the c-span network, on c-span tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern supreme court justice elena kagan followed by chief justice john roberts friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern former new jersey governor chris christie and others discuss the opioid

epidemic. saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern photojournalists talk about their favorite photographs taken on the campaign trail. and sunday at 6:30 p.m. eastern gun laws and self-defense. on book tv on c-span ãbfriday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "after words", political writer derek hunter. saturday 8:00 p.m. eastern pulitzer prize-winning ãb talks about photos she's taken in the middle east. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. on "after words", pulitzer prize-winning journalist josc antonio vargas on american history tv on c-span3. today at 5:30 p.m. eastern on american artifacts. celebrating the first english thanksgiving at berkeley virginia near jamestown. in 1619. friday at 6:30 p.m. on the presidency, reflections on former first lady barbara bush. saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern

on elections and history. u.s. constitutions defines impeachable defenses for the present. thanksgiving weekend on the c-span networks. >> michelle obama is on tour for her best-selling autobiography "becoming" here's a portion of her speaking in washington dc. >> education was also important to your family and early on in about second grade something happened that really changed your trajectory. tell us a little bit about what was going on back in those early days. >> this is also a story about this gives you some insight into who my mother is as well. we grew up in a neighborhood called south shore on the south side of chicago. [cheering] yes! south shore! in the house. we are everywhere.

we just come everywhere. when we moved into the neighborhood it was a mixed neighborhood. mixed race neighborhood. it was working class to middle class which is one of the reasons why we moved there to go to better schools stop we lived with my aunt robbie and she was a teacher so she was able to own her own home. she was married to my uncle, we called him terry he was a pullman porter. they had a stable income and able to buy a house in south shore. the neighborhood was mixed. that meant to the schools were mixed. in kindergarten and first grade my classroom i would put a school picture in my book to show you the diversity that was there. but what was going on in the 70s was what we call white flights. all my little white friends that i had and i had plenty of them. they started literally disappearing before my eyes. i didn't realize until i had grown up and learned about

segregation and the whole issue of pushing folks bullying other communities as black families moved in was that the neighborhood was starting to change.we started to feel those effects, not just in friends leaving but a disinvestment in the neighborhood. we felt it in the schools. second grade comes around and it was the first time i was in a chaotic classroom. where the races were flying and teachers were teaching. and i knew this as a second grader. i would come home with my little lunch and my baloney and i would ãbyou came home for lunch back then. lived around the corner. we turn on all my children. [laughter] we would watch the shows. i'd have my baloney sandwich and i would complain. mom, this class, you'll never believe it we didn't even get homework. i was that kind of kid. i was like, we are not learning

in this class. how will we make it in third grade? i was a worrier. we had girls that came with us. we traveled in packs and we were all complaining. we were like this needs to change. we were just complaining and my mom did the mom thing of like ã ãwe thought she was just listening and humoring us but little did we know she was back up at that school. she was making some moves. what happened was that a few of us got tested out into the third grade because of my mother and thecacy of other mothers. i tell this story because i knew even at that age that i wasn't being invested in.

as a second grader. sometimes we like to pretend that kids don't know when they are being shortchanged and devalued. i'm here to tell you that i knew that at second grade. as we look at school inequality and things are right, kids know when they are not being valued and it makes them feel some kind of way. and i was lucky to have gotten out of the classroom and into a better classroom but that wouldn't have happened if i didn't have a parent at home who was also one of my fiercest advocates and understood the difference between whining and real distress. >> that was just a portion of her talk in washington. watch for more in-depth coverage of michelle obama's book tour in the coming weeks on booktv. this yearbook tv marks our 20th year