Hi everybody, welcome to Orange Hatter. Today you'll listen to part two of my conversation with Jacqui.

As an author, I've created different books and resources for individuals to, uh, to have access to. And as a lawyer, I felt it was really important, both for my own daughter to know, as well as for other families, because our, our goal in looking at this is not just, not to play with it, but to use it, and to have it support us. And so, but if... I know, I know as, and, and I'll, I'll say this as a woman and as a lawyer, even though I'm very intelligent, I'm not always financially smart... in the past. And so I had to learn how to handle my own finances, and I had to learn how to be fiscally responsible, because I wasn't taught this. It wasn't until I learned about Bitcoin and this whole community that I started getting excited about figuring out, okay, what do I want to do with this? And, you know, financial future. So that's why this was very important for me. And that's why, you know, I, I started my talk show, to help people learn more about it. And I wrote different books, because I really thought that there had been a gap in my own outlook. And I wanted, and as I realized that that was a deficiency in where what I had been exploring, I wanted to help others kind of awaken and just understand that it's not, it's not that difficult. It's okay.

Yeah. That's so, so needed right now. I think that a lot of women are in the same place. And it's sort of a silent handicap, because we don't necessarily talk about it openly. So I wanna go back to a statement that you made earlier, about how you came across Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general... was when you said you were planning for your retirement. Now, typically when people talk about planning for retirement, you are thinking 401k, you know, Roth IRA and maybe a mutual fund, or maybe you have some collection of stocks, right, that you've chosen or somebody else has chosen for you. Or maybe even real estate, like rental properties where you're getting passive income, hopefully. So what made you look outside that basket and start examining cryptocurrency and Bitcoin?

Yeah. So I do wanna say there is risk in everything you do. So you, if you are investing in any cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, whatever. I, again, you know, I don't wanna have people kind of be upset with me. You have to be willing to lose anything you put in. But on the flip side... and that's true with stocks, too. That's true with traditional businesses, too. I'm both a, an attorney as well as a teacher. So, you know, when I first started in my teaching space... I'm a special educator for at least another year... so when I first started, you know, different people came to the school and said, hey, you need to open this up, you need to do this. And I thought, okay, fine. You know? And I just kind of let them manage and do. And then I was looking at the growth of it, and I thought, this is not doing very well. You know, I need to think twice about this. And so, you know, I made some personal decisions. I decided to pull out some of the funds that I had put into my IRA. And I'm not saying that anyone else should do what I did, because it's your own personal journey. And you have to make sure that you're not putting your money for... anything that you're gonna be investing in... in that you need for your food or your mortgage or your kids' education. You know, be strategic and be wise about this. But I decided to pull out, from my IRA, certain amount of funds, so I could become a Bitcoin miner. Because I felt that the, the daily drop of my Bitcoin would be a wiser investment than where it was. Now there's, without getting too technical, in March next spring, there's gonna be what's called a halving. So you know those that might wanna learn more about Bitcoin mining, you can reach out to me. There's a lot of things that you need to know when you're... become a Bitcoin miner. But I only became that after I had invested in Bitcoin on exchanges, you know, through the traditional way. And then I started to... I wasn't, when I was younger, I wasn't interested in stocks. It just felt boring to me. You know? So, so again, it wasn't until I learned about decentralized finance and Bitcoin and the purpose behind it and how it was helping people take control, and also that the cost of transferring from one person to another... BItcoin, you know, like in transactions was so small in comparison to some of the other bank wire type of options. You know, I just was exploring more and more. And so those are, those are the, the reasons why I looked at this from the retirement perspective. 'Cause I was... there's a technical term if, if listeners don't know, it's called hodl. I was gonna hold onto my Bitcoin and not spend it. So I was looking at holding onto it. So in the long-term, wherever it was, whether it was high, whether it was low, that would be my long-term growth plan. So, you know, again, but that was a personal choice. Everyone has to make their own. I definitely believe in... diversify. I think that that, you know, is probably good advice to give to anyone, but everyone needs to figure out what do you want in your basket? And I think in everyone's basket, again, personal opinion, you should think about Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is being used in IRAs now. It's being used, you know, in ETFs. I mean, again, there's a lot of financial products that are using Bitcoins. So it's becoming, it has always been mainstream, but it... when I say always, it's been around for over 13 years. Major companies were dabbling in it. They just weren't public about their dabble. So now people are becoming more public about the fact that they are getting involved with it. And as a result of that, that's why different governments and entities are looking at regulations. Just because, again, personal opinion, they want their hand in the pie. But you know, again, it's, there's, there's many levels to this and that's what's exciting about kind of exploring it.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you for, for the explanation. I think that a lot of people can really relate to that thinking process, because we all want to have a secure future. You work so hard for decades, and you want to be able to retire and not have to worry about a groceries bill. Right? And with inflation going on the way that it is, there are some people who are on fixed income who are worried. So I wanna, I wanna ask you about Bitcoin mining, because, um, some of our audience out there probably don't really understand what that is. And for, for a person to go from, let me explore Bitcoin, to it's a real thing, to you know what, I'm gonna be part of the ecosystem, and in fact I'm going to invest in the mining machine and then become even a more integrated part of the Bitcoin protocol. I mean, that journey... I mean, you really believe in it, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be participating in it. And so can you talk a little bit more about just that journey, where you went from I've heard about Bitcoin, to I'm gonna buy some, to actually, I'm gonna be a part of the protocol?

Yeah, it's been a, I like to get my hands, I say dirty, but from the perspective of understanding the tech side, even though I'm not very technical. I also, just as an add-on to that, recently bought a node. And nodes are part of the process of verifying Bitcoin. And they're not miners, but they're part of the the process. So, uh, and on the, my node... I'm, I'm looking at it right now... it has my Bitcoin wallet. It has a lightning wallet, which is a whole 'nother area that we can talk about, you know, down the road if you want. It has a Bitcoin point-of-sale type of platform, so that way, if I was to sell my book on it, "the Bitcoin Cinderella", which I'll talk about in a second. It's available on Amazon, but if I wanted to sell it on a Bitcoin marketplace, then people would be able to buy it in that marketplace. The Bitcoin, consider it like a currency. If someone's buying the book, it would drop into the point-of-sale. So think of it like MasterCard or PayPal or one of those others, and then it would go from that over to my wallet. So it's no different than a traditional bank, where if you buy something, okay, well let's use Amazon. You buy something from Amazon, you use PayPal, you know the, the person who has the product gets paid, and then, you know, goes over to the bank account at that... and so it's like a whole ecosystem stream. That ties into, you know, actually why I became a, a miner is because I realized that as people were obtaining Bitcoin... those Bitcoin that you buy on platforms, the exchanges, have to be created somewhere. And 'cause they're not being created on the exchanges, that is the public marketplace for where you as a consumer will obtain the coin. Um, it sort of was like going to a bank and saying, okay, I want, I have $10. Give me, you know, exchange. But it's a little bit different. But you know, just think of it like that. So it has to originate somewhere. And in the United States, we have the Treasury, they print the money. For Bitcoin, it gets mined. And in order for it to get mined, it has to be, the mathematical equation has to be solved. And the, it's, it's, there's a lot of technical things that get into solving it. But when the, the equation is solved, then whichever rig solves that mathematical equation, it gets rewarded, because it solved it. And so it gets a small drop into a wallet, and then the Bitcoin that is mined, it's sent over to whoever's buying it. And there's also, part of this is verification of the system, because the mining verifies that the transaction is real. So there's no double spending. So that's also important, because there's checks and balances within the system and... you know, a lot of technical checks and balances. But that's the other reason why the blockchain has grown so much. It's so, I wanna, I'll use the word vested, even though my not be the right word. There's too many transactions going through now, that it won't disappear. It won't fall down, so to speak.

Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today. If the discussion with our guest resonated with you and you would like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. The meetup link is in the show notes. Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them. Until next time, bye!