Hi everyone. Welcome to Orange Hatter. Today you're listening to a conversation I had with Mel. Well, hi Mel. Welcome to Orange Hatter. I am so happy to have you here. Thank you for joining us and sharing your stories with us.

Thanks for having me.

Awesome. So we'll jump right in with our first question. When did you first hear about Bitcoin, and what was your journey like from discovery to conviction?

So in 2015, I bought a hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin and then immediately forgot about it. I don't really know why. I have a feeling it was during that Cyprus losing their currency thing, and I read about it and they were talking about Bitcoin and I thought, oh, that's interesting. I've been an early adopter on the internet. I started selling online in 1998. So when I saw that, I thought, oh, interesting. So I bought it. Forgot all about it. 2017, someone said to me, have you seen Bitcoin or have you heard of this thing? And like, have you seen what the price is doing? And I went, have some of that. And so I go find it and that a hundred dollars is worth $4,700. Ta-da. So I'm like, what is this? Why did this happen? Is it gonna keep happening? And uh, that set me down the rabbit hole and my family was telling me to sell. And my dad, you know, it's like, oh my gosh. It's all, that's all that. I'm like, no, I'm not going to. I'm gonna wait. It was a hundred bucks. It's a hundred bucks for me to find out what is this. And I went down the rabbit hole and I've never looked back. I continue to educate myself as much as I can. I mean, I have been like trying to debunk it for years and I can't, I can't. So that is where I began. And so once I started to learn, so I'm like, okay, now how do I learn more? How, what do I do? I get on Twitter and I start following some people. I followed this kid who's, you know, I don't know, like who's a good trader, who's this? Because of course, my first thing I thought was, okay, if I need more Bitcoin, I could just learn how to trade and then I could make more Bitcoin. Okay. That's crazy. Don't anyone think that immediately, unless you already are a trader. That was my first thought. And because I'm an antique dealer and I'm buying and selling all the time, I thought, well, it's the same thing. And it kind of is actually. I mean, when you look at antiques and vintage, you're looking at something that has scarcity and something that has demand and something people are collecting, and that's exactly what Bitcoin is now, why they're collecting it. I think people have different reasons. People understand what Bitcoin is going to be, where it's already going, and then some people just wanna make money and they see the potential. Okay, either way, I don't care. I know some people care. I don't care if that's what it takes for you to get in and and learn some more, then do it. So I got scammed on Twitter almost immediately. I have been on the internet... I had my own home computer at, in like 1995. This giant, compact computer I was so proud of, and I couldn't wait to get that disc in the mail, you know, like to get my 30 minutes of being online. So I have not, it's like if I cannot get scammed all that time until I reached Bitcoin Twitter? Oh, these are clever little monkeys. And it was, um, it was the pretending to be the guy I was following and messaging me and saying, oh, my class is open now for registration. I'm like, awesome. So I send this person 0.01 Bitcoin, and it wasn't him. So that's your first lesson: be incredibly skeptical and pay attention to usernames because it's very easy, especially if you're busy or you're not, you know, totally focused, it's very easy to get scammed. So I recover from that, and then somehow I find Tone Vays. Okay. Tone has been in the space a long time. He is... and for some reason I started watching his show every day. He was the first person that explained s*** coins in a way that I understood. Because I kept thinking, what is the rest of this stuff? Like, I remember watching on Coinbase when they let Bitcoin cash, like when they let that loose. And it went from like nothing to 2,500 bucks in like five seconds. Like I watched that happen and I'm like, what is going on? What is this? So Tone was the first person who explained it. He explained it well, and I learned fairly quickly that Tone could not be bought. You know, he did not have sponsors. He wouldn't take sponsors that weren't like Bitcoin, absolutely, Bitcoin only. And even then he was hard, you know, he had a hard time taking that kind of thing, like doesn't wanna take people's money, wants to educate. And so I stuck around and I've been, you know, hanging on his every word ever since. In 2018, I went to a conference in Chicago, the first Bitcoin conference I ever went to because Tone was gonna be there and he was teaching a class on trading. Okay. Now I listen at that moment, at that class, like I think I even raised my hand and asked some dumb candlestick question, which is like, I shouldn't have been there. I met him and I met Mike, Mike Jarmuz, who's with Lightning Ventures, and they were the first people I met in person. And they were gracious and probably thinking, who is this woman? You know, who is she and why is she here? So I, I was there because I trusted him and I wanted to hear what he had to say. And I have honestly tell you, and now I worked for and I can honestly tell you I've never, that feeling has never faltered. You know, he's, he still doesn't lie. He still cannot be bought and because of that, his conference was the first conference I went to outside of the state. You know, I went to Vegas to the first Unconfiscatable, my first Unconfiscatable, in 2020 by myself. And I was, it was the best experience I've ever had. I mean, that's what, that was my huge orange, orange pill. Like I know I'm in, I'm in, I'm in deep. So I have, that's how it started and that's my. My journey and now I am the organizer of Unconfiscatable for 2023, and I'm excited. It's really going well.

So it, it takes, it takes a, a lot of like tiny pivotal steps for you to get from discovery to that conviction. 2015 to 2017, it was... and then 2017 to when you're fully in 2020. Right? So can you give us an idea of your personal background? You are obviously very interested in learning and you said you were an early adopter even in the internet movement. So give us an idea of who you are, you know, your personal background.

Well, I'm from, so I'm from Metro Detroit originally. That's where I grew up and you know, very probably lower middle class neighborhood. You know, definitely when I was in high school I was bored to death. I mean, I school board me and they had the computer lab over at the career center. So I would just because. It got me outta school and like doing different things during the day. I took these computer classes and I'll never forget Mr... And so this is what, 1987? Okay. 1986. 1987. There were computers. There was Lotus 1, 2, 3, there was Word Star, and I remember Mr... The one thing I took with me was, you can always get out of everything. Like there's a way to get out of any computer situation, just look for it. And like to this day, I use that, you know, if I'm in a situation, but I started there and I was so good at it, you know, I just, and I'm not a programmer or anything else, but I can use a computer and I can find stuff and I know how to do things. And that was my early adoption. I long, you know, long story, I won't even do this, but like, let's cut to 1998. My husband is a comic booking card collector from childhood on and we were gonna buy our first house and I saw this eBay, I kept hearing about eBay and I said, why don't we try selling some of this stuff on eBay and maybe we can raise some house money. Well, that was it. I was hooked. And I, I couldn't even buy a digital camera. It was so expensive to buy one. I bought a scanner. I would lay things on it. I would put a blanket on top. I thinking back on it, how much time this took on dial-up, mind blowing. But when I started selling things on eBay, people said to me, you're crazy. No one's gonna buy anything from you online. Nobody's gonna send you a check and wait, and you know, wait till they get their money, you know, wait till they get their item. I go, you wanna bet? I could see it straight down the line. I knew everything was gonna be online. Everything we bought was gonna be online at some point. And I said in like 20 years, everything's gonna be online. But at that time, eBay was the only place really that you could buy online. And people were into it, you know, I had no problem waiting for that check and then waiting for it to clear and then shipping it. And it was empowering, you know, it was like having, all of a sudden I didn't wanna work for anybody else. You know, I had a really good job. I worked for an accounting firm as a recruiter for financial positions, and I was like on track to make 80 grand my first year, and that's a lot for that time period. And I quit. I had hives. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the drive. I couldn't stand any of the structure. Like I wanted my own freedom. My daughter was, I mean, she was probably five or six and like I knew we wanted to have more kids. I wanted to be at home with them. So I created that eBay business. And then I was part of the Power Chicks, which were all women power sellers on eBay. And they're still friends of mine. So Bitcoin... In fact, you know what? Now that, now that I just said that out loud, those ladies would appreciate Bitcoin in a big way. I know it and they would trust me, and if I said it was good, they'd be like, let's find out more. Let's check on that. But anyway, so yeah, I mean that was my, that was my thing. And I buy estates. I would, and I started looking for vintage stuff because the markup is, Is so much better. I mean, it's really hard to buy retail and sell that online or like go to a show or what do you call those things like in Atlanta they have that marked and it's really hard to go and buy retail things at half the price. You know, you have to make like five times your money or you are not going to survive. Vintage and antiques will do that where retail won't. So I had friends that went into different things and thought it would be easier to do brand new stuff, but the volume that they had to do was so huge to make a profit wasn't, that wasn't worth it to me. So that was my, that was my deal. And then in, now keep in mind at this point, I'm a completely clueless financially. I have no nothing. Like, we grew up with nothing. We didn't, you know, know anything about the stock market, know anything about anything, you know, we're not taught that in school. The only thing my mom taught me, which really annoyed about, to this day, money's only good for the things that buy. So, you know, I had no savings, I had nothing, and in 2007, the market started to fall apart and Detroit fell apart. My husband was working for a big three supplier. I had my own shop. No one could buy anything because no one had any income. Every other house on our street was being foreclosed on. I started going to Chicago to sell because nobody was buying. Pretty soon I got myself a job at the biggest vintage and antique show in Chicago, and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. So that's me. It's like I get into every portion of this, like I started my career in antiques online and then moved into live shows where most people, it's the other way around. You know, you're starting live and then you learn how to sell online. I couldn't tell anyone that I sold online. I was, I couldn't tell anyone that that was how I got started. You're expected to learn this from your grandma and your mom, and you like went to the antique shows with them, and that's how you're supposed to learn. You don't learn from eBay. That was like unheard of now today. So I worked for that and we made the decision to move here full time and move, uproot everything and come and we live in the northern Chicago suburbs now and we have 14 years. So when I did that, I left that job because once again, I. She wanted to go in more of a craft direction and things, and I'm a vintage person, so I started my own market called Vintage Garage. We did it in a parking garage, an actual parking garage in Uptown Chicago. We were at that location for seven years and happened every month, a hundred vendors. Get 1,500 to 2,000 people on a Sunday coming uptown, and then our parking garage was getting torn down. This was right before the pandemic and I was resigned that we were done. That I was done. That was it. That was my live show. And then we were invited by the city of Evanston to come and be a part of. Evanston and the Vintage Garage is now located on the fifth floor of a giant parking garage in Evanston, so we're still at it. I also have a vintage clothing and jewelry show in Nashville. So these events, since selling online, doing all of this stuff, that's been my life. You know, when we came to Chicago, I also wanted my kids to learn something. Let's see, how do you put this without sounding terrible? It's like, I didn't want my kids stuck in Detroit. I wanted them to be able to. Be in an area where they met different people and saw different industries and you know, the culture and everything else here is a lot better. Detroit's a mess. It's a big, it's a big old mess and it always has been. My husband was born and raised in, in Detroit. You know, he actually lived in the city limits of Detroit, which no one does anymore. I mean, I think the amount of people that actually live in the city of Detroit is very small. So that is what I do. I still do that. Vintage Garage still happens four times a year in Evanston and now Nashville in February. And now in the midst of all of that, I started to get involved in the Bitcoin conferences and event. Volunteering my time. Learning, learning, learning, learning. You know, conferences are different than what I do. You know, I set up a show in a parking garage. That's not easy. You know, you have no amenities, you have no light, you have no electricity. It's interesting to say the least. So it's been an interesting journey. You know, learning about the conference side of things seems a little easier, but I'm, I love it. And I spent 26 years, you know, there's been two things in my life that I could see straight down the line. One was selling online. I could see it straight down the line. 20, 25 years, everything was gonna be online, and Bitcoin is only is the second thing in my entire life that I've ever felt like that 20, 25 years straight down the line.

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 will both enjoy and benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them. Until next time, bye!