I think it's very wise to be risk averse or risk aware and I am very risk averse And I will say to people that having spent 20 years in finance and now being down the bitcoin rabbit hole If you are not learning about Bitcoin right now and thinking about how you can get involved in this space, learn the technology, that is an extremely high risk and very vulnerable position, both from a financial perspective for you, your children's wealth, their inheritance. So I would say that if you're not a risk taker, you absolutely need to study Bitcoin and you need to start doing it as soon as you possibly can.

Hey everybody. Welcome to Orange Hatter.

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Krista, welcome to Orange Hatter. I'm so happy to have you here. Can't wait to dive into your story.

Thank you so much. It's so nice to be on and it's such a pleasure to meet you as well. I was just really excited to connect with you because I'd known about HODLUP the game and didn't know you. So this is a really great connection to have and it's just so nice to actually meet you in, not in person, but over Zoom.

Hopefully in person one day. The Bitcoin world is very small. I'm sure we'll cross paths at some

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So Krista, would you just share a little bit about your background with our audience?

Yeah gosh, what's my journey? I'm obviously from the UK. I now live in Canada and I came here via the US. Worked in financial markets for 20 years. So I did about, whatever, however many years of it, it was 15 of those, no, not 15, 14 of those years in, in London and then moved to New York, spent six years there, and then left to come to Canada. And I had a bunch of colleagues that had gone off to work for crypto companies, and I was curious to, understand that space a bit better. And I happened to mention it to my mom, who is a huge Jordan Peterson fan, funnily enough, because we were talking about Jordan Peterson before this podcast, and I don't particularly follow his work at all, but she's really into him. And he had interviewed four Bitcoiners. It was a Robert Breedlove. John Vallis, Dajiji, and the Australian filmmaker Richard James. And so she sent me this video of him interviewing them. It's like a 90 minute long video called the future of money question mark. And that just really changed my life and sent me down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. That's my journey into Bitcoin via TradFi.

What was it about the 90 minute film that really caught your attention?

So gosh, they were talking about Bitcoin more philosophically and about money. And obviously, as Robert Breedlove has his podcast called the what is money show. And. I've been in financial markets for 20 years and something had always struck me about that whole ecosystem that it just didn't make sense. It was just this weird merry go round where, you as a private citizen put your money in a pension fund and that pension fund is ostensibly supposed to protect the value of that money so that you can withdraw that money when you retire. And it just never really made sense as to why that was necessary, why should your money be devalued? And then you've got all of these kind of middlemen that operate in the financial market. So the pension funds they need a marketplace where they can go and buy and sell securities to invest in their funds. So then you have the investment banks and their markets businesses that perform that role. But then the banks also want to trade with each other because the asset managers tend to be buy and hold. So the banks want to be able to operate in a marketplace. So then you have the interdealer market and the interdealer brokers who sit in between all the banks then operate with each other. And everybody's taking their cut in this process. So any stocks or Bonds or any kind of financial instrument that you buy or sell there's The trading fee that gets paid on that and then there's also all of the tax that's associated with operating across these markets The exchange fees if it's exchange traded and it just seemed like this very inefficient and strange process and I remember when I started my career at Bloomberg, I'd asked one of our trainers, they used to give you a lot of training in their products, specifically in financial markets. And I said to her, why is it that we have inflation? why does that happen? She just looked at me. She said it's because people keep asking for higher wages. That's why inflation keeps going up. And I just thought that seems like a bit of an odd thing because. People ask for higher wages because they become more competent at what they do and therefore they demand a premium on their skill set and it never made much sense. And that kind of question never came up again over the 20 years. Everybody that I saw operating in financial markets just accepted it. And it was a bit like I always reference that meme with the two goldfish swimming around the goldfish bowl and one of them says, how's the water today? And the other one turns around and says, what's water? And that's how it is. So when I listened to that podcast or that, I don't know what you'd call it, vidcast, it was the first time I'd really heard anyone not only pose, but answer some of those questions that I'd had. And I suddenly realized that my puzzlement with the inefficiency and the strangeness of how financial markets work wasn't because I didn't understand it well enough necessarily. It was just because the wrong questions were being asked about the entire system and it was the entire ecosystem that made no sense, but it made no sense because of the fact that the money supply was being inflated. And so it just really changed my life. And she called me up the next day and she hadn't listened to this podcast herself. She just had sent it to me and said, you might be interested. They're Bitcoiners. And she said, what did you think? And I was just like, it's changed my entire life. She's like, what? And I just said to her, I've been working like for 20 years and I understand nothing about money. And it just sent me down this. Bitcoin rabbit hole, which you're probably very familiar with that experience yourself, where I just became obsessed with, I started listening to Robert Breedlove's podcast and I just randomly happened to pick the Jeff Booth series as the first series. So then I read the price of tomorrow. I also read the Gigi's book, the 21 lessons I learned going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. And I think two weeks into that, I was just like, how did I not understand the importance of this technology? Because I've known about Bitcoin since about 2011, by the way, I'm ashamed to say, and it just hit me like a truck. And I just got to the stage where I was just like, this is all I want to do with my life. And here I am.

I only just brushed by the whole financial industry. I also have my MBA in finance and I was in London for my internship. And I just remember first of all, it's funny that you mentioned Bloomberg because when I was in business school and everybody was watching the Bloomberg. I was watching Animal Planet. I was like, I don't care. I don't care about those numbers. But I just specifically remember, there was a group of super techie really smart people who are doing financial engineering, and they were getting all the big job offers. And I remember thinking to myself, why do we have to make This whole thing's so complicated because we're all in the same business school and the stuff they were talking about the derivatives on the derivatives, why is that necessary in order for our market to function? I remember thinking that and then when I was in London, I was working as the slave labor in the investment bank, right? And my boss came out of his room one day and he said, All right, I want you to make a proposal. I want to make a pitch to this company, and I want it to be valued at 1. 2 billion. Make it happen. Pivoted on his heels, turn around, went back to his office, closed the door. And I'm like, that's how it works. That's how it works. I was so shocked. I was an intern, I was like, so basically I'm just supposed to tweak the numbers and make assumptions until it comes out 1. 2 billion. And that's what I did. And I just. I just couldn't wrap my head around how the world works in that arena. It just blew my mind. So when I came to Bitcoin, it was the same thing. I was, it just, my, my eyes popped open. And the book that I read was Bitcoin hard money you can't F with. And I

Oh, yes. The Jason Williams, is it?

yes. And I was so angry. when I listened to that book. I had to put it down several times.

It's not funny. I haven't read that book, but I know somebody else for whom that was their orange pill. Yeah, that's funny, isn't it? I remember listening to Robert Breedlove's episode, one of his episodes of What Is Money, and he was talking about when he read The creature from Jekyll Island that his response was to get really angry. He just was furious that this was how the whole thing worked. And it's crazy because I can speak from experience as I'm sure you can, when you're in that water swimming, you're so busy focused on your career and hitting all those, benchmarks that you want to achieve and your promotions and things like that, that very rarely do you step back and look at the whole ecosystem and go, this is just nonsense, but I do remember regularly thinking to myself, this just feels boring because it just doesn't make any sense. It's everybody's just trying to, I don't know, do this stuff that feels very unproductive, like when you work in that ecosystem, everything feels very unproductive, you're being paid a lot of money to not really achieve very much that has any meaning. And none of it genuinely feels like progress. It all just feels and there's something deeply dissatisfying about that when you go in and you're working really long hours every day and you're not really doing anything that feels meaningful. And I don't mean this sort of bleeding heart, fluffy, save the world, whatever. But you don't feel like you're building anything of value. It's just a grift. And then when you step back and you understand that grift and how it works, it's just, there's a part of me that looked back and thought I've wasted my entire life. And then the other part of me was just like, do you know what? Actually, that was a worthwhile experience because to have gone through it and see it close up is actually has some value to then be able to appreciate. how much better this system is and really have an incentive to advocate for it because you can see that it's an improvement on the status quo. But yeah, that's interesting. I didn't realize that you had a background in banking as well.

I,

hope you've recovered.

I can't say I have a background because I graduated in 2002 and everything was crumbling then. I'm not going to go into my backstory, because this is about you, but I didn't end up working in banking at all. But okay, so you moved from London to New York, and now you're in Canada. Talk to me about those moves and environment that you observe in those three different locations.

I really started my career in London, so I was just very absorbed in that whole ecosystem and I actually had no intention to go and work in financial markets. At university, I did Italian and management studies, but I. I'd always observed people who worked in the city of London, like the financial district, which is the city is like the British term for Wall Street, so in the UK, the city refers to the walled city, the old city of London, which is now where the financial district lives. So when you hear people say in the UK, the city, what they mean is like the equivalent of Wall Street, instead of being a street, it's a whole neighborhood. I always used to observe people coming on and off the train and think that they looked really gray and depressed and I thought, I'm never going to do that. And I came back from a gap year in the UK. It's very typical to go into a gap year. It's preferred by employers often that they see that you've gone out and seen the world. So when I left university, I went traveling around Australia, did a year traveling there, came back, ended up working at an events company and we did very small kind of high end private parties for very wealthy people. And it was quite interesting to see that ecosystem, but it was just a really boring job. It was very sort of low level project management and every event is exactly the same. It's just the characters that are different. So it's an interesting insight into that ecosystem, but it didn't pay very well. And I was just like, this isn't really what I want to do with my life. And I had a friend who was working at Bloomberg and she contacted me. She said, Oh, they're desperate for people that can speak Italian on the help desk. Do you want to interview for the job? And so that was how I ended up at Bloomberg because they were going to pay me double what I was earning at events management, which wasn't much anyway. But I was like, wow, you mean all I have to do is answer the phone and talk to people in Italian and I'll get double what I'm getting now, sign me up. And I actually really enjoyed most of my career at Bloomberg because it was very young. It was a very diverse crowd. So because of the job that I was doing, I was surrounded by people from all over the world speaking different languages. It was just a really fun environment. But that didn't pay particularly well either. And the last year I was there, I was working in sales and I was traveling like three out of every four weeks. And I was just like, I'm done. This is too much. I'm exhausted. And so I got offered a job at an interdealer broker. So I went to work there and that was that kind of straddled the 2008 crisis. And that was a very much like Wolf on Wall Street, by the way, that, that movie is so darn accurate. It could be a documentary. I think it's really not embellished at all. That's what the environment is like and it's a huge amount of fun but it's not very intellectually stimulating and then obviously the 2008 financial crisis happened. Nobody was moving jobs but Barclays was a client of mine And then two years after the financial crisis, I got approached there and somebody said, do you want to come and do e sales for the, e trading businesses for fixed income covering Southern Europe? And so that was how I ended up there. And again, it was a really fun environment. It was very diverse. I had colleagues from all sorts of different parts of the world. I had a really great boss, a really nice guy that was a lot of fun. And and then an opportunity came to relocate to New York and I had actually really wanted to go to Asia But at the time the business was reducing operations out there So my dream to live in Singapore for a couple of years didn't happen but an opportunity came to go to New York and I feel like most people, if they're British, if they work in a corporate environment, or maybe not most, but a large proportion have a sort of somewhat of an ambition to go and live in New York for a period of time. So I ended up transferring to New York, doing a very similar role there, and then an opportunity came up to do corporate innovation. So I was. watching what was going on outside of the firm from a technology perspective and thinking, gosh, like there is an absolute avalanche coming down the mountain and the people on the trading floors and the markets businesses who I work with are so desperate to protect their voice businesses because most of the trading activity is either done on the phone or via Bloomberg chat in fixed income. And I was just like, there's this avalanche coming down the mountain. And the only thing that is protecting these guys really is the regulatory moat, because your Googles and your Amazons and your apples don't really want to expend the resources to become banks themselves. It's just not. a profitable way of operating their businesses because of all the kind of compliance requirements and everything else. And so therefore, that's really the only thing that's protecting this industry somewhat from, this. And so as a real, I am now working in corporate innovation because I was able to work with startups really closely. I ran an accelerator program. I ran a team in the U S who was basically working with the businesses to identify innovation opportunities. And I got a really great insight into how innovation works when it doesn't work and what the barriers to innovation are at large corporations. And they're huge because the incentive structure is just off. If you're running a business and you control the money that can be deployed to innovate something, but that innovation is going to put yours or your colleagues jobs at risk. The incentive is just not there to develop and grow. And so that was a real insight. And I obviously had a lot more exposure at that point to companies that were operating in this space, companies that were looking into crypto um, banks do a lot of blockchain projects. And so I thought I understood the technology quite well. And then, we had an opportunity to move to Canada because my husband was able to transfer his job. And we had a long term ambition to come here. So at the tail end of 2021, we moved here and I arrived in Canada just in time for the trucker protest.

So yeah talk to us about that time period and your experiences.

yeah. I think a lot of things just coincided at the same time. And it just, I guess it's how life works really. We spoke about this before the podcast I was quite a branch covidian at the start of the pandemic. I was very bought into this narrative, but what happened was at the tail end of 2021, the Omicron was spreading and the UK, I think was. the second country that really got hit after South Africa. And all of the kind of received wisdom from scientists, from epidemiologists, was that, this is super mild. Basically, everybody's going to get it, and therefore the pandemic's pretty much over because everybody will have natural immunity. And Boris Johnson, who was at that time the UK Prime Minister, just opened the country up. He said we're done now. Lockdowns would be a waste of time. Everybody had pretty much been vaccinated then or at least a sort of critical mass and he said we're going to open up. And instead what happened in Canada was the complete opposite. So Trudeau introduced a mandatory requirement for people to be vaccinated to fly. And at the same time, you had to be vaccinated to enter the U. S., so what that de facto meant was that any Canadian that wasn't vaccinated, that didn't leave the country, I think before the end of October 2021, would basically be imprisoned in Canada, essentially. They wouldn't be able to get on any federal transport, so unless you could afford a private jet and fly where you wanted to fly. You were basically stuck here. So thousands of Canadians left and went to South America to various different countries like Costa Rica and Mexico and things like that. And then they introduced this change where essentially if you were a trucker, they had an exemption, but because they were transporting goods across the border between Canada and the US. you were, that exemption went away. And I think for Canadians, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. But for me, it was very strange because obviously being British, I was very familiar with what was happening in the UK and the narrative and the feedback from doctors and scientists. And so from a science perspective, if you like, what happened in Canada didn't make sense, but it just didn't make sense from an epidemiology. perspective. It didn't make sense from a health perspective. And I went from being very bought into this narrative to suddenly thinking, this is incredibly sinister. Something's not right because the government here is clearly not following scientific advice in any way, shape or form, and it's being quite draconian. And so, I was pleased to see that the Canadians were giving pushback, but then obviously the whole issue with the bank accounts freezing and everything else happened. And it was just astounding to see that happen in Canada. I've always held Canada up as this kind of exemplary bastion of freedom and democracy and human rights. And it was just so chilling to see something that particularly having come from financial markets. I'm under no illusion of what that means when a government decides to sequester people's bank accounts, essentially. It's the kind of stuff of like banana republics, like it's usually what happens when a country is going on a very bad trajectory and probably the regime is losing control. And so I thought it was incredibly sinister. And it was also shocking how many Canadians in the corporate sort of, the Zuma class, if you want to call it, were actually supportive of it. And that was just, for me, I could not believe that was happening in a country like Canada, and I could not believe that there were people in my day to day life that thought that this was okay, and didn't seem to understand what this actually meant, in terms of human rights and freedoms. And by the way, to preface that, I had lived through the Black Lives Matter protests in the US, the Trump administration, and when he was elected, I was one of the people out on the street protesting the next, whenever it was, we did this big women's march. At no point when shops were being smashed up near me and things were being burnt down, and we had actually a bag ready to leave at short notice because things got so bad in New York with the Black Lives Matter protests, at no point did I think that Trump was going to freeze people's bank accounts. By contrast, the Canadian protest, I mean I laugh it's not funny, but it was a typically Canadian protest. Everyone's just really sweet and very polite. And the worst thing that happened in there was people were moaning about the honking of the horns. And I'm like, sure, but protests are meant to be disruptive. I'd lived through protests in London in 2011, I think it was, and we had helicopters flying over our house and the entire high street near where I lived. I was living near Clapham, the entire Clapham high street shops were smashed up. So I had seen like what real not peaceful protests look like and it was just shocking to me that not only was the Canadian protest Overwhelmingly peaceful, but the reaction was so Disproportionate to it and I would say unlawful maybe not illegal, but certainly unlawful. I mean to Prevent somebody from being able to pay their rent or buy groceries. To me is just, I still to this day, I can't believe it happened. So this was obviously happening through my Bitcoin journey at the same time. And I think it really just solidified my belief in the fact that this wasn't just an interesting technology to counter, the inflation of the monetary supply, but that it was Absolutely necessary to protect human rights. It's just fundamentally one of the the most important technology, I think. I think Anita Posh said this in her article in the magazine to enforce and essentially protect those rights that we have enshrined in charters around the world and, the UN and all this kind of stuff that we're just seeing being eroded in a really sinister way. That was a very long answer, but that was basically my kind of experience, and it just really turned me into a very hardcore Bitcoiner at that point.

Yeah, so we're looking at it from afar those of us not in Canada. So that was really helpful to get your perspective. I recently saw that Canada is now requiring registration of streaming services for podcasts, which in their own way, they are now trying to control media and the spread of information. How are people responding to it? Because again, I'm just reading the article, but I How are people on the ground reacting to it?

It's interesting because I've seen some people that I would say on social media, very careful usually about what they say, and they've had a sort of knee jerk reaction to it, said, what the heck is this? For clarity, and I'm not saying that this in any way mitigates the issue, but it's only for podcasts that make more than 10 million annually at the moment that have to go and register that way. That said, obviously that's going to be a continuum where it's going to start with the 10 million and upwards, and then it's just going to trickle down to the entire population. I think the estimate is that for many news outlets already in Canada, the government subsidizes them to about the tune of about 60, 70 percent of the journalist's income. So media. In institutions, I think like the CBC and that kind of stuff that, are largely funded by the government are already not reliable sources of information because they will never criticize the sort of institutions that they should be holding to account. And I'd say my observation is that it's actually interesting to watch how easily people are propagandized and how little they question stuff. There is a segment of the population that is very wide awake. And is saying what the hell and there is another segment of the population that I think Probably maybe a lot of them are actually relying on government funding. So they you know They have jobs that are our government jobs essentially in institutions that are government funded and I think they see That, any kind of pushback or reduction of that obviously being a threat to their ability to earn a living. And I think that's somewhat by design, it's if you're dependent on the government, you will support it because your livelihood depends on it. You're not terribly incentivized to see a reduction in that infrastructure. So it's an interesting trajectory. I think. Yeah, I'd say that there are very extreme factions. I was talking to somebody the other day who just has said to me, she voted liberal all her life. And she said, I'm voting conservative all the way now. She said, I just can't, I don't understand why this guy is still in office. That was her response. But I would say the government here is, they call themselves liberal, they're not. They're really left wing authoritarian, like the Trudeau administration's left wing authoritarian. It's not, it's definitely not liberal by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, so I'd say that the response on the ground is just very diverse. I think some people had a deep dislike of some of the truckers and they had a deep dislike of some of those protests and I think they felt it was very un Canadian to, to have such an extreme reaction. But there was also an element of snobbery around it. Like I found that the people that despise that tend to be more the intellectual class and the kind of zoomer class. So there was an element of Oh, this is the great unwashed who are coming out and protesting. Yeah. And that was really quite sad to me to see that. But it also made me reflect on, I remember at the start of the pandemic when I was still in the U S and, we were all staying at home and. To be honest, it was nice. You didn't have to schlep into the office every day and go on the subway and that kind of stuff. And it was hard to empathize at that time with people who, whose livelihoods were destroyed or who had more manual type of work and were badly impacted by it. In a sense, it's sad to see, but I can also empathize with it because I think I didn't really fully appreciate at the start what other people's experiences looked like versus my own. So I don't know. I mean, my, general sense is that I think things are reaching a bit of a boiling point because, Canadians are not rabble rousers. So I don't think you would see the scenes in Canada that you see in the U. S. like during the Black Lives Matter protest. That's just not a Canadian thing to do. But I do feel like there is a general sentiment that is increasing Of people are starting to question what the benefit is of being affiliated with the federal government As opposed to being independent from a provincial level And I had a conversation with somebody about this the other day and they were saying oh I just think that's kind of propaganda and my take is I actually think it's inevitable that you're going to see a fracturing Because at some point the kind of burden of carrying that sort of federal level government, the cons start to outweigh the pros, like the negative aspects of it start to outweigh the benefits. And I think at that point you will see more of a fracturing. I think it will happen in the U S as well, by the way, I'm pretty convinced that's going to happen in the U S but the key difference between the U S and Canada is that the provinces in Canada have a legal mechanism by which they can secede. That's already in existence. Whereas the U S. States don't have that, so it would be a more revolutionary act for them to secede essentially. But I think that we're going to see that happen in North America for sure, whether it's five years, ten years, it's almost inevitable at this point.

Wow, that's It's it's sobering, to think and it's actually very encouraging. And I always remember the example that was given, I think it must have been like psychology class or something years ago, where they say, and they were specifically addressing women who are abused. They said that, people don't understand why they're being beat up. And Getting hurt and they refuse to leave well on the scale of one to ten one being everything is hunky Dory and ten being it is so bad you fear for your life If you're at a nine You're still not going to leave and I feel like we're at that point now in both countries that you're mentioning We're at an a or a nine the Canadians, they know that the government is overreaching with the authority. They're upset, but it's going to take to a boiling point, like a 10 for that the fracturing to occur. And I think that's encouraging because that's when everybody's going to wake up.

Yeah, I agree. It's encouraging in some respects. In another sense, I just think there's a period of turmoil. Bitcoin has talked a lot about the fourth turning, but I think there's definitely a period of turmoil that's going to happen and that's not beneficial for anyone or many, or, many people suffer more than other people suffer. So I think that's a a shame in many respects. But yeah, I agree with you. It's interesting that you draw the analogy with an abusive relationship because I've heard many people on social media just over the last three years talk about that, about the feeling of government becoming abusive. I've had family members who've said to me. Who are very supportive of government generally, but just say, I have a really deep, strong desire for the reduction of the size of our government. And I think a lot of us see that the Natalie Smolenski actually spoke about this way more eloquently than I ever could. She's an anthropologist, so she comes at it from a really interesting academic angle that she was talking about. It sort of echoes some of what's written in The Sovereign Individual, but she said at some point I think she called it the governing class or the elite, but like I like to call it the parasitic class, but at some point that bloat just gets so big that what's underneath it can't sustain it anymore, and I think that's the point that we're reaching, where it's like the kind of middle class and the productive economy and the workers, if you like. are just being so crushed by this bloat that sits on top of them that at some point it just can't hold anymore. And that's what it feels like to me is happening. It's if you're next to the money printer, you're the proverbial cantilenaire, and you're benefiting from the printing of the money before the impacts of inflation. Come to being, if you like. You're incentivized. You're very, what's the word sheltered from the impacts of your actions. Like from the repercussions of your actions. But for those who are not, there's an astounding percentage of Canadians that are apparently using food banks right now. And this is one of the most resource rich countries in the world with, really great infrastructure. There is just zero reason why any Canadian shouldn't be very comfortable and very well off. And that should really worry people. Because if you get to that point, that really means that the productive elements of society are just being squeezed to a degree where it's not sustainable anymore. So yeah, I do think that if things are going to have to come to a head and I just hope it's resolved peacefully because, that that's really my hope is that things just don't become too chaotic.

Yeah, definitely. So now you're all into Bitcoin fully committed and you started a new project. That's very exciting. Would you like to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah I'll talk about my Bitcoin work journey. So I started working for the Bitcoin collective last year, and they stood up the UK's first Bitcoin only conference. So that was a really exciting experience. It was my first paid job in Bitcoin. And I did that for, about six months. And then we were working on a project within that to have this kind of I don't know what you'd call it really like a sort of I was their community manager so it was like a community initiative to try and harness or provide an organization or a structure behind which Bitcoiners in the UK could get behind so that we could work together on certain projects. And this got spun out and I helped co found the Bitcoin Policy UK organization which is the UK's first Bitcoin only policy think tank. And that's been a really interesting experience because it's allowed me to meet a lot more UK Bitcoiners. We're working on three different pillars one of which is the policy piece, one is mining and sustainability, and the other one which I'm currently leading is NextGen, which is really supporting the creation of a Bitcoin talent pipeline in the UK. And that has led me to work with the team in El Salvador, who developed the open source curriculum for Mi Premier Bitcoin, my first Bitcoin. And so we're doing some work with them as well to upskill UK teachers so that they can deliver that program but separate to that when I left my finance career i'd been incubating this idea for a long time For essentially it was a careers app for women. That was the genesis of it So when I was at Barclays, I founded and I ran this program called women on boards And it was a training program to give women the skills they needed to participate in boards And while I was going through that process, I realized that actually many people don't do certain jobs or careers because they just don't know that they exist. They don't know that it's an option or that it's something that would be open to them. And so I thought there must be a way of appifying this so that you can not only present the information to people about what the options are to them, but also Provide them with some of the training and then the connections that they need. So the company slogan was inspire, educate and connect because I was I'm just going to provide the inspiration on careers, the connections in this space or the education and then the connections. And so I started off podcasting and interviewing people who did interesting jobs. And then this kind of got narrower and narrower because I, started working with somebody who was in the web three space. And he said to me, why are you doing this broadly? Why don't you just do web three? And so we started looking at it together and then I just said to him, look, I'll be honest with you I'm a maxi and I just can't in all good conscience Do stuff that's not maxi because I have zero interest in anything ethereum based and I actually think it's unethical So I was just like I don't want to go from the banking industry to then discovering bitcoin to then doing something that looks like A very poor version of tradfy in my opinion And so I just felt that I was much more interested in exploring bitcoin more deeply and so When I left bitcoin collective or a little bit before I started recording podcasts with women in the bitcoin space just to figure out how many of us there were actually here And understanding how they got into bitcoin or what they were doing in the space and then exploring various different content things. I did some training sessions on Bitcoin 101 for people, just teaching them about Bitcoin to see what the reception was. And eventually this sort of evolved into me thinking I really need to do like a member platform. So I want an ecosystem where women can get together. So I think it was about mid August. I did a bit of a soft launch, but having run an accelerator program, I had this long term ambition that I was like, I want to run an accelerator program for female founders. in Bitcoin. And so what I'm doing at the moment is like what I'd call a mini MVP if you like. So I've onboarded a whole bunch of female founders that applied to the program and I've got a bunch of Bitcoiners that are coming in to teach them about the technology and how to integrate it into their businesses. And so that's actually an extremely enjoyable experience and I'm trying to bring together ecosystems of investors and founders. So I have a space for investors. I write about companies in the Bitcoin space that I think are investable and are interesting. And then I give the investors exposure to this ecosystem of founders. And then my next project is going to be. Actually you'll be really interested in this because of what you do and we definitely need to talk about this But I want to take the mpb program and create a program for women So that they can learn how to teach their kids about bitcoin and their kids will have an online course material that they can then Use to learn about bitcoin and i've got several friends with kids who are really interested in doing it I have a neighbor who's got kids who's really interested in doing it Her husband's a bitcoiner and she wants to do it with her kids together And so that's the plan, really, is just to create this nice ecosystem for women, where they can meet, they can network. We've had some really great connections already in the space, so women have connected with people that they didn't know in the ecosystem. And, we do these sessions, which some of them are live recorded, so the audience can participate. I bring speakers in, so I do it in a sort of AMA format. And I think it just allows us really to build our network out as women and have community. So that's where I'm at with it. Yeah, the platform at the company is called Access Tribe. And the platform is just a member platform for Access Tribe. You can read about it on the website, so it's accesstribe. com forward slash membership, and then that has all of the information about the various different content that I provide in that community.

It's very exciting. I went there and I checked it out. The resources are really helpful. And you can't beat networking with other women. So you've launched this not very long ago, do you have any stories you can share, the women entrepreneurs who have come on the platform and their reception of the material

Yeah, I mean, they're really enjoying it. The feedback's been great and it was interesting actually, because you know, you have this constant thing when you're an entrepreneur, you're ruminating about what you've done prior and should I have changed anything in my journey? Would I have done it differently last time? And I actually think on balance, it worked quite well, because initially I was focusing on podcasting. And so I met lots of women in this space. And a few men. So there's, I think three men that came and have come and are coming into present altogether. But it was interesting because then when I decided to launch the course, it was actually quite easy for me having done an accelerator program before, and then having this quite solid network of very talented females in the Bitcoin space to find predominantly female tutors that could come in and do sessions. And so that was actually really interesting. And I was pleased that I'd done it that way because I was able to just say, Oh, I know that this person has expertise in this area. So I'll bring them in to talk about this. So like Hannah Rosenberg, who's the founder of Veles Commerce, she's got deep expertise in lightning and onboarding companies to the lightning ecosystem. So she did a session on lightning. Dr. Ellie Pembroke, who's a nanotechnology scientist who I think, she also homeschools wild. I just, I always say that to people. I'm like, I cannot believe those kids are being homeschooled by a nanotechnology scientist. It's just incredible. But she did a Bitcoin 101 session, which was amazing. We had who else we had in Lisa Scott, who's the co founder of Sinota. So she's, that's a business that's deep in the lightning and payment space. She came in and talked about payments, mind blowing session, really incredible. Christine Cranley, who's from previously, the Texas Blockchain Council, but she also works with private equity to do investments in Bitcoin mining. So she did a Bitcoin mining session talking about the economics of it and the profitability of it and how you do that. It's just been incredible. And then what's happened is that the participants get to know each other through the Q& A. When they join the platform, they set up a bio so others can see what they do and connect with them directly. And it's just a lovely space for people to be able to share ideas. And the other thing that's been interesting about it is I've actually got. The people that applied and are participating are from across the world. So it's a little bit challenging from a time zone difference, but we've got people in Australia all the way through to people on the west coast of Canada. So there is just an ecosystem that's global as well, where we're now information sharing about how things work in different jurisdictions, how to best apply technologies to things. And what I'm working on now is we wrap up the course on the 11th of October. So it'll probably be, I think, before this podcast goes out, but I'm now working on just ongoing training and follow up sessions. So lots of the founders said to me, I'd really like to learn about more about this topic or how to do this. And so I'm just going out and bringing in speakers to, to talk to us about the various different subjects. So it's almost like an ongoing journey now that we're going on. And I'm a female founder as well. So actually for me, it's quite fun to have this community around me, which wasn't really my intent, but I've as a side effect, just surrounded myself with other entrepreneurs and I'm doing this journey with them at the same time. So it's really enjoyable.

is such a exciting project. And I think really needed in this space, it's going to be such a treasure for Bitcoiners. Very excited for you. I think great things are going to happen for you for

sure! Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm actually excited to have you on because I think now that we've made the connection, who connected us again? Because it was it Dr Ellie Pembroke?

I think it was Elly. Yeah, I interviewed her as well.

That's right.

Yes,

Yeah. So, I mean, this is it, isn't it right? You meet one and then you meet another and they introduce you to somebody else. And, I'm so pleased that I've met you now. And and it's just a new connection in this space.

Yeah, so she and her husband Asher they run the next gen village at Tabconf so we were a part of that and we introduced our game there and that was really fun And we interviewed Elly and Asher for the Bitcoin homeschooler podcast So that's also rolling out. And, I think in terms of spreading Bitcoin, women just, they need to take a key part in that project because they have influence over the next generation. They have more FaceTime generally with the kids and you onboard the kids now. And by the time they're adult age, it's not even a question anymore. They don't need to be orange pilled. That whole generation is just going to know Bitcoin as a matter of fact, but we got to reach the women. We got to reach the women for that to happen.

It's interesting actually because I've looked at a lot of statistics in ideating access tribe and it's just fascinating to me. Women control the vast majority of the household budget, so they're in charge of deploying it even if they're not necessarily earning it. But I think it's something like in North America, 40 percent of households now, the woman is actually the breadwinner or she's the higher earner in the couple. So it's really interesting to me because actually women have a lot more influence over money and finance than people think and therefore actually having them very deeply embedded in the Bitcoin ecosystem is critical. And to your point, they spend a lot more time educating their children and raising them, at least certainly when the kids are young. Imparting that knowledge early so that they grow up Bitcoin native in the same way that their TikTok native or whatever it might be, things that are far less beneficial to their long term prospects is actually really important. And I think, like you say, in 10 years, we're going to see the fruits of this really come to being.

Yeah, for sure. What would you say to women who are still sitting on the fence, aside from, everybody has to go check out Access Tribe, for sure. But other than that, what do you think they should do?

I would think more than do it's the mindset So I think it's very wise to be risk averse or risk aware and I am very risk averse And I will say to people that having spent 20 years in finance and now being down the bitcoin rabbit hole If you are not learning about Bitcoin right now and thinking about how you can get involved in this space, learn the technology that is an extremely high risk and very vulnerable position, both from a financial perspective for you, your children's wealth, their inheritance, and also just in terms of the direction is moving and understanding this technology and in some depth before it really proliferates. So I would say that if you're not a risk taker, You absolutely need to study Bitcoin and you need to start doing it as soon as you possibly can. That would be my takeaway.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Krista. That was so much fun. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your story and your background.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And it's so nice to have met you, Tali. And I hope this is one of many more conversations we have, hopefully in person next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode. Did you enjoy it? Wasn't our guest absolutely fabulous. I just love every woman's story on this show. Everybody has a unique perspective and yet, we all come to the same place, which is Bitcoin is an important part of our lives. If this story has inspired you and you would like to know more, go to www.orangehatter.com. Get involved. Join and our reading group, send me an email and introduce yourself. I will be so happy to hear from you. The best way you can support this show is to spread the word Tell every woman, you know, to listen in. You never know how they will be impacted by these stories. I appreciate you so much. See you next time. Bye.