Hi everyone. Welcome to Orange Hatter. Today you're listening to part two of my conversation with Mel.

in my entire life that I've ever felt like that. 20, 25 years, straight down the line.

Yeah. Let's, let's draw some parallels. So you obviously love vintage, and you mentioned that it's because there's a, there's a bigger margin. But there are properties of vintage items that actually draw a lot of parallels to Bitcoin. Can you expand a little bit more on those things?

It's so hard to explain, but yes, they're absolutely connected. I think maybe the best way to explain it is, have you heard of the Bitcoin trading cards?

I have, yeah.

Okay. Well, I'm obsessed with them. I am a collector of them. In fact, I opened in Nashville, I opened Bitcoin Magazine's box of cards for them and videoed each one. You know, and like the big reveal. And what I am learning is there is a rabid collector base of Bitcoiners. They're collecting Bitcoin stuff, whether it's Bitcoin magazine, whether it's stickers, hardware, wallets. Now the trading cards, I mean, I, I've gotta go ahead and tell you this. I sold, I, I won a very rare card like they were doing when they first got started. You know, we would post things and then we'd get entered into Raffles to win free cards. And I won a very, very rare card, sold it for $3,000. That's a lot of Bitcoin. I was really excited and like I said, these guys are just, they are collecting, they're serious collectors. And Bitcoin is something you collect. It kind of is. It's got, I'm not sure how to explain it. Maybe you could explain it better than me. It's almost like I, I don't know. It's hard to explain, but there's a, there's a correlation there. I've been hoping... so since like 2017, I've been talking to my vendors about it. You know, they need to accept Bitcoin, the prices that we're paying now to actually do transactions with Visa and MasterCard are absurd. The fees for a small business on this are, they're almost unmanageable. We, we push people, like, before the show, bring cash. You know, you're gonna make, you're gonna have a better, you're gonna get a better deal, bring cash. And that works, and it helps. Because the credit card fees are absurd and you don't wanna take a check anymore. It's just, you know, it's a bad idea. Especially in our industry, people have been paying by check for so long, because you go on a Friday to a show and you buy a bunch of stuff, and you don't want that check to clear until at least Monday or Tuesday when maybe you've sold a few things already. So in our industry, we've used checks probably longer than most, but they're about gone. I don't take 'em anymore for payment. Most of the vendors don't either. So I would love to see them. I actually, for the past two years, I have a full season dealer deal for my vendors that have been with me forever and that they do every single show, I cut them a really good deal to sign up for the entire season. The last two years I've also given them an extra bonus if they pay in Bitcoin. I've had six of them do it. Which isn't bad. I hoped it would make them learn more. They just went to Coinbase, bought it and sent it to me. I appreciated it, I mean... but that's the point, it was like, you guys... now I will say, one vendor called me two years ago, and she said, Melissa, I want you to help me with... I wanna buy some Bitcoin. She's 87. Okay. I said, okay. She says, I'll take you out to lunch and you're gonna show me how to buy some Bitcoin. I said, okay. She's the one vendor that still sends me a check, and I let her do it because I've known her for so long, but she's my one vendor that owns Bitcoin. How crazy is that? My one vendor who still pays my check, she's 87 years old, but she's got a thousand bucks worth of Bitcoin.

I think that is such a wonderful story.

It really is. It's like, I wish I, I could somehow convey this to the rest of my vendors. So many of them are under 40. You know, it, it's 75% of them are under 40 and... not interested. So weird.

That is weird because you would imagine that if they're dealing with antiques, then they see the value in limited supply as as a primary value driver.

See, everyone still thinks this is not real. When we started, when the price started to go crazy, people started to pay attention. Then when we crashed back down, everyone's like, oh, this isn't real. And it's like, no, this is a parabola. So a parabola. So the one thing I did learn from tone. I can read charts, I can read charts all day long, and Bitcoin is a parabola. And a parabola will retrace 85%, 85% of the time. So as long as you know that you'll be good and be ready to buy that dip. But how do you tell this to people? You know, how do you explain it when you have to go back to 2017 and, and almost explain to people how you learned and not like I have a friend whose son is working for Caterpillar, and I know Caterpillar's doing a lot of mining equipment, Bitcoin mining equipment. And I told her that and she said, okay, that's interesting. And she was like the first person that didn't seem like absolutely horrified. Ooh. You know? She's like, well that's very interesting. I'm like, okay. This is a very interesting conversation with a woman who is poo-pooing it immediately. You know? Maybe that... I know women are not in finance. Like, it's the same thing. 10%, 90% are men. Same thing with Bitcoin. And so that might explain why some of them don't want, or, or, or just, I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, it's such a, it's such a foreign concept. I really, really struggled. When my husband tried to get me to investigate Bitcoin, not even just to understand it, the desire to investigate for me was almost zero because I'm trying to juggle so many other balls in the air trying not to let one of them drop. But even today when we talk about Bitcoin with our family and friends, even if they politely listen to what we have to say, less blunt than what I did to my husband. Um, they. They nod and they say, I see. And then they don't do anything to follow up. That's the polite ones. The, the less polite ones would literally say, you know, you guys sound like you're in a cult. So for you... go back to, to the beginning, because we're trying to reach women who are currently where you were, emotionally, five years ago or so. What was it like pursuing this with no support from your immediate friends and family?

Well, I'll say my husband was... you know, listen, this man has been supportive of everything that I've done, and he started to learn about it. And to this day he also... you know, I, I asked him about a month ago, said, I don't know why I was distressed or whatever else. I said, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong about Bitcoin? And he said, you're not wrong. And I went, okay, you're right. I'm not. And I picked myself back up and kept going. So he knows more than he's ever, you know, expressing. But he has done some research himself and I, I'm so impressed by that. You know, it's a big deal.

Yeah. So how would you encourage someone who is on the outside looking in?

Buy some. Just buy some. Go to Cash app, and buy like 200 bucks worth of Bitcoin and wait. Just wait.

What if the price goes down?

What if it does? Okay. Anyone who has an investment portfolio isn't looking at their returns next year, right? Everyone is thinking that is happening way down the line. So they're good with that loss and that, you know, potential gains and losses in short term, but nobody seems to be okay with that with Bitcoin. Lay the chart of Microsoft over Bitcoin's chart. Lay the chart of Amazon over Bitcoin's chart. You'll see the adoption curve is almost the same. They're trading. For their first, what is it? How many years is this now? 12 or 13 years. They're, the trading looks the same. The charts look a lot alike. And it's interesting because they think about it, Amazon didn't know where they were gonna go. They were a bookseller, like when they came out, they were selling, you could resell books there. And that evolved into something else. Evolved into something bigger. And the same thing with Microsoft. You know, Microsoft started, they were huge to begin with, but you know, absolutely evolved and kept going, and no one is looking at the price of Microsoft and Amazon and expecting it to double and double again and double again in a matter of that amount of time. So for example, the woman I told you about, the 87 year old woman who has a thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin, she knows that she gets that. Daughter, however, who sets up a cross from her, came over to me at the show a couple weeks ago and said, I lost big. I lost big. I go, why would you sell? Why would you? I go, you don't, you don't lose unless you sell. I go, why would you do that? I didn't sell, but I lost big. I go, you didn't lose anything. If you still have it, you'll be fine. Why don't you look at it just like you would in your investment portfolio? So that's part of it. You know, people that, that volatility argument is kind of ridiculous. If you look at other things that were new technology and where they began, Bitcoin's price is, it's almost irrelevant. But I would get it now. I would rather get more Bitcoin now than I would next year, because my gut feeling is by next year... I'm not, I don't wanna make price predictions, but I'm gonna bet you we'll be double next year by this time, and, and that's just gonna keep going. There's a scarcity issue here that no one's talking about either. There's gonna come a time there isn't going to be enough Bitcoin for everybody. There isn't gonna be enough, there isn't gonna be enough Bitcoin that if you wanna just go on Cash App and buy a hundred bucks worth, that might not be easy to do. There's only so much of it, and that's different than Apple stock. I mean, it seems like there is no end in how much stock you can buy in any kind of, you know, in any of the equities. You can buy as much as you want. Bitcoin's different and people don't know that yet. Like what's gonna happen when they all go, wait, what? There's only how many? And so, but that's what it's gonna take. It's gonna take a giant price explosion. And if you wanna get in and you wanna learn, there's nothing better than having skin in the game. When I first started learning about buying and selling antiques, I would make a pile of things that I liked and I thought were interesting, and I would make an offer on everything. I would come home and I would research. And I paid to do that research, and I was also hoping that I would have a treasure in there. You know? And, and I got better and better and better at that. You know, as time went on, I learned more and more and more. People who are passionate about collecting know their trade. They know what they collect. So like the Bitcoin trading cards, those guys, there's a lot of guys in there that come from traditional card collecting backgrounds. And they know everything about how a card would be centered. What is a grade of a card like this, or, you know, just all kinds of stuff. But when I first started, I absorbed all that from anyone who would tell me. So, you know, if I was selling something and someone collected it, I would ask questions. Well, what about this? Or what about that? Or what, what else do you guys look for? And I just absorbed all that. And I'm doing the same thing with Bitcoin. I look to the people who I believe know more, way more than I do, and I listen and I pay attention. And having skin in the game and then finding the right people to listen to, if that doesn't get you interested, I mean, I don't know what does. That's what did it for me. It was that $4,700 that was sitting in there after two years, and me forgetting about it, that made me go, what in the world? So, you know, it's real, it's real. I can't debunk it. And it's been what, seven... how many years? Six years? How long has it been since... 6 years, since 2017. And it has been a nonstop learning journey. I will listen and listen and listen, and listen and listen. And I weed out what I don't think is good. And then I look, zero in on the things that I think are interesting. And right now, like to me, Bitcoin mining is interesting, Lightning Network's very interesting, and I'm, I'm hoping to see some big things from both of those spaces this year, you know, in the next year or two. I think we're gonna see a lot.

Yeah, for sure. The continual education component of Bitcoin is really important. And the honest truth is there is so much excitement in this space, because it's so new, and there's so much talent coming into this space, helping to develop it, to make it more user friendly all the time, more accessible to people... uh, regular non-technical folks, like you and me.

Not technical, but I can use an app. I can learn how to, you know, use the Lightning Network. It's not always easy. Hard wallets are scary, but I'm learning everything I can. And it just takes time and patience and to find the right people to teach you.

Yeah, for sure. And also, can you address just a little bit from the point of view of a mom with young adult children in terms of prepping them for the future?

That's a tough one. What's tough about it is we as parents, you know, no one taught me anything about money. No one said anything to me about money. No one ever told me how to balance a checkbook. I've never used a checkbook ledger to balance anything. I never learned a thing, so it was just out of my wheelhouse. Like, I just didn't even think about it. And because of that, I didn't teach my children what I should have when they were younger, but now I'm giving them Bitcoin for Christmas. I am doing things in the hopes that they're gonna learn something and stop thinking I'm crazy Bitcoin mom. So I'm having a conversation with my daughter the other day who is saving for a house and she's going to get married soon. And I said to her, Jordan. Bitcoin. You need Bitcoin. She goes, well, what am I supposed to do with that mom? What am I supposed to do with that? I have the Bitcoin that you told me to buy. I haven't done anything with it. I go, if you put your money into Bitcoin right now, buy in the next two years. And she's all, so are you saying that I would take it out then and sell it? I go, yeah, yeah, I would. You could do that. It's possible. Get some money in there. I, I think that was like the first time in her mind... clicked... something clicked in there. Because of the house buying. You know, we know this is an interesting new housing market. They need as much money as they can. And the way I see it... oh, and this is the child who knows I'm crazy Bitcoin mom, knows I don't like shit coins. And the first thing she does is buy Dogecoin. And why? Because Elon Musk told her to. I was so annoyed. I go, I cannot believe you didn't even talk to me first. I'm hoping that because she needs this, and she needs to buy a house, that maybe this will be the thing that helps what's next.

Yeah. I think I'm, I'm having some challenges convincing my young adult children...

Oh, okay. Interesting.

about the value of Bitcoin. Scott and I talk about it all day long.

Is that why? Is it just because mom and dad talk about it so much?

Well, the thing is that we didn't get to them when they were younger. When they were younger, we taught them the traditional way, which is study hard, go to college, you know, get a good job or start a business, and your wealth will be created yourself. At the time when we were teaching the kids financial literacy, we were not questioning the monetary system as it is today... 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!