In Kenya we live a day at a time hand to mouth, basically. The husband is the, breadwinner, once he leaves most women are left without means. So it is in the back of the minds of a lot of women. We have lots of cases of abuse in Kenya. I We saw a huge rise in divorce. Finances was a major issue especially if the woman is dependent on the man, 100 percent. it's a huge deal. Let's educate the women because after all, women are the majority population and around here, women are quite the educators. If you educate a woman, they educate their husband, they educate the community around them. That way, we can have women being able to take care of their families, taking care of themselves, whether you are married or unmarried.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Orange Hatter. My mission for the Orange Hatter podcast is that after tuning in and hearing about everyday women's stories and their path to Bitcoin, you'd think, Hey, if Bitcoin made a difference for them, maybe it could do the same for me. I'm so glad you're here. And I know you're going to love today's episode. Welcome.

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Welcome Noelyn to Orange Hatter. I'm so happy to have you here. And I can't wait to dive into your Bitcoin story.

Thank you for having me Tali. I'm also glad to be here with you today.

Awesome. Let's dive into a little bit of your background.

Yes. So my background in terms of education so I have a background in finance and accounting. What I studied in school means actually is the financial engineering. What drove me actually funny thing to learning this was I experienced something when I was young during the 2008 crisis, I was I was a young child, but I happened to be affected by the crisis, the financial crisis, and I became curious about money from a very young age of uh, I saw the effects that the crisis had on my family and yeah, I just wanted to go ahead and learn as much of about money that as I could, and that's what drew me to learning about that. Yeah.

Would you mind if I asked you to share some details that you remember from that time? It sounds like it made a huge impact on you.

Yes it did. my dad, My dad used to work in the banking sector and when the crisis happened in the US. The ripple effect here was that, of course, you know how banks are usually asked to go ahead and collect their assets. And unfortunately we lost a lot as a result of that. And he ended up also losing a lot financially. So maybe I can say I learned recently that it was more of from a financial trauma point of view. Good or bad, I'm not sure, but I think it, it had a huge impact to determining my focus or my trajectory and especially getting here. So it's something that I'd always wanted to know and learn how money works because I was curious about it.

You didn't just want to learn about economics. You actually went into the nitty gritty, the financial engineering side of it.

Oh, yes, I was looking for ways to avoid risk from a very young age. And it's funny because now after I had cleared, because I was studying business in high school. And when I got into campus, the same thing, I just wanted to do something to do with related to money. So financial engineering was the best option. And after I left now, this is where it gets even more interesting. Okay. My internship was in a banking in the banking industry. And I ensured I understood everything that occurs in the bank. This is actually the first time I'm mentioning this. Interesting. But yeah I Went ahead and learned everything that I could in the banking sector and I did not like the bank because I thought it was very monotonous working there. So even after my internship, I left and, now with working in terms of getting job opportunities, it's not very easy in Kenya, so it took me a while to be able to get into the sector, basically working. But when I was doing that, with the few amount of money that I had made, or rather had saved, I wanted to look for ways in which I could invest it. And the first time I remember I tried investing, there was a product that had been released by the money markets in Kenya, it's a T bill, but instead of having the huge amounts of money, it was in just small quantities. I remember I saved it there first and after I had saved it, what I received at the end of the year, it's something like, if I could have worked hard, I would have received even within days. And I was shocked because I'd expected with the interest rate that I would receive a huge amount of money. So I took my money out and I went into shares and also a disappointment because especially if you're young and you try to get into investment, you realize soon enough that either you need a huge amount of money to get into it and in Africa, Australia, like investing in companies chances of them failing are quite high and we've had lots of companies fail here with Australian share prices. They plummet. There's Very few companies make it. That was my unfortunate or rather fortunate event. So basically all throughout I was just trying to find out something that I could invest in. You end up realizing sooner or later that you might work for the rest of your life. And yeah, I guess that was me in terms of my background. Especially when learning about money, I had to do it practically.

when I was going through school, people always talk about, There are two ways to earn money. There's one way, which is using your labor, and one way is to use money to earn money. And we learn very quickly in society that the money part is what makes the difference, not necessarily your labor, I think.

yeah!

So that's why I'm very fascinated that you went into financial engineering, because When I was in business school, the people who went into financial engineering were the brainiacs. They were their super, super smart people who would create derivatives on top of derivatives on top of derivatives. And I will always have to sit and think so long about how this money is coming, like being creative because it's so mind boggling.

Yeah. And it's so funny. You end up realizing that derivatives are just people trying to figure out ways to manipulate the system in order to make profits. And I think that's the unfortunate thing that not many people get to understand this language. So unless you study it. It's like it opens up your eyes. I think that's why it's easier for people in finance to just switch on to Bitcoin quite easy. It opens up your eyes to what exactly am I doing here? What's the end goal? And for financial engineering, I did the derivatives. I did the derivatives. It never made sense to me. And I think even like the most important topic I should have focused on and being taught was the crisis because we had talked about Crisis. From the black Monday crisis to the dot com crash. But and eventually you realize that at the central point of all of this were people making decisions. And people using these same derivatives that are learning about to come up with yeah, just ways in which money should move or money should be allocated. And eventually there's the end result, which unfortunately leads to the loss of income. Livelihoods are affected by this worldwide.

Yeah, you see very quickly. That you have people who are on the in, and people who are not on the in.

yeah. Exactly.

Do you mind if I ask you how old you are?

Oh, no, I'm in my late 20s.

What you're doing being so active in this space is so encouraging because this is a young people's world. Not that it doesn't affect absolutely everybody, but you guys are going to be the ones that make the difference for this evolution. So I'm very excited to talk to you about where you are now. So somehow you found Bitcoin and let's talk about the first time you heard about it.

Okay. Besides the financial trauma side of it now that we're even talking about being women I, there's that desire where you want to be a mom, you want to have a family and work life balance. Australia nine to five here. It's not that easy. And I was looking for a way out. I wanted if I want to start building a family and I wanted a way in which I could be able to earn leisurely. I could be able to make time while I do that, while I raise kids. And I looked at my options. So that is the other thing, looking for financial freedom. So after now the internship, I hustled a bit here and there. I ended up working for the government in taxation. People are usually surprised. I know. Yeah, so I, while I was working there, it just opened me up to a whole lot of things that were basically just, odd if I may put it that way in terms of how the government runs the financial system in terms of how taxation is applied. And I don't know whether it was just me who was realizing it. Actually, if you're in it and you're profiting from such a system, you do not really see the. challenges with it because after all they're paying my salary. Why would I question why we are imposing this tax and especially imposition of tax and people don't even have education. So tax education around here is not quite good. And you have people lining up paying taxes, and they don't even understand. Penalties are quite high. And I was supposed to be the educator, but then you realize that even the regulatory authority isn't focused on educating people on how they're supposed to be taxed. All they want is, you get the penalty and you get taxed. So this was One of the reasons when I thought I when people work in such organizations, government organizations, they never want to leave. They want to stay there till retirement. I did not see myself doing that. I wanted to figure out I like working in the sector, but I wanted to work in a sector that's impacting people positively. Tax collectors are not the favorite at all in this country. And I wanted to find something that can be impactful for people. So besides working towards having to raise a family and looking for work that can be impactful, I decided I was going to start educating myself. That's But I had come across Bitcoin the very first time in 2015, I was still a student back then. This was just a friend who was mining Bitcoin back then in campus. And I just happened to come across them and they told me about it. They mentioned it, but I didn't pay keen attention to it. And they were like, you know what, this is the future. Funny thing, even that friend left Bitcoin, but came back later. So I read about it and I was like, wow, this Bitcoin, but in campus, you don't really have that much money to buy Bitcoin. I wish I would have even sacrificed a bit of lunch and bought them. But anyways, it's a bygone. I had the tap to be, you remember Zappos, that wasn't a bank then, it was still in Kenya. There are still people mining Bitcoin in Kenya at that time. But not so many people, very few people understood it. I used to tap to play and earn a few sats. I remember I called Zappo back recently when I figured out what it was all about. I'm like, I still want my sats back. And they were like, no, it's gone. But yeah, after learning, clearing my school, now going through this working journey while I was still in taxation, I decided to self teach myself because I realized I had missed something. When there was a tourist who had come to Kenya after they leave at the coast and around here we have lots of tourists coming in. I interacted with with a couple of them and I just used to hear them talk about crypto and traveling on crypto. So I met one who was specifically traveling on I was like, how do you mean you are not? You can't be able to just sit still and work somewhere. You can't be able to travel like this. So I felt I missed something and they were kind enough to teach me and of course, to the teaching, they started teaching me the trading part of it because they were doing all of crypto but I had the background of Bitcoin and I had the background of, trying to always avoid risk from my childhood. I knew the risk that comes with bank. I knew the risk that comes with people being at the center of making financial decisions So it didn't take me a long time when people say they went through the crypto Phase it didn't take me long to realize there's something I missed here because with crypto there's body making the decision at the top, but with Bitcoin, it's decentralized. So it was very easy for me to just move towards Bitcoin. And with self teaching, once you get the Bitcoin bug, it itches you, you want to start telling the whole world about it. So that's how I found myself. I just looked for the first social media platform that I knew I could be able to talk to people about it easily. And I just started talking about, I bought my first Bitcoin, it wasn't much, that time I was still working. And then I just started teaching about Bitcoin, I was like, you know what, even if I don't get my social financial freedom, maybe I could be able to reach other people so that they can see there is a problem with having centralized decision making when it comes to money. And yeah, that's how I just started shouting about Bitcoin everywhere to everyone. Yeah.

So my first question is about your dad who went through that trauma of the financial crisis. When you first came across Bitcoin and you're starting to talk about it, what was his reaction?

Oh, wow. It took him a while. It took him a while. Actually, when I said, I was leaving my government job, which no one leaves. And so it took him a while to actually agree or understand. But eventually. It came, he understood it, also being with a background in banking, he now don't believe that, yeah this thing is real. Of course, with the age factor, it's still difficult for him to navigate it, but nowadays we, I send a few sats. He can be able to understand what it really means. But yeah, I might say it really did take a while. Surely him imagining that we can have money that is not controlled by anyone. And in my country, Kenya, there's a lot of money laundering. We call it it's called wash. So when people see you dealing in money that is not Planted the government. They think you're more like a scammer and he was worried about that. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't

Yeah, I bet. It just sounds like he would be so ready to hear about a better alternative,

like they're so

than what, what burned his boat,

i'm used to this system, I don't want to Be told that it's been a lie. Even at my young age, I was very sad to figure that out. So I can imagine you'd rather just filter it out. And that's the unfortunate part. We have been with the company I'm working with onboarding. People who are older, it's it's a struggle trying to explain it to them. It's what they've known their whole lives. So how can I, a young person, come and tell them, you know what, times change, people evolve, things evolve, and this is, it's the time now for new money.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said It's hard for them to believe that it's all been a lie because being a much older person than you I made major life decisions based on what I was told and what I learned and I Every step of the way I was trying to make the right decisions so I can imagine People who are even one or two generations ahead of me turning around looking back and go I can't believe I was part of the whole scheme You know you

How did you be able to turn around? Maybe you can give me a few tips. What changed your mind?

For me, personally, I was very resistant. My husband started hearing about it on the podcast that he was listening to and he was like, hey, Tali. This Bitcoin thing. I think it's something we should look into and I said, I don't understand it I'm not a computer person and I honestly don't have time because it was a few years ago My kids were all in school. I homeschooled them. So their school was my school and I was I had no break. It was like a 24 7 job and Honestly, I just wanted him to stop bugging me about it. I was just like, can you please stop talking about this thing? I do not understand what it is. How can it possibly be money? And honestly, I think if I have been something physical like gold I could wrap my head around that, if people want to exchange something that's physical, but especially because it's digital and I don't even know how to set up a wallet. I don't know where the money goes. I struggled when our banking system went digital and online, like for the longest time, I didn't, I still brought my checks to the bank to deposit it because I was not doing mobile banking. I was not doing mobile deposits because what happened to the picture of the check, my mom still refuses. My in laws, they will not do it. They won't do digital banking at all. They still take the check into the physical bank. But what ultimately convinced me is the game behind me. I don't know if you can see it. So Scott, he spent two years trying to convince me and in the process he basically created this game and he goes, Talia, you have to understand this because it's important. Yeah. So it's a board game. It's a tabletop board game. And it just explains the basics of blockchain technology and how Bitcoin mining works and what a Bitcoin. And once I got over that mental hurdle, then I was willing to read a book and listen to a podcast. And then, you go straight down the rabbit hole once you do that. But for me, that's what it took was seeing something digital represented in physical form, because I'm stuck in that mindset.

Maybe you should try and do that over here. Because the challenge is the unlearning process. Once you are calm enough to unlearn, then it opens up eventually for sure. Yeah,

Yeah, I think for all of us older people we just have the mental hurdle To hop over because the world has changed so much since the time we were young, when I was going to university, nobody had a computer in their room. Nobody had a phone. You had to walk from the dorm to the computer center. And the screen was just The black screen with the white, letters that would go across. There's only one font. And the entire computer center had one printer. So you have to send your print job to the printer. And then you gotta walk over and stand in line to pick up your print job. If you go back even further, when I was younger. We were playing in the dirt, we were using little marbles that you kind of flick into little holes that you dig out with your nails, really basic stuff, my kids can't relate because they grew up in the age of iPads, they were already out, the phones were already out. And so for them, it's not a huge mental shift for us and older people. It is such a mind boggling chasm that you have to cross mentally.

is not technology, this is money. What do you mean the money is changing? That's huge. Yeah.

This theft that's been going on of their life, because if you think of your job as you, or when you're earning money, you're exchanging your lifetime for money. If you're being paid. Per the value that you provide, right? So to realize suddenly that you have worked your whole life and people have been stealing from you the whole time and you didn't realize it, that's a really hard truth to take.

Yeah. Actually, my talk at El Salvador was talking about that. If you get to listen to it on YouTube, that's that's exactly what I was talking about. I grew up in an era where I was told education is the key to the future, but you didn't mention that the kind of education I'm receiving is not really as beneficial to me. It's supposed to just make me work for the government and not, and like really working for myself or really stop working at some point. It's unfortunate. You find someone's a doctor, they earn good money, but Still, you have to figure out how you can fight inflation. So you have to become a doctor. You have to know taxes. You have to know investment. All in one as a single person. And if you never had the knowledge, you end up losing a lot. And yeah, I guess that's where we're at.

I gave a talk at a homeschooling conference a few months ago, and in the talk I said to the parents who are sitting there, they're all homeschooling parents, and I said, when you talk to your kids about growing up and getting a job or choosing a career, how many jobs do you tell them they would be working, once they choose a career path? And they all said one. And I said that's just not true. Because everybody has to have two, there's one job to earn your money. And there's a one job to try to keep your money. What kind of time does that leave you to focus on your family? You mentioned that family is very important to you and you're doing this so that one day you can have the family life that you envisioned, right? But if you're working two jobs just to survive, then the kids take a backseat because they must. And a lot of people are in that boat.

I was listening to I think Natalie Brunel also was talking to the crypto couple the other day, and she mentioned the same thing. She was told as a lady, work, become the girl boss, because she was doing that so that she can get to a point where she's It feels financially confident to be able to have kids in this case. Unfortunately we need two incomes in a household and that's just it. So even the ripple effects, we're going a little bit deeper, but I feel the ripple effect of fiat is women are delaying, but men are getting frustrated out of it. I don't know about your generation. You guys are good. Us, people don't even want to get married anymore because they're thinking, what's the point? And this is not just something that's happening in the West. Kenya is quite influenced even by the Western culture. So even here you get Girls just want to work and work, and with that, you delay marriage, you delay a lot of things. Men are also frustrated, they're also trying to gain a living. The societal effect of the family is also, it can be felt, or rather it will be seen in the days coming, yeah.

I was going to ask you about that because, my understanding of the African culture is that for women, children is their wealth. Is that still up until recently? Is that still something that's very cultural?

Yeah, okay wealth for female, girls? In most cultures, actually, when a man gives birth to kids the wealth is mostly transferred to the male child. They still assume that the female is supposed to get married, and be supported by the husband. But of course now with things changing even we find that not many ladies are getting married. So Progressed families, you'll be able to get yourself in a situation where you can be able to get married, although you can get people to get inheritance from your father. But the other side of the coin is When you can't be able to have that, you are forced into probably getting married so that you can be able to support if you want to, that is. But with that, you can get things like abuse, which is quite common. depend on your husband. Unfortunately, it's really financial financially depending on your husband. We have lots of cases of abuse in Kenya. I think of late, especially since COVID period the rate of divorces. I'll just speak for Kenya because it's not generally in all African countries. I can say we saw a huge rise in cases of divorce because finances was a major issue. And with it, you get to the root of it. Especially if the woman is dependent on the man, 100 percent for finances, it's it's a huge deal. So that's why you've talked about Bitcoin Dada and Marcel. I guess for her she saw that and she was like, let's educate the women because after all, women are the majority population and around here, women are quite the educators. If you educate a woman, they educate their husband, they educate the community around them. That way, we can have women being able to take care of their families, taking care of themselves, whether you are married or unmarried. Yeah, and you don't have to undergo abuse, especially if you can't be able to afford to take care of yourself and your children.

Is that something that is on the back of your mind, not your mind, but is that something that's on the back of the minds of the women today, even as they consider marriage, that if they ever become 100 percent dependent on the husband financially, that they can be subject to abuse? Is it that common?

Yes, it is. It is. In fact I can say that growing up with my aunties they, Will tell me go times have changed. Don't go ahead and get married to a man until you have something going on for yourself and even they encourage you even as a married woman, have something going on for yourself. Besides that is anything will happen to your husband. And as I've mentioned, investment in Kenya is not knowledge that's Available to everyone, not, we live a day at a time hand to mouth, basically. So not so many people are investing for their futures. And if you find, if the husband is the head of the household or the breadwinner, once he leaves most women are left without means. So it is in the back of the minds of a lot of women. Majority of the women right now, it's been conversations that have been going on for a decade, if I can say a decade plus, where they're encouraging women to have something going on for themselves.

So there is, it sounds like there's a new standard. That sounds, I don't know if that's the right word, new standard, but instead of getting married young and starting a family right away, the new generation of women, they are trying to be more independent and delaying marriage and delaying childbearing.

Yes. I would say this is especially mostly for the really educated, like highly educated women. That's majority, not all of them, but majority of them. We have also the extreme cases. So in the rural areas, girls are getting married young, but it's also for the same reason. You figure out as a girl, I need somebody to take care of me financially. So that's the other side of the coin. Just to avoid having to be a burden to your family, you decide, okay I'll get married. And of course that has it's benefits, but also now the abuse you were talking about.

It's so fascinating that this is the new movement. It's also really encouraging because women have a way of figuring things out and then passing on. So if you become educated yourself, not just in traditional education, but in financial education, You are the best person to pass it on to the next generation.

I'd love to.

Yeah. Okay. So tell me about your work. You sound like you're so busy. You're traveling all over the place. What are you doing?

Oh getting into Bitcoin. Fascinating. So after screaming around on Twitter I was approached or rather I started looking for Bitcoin jobs. That's the first thing you do because you realize you can't be able to work in fiat and And I'll be able to keep on buying fiat or selling fiat for Bitcoin. So I was like, I need to find ways to just get Bitcoin. And but before that I was too focused on getting the message out because I was like, you know what, if everybody comes into Bitcoin and we find people coming into Bitcoin, then I wouldn't have to my work will be easier. So I ended up working in a company called Exonumia. Exonumia carries out translation of Bitcoin literature into African languages. For example, I speak Swahili in Kenya. Swahili is spoken by around 200 million people. So you find Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda. Uganda uh, a bit of Burundi, also Malawi even Sudan, a bit of South Sudan, you can find people who understand Swahili, Somalia, so it's a widely spoken language and I was requested to maybe start translating Bitcoin content into Swahili and it was exciting for me. I managed to translate the Block Size Wars by Jonathan and Layered Money by Nick Bhatia. Exonima has actually done translation in Uganda. It has done translation in South Africa. It has done translation in West Africa, Ghana, Nigeria. It was a good team to, to work with. The translation is still ongoing, because the major barrier, actually, in Africa is We speak different languages and not so many people understand English. So if you want to get Bitcoin to them educating them through a language they understand will be the first thing that you can be able to do. And so after doing the translations I happened to meet built with Bitcoin foundation. They have built a school in Kenya. The, some place called Ukambani, so we went there, we with a team of also Bitcoiners in Kenya there's Master Gwantai was organizing it, and he approached me and he was like, we're going here, we're going to teach people in the rural area of Ukambani about Bitcoin, if you have time, you can join us, so I joined him. On that trip and while we were there, it was teaching Bitcoin already is difficult enough. Teaching Bitcoin in Swahili, teaching Bitcoin in uh, one of us had to go all the way teaching Bitcoin in now the native language. Kenya has 22 ethnic tribes. So he was teaching in one of the ethnic tribes that's Kamba. So when we were done teaching we realized the whole group of people, in fact, they asked us now you've told us about this Bitcoin. So how can we get Bitcoin? Because they understand hard money. One of the ways in which people invest in Kenya is through land. So that's the go to when it comes to long term investment when people make a huge amount of money they go directly into real estate. So they understood the concept of inflation, we didn't have to go in depth explaining to them because everybody can say that Kanyashiling is devaluing fast. And they asked us now, can you send us this Bitcoin? And it was unfortunate. We couldn't be able to send them. Where we were, the internet connection was terrible already. And even if you wanted to, there was only one person in the room who had a smartphone because this was a group of it was a school. And now we were teaching the parents. And the teacher now was the only one with a smartphone. So we even thought maybe even if you wanted to send it to the teacher, Bitcoin is something that you should own by yourself. It was, it will not make sense practically. And it was on that day, for some reason, there was a tweet being sent out by another an African that If somebody could figure out, that was Ogin from Namibia, if somebody could figure out how to put Bitcoin into feature phones, it would be really amazing for Africa. And I saw that tweet I retweeted it, and I was like, yes, please, somebody figure, figure out also now Kogatso from South Africa, that's the founder of Machankura, also. So that we can be replied that he should be given two weeks to do it. And within two weeks, he delivered much on Kura. And it was amazing. Right now we can be able to send sats to anyone, even my grandmother in the village. And even though people have smartphones. Internet connection is still quite expensive for most people to afford. So it was a game changer. I remember actually saying this is going to be a game changer for us in terms of adoption of Bitcoin in Africa. Because not so many people really have to understand inflation. They don't have to go through everything. I've gone through understanding risk. If they can just see Bitcoin in which they can send and receive and purchase goods with it, then We can be able to get massive adoption in Africa. So I did that, but also after I translated Nick Bhatia's book, I thought that it was necessary for us to have African stories being told. So I decided to get into podcasting with the Bitcoin layer and where I was like, maybe there's something going on in Africa. I. I would love to report on it especially in terms of Bitcoin adoption, because I don't know whether you've tried researching on Bitcoin in Africa, there's very few stories, but right now, at least there's a lot, but when I was Trying to, I think what I got was just one documentary and it was very outdated. Yeah. When I was trying to learn,

Scott and I have talked to Master Guan Tai actually about the game, because we were trying to figure out how to get it into Africa. And we were trying

get it, I'll buy it for sure.

we were trying to figure that out. Cause he was like, why don't you send us one? I'm like, sure. We'll send you one. And I think the shipping cost was something like 450 for a game. I'm like, what? 450? Nobody can, how are we going to do that? So we still have to figure that out. I'm very curious when you're talking about the guy who stepped forward and was able to now bring Bitcoin to people in the rural areas what's the system that's in place right now that's allowing that to happen?

Okay. So in Kenya we use mobile money. I don't know. Have you heard of M Pesa? Yeah, so we use M Pesa to send and receive money. Credit, we, I keep on saying we skipped the phase of credit cards I think it's a good thing that we didn't have to go through that. Not so many people have credit cards. And one of the ATM cards here, that's what, although, most of the merchants in fact, if I can say a huge number of merchants accept payments using M Pesa, it's a mobile money payment system. And what made it really gain adoption in Kenya was the fact that it uses the U. S. D. platform. So with U. S. D. You do not need the Internet to able to send and receive because it uses the telecommunication, the mobile network, the television. So that's the unstructured supplementary service data. So this is what is used to send SMS. Thank you very much. Yeah, so with that now, when the lightning network was came about, it was easy to implement the lightning network on this service. So that's what he used to come up with a service and integrating the both of them. I have no idea how he did it, but it works. It works seamlessly. It works smoothly. Onboarding process is faster than using an app. All you have to do is just send someone a USS day code. Once they dial it, they have and register. They have themselves a wallet. It is still custodial, though currently in the works we have rather, he has managed to come up with a self custody way also for the feature phones. So that should be, if you can join us in South Africa. In January we'll be able to demonstrate the self custody of the same feature phones. And I think now that's going to be even a major game changer for us. Because we don't want as a company to hold anyone's Bitcoin. The point is getting people to be self sovereign. And even with the regulations in Africa. What I can say, it's a gray area unfortunately we had an instance in Tanzania and Uganda where we had to, we had challenges with the regulatory regulations there celebration in other countries, the USSD we managed to integrate the WhatsApp API. So people in Tanzania and Uganda can still be able to transact. But at the end of the day, the main is to get them into self custody. So once we can be able to release the product, then it will be faster and actually much better for us to just have people hold their own Bitcoin.

When you're talking about self custody, are people resistant at all about the responsibility? Especially in light of stories that come out where people's Bitcoin got swiped while we were in El Salvador, there was a guy who lost 25 Bitcoin.

I saw that. I felt quite sorry for the guy. I remember I was heading to the airport and I saw that story. That was quite unfortunate. So two instances. Binance is still a major player in Kenya. majority of Africa Binance, still a huge player. So we have the youth who are tech savvy. They do not care to get into the in depth of it well, I'm trying to reach. So they, you find that there's still having the coins on exchanges, but I realized I could have also been among those people who are comfortable having my coins in an exchange because of course you realize and you just decide, okay, I'm going to just buy Bitcoin, but I could have easily also ended up just having my coins in an exchange. So what I can say is They have not really either been reached by the education for self custody. Because unless you go ahead and take the step towards learning this, or somebody approaches you with with this information, you don't really go searching for it. All you are, you're contented you have Bitcoin, you don't really care why it is, whether it's on, or rather you don't understand the difference between it being in self custody or in an exchange. But that's the major challenge that I guess I have and also other African educators have with this group of people. But I don't think anybody will be against it once they, because we've seen FTX. They've been affected with it. So what usually happens exchanges go down, people lose money and they come and say Bitcoin is a scam. And that thing was just, it was unfortunate they didn't even get the relevant education to understand this. I guess that's a challenge For us here as educators to be able to get this information across and I'm sure there wouldn't be any resistance when I figured out self custody. I was like, good, because after all, we keep, I've told you land is the major way of investment here. People do keep their title deeds. They don't have a problem with that. I don't think keeping 12 seed phrases will be a problem. Yeah.

That's just something that I personally struggle with just because I'm not tech savvy. And I was talking to another woman last week, we were talking about how there are a lot of things in life where we feel like we have a solid understanding on. And then when it comes to Bitcoin, I always need to rely on a translator. It's like a whole foreign language by itself. If something develops or if somebody raises a question, I always have to look to somebody else to translate the impact of that to me. And that makes me feel somewhat helpless in a way, just because I don't speak the language, even though we've been studying and we understand the impact. And You know what I'm saying? It just it's this sort of unsettling feeling of I know, I don't know, and I always have to rely on translators a little bit.

I understand you fully. Even for me, even though I can say I work for a Bitcoin company, it's mostly the developer who understands most of the things. I It usually just comes to my attention. Maybe there's a problem when people are talking about VIP 300 VIP. What? Lightning going things. So that's when maybe I'll put that put in the effort to just understand the basics. But I don't feel we really have to understand all of this as long as We understand the main thing, which is self custody, and it's in a safe manner. Um, All of these things, they can just go on as usual, yeah. Yeah, that's very

Yeah, and I think sometimes knowing too much actually hurts you. So just knowing the basics and Almost I don't know if you guys use PayPal or Venmo or something over there. But the payment systems, the people that dab, we don't really know what goes on in the back. And if they release a new version, nobody pays attention. You just agree, and then you just have the software update. We almost have to get to that point of trust in this system. Once you have your seed phrases written down and just let the technical people take care of that. And just make the experience so user friendly that it doesn't even have to cross our mind.

a huge factor. At least you've heard of Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa. That's it. So there's a educational brother, a circular economy in South Africa called Bitcoin Ikasi. They've done a fantastic job in terms of education, teaching the community there. And people there are open, they're open to using Lightning, they're open to self custody. And right now, even now that there's Options like phoenix, solitary and self custody there. They're open to using it. So Same case in Ghana. We have a bitcoin doer And so what the educators I know are doing we are focusing on wholesome education give people all the options and Tell them allow them to decide which one they prefer to use. I like Lightning because it's cheaper for me to move money in Lightning, yeah, as compared to having to go to self custody. But if there's Bitcoin I never want to touch for the next a few years, it's in safe custody. Yeah.

And I think there's just bugs that need to be worked out as the system continues to evolve. For example, Scott and I, we were in El Salvador and it was our first time. At a circular economy where we were able to use our Bitcoin. We were so excited, but two of our wallets didn't work. We were trying to make Bitcoin payments and they didn't work. I'm like, Oh my God, no, I'm stuck because we didn't carry cash. We're like, Oh, cash is so old school. We're using Bitcoin here, but there are bugs that need to be worked out because we ended up having to get friends to help us who had. Two different wallets. So there were four wallets that we were experimenting with there and Yeah, so it's just you almost have to see it as a game Like you're playing and you're having fun in the process while you're learning So, okay. So before we wrap up, what would you say to women who are sitting on the fence about Bitcoin?

For women who are sitting on the fence about it, I know a lot. If you're a woman and you have been looking to add value in the world, and you're yet undecided on where you want to work, I feel Bitcoin is a good place to start. It may feel complex, it may feel very male dominated, but there's so many ways in which you can be able to input in it. I still insist that I think women are better at educating. Yeah, there's a way you can be able to put out information that people can be able to understand a majority of the population, especially when it comes to young kids and the children of the future. So the more women you can get talking about Bitcoin, it will be easier for kids to transition. And so. if there's any woman who is considering getting into Bitcoin, you're welcome. We need you here. We will welcome you. It's a very wonderful place, a very wonderful community. Especially I have Worked in corporate and I keep on saying I've not seen as much support in what I do than what I've seen in Bitcoin. It's fascinating to me. And I'm sure even in Bitcoin you can find a way to work flexibly and get time to focus on family and Also get to earn as compared to earning in fiat. So yes you're just welcome to join this amazing community of people and let's fix the world.

Awesome Thank you so much. That was really enlightening. I'm sorry that I don't know more about how things work in Africa I feel so blind When I

okay. Welcome to join us here.

I would love to visit Africa one of these days, 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.