Hi everybody. Welcome to Orange Hatter. Today you'll be listening to a conversation I had with Lindsay. Lindsay, welcome to Orange Hatter. Thank you so much for coming to our show. You've got a ton of stories to, to share with us, so we're gonna jump right into it. Let's start by addressing our first question, which is, when did you first hear about Bitcoin, and what was your journey like from discovery to conviction?

Thank you so much for having me on. My story starts in like 2019. I had heard about Bitcoin before that in 2018 with the, with the bull run then, but I really didn't think anything of it... thought it was, you know, a bubble. And then in 2019, and I was really interested in reading about China and Henry Kissinger and stuff like that at the time, and somehow I happened upon bitcoin again. And I don't know, I kind of, I got sucked into the, the Altcoin world for a couple months and, but like things started to kind of click with me that there was something different about Bitcoin than the others. So many of them have, you know, what are called pre mines, um, where the, the owner, the, the inventor kind of releases a whole bunch of their coins to their friends and keeps 'em for themselves. And then, and then they do a sale to the public, and then they can kind of dump their, their holdings on the public. That's really, really common with altcoins, and I realized that Bitcoin didn't have that capability. And the other thing about it is that a lot of those altcoins had paid advertising and, like, groups that were kind of, you know, advocating them and Bitcoin didn't have any of that. All of the, all of the marketing seemed to be, you know, people who didn't have anything to gain from it. And I thought that kind of was a, you know, a vouching for its merit, I guess. And from there, I mean, there's no, there's no real end to bitcoin rabbit hole. So I kind of, I learned about economics and, you know, the history of money and what makes, what makes something of good money. And, you know, why, why did we ever get off the gold standard in the first place if that was such a good standard? And yeah, I, uh, I got really, really into it and I kind of talked to my, some friends and family into learning about it, and ever since I've just been more and more interested and more and more impressed by the community that I've, that I've experienced growing up around it.

Thank you for sharing that. If you can just paint a picture for our audience of, like, your background and where you're located and what it's like in terms of, just knowledge about Bitcoin, where like closest to you, where you live.

Sure. So I am 29. I live in Michigan, which is a pretty, a fairly rural area. There's, other than the, other than the people that I have personally talked to and kind of gotten, started down the, down the path, there's really nobody that, that I know that's, that's interested in it, um, or knows, you know, anything, anything about it. I work several part-time jobs. I was a paramedic for a while, and I decided to go and try and... you know, I was trying to, to do something more tangibly helpful, you know, to society with my life and not a... there's not a whole much, whole lot out there that's more tangibly helpful than, you know, being a paramedic on an ambulance. But I decided that wasn't for me. I actually stopped being a paramedic in 2020, and decided to, to try and, you know, go back to school and, and contribute to this movement more. I'm actually going to school for information systems management. I wanna learn a little bit about development so I can do more in the Bitcoin space, 'cause I think that this is, I think this is arguably the most important movement going on in the world today. And that's saying a lot coming from someone who, you know, does, did CPR for a living and whatnot. I don't know, I just, I can't... it's so strange to me that so few people understand, you know, the, the gravity of this movement and what, and what Bitcoin is actually doing in the world.

I think that sentiment is shared by a lot of Bitcoiners. I'm curious, so you were a paramedic... and I think a lot of women have the same concern when it comes to Bitcoin, which is if they're not computer sciences, it's not something that they can possibly understand, and yet you are so far down the rabbit hole, you've changed your entire life direction. So can you talk a little bit about that, that sort of internal shift and address some of the concern that a lot of women have, which is: how can I possibly understand this? It's so complicated.

Yeah, so I don't know. I'm, I actually had an experience, I went to Bitcoin Miami in 2023, and I was sitting with a, with a group of people, and I remember one of them kind of rubbed me the wrong way... uh, said something about how, you know, if you don't, if you don't, if you basically, if you can't be a developer, like, you know, you're not doing anything important. And I'm just like, that is so, so completely backward. And it's like, you can't, you can't put it in those terms. Yes. I mean, I'm not gonna deny that the development part of Bitcoin is hugely important, um, and, you know, building out the tools to make it easier is, is, you know, they have vital role. But Bitcoin doesn't do any good if nobody knows about it and nobody understands it and nobody can use it. And Bitcoin's biggest hurdle is adoption. Um, and that's why I think that podcasts like this and you know, people like, you know, Natalie Brunell and Preston Pysh and all those that are kind of evangelizing and kind of spreading the word and, and helping people to understand... that is, that I think is the most important role in this space right now. And I am trying to do, I'm trying to do both. I'm trying to, you know, kind of change my, my career path. And fortunately I have the, you know, the, the time and the ability to be able to put myself back through school to do that and learn some about development. But, you know, if a better, if a better, and, you know, different opportunity comes along where I'm doing something more like this, absolutely, I'll take it. I don't think that there's... any contribution to Bitcoin is a good one and a worthwhile one.

When you first heard about Bitcoin and you started taking that very first step, so if you can think back a couple years, how did you... how did you start learning like the first baby step? How did you take that step and what material did you use to help you understand it enough to take the second step?

To be honest, I don't, I don't really remember all that well what I did first. I know that the concept of, of inflation was probably the first hurdle that I, you know, kind of tackled and that, that made sense to me. 'Cause I've always, you know, as someone who's worked a lot of, a lot of lower wage jobs in her life, you know, inflation's a, a real thing, and it's like, you kind of feel like you're on a, you're on a treadmill all the time, and it's just, you know, you gotta go, you gotta go faster and work harder and put in more hours just to kind of stay in the same place. And, you know, I've always been, I've always felt that, but I never really devoted any, any mental space to, to really understanding why that was and learning about inflation and why it exists, and, and the times in the past when it hasn't really existed, really kind of helped build a framework for me. And that really kind of put it in context and, and put Bitcoin, made Bitcoin into something I could, I could relate to, and something that had a, you know, a real use case for someone like me.

So I imagine other people, your age group, you know, your, your friends and family are feeling the same inflationary pressure. Were you able to discuss this topic with them in the way that you just described?

No, I, uh, After I had gone down the rabbit hole enough where I felt confident enough to kind of, you know, to breach the topic with other people and, you know, not sound like a, you know, tin hat, conspiracy theorist. Um, I was a little more thoughtful in, in how I approached things. And like with inflation in particular, there's, there's an analogy that I like to use. So if you think of a grocery store owner, just a local grocery store owner, who also happens to own some rental properties, This grocery store owner, you know, he has employees, and we'll look at one of those employees in contrast. So you have an employee who works at the grocery store and who happens to live in one of these apartments. If you introduce inflation into that picture, what it does is it's going to raise the prices in the grocery store. It's going to raise the value of, say you own your own home, or you own a rental, or you own a business... the value of all of that goes up. The value of those wages of that worker did not, and the value of the cash that you save, which is a large percentage of your net worth if you're a wage worker, also goes down. But if you happen to be better off and you own stocks, those go up as well. So when you introduce inflation, you have this lowering of the net worth of people who are already lower class, and you have this elevation of the net worth of people who are already more well off. But the transfer of that purchasing power first goes to whoever has control of the new money, that is the person doing the printing. So you have a transfer of the purchasing power of the people in the lower class to first the government and then, the government who does the printing, and then to the person who owns that grocery store, who owns those assets, who owns those homes, rentals, whatever assets that they have. You have, you have a net wealth transfer. And I don't know, kind of putting it into those terms and then kind of relating it to the person that I'm talking about seems to, seems to help a lot. 'Cause I mean, in my case, like, I never really thought about the fact that my, that the money in my bank account didn't buy as much as it, you know, doesn't buy as much as it did two years ago, even if there's the same dollar amount in there. 'Cause two years ago, things were cheaper, things are more expensive now. But where did that purchasing power go? It went to the person who put that new money in circulation. And that person in this case is, is the government, the Federal Reserve, or you know, the big banks that kind of introduce money into the system by lending... however, however you wanna look at it, it's people with a lot more money than me. And that's kind of, I don't know... it's an insidious thing because it's not something that very many people understand. Inflation is the most progressive tax.

So when you explain it like that to the people that you talk to, what is their first reaction?

A lot of, I get a lot of quiet for a little bit while. They kind of, kind of think about it, but I don't know. It's, it seems to, it seems to connect, it seems to, it seems to make sense. And then usually from there, like, you know, it's, well, what's, you know, that that connection makes you, makes you think of like, oh, I need to be, I need to be invested in real estate, in stocks like that grocery store owner. Which... I mean, that's, that's not untrue. Like that, those are good strategies and would've served you well over the last, you know, a hundred years or really whenever. But from there, it's, you know, we kind of breach into into why, why Bitcoin is a superior asset.

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