Episode 54
Mel: "Two things in my life that I could see straight down the line... selling online...and Bitcoin." - part 3
Governments and politicians may not always have the best interests of the people in mind.
The power of Bitcoin and its scarcity in the market, emphasizing the importance of owning real Bitcoin, not just paper Bitcoin.
Explanation of the difference between paper Bitcoin and actual Bitcoin: paper Bitcoin means it doesn’t actually exist and you don’t hold the keys to it.
Mention of the Unconfiscatable conference, organized by Tone Vays.
Mel's Info:
Telegram: @Mel
Twitter: @girls_bitcoin
Email: Mel@unconfiscatable.com
To learn more about Bitcoin: Join the Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club. Visit https://www.meetup.com/womensbitcoinreadingclubwithorangehatter
Please email questions/comments to Tali@orangehatter.com
Remember: Knowledge is empowerment! 🍊🎩
Mentioned in this episode:
Free Market Kids Short
Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.
Transcript
Hi everyone.
Tali:Welcome to Orange Hatter.
Tali:Today you're listening to part three of my conversation with Mel.
Tali:... at the time when we were teaching the kids financial literacy,
Tali:we were not questioning the monetary system as it is today.
Mel:You were teaching them about monetary history.
Mel:They don't even teach that in school.
Tali:They don't.
Tali:They don't.
Tali:Scott and I both have an MBA and when we started trying to teach our kids
Tali:financial literacy, all we knew was accounting and business valuation.
Mel:Makes sense.
Tali:And we didn't know.
Tali:We didn't know anything about money itself until we went into the
Tali:Bitcoin rabbit, went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and started studying
Tali:it, questioning everything that we've been taught our whole lives.
Tali:So by the time we, we came to that point, our kids have been trained up.
Tali:And now we're challenging what we've taught them and they were homeschooled.
Tali:So I mean, the, the anchor is deep.
Tali:And so when we were talking to, my son is engaged and he and his fiance are
Tali:planning for their future, and I said, you guys have got to invest in Bitcoin.
Tali:You gotta invest.
Tali:They've been trained up so much by the notion that passive
Tali:incomes comes from real estate.
Tali:You know, value investment is stock market.
Tali:And 'cause that's what we knew and that's what we taught them.
Tali:And so now it's like we're fighting our own ghost kind of.
... Mel:but things change.
... Mel:And what I'm learning too is that the government does not necessarily
... Mel:have our best interest at heart.
... Mel:And you know, there are things that they just do, and I think a lot of us are
... Mel:brought up to believe what we're taught.
... Mel:And that is listen to your elders.
... Mel:You listen to your politicians.
... Mel:What they say is true, they wouldn't lead you wrong.
... Mel:And now I'm just realizing we're all humans.
... Mel:Humans are flawed.
... Mel:They always will be.
... Mel:You know, we're not set up to work the exact same way all the time.
... Mel:And so when you look at flawed humans and then you think about them being
... Mel:your politicians, You know, sometimes people are in it for themselves.
... Mel:They're definitely not in it to teach you anything.
... Mel:And that's what I learned from Bitcoin.
... Mel:I mean, once I started to figure out Bitcoin itself, I realized
... Mel:it was connected to all of the markets, you know, all like.
... Mel:That opened my eyes, not to other cryptocurrencies, but to the entire
... Mel:world financial system and looking at that and then realizing how
... Mel:many people are not involved in the world, GDP, because they can't be.
... Mel:So, you know, all of these things smack you in the face and, and you can't
... Mel:believe, of course, no one's teaching you this 'cause it's kind of dismal.
... Mel:It's not a very pretty picture that you could paint.
... Mel:So maybe that's something we have to explain to our kids and be
... Mel:like, all right, um, we wanted to believe all of this, but Bitcoin
... Mel:does make the flaws obvious, and don't look at it like it's Bitcoin.
... Mel:I'm gonna make a zillion dollars next week.
... Mel:All right?
... Mel:If, if, you know, in 2015, I bought a third of a Bitcoin.
... Mel:I, I had somebody say to me in Miami, oh, you've been in
... Mel:this so long, like you must be.
... Mel:You must be doing well, and I'm like, um, no.
... Mel:I mean, I bought a hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin.
... Mel:I had 0.37 Bitcoin.
... Mel:I would love to someday have like five Bitcoin.
... Mel:You know, it...
... Mel:I'm a real person with real bills and real kids and real stuff.
... Mel:And I would, you know, I wanna earn as much Bitcoin as I possibly can
... Mel:before we explode, because I am just.
... Mel:Thinking that that's exactly what's gonna happen with the
... Mel:scarcity, with everything else.
... Mel:Doing everything I can to stack more SATs.
... Mel:And oh, if anybody, I am working on a post, I have like seven sources of free
... Mel:Bitcoin every day that I go to and gather.
Tali:I need that list.
Mel:Yes, I will, I will.
Mel:I'll hand, I will make sure I have it all like laid out.
Mel:I just have to put the links into everything, but, and
Mel:explain, you know, why.
Mel:One of them is all about Costco.
Mel:We, we do a lot of Costco, and if you can get 2% back in
Mel:Bitcoin on Costco, we do that.
Mel:So I'll definitely share that with you.
Tali:Yeah, that's cool.
Mel:I'm sure your listeners wouldn't hate it either.
Mel:They need Bitcoin as bad as I do.
Tali:We all need Bitcoin, really.
Tali:You know, in reality.
Tali:Let's talk a little bit about the conference that you're helping to
Tali:organize called Unconfiscatable...
Tali:what is it called?
Tali:Just to call the Unconfiscatable.
Mel:Unconfiscatable is the conference, and this was created
Mel:by Tone Vays because Bitcoin, if held correctly, is unconfiscatable.
Mel:No one can take it from you.
Mel:If you have your Bitcoin on a, on a cold wallet, no one can take that from you.
Mel:I mean, if you give it to 'em, I guess I can take it, but it's yours.
Mel:It cannot be confiscated...
Mel:confiscated.
Mel:And the conference started in 2019 and it's intimate.
Mel:There's about 450 seats total, and that includes speakers.
Mel:So, For me, it was the best conference.
Mel:It's, it's my favorite because it's the smallest and you're
Mel:all together in the same room.
Mel:You know Jack Mallers is standing next to you.
Mel:He's not hiding anywhere, because there's nowhere to hide.
Mel:There's only 450 people, so you literally are meeting and talking to everybody
Mel:and I love BitBlockBoom as well.
Mel:I'm working, this will be my first time working for Gary in August now.
Mel:With Gary, I'm really excited because all I have to do is
Mel:show up and I work on site.
Mel:He does an amazing job putting everything together.
Mel:For Unconfiscatable, I'm putting everything together and working
Mel:on site, but I think that these conferences are hugely important and
Mel:I know Gary and Tone are Bitcoin only.
Mel:They're unwavering and as long as.
Mel:They stay that way, which I have no doubt in my mind that both of them will, I
Mel:believe these are the ones to go to now.
Mel:I, I'm going to go to Pacific Bitcoin for the first time this year, so,
Mel:but I've heard nothing but amazing things about that tab comp in Atlanta.
Mel:Nothing but amazing things about that.
Mel:I haven't been there yet.
Mel:And Mike Tidwell is a great guy and I believe he's the
Mel:one who, you know, runs that.
Mel:So being in person with other Bitcoiners is how I've learned the most, you know.
Mel:What I learn online is one thing.
Mel:It's like I can take that and then talk to somebody real and have them either
Mel:expand, you know, confirm or deny, expand, or, yeah, don't worry about that.
Mel:You know, like right now I'm interested in, and I, and not because I like
Mel:Ordinals or anything, so don't anyone freak out on me, but how
Mel:the heck does that work and why?
Mel:Like, what is the point?
Mel:Well, I wanna know.
Mel:So I have been investigating that and looking into it.
Mel:Not sure what the.
Mel:It is pretty much a JPEG put on a block.
Mel:So again, I don't know if that's necessary.
Mel:I don't know if there needs to be cartoon frogs on the block, but maybe other
Mel:things could be inscribed on the block.
Mel:That would matter.
Mel:So again, just trying to understand, trying to, you know, figure
Mel:out what's real, what's not.
Mel:There's a lot of real things here that on its own is just.
Mel:Important and you have.
Mel:It's just gonna take time, but get going, get going now because you
Mel:don't wanna be left behind on this.
Mel:This isn't gonna be good.
Mel:You know, when if BlackRock gets this ETF approved, the scarcity of Bitcoin
Mel:and that being an issue is going to become a bigger issue pretty quickly.
Mel:I think just not that much of it.
Mel:When you look at how much is actually on exchanges, it's small
Mel:and no one's paying attention.
Mel:I mentioned it earlier, no one's paying attention.
Mel:You may be able to buy a piece of BA paper Bitcoin, which is what
Mel:an ETF will be, but will you be able to own actual real Bitcoin?
Mel:Gotta do it.
Tali:So can you explain to the audience who don't understand the difference
Tali:between paper, Bitcoin and real Bitcoin?
Mel:Okay, so remember FTX and Sam BankmanFried and he had an exchange.
Mel:Alright.
Mel:He's, he's not a nice kid, right?
Mel:This has nothing to do with Bitcoin.
Mel:This has to do with someone who created an exchange, took people's
Mel:money, but didn't buy the Bitcoin.
Mel:So if I had bought a thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin on FTX and I left it on
Mel:FTX and didn't withdraw it into a hard wallet that wasn't real, that Bitcoin
Mel:had not been purchased with my money.
Mel:You know, so that's paper, Bitcoin, that's an exchange.
Mel:Selling as much Bitcoin as they can regardless of what they have.
Mel:So when you're thinking about most people, we would like to think
Mel:that if you have money in the bank, that your bank has that money.
Mel:Right.
Mel:Okay.
Mel:Maybe that's not a good example 'cause that may or may not be.
Mel:But with Bitcoin, you, you need to make sure that they have it and you
Mel:can actually withdraw it, even if it's a two, a hot wallet on your phone.
Mel:Withdraw it.
Mel:Okay?
Mel:Like I just told my sister yesterday, it's time for you
Mel:to start buying Bitcoin again.
Mel:You need to buy it, and then you need to immediately put it into your wallet.
Mel:Okay.
Mel:And this was something I had her do when it looked like everything was kind of,
Mel:I'm just like, you need to get off any, you know, she was buying on Coinbase.
Mel:I'm just like, you need to get off Coinbase.
Mel:You need to get into a like the moon wallet.
Mel:And she did.
Mel:So I was really glad.
Mel:So paper Bitcoin means it doesn't exist.
Mel:It's not real Bitcoin, you don't hold the keys to it.
Mel:It's not yours.
Mel:Bitcoin that you own and you have the keys to will end up being
Mel:worth more than paper Bitcoin.
Mel:GBTC holds Bitcoin like GBTC is a way to buy is to, is a way to invest
Mel:in Bitcoin on the stock market.
Mel:But again, they may have Bitcoin to back that up.
Mel:But you can't cash that out for Bitcoin.
Mel:You can only cash it out for fiat if you make a profit.
Mel:So apps buying real Bitcoin that you can buy and move into a
Mel:wallet, that's what you need to do.
Mel:Paper Bitcoin means you don't actually own it.
Tali:It's almost like you have a claim to it.
Tali:Just like when you put money into the bank, you have a claim to the money,
Tali:but it's actually no longer there.
Mel:Right, right.
Mel:So, but, but in the case of SBF, he took, he just took the money.
Mel:He just took the money.
Mel:And if it said, you know, if you try it, it just said you
Mel:had that much Bitcoin in there.
Mel:But unless you did try to take it out, apparently if you did try to
Mel:take it out, they gave it to you, but if you didn't, it's gone now.
Mel:But see, it's not really gone because it never existed.
Mel:They were just paying you.
Mel:If it rose in price, you would get a little more.
Mel:And that's paper.
Mel:Bitcoin, an ETF will not, an ETF is like a, an fund that you can
Mel:invest, things you can invest in.
Mel:And that won't be real either.
Mel:So like when FTX went down and everything was gone, there was no Bitcoin.
Mel:So there were no Bitcoins lost.
Mel:There were no Bitcoins anywhere.
Mel:All they were doing was taking your money and saying you had
Mel:Bitcoin unless you moved it.
Mel:If you moved it, I guess what I'm assuming is that they bought it and gave it to you.
Mel:So, I mean, I think the best thing to do is obviously you buy it and
Mel:you get it right out of there.
Mel:You just do not wanna use anyone as your wallet.
Mel:You need to use a wallet of some sort, whether you start with a hot
Mel:wallet and move into a cold wallet, but you gotta get it off the exchange.
Mel:You have to.
Mel:Period.
Mel:And I, I told my sister this, I'd actually gotten her to buy Bitcoin.
Mel:And you know, as I'm telling her this, she's thinking, oh, why have I done this?
Mel:But she did it.
Mel:So that's a good thing.
Mel:But now my whole life is starting to rev up into Unconfiscatable,
Mel:Tone Vays' conference.
Mel:He was the one who basically told me the truth, and he has never lied as
Mel:far as I know, you know, I have always been able to go back and check his,
Mel:you know what he says, and it's true.
Mel:He is very cautious.
Mel:His conference was the first one I ever went to.
Mel:I went by myself and you know, here I am, like 40 something white
Mel:woman alone in the middle of this.
Mel:And I left there more inspired, more excited.
Mel:I met some, some of my best friends today, I met there and
Mel:I haven't missed one since now.
Mel:The fact that they put this conference on to begin with was amazing because
Mel:neither of these guys tone and, and Mike who was helping him, come from any event
Mel:background and they were so busy, you know, in life with everything else, I
Mel:think they kind of thought, oh, we'll throw this together and it'll be fun.
Mel:And it's a lot of work.
Mel:So this last year they both asked me if I would come and look it over and
Mel:see if this would be something I would wanna take over and be the organizer of.
Mel:And I said yes, because it's the one conference that it's most important to me.
Mel:And the one thing I hear about Unconfiscatable, you know, versus
Mel:others, is how much business gets done.
Mel:It's like you're talking to the decision makers.
Mel:You are right at the high level where you can, and, and again, because
Mel:tone is so particular, like you won't speak at Unconfiscatable unless.
Mel:He knows that you know what you're doing.
Mel:And that is what I appreciate about him and that's why I went to work for him.
Mel:And I feel like in this space, we need more organizational people, you know,
Mel:people that can help put things together.
Mel:I know I'm hearing this about companies too, that they need organizational
Mel:people, they need chief of staffs, people who can sell, people who can talk.
Mel:I decided, you know, this is where I need to be at the moment.
Mel:And I feel like going forward it's just really good experience and I'm hoping
Mel:that this is the next part of my career.
Mel:I spent 26 years in vintage and antiques and then, you know,
Mel:vintage and antique events.
Mel:Now I'm just interested in Bitcoin and it's all I wanna talk about.
Mel:It's all I wanna do.
Mel:I've been like that since 2017.
Mel:So I hope to spend the next 26 years in Bitcoin, and by the time I get sick
Mel:of it, well, I'll be like a hundred.
Mel:So there you go.
Mel:No, I'm, I'm not gonna be that old.
Mel:So there you go.
Tali:So how do people find out about Unconfiscatable?
Mel:Unconfiscatable.com.
Mel:And you can also look me up on Twitter.
Mel:I'm girls_Bitcoin or Tone Vays.
Mel:You'll find it there too.
Tali:Sounds good.
Tali:Any last recommendations for women who are still sitting on the fence?
Mel:Well, I think the organizational thing is big, and if you're a woman
Mel:who has a big mouth like me and you can speak to others and you
Mel:can actually understand the Bitcoin lingo and such, I think there's gonna
Mel:be a need for that in the space.
Mel:And it's time to start because if, if, if they don't get it or understand it, That
Mel:they need that there, there are businesses that are already falling apart from it.
Mel:You know, tech guys may not always be business owners.
Mel:It's just two different things.
Mel:So I think that is something that the women in the space are going to probably
Mel:have that some of the tech guys will not.
Mel:So I think there's a, there's a niche there for us.
Tali:Wonderful.
Tali:Thank you so much for joining us today.
Tali:Thank you for sharing all your stories and your insights.
Tali:We'll hopefully come back around and talk to you again after con
Tali:Unconfiscatable and hear some more really cool stories from you.
Mel:I would love that.
Mel:Thanks for having me.
Tali:Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.
Tali:If the discussion with our guest resonated with you and you would
Tali:like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the
Tali:Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club.
Tali:The meetup link is in the show notes.
Tali:Also, if there are women in your life whom you think would both enjoy and
Tali:benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them.
