Are you curious about how Bitcoin can transform lives and empower individuals globally? In this podcast, we'll delve into the journey of Sanjna, who found herself drawn into the world of Bitcoin after discovering its potential for financial freedom and human rights empowerment.

• Drop Shipping to Bitcoin: Sanjna pivoted from a COVID-era drop shipping business to diving into Bitcoin.
• Husband’s Bitcoin Introduction: Before her interest, Sanjna's husband was already deep into Bitcoin.
• Human Rights & Bitcoin: Sanjna's genuine Bitcoin interest was sparked by its potential for human rights and financial empowerment.
• El Salvador's Bitcoin Transformation: El Salvador's pioneering move to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender could be responsible for its economic boom, reduced crime, and increased tourism.

Sanjna's Info:

Sanjna Mehta

Co-founder, Yzer

yzer.io

@sanjna_connect

Special Mention: Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club – a space to delve deeper into the world of Bitcoin. https://www.meetup.com/womensbitcoinreadingclubwithorangehatter

Please email questions/comments to Tali@orangehatter.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Aleia Free Market Kids Sponsorship FULL

Get your HODL UP ("The best bitcoin game ever!") at www.freemarketkids.com.

Hi everybody, welcome to Orange Hatter.

Today you're going to be listening in on my conversation with Sanjana.

Hey Sanjana, welcome to Orange Hatter.

I am so happy to have you here.

Um, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you heard

about Bitcoin, uh, when you did?

Of course.

So thanks for having me on the show, Tali.

I'm super excited to be here.

I'll tell you a little bit about my background.

I'm based in Belgium.

I've lived here my whole life.

I, uh, went to the UK, studied sociology, and then went on to pursue

a master's in media and communication.

And then I came back to Belgium, and I was super interested in,

just, marketing in general.

So I worked in a startup.

I worked in B2C, B2B, did about seven years in marketing, and

then had a complete career switch and came into Bitcoin.

I came into the Bitcoin space.

So it's, it, it, it is very interesting.

I, when I left, left my last job as a marketing manager in an

industrial company, I was wondering what to do with my life next.

And then Covid hit about six months later.

So, my husband and I actually started a drop shipping company together.

We, we we're both very creative and very adapting and we're very, we, we've

always wanted to start something out of the blue and just try something

that no one else has ever done.

So we came across drop shipping and we thought, okay, this is cool,

'cause I'm super into marketing.

He's super creative.

So we had that whole knowledge and, and sense of, you know, creating

ads, creating compelling videos, just getting a little creative with,

with that whole marketing front.

So we started a drop shipping business, which eventually led into

a white labeled beauty product.

So of course at the time of Covid, you know, salons were shut worldwide.

Women still wanted to be completely groomed and, and have a way

of doing their beauty routine.

So we started selling an eyebrow hair removal pen.

And you think it's just such a niche product, and it's so random, but

it, it actually worked really well.

We, we, we sold, I think over...

we had over 15,000 customers worldwide, so it was super interesting.

And then we got into the whole business of more home beauty gadgets.

So we, we kind of scaled that business.

We worked on it for a year, almost a year and a half, and then there

were just a lot of changes going on.

We thought that, okay, COVID was making it a little difficult 'cause

of the logistics, but there were a lot of issues going on with

advertising and small businesses.

And we just thought it was, it was more of a passion project and we're like, okay,

maybe you know, maybe we stop this now and we find the next thing that we wanna do.

So I think in that much time, we gained a lot of experience on how to start

a business and how we can actually work together, me and my husband.

'Cause it's a nightmare for most couples, right?

It's not easy working with your partner.

But I think taking that as a first experience is what actually

led both of us to Bitcoin.

So my husband's known about Bitcoin since, I'd say, 2013, 2014.

He is, he is always been very knowledgeable, very intrigued by

the whole space of, of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, but he never

really took a lot of action in 2013.

Then I think when things started picking up again, he, he got into it.

We, you know, we quit, we quit this ... business, so he had more time.

He, he, he does some other work on the side.

He's a, he's a jeweler.

He is in the diamond business.

But he also kind of wanted to explore, explore other opportunities.

So once he started getting more into Bitcoin and reading about

it, he was fully immersed.

'Cause when you get into the Bitcoin space, there's like,

there's no turning back, right?

It's, it's a rabbit hole and just go deeper and deeper.

So I think for about a year I was still kind of figuring out what I wanna do,

and he kept talking about Bitcoin, and it just, it never interested me.

I just, I would go blank every time he spoke to me.

He would, he would do all these sketches on a whiteboard, try to write these notes,

and he really wanted me to learn about it.

And I, I was just like, I, I don't get it.

And there's nothing about it that's, really hit the spot where I feel like,

okay, I need to learn about Bitcoin.

But then I think the more he got into it and the more passionate he got about it...

like, I could hear him talking about it with our friends or

family and, you know, at that point everyone's like, oh, what is crypto?

What is this hype?

It wasn't specifically just Bitcoin, it was the whole space.

Right?

It was, there was this hype of Ethereum, Solana, just a lot of

these different coins and tokens.

And suddenly I'm like, okay, maybe I, I have a little bit of interest.

I just wanna know what, you know, what you spend so much time in a day doing.

So he started explaining a bit of the technicals to me.

He started explaining hash rate blocks, mining, all of that.

And then again, like, I don't come from a very technical background.

I don't have a finance background.

So for me, I was, I was still, I was trying to get interested 'cause

he was so passionate about it.

But nothing, again, nothing still really hit the spot where I was like,

okay, this makes a lot of sense.

I think that moment where I was like, I wanna get deeper into Bitcoin is

when I started learning about the human rights part about Bitcoin, right?

So it's funny because when I talk about this, a lot of women are

interested in the same thing.

Maybe it is a gender thing, I don't know, but he never told me about

Bitcoin from this perspective.

But I actually started doing a lot of reading.

I started finding out that, okay, there's a lot more to the

technical aspects of Bitcoin.

Sorry, there's a lot more than just the technical aspects of Bitcoin.

There's this whole crisis that can be solved with Bitcoin, right?

People actually use it as a financial empowerment tool, as a human rights

empowerment tool, especially in developing countries, in countries

where there's authoritarian regimes.

Maybe because he's from the U.S., I'm from Europe, it doesn't hit

us, you know, the way it should.

But we're both originally from India and, and we spend a lot of time in India, and

government corruption, monetary issues, a lot of the stuff does hit close to heart.

And then, that's when Bitcoin started making a lot of sense to me, when I

thought that, okay, there's about 5 billion people, four to 5 billion people

in this world who are living under these kind of governments and authoritarian

regimes, and it's a place where Bitcoin can really solve all, all your issues.

When, when I really started understanding that Bitcoin is for everyone.

It, it's a form of money that's borderless.

There's no restrictions based on age, gender, sex,

religion, caste, none of that.

Right?

It, it, it doesn't matter where you come from, Bitcoin is literally for everyone.

And I think that is when I started going down the rabbit hole and I'm

like, okay, I, I can do something with this and I, and I wanna get into

this, and this is the future, and I think I wanna spend the next 30 years

of my life just focusing on Bitcoin.

That is so wonderful.

We have a very similar journey, in that, my husband started, he

started down the Bitcoin rabbit hole before me, and he tried very,

very hard to get me interested.

And I wasn't.

Like you said, they would go...

I don't know if it's a man thing or an engineer thing, but they

always go from the technical side.

Exactly.

He said, he was explaining, he was explaining the hash rate to me,

and the, the, the whole blockchain, you know, structure and I'm like, I don't...

what, what?

But I really wanna find out more about that moment of spark.

So you said that you...

what interested you in the first place was the human rights aspect of

it and that it's a freedom money and it's, it's financial empowerment.

So can you think back to maybe a specific story that really jumped out

at you and grabbed your attention?

Yeah, sure.

So I think the first thing that I read about actually was, was the strike.

I think it was in Canada, but basically there were a bunch of truck

drivers also who went on strike.

They wanted to raise money through crowdfunding, and I think the government

completely blocked them off some platform.

I'm trying to remember the exact story, but that that's what kind of happened.

And basically you realize that the government has a lot of

control over, over any system.

Everything is centralized, whatever bank account, whatever, uh, way

you're transferring money...

anything can be blocked, seized at any moment, because they

have all your information.

Right.

So I think when these truck drivers went on strike and their money was blocked

from transferring it to other people.

It was, it was Bitcoin that actually saved them, and they could actually make

a lot of remittances and, and transfers.

And I think that's actually, I'm giving a first world example because

that's when I think a lot of people started realizing that it makes a

difference all over the world, right?

It's not just about where you come from.

It's not just about Africa and certain countries in Asia.

It's actually, it's happening in North America.

So, so that's one of the things that struck me.

I mean, there's a lot of, there's hyperinflation happening

in countries like Zimbabwe.

There's, there's issues going on in Lebanon.

There's again, India, right, like...

it, the government's so corrupt.

They're trying to block, they're trying to block Bitcoin in general.

But even then, there's just so much corruption and so much politics.

You, you can't even understand what's going on.

It's like only the top 5% of that country actually has access to

wealth, or whatever happens to that country is just in their control.

And what...

India's like the most populated country today.

It's crazy to think that 95% of the people there don't even have, have

access to bank accounts, or they just get seized, or they just get frozen.

So I, I, I, I think for me it's, it, it, the best example is just India,

'cause it's close to heart, and I know what's going on in that country.

But for example, we've been speaking to a lot of people from, from

Venezuela and Nigeria, Philippines.

Like, these are all, all personal stories.

One of our co-founders is from Lebanon as well, and there's so many

countries going on in their own...

so many issues going on in their own country.

And I think it's, it's just one of those things where people are not aware.

You know, if more people were aware of what's going on worldwide, they would,

I don't wanna say just, move to Bitcoin, but they would try to understand how

flawed our economic system is in general.

But, but yeah, I think, yeah, I think again, for me it's just, it's just

really India that hits for me, because it's, it's, it's really one of the...

if you move away from the three largest cities in India, it's

like it's a horrible situation.

Whatever's going on in villages and remote areas and the way, yeah, the

way the government has just been since the past like 60 years, it's very

difficult to get, to get any kind of money into your bank account or to

just, you know, get past the government and, and, and that whole KYC process.

I really would love to be able to picture, like, a specific example

that maybe that comes to your mind when you reference the village situation in

India outside the three large cities.

Because I think, especially for us women, we, we tend to want

to relate through our feelings.

And so if you can think of something more specific, maybe some particular family

that comes to mind, or particular specific situation that you can describe for us...

It's funny 'cause I've spoken to a lot of people from India, and they've

told me their stories, but I'm just like completely blanking out right now.

But the country that does come to mind is actually El Salvador.

'Cause we actually just, like, did a class on this in our byte section as well.

But I think El Salvador was seen as one of the most dangerous countries

until we got the new president.

Right.

Nayib Bukele, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing him right.

But basically he came into power and I think in, I think in 2019.

So before he was in power, the country was known for its high

crime rate, for violence, for a lot of the population being unbanked.

And after he came into power, he actually, he's, they're the first

country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

So there's so many people who support this, and I mean, of course the country,

but there's so many people outside of El Salvador who support this.

And we, we'll probably see a lot more countries follow, and following, and

taking the step because we've seen Bitcoin's impact on El Salvador, right?

So crime rates have gone down.

They've gone down more than 30%.

It's become a new hub for tourism...

for talent and tech startups to, to start their hubs there.

Of course, he has a lot of popularity, positive popularity from

the, from the population itself.

Just, economically they're doing a lot better.

So I think this is the best example of where you see a pre-Bitcoin country

and a post-Bitcoin country and how much of a change there's actually been

economically but also socially and, and just, yeah, just in, it just...

very positively within the country and how many changes it's, it's made.

And they're getting a lot of support.

I think there's...

we went from Bitcoin Miami, and there's just people who, who wanna

move to El Salvador, they wanna, you know, start investing in El Salvador.

Like it's, it's just opened up like a million new opportunities.

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.