Artwork for podcast Orange Hatter
Mel: "Two things in my life that I could see straight down the line... selling online...and Bitcoin." - part 2
Episode 5323rd August 2023 • Orange Hatter • Tali Lindberg
00:00:00 00:15:44

Share Episode

Shownotes

The Perceptions of Bitcoin:

  • The cyclical nature of Bitcoin's value and understanding its parabolic patterns.
  • Comparing Bitcoin's growth curve to major corporations like Microsoft and Amazon.

Women in Bitcoin:

  • The notable gender disparity in the Bitcoin and finance sectors.

The Value of Experience:

  • Highlighting the importance of "having skin in the game".
  • Drawing parallels between learning antiques trading and navigating the Bitcoin landscape.

The Future of Bitcoin:

  • Addressing Bitcoin's scarcity and its implications.
  • Speculations on the next big things in the Bitcoin world, including Bitcoin mining and the Lightning Network.
  • Ongoing efforts to make Bitcoin more user-friendly and accessible.
  • Overcoming the intimidation of the technology behind Bitcoin.

Educating the Next Generation:

  • The challenges faced by parents in teaching their young adult children about Bitcoin.

Mel's Info:

Telegram: @Mel

Twitter: @girls_bitcoin

Email: Mel@unconfiscatable.com

https://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.

Transcripts

Tali:

Hi everyone.

Tali:

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

Tali:

Today you're listening to part two of my conversation with Mel.

... Mel:

in my entire life that I've ever felt like that.

... Mel:

20, 25 years, straight down the line.

Tali:

Yeah.

Tali:

Let's, let's draw some parallels.

Tali:

So you obviously love vintage, and you mentioned that it's because

Tali:

there's a, there's a bigger margin.

Tali:

But there are properties of vintage items that actually draw

Tali:

a lot of parallels to Bitcoin.

Tali:

Can you expand a little bit more on those things?

Mel:

It's so hard to explain, but yes, they're absolutely connected.

Mel:

I think maybe the best way to explain it is, have you heard

Mel:

of the Bitcoin trading cards?

Tali:

I have, yeah.

Mel:

Okay.

Mel:

Well, I'm obsessed with them.

Mel:

I am a collector of them.

Mel:

In fact, I opened in Nashville, I opened Bitcoin Magazine's box of

Mel:

cards for them and videoed each one.

Mel:

You know, and like the big reveal.

Mel:

And what I am learning is there is a rabid collector base of Bitcoiners.

Mel:

They're collecting Bitcoin stuff, whether it's Bitcoin magazine, whether

Mel:

it's stickers, hardware, wallets.

Mel:

Now the trading cards, I mean, I, I've gotta go ahead and tell you this.

Mel:

I sold, I, I won a very rare card like they were doing

Mel:

when they first got started.

Mel:

You know, we would post things and then we'd get entered into

Mel:

Raffles to win free cards.

Mel:

And I won a very, very rare card, sold it for $3,000.

Mel:

That's a lot of Bitcoin.

Mel:

I was really excited and like I said, these guys are just, they are

Mel:

collecting, they're serious collectors.

Mel:

And Bitcoin is something you collect.

Mel:

It kind of is.

Mel:

It's got, I'm not sure how to explain it.

Mel:

Maybe you could explain it better than me.

Mel:

It's almost like I, I don't know.

Mel:

It's hard to explain, but there's a, there's a correlation there.

Mel:

I've been hoping...

Mel:

so since like 2017, I've been talking to my vendors about it.

Mel:

You know, they need to accept Bitcoin, the prices that we're paying now

Mel:

to actually do transactions with Visa and MasterCard are absurd.

Mel:

The fees for a small business on this are, they're almost unmanageable.

Mel:

We, we push people, like, before the show, bring cash.

Mel:

You know, you're gonna make, you're gonna have a better,

Mel:

you're gonna get a better deal,

Mel:

bring cash.

Mel:

And that works, and it helps.

Mel:

Because the credit card fees are absurd and you don't wanna take a check anymore.

Mel:

It's just, you know, it's a bad idea.

Mel:

Especially in our industry, people have been paying by check for so long,

Mel:

because you go on a Friday to a show and you buy a bunch of stuff, and you

Mel:

don't want that check to clear until at least Monday or Tuesday when maybe

Mel:

you've sold a few things already.

Mel:

So in our industry, we've used checks probably longer than

Mel:

most, but they're about gone.

Mel:

I don't take 'em anymore for payment.

Mel:

Most of the vendors don't either.

Mel:

So I would love to see them.

Mel:

I actually, for the past two years, I have a full season dealer deal for

Mel:

my vendors that have been with me forever and that they do every single

Mel:

show, I cut them a really good deal to sign up for the entire season.

Mel:

The last two years I've also given them an extra bonus if they pay in Bitcoin.

Mel:

I've had six of them do it.

Mel:

Which isn't bad.

Mel:

I hoped it would make them learn more.

Mel:

They just went to Coinbase, bought it and sent it to me.

Mel:

I appreciated it, I mean...

Mel:

but that's the point, it was like, you guys...

Mel:

now I will say, one vendor called me two years ago, and she said,

Mel:

Melissa, I want you to help me with...

Mel:

I wanna buy some Bitcoin.

Mel:

She's 87.

Mel:

Okay.

Mel:

I said, okay.

Mel:

She says, I'll take you out to lunch and you're gonna show

Mel:

me how to buy some Bitcoin.

Mel:

I said, okay.

Mel:

She's the one vendor that still sends me a check, and I let her do it because

Mel:

I've known her for so long, but she's my one vendor that owns Bitcoin.

Mel:

How crazy is that?

Mel:

My one vendor who still pays my check, she's 87 years old, but she's got

Mel:

a thousand bucks worth of Bitcoin.

Tali:

I think that is such a wonderful story.

Mel:

It really is.

Mel:

It's like, I wish I, I could somehow convey this to the rest of my vendors.

Mel:

So many of them are under 40.

Mel:

You know, it, it's 75% of them are under 40 and...

Mel:

not interested.

Mel:

So weird.

Tali:

That is weird because you would imagine that if they're

Tali:

dealing with antiques, then they see the value in limited supply

Tali:

as as a primary value driver.

Mel:

See, everyone still thinks this is not real.

Mel:

When we started, when the price started to go crazy, people started to pay attention.

Mel:

Then when we crashed back down, everyone's like, oh, this isn't real.

Mel:

And it's like, no, this is a parabola.

Mel:

So a parabola.

Mel:

So the one thing I did learn from tone.

Mel:

I can read charts, I can read charts all day long, and Bitcoin is a parabola.

Mel:

And a parabola will retrace 85%, 85% of the time.

Mel:

So as long as you know that you'll be good and be ready to buy that dip.

Mel:

But how do you tell this to people?

Mel:

You know, how do you explain it when you have to go back to 2017 and, and

Mel:

almost explain to people how you learned and not like I have a friend whose son

Mel:

is working for Caterpillar, and I know Caterpillar's doing a lot of mining

Mel:

equipment, Bitcoin mining equipment.

Mel:

And I told her that and she said, okay, that's interesting.

Mel:

And she was like the first person that didn't seem like absolutely horrified.

Mel:

Ooh.

Mel:

You know?

Mel:

She's like, well that's very interesting.

Mel:

I'm like, okay.

Mel:

This is a very interesting conversation with a woman who

Mel:

is poo-pooing it immediately.

Mel:

You know?

Mel:

Maybe that...

Mel:

I know women are not in finance.

Mel:

Like, it's the same thing.

Mel:

10%, 90% are men.

Mel:

Same thing with Bitcoin.

Mel:

And so that might explain why some of them don't want, or, or, or just, I don't know.

Mel:

I don't know.

Tali:

I mean, it's such a, it's such a foreign concept.

Tali:

I really, really struggled.

Tali:

When my husband tried to get me to investigate Bitcoin, not even just to

Tali:

understand it, the desire to investigate for me was almost zero because I'm trying

Tali:

to juggle so many other balls in the air trying not to let one of them drop.

Tali:

But even today when we talk about Bitcoin with our family and friends, even if they

Tali:

politely listen to what we have to say, less blunt than what I did to my husband.

Tali:

Um, they.

Tali:

They nod and they say, I see.

Tali:

And then they don't do anything to follow up.

Tali:

That's the polite ones.

Tali:

The, the less polite ones would literally say, you know, you

Tali:

guys sound like you're in a cult.

Tali:

So for you...

Tali:

go back to, to the beginning, because we're trying to reach women

Tali:

who are currently where you were, emotionally, five years ago or so.

Tali:

What was it like pursuing this with no support from your

Tali:

immediate friends and family?

Mel:

Well, I'll say my husband was...

Mel:

you know, listen, this man has been supportive of everything that I've

Mel:

done, and he started to learn about it.

Mel:

And to this day he also...

Mel:

you know, I, I asked him about a month ago, said, I don't know why

Mel:

I was distressed or whatever else.

Mel:

I said, what if I'm wrong?

Mel:

What if I'm wrong about Bitcoin?

Mel:

And he said, you're not wrong.

Mel:

And I went, okay, you're right.

Mel:

I'm not.

Mel:

And I picked myself back up and kept going.

Mel:

So he knows more than he's ever, you know, expressing.

Mel:

But he has done some research himself and I, I'm so impressed by that.

Mel:

You know, it's a big deal.

Tali:

Yeah.

Tali:

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

Mel:

Buy some.

Mel:

Just buy some.

Mel:

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

Mel:

Just wait.

Tali:

What if the price goes down?

Mel:

What if it does?

Mel:

Okay.

Mel:

Anyone who has an investment portfolio isn't looking at

Mel:

their returns next year, right?

Mel:

Everyone is thinking that is happening way down the line.

Mel:

So they're good with that loss and that, you know, potential gains and

Mel:

losses in short term, but nobody seems to be okay with that with Bitcoin.

Mel:

Lay the chart of Microsoft over Bitcoin's chart.

Mel:

Lay the chart of Amazon over Bitcoin's chart.

Mel:

You'll see the adoption curve is almost the same.

Mel:

They're trading.

Mel:

For their first, what is it?

Mel:

How many years is this now?

Mel:

12 or 13 years.

Mel:

They're, the trading looks the same.

Mel:

The charts look a lot alike.

Mel:

And it's interesting because they think about it, Amazon didn't

Mel:

know where they were gonna go.

Mel:

They were a bookseller, like when they came out, they were selling,

Mel:

you could resell books there.

Mel:

And that evolved into something else.

Mel:

Evolved into something bigger.

Mel:

And the same thing with Microsoft.

Mel:

You know, Microsoft started, they were huge to begin with, but you know,

Mel:

absolutely evolved and kept going, and no one is looking at the price of

Mel:

Microsoft and Amazon and expecting it to double and double again and double

Mel:

again in a matter of that amount of time.

Mel:

So for example, the woman I told you about, the 87 year old woman

Mel:

who has a thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin, she knows that she gets that.

Mel:

Daughter, however, who sets up a cross from her, came over to me at the show a

Mel:

couple weeks ago and said, I lost big.

Mel:

I lost big.

Mel:

I go, why would you sell?

Mel:

Why would you?

Mel:

I go, you don't, you don't lose unless you sell.

Mel:

I go, why would you do that?

Mel:

I didn't sell, but I lost big.

Mel:

I go, you didn't lose anything.

Mel:

If you still have it, you'll be fine.

Mel:

Why don't you look at it just like you would in your investment portfolio?

Mel:

So that's part of it.

Mel:

You know, people that, that volatility argument is kind of ridiculous.

Mel:

If you look at other things that were new technology and where they began, Bitcoin's

Mel:

price is, it's almost irrelevant.

Mel:

But I would get it now.

Mel:

I would rather get more Bitcoin now than I would next year, because

Mel:

my gut feeling is by next year...

Mel:

I'm not, I don't wanna make price predictions, but I'm gonna bet you

Mel:

we'll be double next year by this time, and, and that's just gonna keep going.

Mel:

There's a scarcity issue here that no one's talking about either.

Mel:

There's gonna come a time there isn't going to be enough Bitcoin for everybody.

Mel:

There isn't gonna be enough, there isn't gonna be enough Bitcoin that if you wanna

Mel:

just go on Cash App and buy a hundred bucks worth, that might not be easy to do.

Mel:

There's only so much of it, and that's different than Apple stock.

Mel:

I mean, it seems like there is no end in how much stock you can buy in any kind

Mel:

of, you know, in any of the equities.

Mel:

You can buy as much as you want.

Mel:

Bitcoin's different and people don't know that yet.

Mel:

Like what's gonna happen when they all go, wait, what?

Mel:

There's only how many?

Mel:

And so, but that's what it's gonna take.

Mel:

It's gonna take a giant price explosion.

Mel:

And if you wanna get in and you wanna learn, there's nothing better

Mel:

than having skin in the game.

Mel:

When I first started learning about buying and selling antiques, I would

Mel:

make a pile of things that I liked and I thought were interesting, and

Mel:

I would make an offer on everything.

Mel:

I would come home and I would research.

Mel:

And I paid to do that research, and I was also hoping that I

Mel:

would have a treasure in there.

Mel:

You know?

Mel:

And, and I got better and better and better at that.

Mel:

You know, as time went on, I learned more and more and more.

Mel:

People who are passionate about collecting know their trade.

Mel:

They know what they collect.

Mel:

So like the Bitcoin trading cards, those guys, there's a lot of guys

Mel:

in there that come from traditional card collecting backgrounds.

Mel:

And they know everything about how a card would be centered.

Mel:

What is a grade of a card like this, or, you know, just all kinds of stuff.

Mel:

But when I first started, I absorbed all that from anyone who would tell me.

Mel:

So, you know, if I was selling something and someone collected

Mel:

it, I would ask questions.

Mel:

Well, what about this?

Mel:

Or what about that?

Mel:

Or what, what else do you guys look for?

Mel:

And I just absorbed all that.

Mel:

And I'm doing the same thing with Bitcoin.

Mel:

I look to the people who I believe know more, way more than I do,

Mel:

and I listen and I pay attention.

Mel:

And having skin in the game and then finding the right people to listen to,

Mel:

if that doesn't get you interested, I mean, I don't know what does.

Mel:

That's what did it for me.

Mel:

It was that $4,700 that was sitting in there after two years,

Mel:

and me forgetting about it, that made me go, what in the world?

Mel:

So, you know, it's real, it's real.

Mel:

I can't debunk it.

Mel:

And it's been what, seven...

Mel:

how many years?

Mel:

Six years?

Mel:

How long has it been since...

Mel:

6 years, since 2017.

Mel:

And it has been a nonstop learning journey.

Mel:

I will listen and listen and listen, and listen and listen.

Mel:

And I weed out what I don't think is good.

Mel:

And then I look, zero in on the things that I think are interesting.

Mel:

And right now, like to me, Bitcoin mining is interesting, Lightning

Mel:

Network's very interesting, and I'm, I'm hoping to see some big things

Mel:

from both of those spaces this year, you know, in the next year or two.

Mel:

I think we're gonna see a lot.

Tali:

Yeah, for sure.

Tali:

The continual education component of Bitcoin is really important.

Tali:

And the honest truth is there is so much excitement in this space, because it's

Tali:

so new, and there's so much talent coming into this space, helping to develop

Tali:

it, to make it more user friendly all the time, more accessible to people...

Tali:

uh, regular non-technical folks, like you and me.

Mel:

Not technical, but I can use an app.

Mel:

I can learn how to, you know, use the Lightning Network.

Mel:

It's not always easy.

Mel:

Hard wallets are scary, but I'm learning everything I can.

Mel:

And it just takes time and patience and to find the right people to teach you.

Tali:

Yeah, for sure.

Tali:

And also, can you address just a little bit from the point of view of

Tali:

a mom with young adult children in terms of prepping them for the future?

Mel:

That's a tough one.

Mel:

What's tough about it is we as parents, you know, no one

Mel:

taught me anything about money.

Mel:

No one said anything to me about money.

Mel:

No one ever told me how to balance a checkbook.

Mel:

I've never used a checkbook ledger to balance anything.

Mel:

I never learned a thing, so it was just out of my wheelhouse.

Mel:

Like, I just didn't even think about it.

Mel:

And because of that, I didn't teach my children what I should have

Mel:

when they were younger, but now I'm giving them Bitcoin for Christmas.

Mel:

I am doing things in the hopes that they're gonna learn something and

Mel:

stop thinking I'm crazy Bitcoin mom.

Mel:

So I'm having a conversation with my daughter the other day who is saving for a

Mel:

house and she's going to get married soon.

Mel:

And I said to her, Jordan.

Mel:

Bitcoin.

Mel:

You need Bitcoin.

Mel:

She goes, well, what am I supposed to do with that mom?

Mel:

What am I supposed to do with that?

Mel:

I have the Bitcoin that you told me to buy.

Mel:

I haven't done anything with it.

Mel:

I go, if you put your money into Bitcoin right now, buy in the next two years.

Mel:

And she's all, so are you saying that I would take it out then and sell it?

Mel:

I go, yeah, yeah, I would.

Mel:

You could do that.

Mel:

It's possible.

Mel:

Get some money in there.

Mel:

I, I think that was like the first time in her mind...

Mel:

clicked...

Mel:

something clicked in there.

Mel:

Because of the house buying.

Mel:

You know, we know this is an interesting new housing market.

Mel:

They need as much money as they can.

Mel:

And the way I see it...

Mel:

oh, and this is the child who knows I'm crazy Bitcoin mom,

Mel:

knows I don't like shit coins.

Mel:

And the first thing she does is buy Dogecoin.

Mel:

And why?

Mel:

Because Elon Musk told her to.

Mel:

I was so annoyed.

Mel:

I go, I cannot believe you didn't even talk to me first.

Mel:

I'm hoping that because she needs this, and she needs to buy a

Mel:

house, that maybe this will be the thing that helps what's next.

Tali:

Yeah.

Tali:

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

Mel:

Oh, okay.

Mel:

Interesting.

... Tali:

about the value of Bitcoin.

... Tali:

Scott and I talk about it all day long.

Mel:

Is that why?

Mel:

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

Tali:

Well, the thing is that we didn't get to them when they were younger.

Tali:

When they were younger, we taught them the traditional way, which is study

Tali:

hard, go to college, you know, get a good job or start a business, and

Tali:

your wealth will be created yourself.

Tali:

At the time when we were teaching the kids financial literacy,

Tali:

we were not questioning the monetary system as it is today...

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.

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube