Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.
This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can
around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean
for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so
much for listening. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten podcast.
Joining me today is Ania from BitVocation. Do you want to get out of your daily nine to five
fiat grind job that you've managed to paint yourself into a corner over the last 10 to 15
years however long it's been if so listen up bit vocation is the place for you to there's the group
on telegram it is very lively all of the jobs that are being offered to bitkiners out there are being
aggregated and followed and posted in that telegram group and annia is here to tell us all about why
she founded bit vocation and how she's helped people find their jobs and no it's not just software
developers it's all kinds of roles from marketing all the way up to cfo's there are people out there
that need your skill set you've just got to start putting yourself in front of them and joining the
telegram group that we're going to talk about here with anya is one way to do that getting to a
conference is the next best thing we were just in dublin excellent event put on by at la par on
Twitter and Bitcoin with Din, that's Bitcoin with Dinny, they both have their own Bitcoin shows.
Great community over there, really enjoyed it, meeting the Chads and Chadettes in Ireland. 500
odd people showed up for a one-day event full of talks. It was great to meet up with old Bitcoiners,
old friends as well, and make new ones. And that's what it's all about. If you're not getting to your
local events, you should be. That's the first place to start. In fact, this weekend in London
at the Cypher Monk House.
There's going to be an event there.
You can go and find out those details.
I'll put them in the show notes as well.
It's a two-day event in London.
It's called cyphermonkhouse.com forward slash bloom dash fest.
That's Cypher, C-Y-P-H-E-R-M-U-N-K house.
And there's going to be talks, workshops, all kinds of stuff.
This is just education, grassroots education initiatives.
You can find these events on Orange Pill App.
Download that.
I've been geo-zapping Orange Pill App.
I love it.
I geo-zapped all the London Bitcoiners.
There's 335 Bitcoin people on that app listed as in London.
And I just zapped them.
One sat each just with the link to this event just to say this is what's going on.
I did the same for Ireland.
but you can just hit the events tab on the orange pill app and find out what's coming up in your
local area and get down there we've got btc prague coming up in june and if you're not going to fomo
into that you got riga in august or you've got helsinki the weekend after as well these links
are in the show notes and if you've never been to a bitcoin conference make 2025 the year that you go
And I know, yes, you're going to say, I can't afford it.
I want to stack sats instead.
I understand.
But you have to understand, as an Austrian economist now,
the opportunity cost that you incur every time you do not go to a Bitcoin meetup or a conference.
Don't trust me.
Verify.
Ask other people that have been to these events how it's changed their lives.
what have they done since and you'll find that many of them have made either friends for life
or have started new projects with the people they've met anyway stack your bitcoin relay across
europe r-e-l-a-i dot c-h forward slash bitten you can stack up to a thousand swiss or equivalent per
day the wallet is built right into the app there it's your own wallet it's self-custodial it's
lightning enabled and they have the private service so you can get straight on the phone
to someone if you need to take your Bitcoin, your, excuse me, your business onto a Bitcoin standard,
or if you've got a large amount that you need to buy. So that's Relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H
forward slash Bitten. And yes, the team will be at BTC Prague. In the US, you have Swan Bitcoin.
Offer all the same services. That's swanbitcoin.com forward slash Bitten. Take self-custody of your
coins, please. Once you have started stacking, it's very important that you get a hardware wallet.
Max Hillebrand was at the Island event.
I think he's going to be at Cypher Monk House this weekend,
and he will be at Prague as well.
He has an array of different hardware wallets he brings along.
He's got a service he's offering.
Very knowledgeable Bitcoiner.
Bitbox O2 is the place for you to go.
The link is in the show notes,
and you use the code BITTON to get a 5% discount.
Take control of your coins.
Do not leave them on the exchange.
if you left them on the exchange, they are open to being hacked.
If you lose them, you don't get them back.
So you've lost your fiat in the first place to exchange
and then you've lost your Bitcoin because you left it on the exchange.
Please take this seriously.
Bitbox O2.
Get over to paywithflash.com to find out what they are building
to help you accept Bitcoin for your goods and services.
They're making it so easy.
It's plug and play.
And then check out plebeian.market.
That's P-L-E-B-I-A-N.market to find out if you can list your goods and services on there as well.
We're building out this parallel economy.
I've run out of music.
I'm going to stop talking.
I hope you enjoy this one with Anya.
Okay, we are recording, Anya.
Great to see you.
You too.
Nice to see you again.
Yeah, we met in Bulgaria.
Lauren, you remember now that you've seen Anya's face.
uh yeah big shout out to plumber and all of the the bulgaria bitcoiners that was uh a great event
and i mean is that where you're from or that's where you live or i'm i am german uh i'm not
bulgarian but i've had this as my base for the last four years um i just became an accidental
digital nomad four years ago and uh yeah i've been traveling a lot but this was my home base
that i always come back to in between yeah all right well we'll get into all of that digital
nomads uh all of the the bitcoiners listening they want to hear about how they can exit the
fiat system and live more of a free life and certainly if they're not married and don't have
kids then they can they can be very free uh obviously for people like myself as i look at
one of my four kids sitting next to me uh we did do it we did it for like two and a half three years
full-on nomad digital kind of like you can do it family yeah yeah i wrote a book about them
so it is possible uh so there are no excuses so for anybody listening uh yeah stay tuned because
we're going to get into all of that kind of stuff but Lauren's going to fire away
with the first question okay why did he make bit vocation oh okay um I didn't set out to
make Bitvocation. I think it found me. I just wanted to find a way to be of service to the
Bitcoin community because I have been a Bitcoiner for a long time, actually almost 10 years,
I realized. 2015 was when I first got into it. And I made a little detour through crypto and
web3 I was working in this industry and then yeah in 2023 two years ago I decided I'm a bitcoiner
I want to hang out with the bitcoin community and be of service to them and not have a day job in
crypto and be a bitcoiner in my private life so I went to the conference in Prague with the intention
to figure out how to be of service to the Bitcoin community.
And yeah, I met many people there who wanted to work in the industry
and who were like, oh, tell me how you work in the industry,
wider crypto industry, tell me how I can do this too.
And so I realized, ah, this is how I can be of service.
This is what people want.
And I remember I also went to the booth of Bitcoiner Jobs
because they were the main, and still are, I think, the main job board.
and I asked them, are you just a job board
or do you also coach people, educate people
or provide just more tools and resources?
They were like, no, we are mainly a job board.
So I was like, then I'm going to do that.
So that's how this started.
But I didn't have the name yet.
The name BitVocation came a few months later
from ChatGPT, I think.
Yeah, I remember Nathan at BitcoinerJobs.
He had the booth there.
yeah big shout out to him because yeah they've done great work like yeah he managed to extricate
himself from his fiat day-to-day life which was in recruitment so it was a perfect fit for him
because well he had the expertise and he loves bitcoin and that's just exactly what you've gone
and done yeah um yeah not um same sort of path but uh different in terms of we are not a great
recruitment agency and I don't have a background in recruitment I have a background in efficiency
as a German operations manager so I just often see things that are missing or could
work faster or better or could be easier for people and yeah so that's what I what I'm trying
to do with Bitvocation just to make job search in Bitcoin easier for Bitcoiners and having one
job board like bitcoiner jobs is fantastic um but there are many companies who are not advertising
there so um we want to capture all of them so this is how the telegram feed also came about
because we first we actually scraped only bitcoiner jobs just to make it because i was like okay i can
check on bitcoiner jobs every day um to find a job but wouldn't it be much easier if the jobs
came to me it's just i want to have them delivered to my phone so that's how this started and then
later um when we realized that not every company actually advertises there we also started scraping
all the careers pages of every single well maybe not every single one but we are capturing really
a lot of bitcoin companies and scrape them directly so we have the full picture and not
only Bitcoin jobs. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to find a Bitcoin job
or be aware of what Bitcoin jobs there are you can follow Andy company and that scraping all of that information Do you also keep an eye on their Twitter feeds Because I know a lot of Bitcoin companies they just try and do it themselves They just tweet and put out like the different roles
that they're hiring for.
Not really, because when they tweet,
they tweet a link to their website, to their careers.
So that's where it is.
Capture that, yeah.
Right.
Okay, perfect.
So yeah, you've captured the whole thing then.
Yeah, yeah.
And the nice thing is now that we have all of this data,
data we can also actually produce job data reports which also nobody had before so that's
also really interesting yeah i've seen that as well and so you write that in kind of article form
yeah so we have two um we started doing this less than a year ago i think in september last year we
did uh we started monthly job reports on our sub stack and uh but yeah 2024 was the first
full year that we've been scraping data so we also have we also made like a proper annual
fancy job report and a pdf and everything yeah so that's what we're going to do every year from now
on yeah so how does the business make money is there a way that people pay subscription fee or
what yeah we are still figuring this out so i'm very transparent like you can see our complete
income on geyser fund yeah so which was around a thousand dollars for the whole year for the whole
team oh man right okay so so we are um we are a passion project really coming from a place of
service um and we are yeah we have to figure out we have ideas um and right now with with ai and
everything finally we can really accelerate and implement them but this took a while to
figure out our place and who we serve because I've been very clear from the beginning that we
serve job seekers first and foremost because recruitment agencies serve employers and the
so they are the ones that pay them and the job seekers are actually the product that's being sold
and I'm sure many job seekers have also often felt like a product or at least not
like a valued customer so that's why our business model is really different the business model that
we're still figuring out but I'm very clear that our target group is the job seekers this is the
group that I want to make a difference to and that I want to make life easier for of course at the
same time we can also help employers by building like we are building really a talent pool now of
bitcoin professionals we have the pow lab the proof of work lab which is our inner circle
community for because most of the things we offer are for free but for the people who do want a
little more guidance whether it's linked in or well there's all sorts of things that are related
to job search they can pay us a few sats it's super cheap it's all on geyser fund
and it's like a it's like a membership basically but by building this and
and actually hanging out with them because it's a telegram group it's a private telegram group
we actually get to know them so when startups come to us and say hey do you know a good
UX designer or customer support person, I can say, yeah, I have someone in our community.
So that's what we're building. And so I don't want to build a recruitment agency because I
don't have a background in that. Plus, I don't want to do headhunting everything. And also,
my hunch is that I have no evidence for that. But my hunch is that you cannot just copy paste
this fiat recruitment model onto the bitcoin world bitcoin just works differently so i'm trying to do
something different and it's an experiment we will see if it works out and if we never make money
then it doesn't work out yeah but it's worth trying so but that's why um like with a normal
recruitment agency everybody can just submit their cv or join a database with us you have to pay a
few sets because we also need a filter because we really want only Bitcoiners. We don't want
everybody. We want to offer quality, a quality talent pool to potential startups who contact us
and also to the community members. We want to ensure that they get to hang out only with other
Bitcoiners and not with just anybody. So yeah, we're trying something different.
and yeah this year we we want to monetize
but we are still figuring out how to best do that because i don't want to be a
like i said just now we are not doing head hunting services so we we would never charge
like five digit fees success fees uh yeah the usual like the way it would generally work is if
somebody hired somebody from your say say they come to you and said we need x y and z and you
send across five people and they hire one of them then like in the fiat world you would charge them
like 20 to 25 percent of their first year's wage or something and that's how you make your money
but you don't want to do that um we still want to charge some kind of fee but something that works
for startups in bitcoin yeah um so it could just be like a referral fee because we also do a lot
less work we don't do headhunt i mean um recruiters headhunters they do a lot of work
that is probably worth getting paid i've been on the inside there i know how it works i could lift
the lid on a few things i'll share them with you in a minute but okay well i i cannot judge this
because I have no knowledge about this.
All I know is that 95% of companies in Bitcoin
are startups who cannot afford these high fees.
And I want to be of service to them
and find something that works for them.
And so that's why maybe it could just be a flat fee
of like a referral fee or something if we find them.
Because also I want to encourage also our people
in the power lab, if I see something,
I will go apply for this or did you see this job offer whatever so I don't want to be like
you know I will refer you so that I get the money but no I just want to be free and help
both parties to connect and find each other and ideally make a few sats in the process yes
cool okay well any further questions Lauren
uh hi you're not looking for your beard so it's not so relevant yeah i don't think so okay all
right thank you for your question well thank you for answering them thank you nice to see you again
yeah nice to see you too all right bye-bye oh so yeah for um just to to come back on what i just
said I spent only six months that's uh that's as much as I could handle inside a uh a recruitment
company in Singapore after I left the uh the foreign exchange I'd managed to extricate myself
from the foreign exchange markets and uh my idea was because a friend of mine was setting up his
Singapore arm of his recruitment company which had been very successful in in the UK and and uh
in holland and uh yeah it just that is it it wasn't for me and it wasn't at the right time
uh but what what happens is generally especially at the bigger places let's i mean this wasn't
happening in in the shop we were at because we were building it from the ground up but say you've
got a haze or a robert walters or i think they're the two i can think of uh off the top of my head
that are the biggest, Alexander Mann used to be around as well.
Once you've got that database, because this is all it was about,
like the, you're right, the job seeker is the product.
That's it.
And all you're trying to do at the very beginning of these businesses
is just get as many names on the database as possible.
As many names of managers, of hiring managers,
as many names as references in different areas of different businesses, as many names of candidates.
And when the job offer comes in, excuse me, not the job offer, the spec comes in.
Nowadays, what happens at least like the guy is just sitting there.
He sees the job spec. He looks for a few keywords.
He goes into his database, puts the keywords in the database and up come 100 CVs with those keywords in it.
Then he'll have a quick look through what are the top 10 looking ones and then send them over to the hiring manager within an hour because it's all about speed.
There's no vetting done at all.
And then they know as well that they've probably put this spec out to at least two other agents that are doing exactly the same thing.
So the hiring manager turns up and now got 30 CVs on his desk within two hours.
no one's been vetted no one's been like even called uh and he's got to sift through them
and then start that process it's so fear it is so fear and then it's the role of the uh of the guy
the agent excuse me if he if they say yeah we want to interview this person they got to call
that guy up or woman and say uh this company's interested in headhunting you it's not i just
blatantly sent out your cv because it is half a match to this spec they swept they switch the
story to they want you and they want you to come in to have a discussion to see and so you you
inflate the ego of that person and then before you know it it's like they're scratching their
head am i happy here am i not what would this mean an extra 10 or 15 000 pounds or euros or dollars
a year oh that would sound very very interesting and then perhaps we could get the slightly bigger
house or the nicer car and it just starts this it's so disgusting yeah and um and yeah so i'm
not super familiar with this world but yet it's not something that i would want to uh create i
have found tons of people jobs before i ever got into this just within my friends and group and
community because I really really knew the job seeker very well let's say it was a friend and
then if I would meet someone who was saying oh we're hiring we're looking for this or that person
I would go I have the perfect person because I knew them really really well so and that's why
this is what I trying to recreate that why I we have the power lab and we have a telegram group where we hang out together because I need to be in touch with people Of course everybody has a choice to engage in the group or not
But the more people engage and share a little bit and the more I get to know them,
the better I can help them and remember them when I do come across opportunities for them.
And what are the success stories you've got from starting BitVocation?
have you got any there that you can share with us obviously you don't need to share names of
companies or even uh individuals whatever you've whatever you've seen i think a lot because most of
what we do is for free um it's only when people actually write to us um uh that we have helped
them and that has happened like just recently someone wrote to me and said i have used your
tips and your tools to find a job at company x and yeah that really that makes my day even though
i didn't make any money from that but it just shows that the the tools that we are putting out
there are working and actually helping people um and um with the pow lab it's still a very small
group and the the primary aim is not to of course ideally it is that we find them a job but we are
not there yet we are not known yet by all the employers or whatever that's why a big part is
networking education linked how to be findable the purpose of the pow lab is how to be how to
become findable because I want people to flip the script basically to go from chasing jobs and
sending out applications all day long to setting yourself up to become findable what has just ask
a different question what has to happen so the jobs can find me rather than me having to find
the jobs so when you when you flip those questions that's where the magic happens and this is how you
then can enable yourself to be found or find jobs without us having to facilitate recruitment
so the success of the power lab is not um i'm not measuring it especially right now
by whether we have placed someone somewhere yeah well nothing changes if nothing changes right
people have to be willing to to listen to the uh i love it power lab proof of work lab uh to
yeah just just the advice and and listen to the well what's worked for people in the past i mean
it makes no sense just to keep on just to sit there and wait for the phone to ring uh and i would say
i'm not the only person that says this but getting to a conference or getting to a meetup
is the best way to start that journey like it's you found the exact same thing at btc prague
exactly and even like with us i mean i'm here now because we met at a conference you know like
everything happens through conversation um and through in-person meetups and yes we can also
all connect online but there's nothing more valuable than actually meeting in real life
and connecting there yeah so that's yeah it's about networking building your human bitcoin
network is about building proof of work uh everybody knows that but what very few people
um remember is to show that proof of work because if it's great if you have proof of work but if
nobody knows about it and if nobody can see it especially on linkedin i know many bitcoiners
LinkedIn and it's peak fiat and it's true but the truth is that recruiters hang out there and it's
still the number one platform where they look for people even for Bitcoin companies so yeah if you're
looking for a job I mean you can reject LinkedIn but if you're looking for a job your chances are
much higher if you utilize it and at least passively exist there and have your profile up
They have it full of the keyword Bitcoin.
Because if a recruiter searches on LinkedIn and finds two equally skilled candidates,
if one of them has the keyword Bitcoin in it, guess who they're going to call?
And that's another point.
That's another point.
That's what recruiters do.
It's called a Boolean search, if I'm not mistaken.
They'll do a Boolean search on LinkedIn, and they'll have three or four critical keywords,
Bitcoin obviously being one of them, and then the role that they're looking for.
and if you don't you know if you if you not polished it up
then you're never going to be found you're just not and yes you could go to you you might meet in
person by chance at a conference that is a very high uh possibility but if you don't have the time
the means the money to get to these conferences and you're sitting there with your your fiatized
linkedin and if you're not posting right you i'd imagine you've got to be at least semi-active and
know this yes it's i hate it i do hate it uh thankfully i don't have to uh interact there
but if people can use it it is a tool and if you are trying to find something um
this one's it this one's tricky though because if you're on linkedin and you're posting about
bitcoin and you don't want to be the bitcoin the bitcoin guy or girl in your office in your day-to-day
have you found ways around that is there things um perhaps just reposting things that doesn't look
too obvious that's got the keywords in or i'm not sure if it's still that bad now to to be known as
a bitcoiner even until last year i can imagine but just this year everything has been so much more
legitimized but also i think the most important thing is um to be connected because the larger
your network on linkedin is the more you will come up in searches so that is the passive thing again
so yeah even if you don't have the keyword uh bitcoin in there you might still come up for the
right job it's much more helpful if you do have it but yeah if there are concerns that you can't
put it there i understand that um but also i think you don't even need to post that much as long as
you have a large network you just need to make sure you have the right people in your network
like what i did two years ago when i decided for bitcoin i unfollowed everybody who's not
talking about bitcoin the nice thing i just want to say there are really a lot of bitcoiners on
linkedin so it's not as bad as you imagine you can make it your twitter or whatever so there are
all the right people you can cure your feet exactly so you um you are in charge of your
experience on linkedin like everything and um yeah i unfollowed everybody who's not a bitcoiner
i accepted only until now i accept only connection requests from people who either have it have the
keyword Bitcoin right there in the first 40 characters, because that is what shows when
you receive a connection request.
Or if they send a message and say, hey, I'm a Bitcoiner, whatever.
That's what I accept.
And everybody else I don't accept.
I don't follow anybody who's not talking about Bitcoin.
So I have a very, very curated and specialized feed.
So I have a good experience.
OK, well, no, that's that's very good advice.
so the the telegram group i think you almost like 1.4 1.5 000 subscribers to that yeah yeah and uh
i mean that's amazing well done and you're posting in there as the jobs come to you did i just go
straight into the telegram group so it's like live it's yeah so as soon as you know about the
the the job offering it's there yeah yeah it's so we scrape all the time and not like in real time
but every few hours several times a day and and to post school in the feed directly yeah yeah i
noticed you've got the btc prague one in there they're looking for a coo yeah uh that'd be a
great team to join you've got some um yeah like if you're a lawyer and you want to work in bitcoin
the legal department at zappo are looking and engineering there as well who's this one
uh mara are looking for uh in the finance department employment type unknown so you
don't have the exact spec but um you know now that mara are looking for somebody in the financial
division there and also sometimes it's just maybe that the scraper doesn't pick it up because it's
in the wrong space or place so if people just click through on the job title then they can see
the full job description on wherever we scrape it from either on bitcoin or jobs or on on the
mara or zappo page directly yeah and rizzo's looking for help with his bitcoin history stuff
uh there's loads on here yeah and there's there's something there you know a lot of people i think
get kind of bogged down and they want to make the the full switch so i'm sick of my nine to five
I want to do nine to five over there instead of over here without perhaps thinking about, huh, if I could just pick up a side gig like helping Rizzo with research in my spare time, which I love doing anyway, and helping him with some pointers and links and sources and ideas and copywriting or proofing or being the first to read it for a couple of hundred bucks a month.
that that's your first kind of step out exactly and many people i don't know if this is only in
the bitcoin community but i have not experienced this anywhere else before many people are happy
to contribute uh even without pay of course with pay is better value for value but um just to get
your first proof of work um by contributing like like just to be able to get the experience and to
able to say i had my first bitcoin job that is often already considered value for value yeah
and of course the more you can put on your cv or on linkedin or wherever uh the easier it will be
to be found um for your next proper opportunity joining the telegram group is that the the
quickest and easiest way and anybody could do right so how can they do that let's make sure
people can do that yeah it's called a bit vocation feed so you can just type this in telegram
um and it should come up yeah and we also have a nostal bot a bit vocation bot on nostr
so people can also follow there it's the same feed in both uh in both locations okay perfect
all right plus nostr well yeah i'm sure you asked about monetization earlier because i'm thinking
maybe the best way for us to monetize would be mainly through partnerships and sponsorships Because if we are building an audience on Telegram that might maybe hopefully be attractive for startups
or companies who want to reach that audience.
Because it is really a highly curated, it's really Bitcoin only.
Because we really make sure that we,
sometimes a crypto job slips into the feed.
or there is like we had this recently from exodus at the exodus wallet um we include them in the feed
they are a multi-currency or crypto or web3 wallet but they are bitcoiners i have worked for them so
everybody gets paid in bitcoin so i know the company is run by bitcoiners and they are a
fantastic employer and a great um uh first place to get your foot in the door also so that's why i
keep including them yeah but they had a job like for a solana engineer or something recently
you can always tell in the feed because people leave emojis yeah right and if i do spot them i
just delete them but um yeah so we really try to keep it absolutely 100 bitcoin only so that it's
very clean because that's what i realized two years ago was what was missing because there are
other telegram channels with crypto jobs or web3 jobs but there was no 100 bitcoin job
and that's what the community wants of course and bitcoin's a much better niche in fact like
the wider crypto web3 world defy world whatever you want to call it that's not even a niche
anymore that's just a it's a honeypot of scammers and like just it's so noisy and disgusting and
just it's worse than fiat it's like fiat on steroids yeah it's uh no it's not nice and i
just spoke to a ex-colleague from yeah like three years ago or four years ago um when i was working
in web3 and she's also like i don't i only do bitcoin and i can't do the same we all worked
actually for teams i mean i never worked for a company that was a scammer or whatever obviously
there are really good teams out there that that innovate and that want to build good things but
the thing is they all vaporize after one market cycle or and yeah it's just you just keep seeing
proof that this is um yeah bitcoin is the only thing that matters you know it's it's people get
really disillusioned in the crypto space very fast. So yeah, I'm happy I'm back 100% in Bitcoin.
So how did you find it then? You mentioned it's almost 10 years. What was going on in your life
back then to make you kind of glance over at Bitcoin? Yeah, I was living in the Netherlands
and I was thinking of moving back to Germany. So I was in the process of moving countries and
I was like oh do I have to get a job do I am I going to start a new business or
the same business that I had in the Netherlands well so I was like okay let's look at the money
let's take stock of the money how urgent is it that I have an income and yeah so I took really
like um like inventory of all my finances and I realized that everything that I had been taught
as a good german to save money just didn't work anymore and it was stupid to save money in the
bank and not get anything for it and yeah so and luckily i like numbers i like money management
everything so i was like okay i have to learn how to become an investor i was never taught it's not
in the german um mentality we are savers we are not investors so i took i enrolled in a in a course
an investment course but like a traditional one where you learn about trading stocks or investing
in stocks and stuff and yeah i really like that course i learned lots of valuable things but when
it came to actually putting my money in in this for real i just couldn't do it because i i had
also learned so much about how our money system works in this course and also through on youtube
on extra rabbit holes that i was like i cannot i i just can't like i cannot contribute to the
system with my money because when you put your money and you put your energy and you know you
support this with your energy and and then someone in that course asked asked about bitcoin
and the trainer was like don't touch it it's way too volatile and too dangerous and
I thought oh bitcoin I had I've heard this because I had heard about it in 2013 like all of us we
heard it way before we took it seriously and back then I dismissed it but now that I was really in
this mindset of fixing my money situation I was like okay well let's look into this and yeah so I
did look into it and since I was already studying our money system and then I had this contrast of
this new money system um yeah it took me ages I studied for over a year before I finally put my
first money in bitcoin but that's how this happened yeah and and in the end I like when I did put my
first money in bitcoin it was so easy like I could just like energetically I just knew this is the
right thing this is where i will invest my energy from now on this is the new system that i want to
support but i cannot possibly put any money in stock market or oil or all of these i don't know
these fiat things i can i cannot i'm not saying they're bad but me personally i cannot put my
money in there and that's more of a like you can just feel that like yeah yeah had you read about
like the formation of the federal reserve had you gone down that kind of rabbit hole you
maybe uh i because everything happened sort of at the same time um
yeah it was either after i put my first money in bitcoin because you consistently
you keep educating yourself you know so i don't know if it was before what was all around that
time that I learned all of this stuff and yeah I'm very uh I very I'm very open to conspiracy
theories also so I'm learning things that that are the opposite of what I always knew or believed
so whether they are true or not I just um in the end I go with my intuition and what feels good for
me and so in that moment it was bitcoin and I also got kicked out of that course because I
because I put my first money in very early in 2017,
on the 3rd of January, actually.
And I didn't know the significance of 3rd of January.
And that was the best time
because I don't know if you remember that year.
And so within a few weeks, my money just multiplied
and I just couldn't believe it.
So back then it was mainly about the money.
Right now, like many of us, I'm in Bitcoin for other reasons.
But back then, I was trying to fix my money situation.
And so I was posting in this course, like, wow, you have to look into Bitcoin.
I got kicked out, yeah, because the trainer really didn't agree with it.
But I was like, also, because he was saying, it's too volatile, don't touch it.
But I'm like, but as traders, you're teaching people to trade.
you need volatility the more volatility the better for traders you know so yeah i wonder what
that guy is doing now probably still selling the same bullshit course yeah or maybe he's in crypto
probably yeah oh my gosh yeah so what what started changing for you then over those next couple of
years um more you know esoteric stuff that happens to us all like it bar none before you know it
you've changed so much since that first purchase if you're still and if you've just held on to it
for six months your brain is getting rewired every second every every block there's a new
rewiring of your brain and it still happens it's it's really tangible and noticeable and
everybody's gone through the same kind of process do you remember the first couple of things that
you started as soon as you questioned money and financial markets what was kind of the next domino
for you to pull um i started onboarding others this is again like this happens throughout all my
life that these my businesses find me like with bitvocation um when i get excited about something
and then other people see it because i remember i was in thailand in a hammock and i was looking at
my wallet and i was like my eyes must have been something and uh and there was this woman walking
by she said what's happening on your phone you know something really interesting seems to be
happening on your phone i'm like bitcoin you know i just she's like what's bitcoin so i started
telling her and and she bought bitcoin on that beach wow like in that you know and not the same
day because 2017 it was not so easy to buy bitcoin there there were much less um apps and services
but yeah so she became my first um student or i don't know how to call it so i fell into like
onboarding mainly women um back then too because they all think not they all correction many women
think they are not good with money not good with tech and then you have bitcoin which is like a
double web of money and tech um but everybody just needs a teacher that speaks their language
so and and i went through the same thing so i had the right words to to help them and onboard them
so that's that's what i started doing uh back then and um yeah and then later uh like 2017 we all
remember this was like the crypto boom year so i also got into all of these other currencies and
which was really fun i mean i have to say it's fun as long as it goes well and you know how to
not lose your money.
And then, yeah, I started working in the industry
for like Exodus wallet and then other blockchain projects.
And then, yeah, after a few weeks, after a few years,
I came back and concentrated on what matters again.
But I'm very happy to have the exposure to crypto
or to Web3,
because I think I also learned through contrast,
I need to see and experience first what doesn't work,
or maybe it seems to work in the beginning,
and then in the long run, it turns out, no, this makes no sense.
And then just to come back and remember the signal amongst the noise.
Yeah, exactly.
So I remember as well, recently you messaged me before we,
well, after we'd set this up,
and you were talking about the episode I'd done with Ahmad Amous,
where we were talking about his journey,
not into Bitcoin, obviously,
SaferDN being a huge part of his own rabbit hole journey,
but then his profession as well
and moving away from his profession as a GP
and taking his service online to serve others
that he wants to be able to serve
in a much more intimate way
and step away from that system
and try and take people away from pharmaceutical drugs
that he'd been trained to push in the past.
In fact, you weren't the only one that reached out to me.
In fact, what's rather strange,
the people that reached out to me about that episode,
the majority of them were women that were like,
oh my God, I'm so happy you had a madame to explain everything.
and I'm trying to figure out why why would that be but then what I'm landing on is uh I think women
have pushed the pharmacology a lot earlier uh than men and through one the birth control
like pills that just gets thrown at 12 to 13 and 14 year old kids and I've seen it
bringing up my own daughters you know they go to the doctor with something thankfully
not anymore because you know we're way more awake than than we used to be just four or five years
ago uh it's oh yeah oh bad acne here you go his birth control bad bad period pains oh here you go
his birth control oh you know pick your ailment and he's like yeah here you go here's birth control
and that i did another podcast two years ago probably now called estrogeneration with dr
anthony j and he talks about what's in this stuff and the the mess it does to to women's bodies and
especially if you imagine you've been on these things since you're the age of 13 and you're now
in your 30s crazy yeah unbelievable so i have no idea you know that the downstream effects of all
of that but i just hope that more and more people are waking up to all of these things all of these
damaging things that is pushed by a fiat incentive somewhere it's a it's a lot you know to because
what we're doing as Bitcoiners is to take our financial matters in our own hands. That's how
I felt what I had to do back then. But the same thing happens in every single area of life. We
take our education in our own hands. We take our health into our own hands. Like I just told you
before we started recording that I've been going to Thailand for the last 15 years and I do a
cleanse every single year and I add my health to that I have not taken a painkiller in 15 years
I do not take I mean I think not only twice but longer before I take any pill or any pharmaceutical
something but also I've been lucky because 15 years ago I was one of my best friends when I
lived in the Netherlands was a naturopathic doctor and so I learned a lot from her and how
much you can fix with food by eating differently or natural remedies and yeah so I just I don't
if I can avoid it I will not take any any pills I mean I'm glad they exist in case of emergency
I mean things have their place but if I try to prevent things and we are not taught to prevent
we are taught to fix symptoms not even taught we go to the doctor and they prescribe something and
then we take it not us you and me but general population so but yeah I have a lot of compassion
also for people because people have busy lives they have families they have businesses they have
full-time jobs and you have to pick the things that you can invest time or mind space on not
everybody has energy for that the the only reason that I had time to study bitcoin is because I was
moving countries during that time and yeah I didn't have a job I didn't have a business yet
or I was in the process of figuring stuff out in in when I moved to Berlin back then so I had one
or two years of not doing much and not being distracted by daily life so that I had the
opportunity in the time to study Bitcoin during that time. That's what I can say in hindsight.
I did not enjoy this time and not having an income when it was happening. But I'm also,
So I have to say I'm a great money manager.
So I can take myself through one or two years of not having an income.
So, but yeah, I just want to recognize that not everybody can do that.
Yeah.
So we often wonder like, why don't you study Bitcoin?
Why don't you eat healthier or whatever?
People don't have time for that.
And maybe you and me or us, people who think we are awake or whatever,
we also have blind spots and um and don't do certain things yeah yeah for sure and that's why
i'm always interested to hear about like the latest rabbit hole you know yeah it's um well
i heard a quote earlier it's not about having an open mind it's about having a critical mind i think
with something along those lines anyway so when you're presented with something uh
so much has happened over the last year that again i've changed um you know listening to to
jack cruise dr jack cruise he came on a podcast he opened my eyes you know to to the light and
then you have angelo and tristan over at daylight computers and they they back up what he's saying
and then you have ahmad as well you know he's been doing a lot of research onto the into this and
backing up that and you know it's like oh shit so we're surrounded by this emf like this isn't you
know the non-native electromagnetic frequencies and here we are okay it's it's it's all right at
the moment because we've got natural well not too much because it's coming through the windows
anyway it's not dark and we're not looking at our screen so we're all right but i wear the blue
blockers in the evening uh and you know started doing that people thought i was absolutely crazy
Just before we started this call, I was like, where's my Organite?
I have to show you.
Yes, the Organite.
There's another one.
Hang on.
Here's my Organite.
One second.
Here we go.
Here's one of them.
That's exactly the same one I have.
Right So we have these dotted around all over the house Yeah And that was a result of going down the Wilhelm Reich rabbit hole
and learning about his life.
And what I love doing is, like, you get presented with something.
I was actually gifted that.
So now it's in my hand.
I'm like, damn you.
Now I have to learn about this.
So I've got to go and pick up some more books.
and I started learning about Wilhelm Reich and how he was silenced and suddenly disappeared
well he died suddenly the day before he was leaving jail and why was he jailed well he was
jailed because of his work with orgone energy and building orgone accumulators which were basically
solving cancer by somebody sitting inside something the size of a cupboard it was made out of
inorganic organic inorganic organic material tightly pressed together which was drawing in
energy from the ether and then you get into like this whole what's the ether i thought that was
just it's not fucking shitcoin by the way we're talking about we're talking about energy and
which was heavily uh uh studied and discovered back in i want to say 30s 40s 50s and was a real
branch of science physics until it wasn't until it was all shut down and the guy that was at the uh
who was leading it all all of a sudden was touted as a weird pervert that one that runs sex communes
and all this woo-woo funky stuff and uh don't worry he's now in prison what okay well then
there's definitely something here so then doing the doing the research setting up some podcasts
and before you know it we've got these things oh each corner of the house and i remember i hope it
does what the the research says that it you know it's uh it takes the the negative non-native energy
and uh and like this dissipates it at the very least um yeah like this is uh i only just heard
about this the founder or the inventor of this a few days ago but yeah with the organizer i'm like
this is a rabbit hole i cannot i don't have time to go into they just look pretty and i'm like okay
i'll get one if it does what it's what it says it's great if not it just looks nice but i got
mine from the bosnian pyramids uh which is another rabbit hole or oh my goodness all right what's
this i i don't have i heard of this one before bosnian pyramids the largest and oldest pyramids
in the world are in bosnia not in south america or egypt if you believe it you can visit them
yes i went there because that was one of my rabbit holes um like um i don't know six or seven years
ago and i just i don't know how i found out about this and i saw it on youtube and all people saying
it's a hoax they are not real pyramids and then yeah yeah yeah and i was like oh i'm just gonna go
there and check it out and yeah because they are covered with um woods with forests so they don't
like the pyramids that we are used to um but i believe they are real and there's a whole tunnel
system underneath them i went in there uh with healing energy and everything so it's yeah especially
if you're a traveler it's worth stopping by there and and checking can you can you just book to go
on like guided tours of the bosnian pyramids and uh yes uh but so they exist like
so hang on i'm just googling now yeah i always go to wokipedia just to see what the lines are
all right bosnian pyramid uh and on wikipedia it's called the bosnian pyramid claims right yeah
so the bosnian pyramid claims are pseudo archaeological i've never heard of that
before pseudo archaeological theories put forward to explain the formation of a cluster of natural
hills in the area of visico and central bosnia and herzegovina all right okay so we
they want us to believe they're just triangular hills yeah nice yeah okay pseudo archaeology so
that's what they call like graham hancock and people like that imagine all right so you go to
bosnia you you get to these places but you go to sarajevo just a local guy yeah it's like half
visoko is like half an hour outside of sarajevo so i booked an airbnb back then i spent the week
there um um yeah i went there there's like a little um maybe two booths or something and
one is like the where you buy a ticket if you want they give you a tour if not they just give
you a helmet and say go in check it out yourself it's the tunnels so there's five pyramids and
they are connected by a tunnel system and the people who who say it's a hoax they they say that
the guy who found them he's digging the tunnels but he is saying he's uncovering the tunnels he's
getting out all the rubble to to uncover them uh i have to say i went in there
i do believe they are real they it feels very different to be in there it i felt super safe
um it's like 300 it's really deep tunnels i just walked in there by myself it really feels like
it's not made by us by humans wow so i don't know it's just something interesting
in the smithsonian magazine from 2009 it talks about this guy sam osmanigic
Manovich or something yeah exactly
yeah
excuse me Bosnian listeners
for you know not being able to pronounce
the name
yeah
he claims that
he found them you find
evidence of the stone structure everywhere
consequently you can conclude that the whole thing
is a pyramid
so the deniers say
this dude's just digging tunnels and selling
tickets like you know
Yeah, exactly. And the pyramids, they just look like they are just pointy mountains. And I mean,
we don't know. I don't know. But he says, or he has written many books or done many on YouTube,
you'll find tons of his presentations about pyramids. And he says that they have scalar
waves or something that come out of the top, like the Egyptian pyramids. It's like a communication,
it's supposed to be a communication system and he says the same people have come scientists have
come to measure it and they found exactly the same thing as in the Egyptian pyramids and
so I don't know I just like I said before I I don't know if I believe certain things but I love
having my beliefs challenged I love hearing about conspiracy theories
yeah I don't really care whether they are true or not but I yeah I had a nice trip to
to Bosnia and I saw some beautiful nature
and interesting things
and a great story
yeah
yeah excellent well I love it what your latest or your latest or your next uh trip or adventure i know you just been to thailand but you you said at the beginning something along the
lines of you were you were forced to become a digital nomad like four years ago or something
what what went down happened four years ago oh i can't imagine let me think oh well we're all
supposed to just forgive and forget and you don't don't you remember let's just forgive everybody
for losing their fucking minds and trying to force injections into people that weren't
particularly interested in taking those particular injections yeah well i also was not so into
lockdowns uh and berlin is i was living in berlin at the time and berlin gets very depressing in the
winter um every year um but that but winter and lockdowns i just couldn't face it um and uh so i
just saw i spotted by coincidence i think it was a facebook post or something uh that someone had
organized a women's business retreat here in barnsco in bulgaria and that was in october
and i thought oh okay i'm gonna go to bulgaria for the month of october just to have something
nice and embrace myself for the lockdown in winter in berlin when i come back and yeah i arrived here
on the 1st of october and on the 2nd of october i decided to stay because it's a completely
different life here and yeah bulgarians are very very different very resilient very like no bullshit
we don't put up with everything i think bulgaria had the highest rate of non-vaccinated people also
I remember the president at the time was very outspoken I can't remember the name but I just
remember like wow you know he's yeah for me also back then again I my stance is always I
I don't know for sure so I was never 100% on on the side of vaccines or on this on the other side
of non-vaccines because I just didn't know I'm not a scientist and back then yeah I just yeah I
want to be able to make my own decisions and also Germany to witness how what people turned into
in Germany it was just horrible how everybody was policing each other and yeah yeah and I have lived
outside of Germany I am German but I've lived outside of Germany for half my life so I also
have a different view on my own country yeah so anyway I came to Bulgaria and I just came here
not for some political or whatever opinion but just because life was good here and it was nice
to hide here for a while until the world sorted itself out but yeah in the end I never went back
I went back for like eight months later, I think.
Yeah, I left in October.
I went back in August just to give everything I owned away,
completely cleared out my apartment and gave everything up basically
and became a proper nomad, which felt really good at that time.
It was really like a cleanse.
You leave an old life behind, start a new one.
but now it's been four years and it's been fun but now I'm like I want things again
I would like to have a stable home base and apartment somewhere yeah so so that's my next
yeah you asked what's the next adventure the next adventure will be to find a home somewhere in
Europe again I don't really feel like going back to Germany since I have really no roots there or
know yeah i've never really lived there and um yeah let's see so i'm trying to find maybe portugal
or spain somewhere where there's an international community if it's bitcoiners amazing uh
if not uh yeah just some yeah a nice community that's always the the most important thing
well best of luck with that and uh will you be going to any of the conferences this year to try
and find those communities or are you giving any presentations again because you gave a presentation
in bulgaria about bitvocation which was very good by the way i like the fact uh halfway through it
you said people don't talk to each other enough you know take two minutes turn around and start
you know say hello and you had to stop us all talking after about it he's like all right no
no on with the talk don't off bitcoin is to talk to bitcoin bitcoin is about bitcoin
well actually i'm going to the film fest in warsaw yes yeah yeah that's a great one we won't we were
there last year but this year it's a clash with dublin so shout out for dublin bitcoin ireland
and it's a clash with the value for value concert that's taking place in essex in westcliffe which
we can't make so i just had aaron and uh and uh joe martin on the show and i was like mate i'm so
gutted all of these three things are happening at the same time but at the same time that's bullish
as all hell let's go more bitcoin events i would have loved to go to ireland i love ireland so yeah
so you're off to warsaw and will you give a talk there or are you just going for i'm going to make
people talk to each other i'm going to spend an hour like uh running like a connection session
like on pizza day on on day zero of the film fest um get everybody to meet so that they can then
spend the rest of the weekend amongst friends uh new friends yeah love it um and then the other
conference i have on the agenda is helsinki i think you're going to help yes we're going to
helsinki yes yeah then we'll see the whole family we will see most uh just juggling dates for yeah
so yeah most of us will be there yeah nice then we'll see each other there and that's it for this
year i'm not going to prague this year but uh bit vocation will be present it's the nice thing about
having a team uh if i can't make it then somebody else can go and yeah let's see maybe in the in the
fall in october somewhere else but i don't know yet yeah okay cool well meanwhile how can people
reach out to you personally obviously join the nostor group or the uh telegram group if you're
listening and you want to follow these jobs that are coming up but if you want to reach anya talk
one-on-one what's the best way for people to do that yeah um through the sub stack actually i get
a lot of messages on telegram but yeah there's a lot of spam so it's not the best way to contact
me initially but there's a contact option through the sub stack so we have bitvocation.com that is
our website which is also a sub stack where we also have a beginner's guide so for people who
are looking for jobs is really good to subscribe and you get a beginner's guide how to find your
first job in bitcoin instantly in your inbox and there's also a contact option which goes straight
to me yeah perfect so last question if you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody who would you give it to and why Oh my God Yeah my family my brother my sister
Yeah.
I am right now saving for them.
They don't know about it.
Well, my brother knows because he had a son three years ago.
And even though he doesn't have the mind space to look into Bitcoin,
he's like, you're going to start a Bitcoin wallet for him, right?
so i'm doing that and for my niece yeah but like i said before i i appreciate that some people do
not have the mind space to fall into the rabbit hole like we did so i'll just do it for them and
yeah i guess we all have people that we secretly take care of like that yeah for sure well anya
thank you so much for coming on and thank you for everything that you're doing for bitcoin
and leaning into this with integrity
and all of your heart and your energy.
We need more like you.
And yeah, just look forward to seeing you again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing you too.
And like I said before,
you are the favorite podcast of my team members.
Thank you.
And I'm also, I'm not listening to enough podcasts.
I listened to a few episodes
in preparation for this
that's how I found the one with Amad
but I'm going to make an effort
to listen more
and I enjoy listening to it
thank you, we need to be listening to
40 hours per week, don't forget
40 hours per week
that's what some psychos
are doing out there
that's a lot
of listening
thank you for coming on and thank you everybody
for tuning in
Thank you.
well there you go everybody thank you everyone for listening please listen to this on fountain
app going forward i have just actually moved my hosting to fountain app fountain app are now
running the service where they host podcasts they are building all the time over there they're very
much behind the scenes but they are brilliant brilliant founders bitcoiners through and through
well done Nick well done Oscar the uh the parallel economy needs being built out and if you just
listen to this on Apple pods or Google pods or anywhere else please consider downloading the
fountain app and start your listening journey there and support podcasters you can stream sats
you can boost sats you don't have to do any of that you can just listen if you want it's completely
free but you are making you're drawing a line in the sand and you're making a decision just by
downloading and using fountain app you are saying no more of these centralized hell pit fiat
services we want more for ourselves and our future and we've got to build out the uh the
parallel economy as best we can that's why plebeian.market is a great place for you to go
and check out and uh consensus network bitcoinbook.shop forward slash bitten if you use that
code BITTON at checkout. When you're buying your books, you can find my book over there. It's called
Choose Life. It's available in two languages, English and Spanish. And yeah, you can pay with
lightning. So this is what we're talking about, building this parallel economy. Paywithflash.com.
Just go visit the website. There's no affiliate link. There's no nothing. Just go and check it
out paywithflash.com is it a service that you can use or even better that you can recommend or think
of someone that might be able to use it go and see what they're building they are making it very easy
for you to accept bitcoin to sell in bitcoin not sell your bitcoin to sell in bitcoin and that's
very important as we move to a medium of exchange so that's paywithflash.com again built by bitcoiners
orange pill app like i said at the beginning here just get out there go start meeting people orange
pill app is the easiest way to do that there's over 16 000 members on that app they are all
bitcoiners they're all keen to get in touch and connect and discuss bitcoin i've used it so many
times when traveling you just open it up you hit near you there might be three or four people you
can just say, hi, send a message. Hey, just landed in town. Where's the best place to go for
a coffee or a beer or a restaurant, whatever it is you want. Who accepts Bitcoin in this town?
And I guarantee you, someone comes back to you and says, I got you. Meet me here. I will take
you out for a steak or a beer or a coffee or whatever, because you're in my town now and I'm
going to look after you. Then you get plugged straight into that community. It's such a great
tool. You've got events on there as well. It tells you where your nearest and upcoming events are.
You've got merchants on there. That's being built out. And you've got the wallet feature,
which is the most fun feature. You can GeoZap different countries. I've been making a lot of
use of this and I really enjoy it. So that's all built in and ready to go in the wallet for you.
Orange Pill App built by Bitcoiners again. Bitbox, please take self-custody very,
very seriously. If you've not taken self-custody of your Bitcoin, you are leaving everything to
chance. Why would you do that? Please, why would you do that? So like I've said before,
BTC Prague is coming up. They will have a stand there. They were just one of the sponsors as well
for Bitcoin Ireland. These guys are always getting around saying hello, helping you get set up,
understand what a Bitcoin wallet is, understand what cold storage is. Obviously, this is a big
learning curve if you're very new. But here's the basic nutshell. If you are buying Bitcoin,
you are sending your fiat currency into an app or an exchange and leaving it there. Once you've
exchanged it to Bitcoin, not only have you sent in your fiat, but what you bought is also there.
It's like buying a car from a dealer and leaving the keys with them and walking away.
what are you doing like no give me the keys that's what a bitbox is that's the equivalent
so please take self-custody bitbox link is in the show notes it's bitbox.swiss
forward slash bitten use the code bitten get 10% off or 5% actually or come to btc prague if you
come to btc prague you can play around with all the hardware wallets because they'll all be there
and you can get all of the information that you need in person.
And you can actually touch the thing and get set up
and let them guide you through the whole thing.
So btcprague.com forward slash bitten.
Use the code bitten.
You'll get 10% discount.
And FOMO knows no discrimination.
It's coming for you whether you like it or not.
So embrace it.
And remember that opportunity cost I talked about at the beginning of the show.
who else is left? That's it, I think. Thank you, everybody. Relay, go stack your sats,
R-E-L-A-I.ch forward slash bitten and swan bitcoin as well. And Zapright, shout out to
Zapright. I was hanging out with John, the founder today, excuse me, last weekend in Ireland. Looking
forward to seeing either him or Parker in Prague as well. So that's zapright.com forward slash
bitten. That is an invoicing platform for you to start accepting Bitcoin.
Love you all.
See you soon.
Take care.
Stack Sats.
Stay safe.