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My Story
I grew up in a village in East Germany so close to the border that you needed a special permit to enter it. I was fourteen when the wall came down. Even today I cannot quite believe they had the right to lock people inside a country. The moment I was free to move, I never stopped.
I spent my university holidays leading children’s camps across Europe, sleeping in tents, travelling through countries I had only ever seen on a map. At twenty-five I arrived in Australia as an exchange student, met my partner, and never went back. I built a career in international shipping across three continents — starting as an imports clerk, moving into ship operations, then sales, then commercial management. None of the jobs were the same. I loved that about it.
And then I discovered property.
I spent twenty years investing in Australian property and I was not a passive investor. I was a nerd about it. I would spend hours on real estate websites studying prices, tracking which areas were moving, working out what improvements could add value before a sale. I genuinely loved every minute of it. I remember selling one property after five years and being completely gobsmacked. I had almost doubled the value. Not because of some secret formula. Because I had done my homework, trusted my gut, and been patient.
In 2024 we picked up our canal boat in London — a boat that had been in the family for twenty years and had never been looked after properly — and crossed the English Channel with our son and our dog. A lot of people think that is insane. We just did it. We made it down to Dijon before October when it got cold and the heater died, and we found ourselves a house in the south of France near the Canal du Midi, a waterway we had travelled years before and always loved. We brought the boat down to the Mediterranean, took it out of the water, and renovated it ourselves. My favourite part was always choosing the colours.
I have never had a master plan. I just follow the flow and one thing leads to another
Crypto was always around in our house. My partner had been investing for years. We would talk about it over dinner. He would explain things, I would listen, ask questions, form opinions. And somewhere along the way I realised something. He would come to me and ask for my gut feeling. Which crypto. How much. When to move. And more often than not, I was right.
I started to think: what if I did this myself?
The more I got into it, the more I noticed something that surprised me. There was almost no information out there written for women. Not real information. Not the kind that respects your intelligence without burying you in technical language. Everything was written by men, for men, in a way that assumed you already knew things you had never been taught.
So I built the thing I was looking for.
Yadala is for women like me. Women who are busy, who are smart, who have good instincts, and who are done waiting for someone else to explain things to them. Women who want to understand crypto themselves. Not because someone told them to, but because they have a feeling they might actually be good at this.
You might be right about that feeling. I was.
If you are reading this and something resonated, I would love to hear from you. What are you struggling to understand? What would you like me to write about? What questions do you have that you have not been able to find a straight answer to anywhere else?
This is not just a blog. I want it to be a community. A place where women like us can figure this out together, without the jargon, without the overwhelm, and without feeling like we are the only ones who did not already know.
Reach out. I actually read every message.
Yana Ballantyne
Yana Ballantyne is a long-term property investor, mother, traveller and the founder of Yadala. Not a financial advisor, just someone who spent years in business, making investments, and figuring out how to create a life that lets her family live wherever they choose. She built Yadala so other women would not have to figure it out alone.
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