I'm Will Lucas and this podcast, if you haven't heard, has been nominated for an inn Double A CP Image Award, and I need your help. The Double A CP has recently opened up the opportunity for the public. That means you to weigh in and vote on this category. Head over to vote dot Double A CP Image Awards dot net. Scroll to the Outstanding News and Information Podcast category and
vote for Black Tech, Green Money. It's not often that we see a podcast for us by US, which highlights the stories of black innovators, technologists, venture capitalists and angel investors, scientists and engineers with this biggest spotlight. So I'm asking for you to take a moment of your day and vote for us now. So I think this is where I think a lot of people can have a pretty bad misconception. The base layer technology that we're talking about
is blockchain technology. The first use case, the first the first born child use case of blockchain technology is cryptocurrency. So you usually when I'm having this kind of conversation, I love to kind of have a first principles conversation around the use case and the efficacy of blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency is a use case of block pain. I'm will Luca's Mrs Black Tech cream Money. I'm gonna chew this you to some of the biggest names, some of the
brightest minds and brilliant ideas. I feel black and building, but simply using tech to secure your back. This podcast is for you. Kay is an n f T strategist and founder at sting Rock Media, which helps companies all over the world craft cultural experiences and events. A frequent speaker on n f T related topics, Kayla is the
prolific investor and trusted voice on blockchain technologies. I spoke with Kayla about the current n f T bear market and investor outlook and what's happening in the world of n f T s that gives investors like her hope. I think number one is there's some really interesting examples of really large brands out there that are doing a fantastic job um. Two of which would be like Reddit,
um and uh Starbucks. And the interesting thing I would say that they've done UM that's unique about their n f T programs is that they're not even calling them n f T s. They call them uh digital collectibles. They're calling them it's just you know, uh Starbucks just calls it their new like Odyssey rewards program UM. And so I think that what a lot of groups are doing right now is there they a lot of fintech solutions,
a lot of big brands. They have not slowed down on adopting the technology UM, but they have tweaked the way that they bring that technology to market UM and what they're calling it. The technology is the same. People
just don't know that they're using it. And so I think that's one of the big differences that I've been seeing in the LATS a couple of months, is how some of the big brands have been UM using mass adoption with with blockchain and n f T. Can you make a distinction because I've heard you use n f T business before and like your tweets, you've you've you've used that, you've used that phrase. Can you describe the difference between like an n f T and n f T project and an n f T business and if
there are others, can you describe the differences between those? Yeah, So I think, like you know, I just described a couple of companies that are natively web two companies that are adopting blockchain technology. So they're kind of in this like Web two point five UM space Web three companies
are companies that have started from the community first. So a lot of times UM web two companies tend to be like products driven, and so they'll create their product, they'll create their m v P what's their minimal viable product, and then they uh, you know, get a bunch of VC money and go, you know, uh customer acquisition right UM web three companies UM. Some that I might throw as an example would be board A Yacht Clubs, so like you Go Labs, UM Artifact which then got acquired
by Nike. UM are all community based companies. So they started as a community, the community bought the token, the n f T, and that was the startup. Those are the startup finances for the company to continue to build and develop as a company. UM. So it's really just kind of the ethos of like how those two world kind of use the technology. UM. I will say though that there are the vast majority of n f T
companies out there are not great operators. So they tend to get really excited and get the community really excited, and um everyone buys the token and then they don't have any operations. They don't actually have a value proposition. They don't actually have a product that they that they want to continue to develop on UM. And so that's where a lot of Web three n f T companies specifically kind of stumble and fall. Um what typically, what
typically do they have that makes people buy in? Celebrity status, you know, great design, great art, like, what what makes people buy into these things that have very bad business operations? Yeah? I think that UM. A lot of these folks are marketers, so they're really talented at marketing. They're really they're really talented.
The artwork UM is really attractive. UM. People love being a part of something that other there's kind of this like indie culture of folks not you know, oh I know about I'm an early adopter, right n f T Web three people love being like early adopters. So they love being able to like be on the bleeding edge of the next trend. UM. And so I think that that in combination with the fact that people who if they wanted to resell the n f T, they can
make money off of it. So you add those two components together and making money culture tech uh, and it's kind of a winning recipe. For people to to to to buy into something. Uh, the problem is that they've lost a lot of money along the way. Damn. Can you describe more about the projects? What typically is a thread between projects that are successful, that have that gave them unique or innovative, you know, features that allowed them to be successful other than the operation, which we'll talk
about mm hmm, yeah, great questions. So I think that, um, some I call them at st Rock, we call them value engines, And so you have to be really clear on what exactly you're offering. What is the value proposition for Sometimes you have some artists out there that it's literally just art and that is the value problem. And you've got to have the art and that's it and
it's beautiful. UM. And you know, the interesting thing is is, as the market has kind of had a bit of a downturn, art projects have performed better and maintained their value better than the projects that promised you know, this really fantastic road maps. UM. So that's that's been a bit of an ironic and an interesting thing to see. UM. But other than that, UM, I think that basically you're asking, like, what makes um, some of these projects successful, some some
some successful projects. UM. I think it also comes down to the funding and the runway. Uh. Some of these projects raised a lot of money they UM through the n f T, and they had the time to go and acquire like talent to help them figure it out. So some of them just had the runway to go, like figure out what they were going to offer UM doodles, for example, they hired uh, they hired uh uh Farrell
as their creative their chief creative officer UM. And so between Doodles, you go labs, UM artifacts some of these other big projects, they just simply had extra funding to like help them figure out what they're gonna do. Some of them have moved really aggressively into gaming because I think that they think that that's like a really viable
business model going into the new year. When you are looking at the team, who are who's building a product, a project, even um building a community, what are you looking for as an investor in n f T, Like what kind of things give you signals that say, you know what, this is likely going to be around a while because these things are in place. Mm hmm. Yeah. Number one, the team has to be docks. And by docks,
that just means they need to. They cannot be anonymous, and so you have to be able to do your due diligence to be able to look at Okay, great, let's look at this person's LinkedIn profile. Let's look at you know, what is their history of just part participating in this like overall ecosystem, um over over a period of time, so that's important. What's their background? UM? What experience do they have. They're saying they're going to bring a game, a metaverse game to market. Great, who on
the team has actually done that before? Um? Those those are some of the things that you would do kind of during your own personal due diligence process. I'm looking at the community. How engaged is the community? Um? If they are hosting a Twitter spaces on Twitter? Great, how many people show up? How many people are engaged and are asking questions during that Twitter space? Um? Another thing would be to look at, um, you know, the team's important. Um Uh what is the value prop? What is the
business model beyond the initial n f T sale? Because if I think that a lot of people who aren't attracted to n f T s and web three, they tend to be UM kind of like libertarian uh from a kind of political slant. Um in point of view, Um, they don't want to be the product, which is why they are happy to pay money up front, because they don't like traditional social media platforms and so. Um. The problem though is that again with some of these folks
who are running these projects, they're not great operators. Um. All they know to do, all they know how to do is sell n f t s to people. They don't know how to create products. And therefore those same people that don't want to be the product realize that they end up being the product again because they're just
selling more n f t s two people. This is so talk about the the value proposition because so often when we hear about value propositions, Hey, your n f T gets you in the door at this party, or it gets you, you know, a ticket to you know, meet me and have lunch face to face. Like what are better things of avengers? I shouldn't say better, Like what are other things of avengers that tickets to the party that n f t s you know, really unique
opportunities have provided for those holders. Yeah. I think that Um, with some of these I think that a lot of Um. Again, Uh, the industry is so nascent right, and so a lot of those business models are still being ironed up. When we're talking to clients, were like, hey, look, n f T s are not a business I wrote a tweet about this too. Business n f T s are not
a business model within themselves. You already have to have an established business model that n f T s can be an added value layer to something that's already pre existing you already. You need to know that the market is there. You need to know that the solutions that you provide are already there. UM. I'll give you an example of one that we actually did UM for an
education higher education product UM. Essentially it was a membership pass by your n f T. I think it's not it's not too much different than UM, like a costco membership. We have a network of partners of UM, you know, online college, UM colleges around and universities around the country. UM all Tier six or Tier five or higher accreditation. They're in our network of schools that you can if you have our n f T pass, you get access
to any of those schools you can enroll. Obviously you still have to apply and get in, but assuming that that happens, you get access to those college credits at
off of what retail is and so um similar. So it's almost the idea if you're familiar with like Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs or if you're familiar with obviously costco um it was like wholesale college online college courses and so that was like a very um it was a very tactical and practical um application of how you have a membership pass uh that then translates into real world savings for something that people want, which is, well,
some people want a college degree. And so you touched on this a little bit about n F t Art and that's one you know, vertical inside the n f T space and it was super duper hot a year ago, eighteen months ago, or any time in that window. Where are we with just n F t art and beyond the ones that have communities behind them, it's just a pretty picture. Where are we today? Is there still value today? If I'm a designer and I'm just a designer, I may not be a community builder. Is there still value?
Is it still worth it for me to go to open see and publish my thing. Well, with all of these things, you still have to build a community because it's we're at the end of the day, we're talking economics and we're talking supply and demand, and that's that's that's regardless of if you're an n f T artist. That's that those rules apply even just in the regular traditional art world as well. So UM, regardless of whatever you're offering to the world, there's gonna there has to
be a buyer for it. So UM. So the the value prop for um for artists. And I think the reason why so many artists are attracted to n f T s is because of the royalty component. And so they're like, Okay, great, if I'm going to spend all my my time and energy creating this piece of art, I want to get as I want to be able to extract and capture as much value from it as possible. UM. And I think that that the smart contract, the royalties
and perpetuity is what attracts so many artists. So I was having a conversation with a nonprofit um executive directors think of think of it in the way of you know, a zoo executive director or a metro park executive director, and they were they were wondering what the value of them could be with producing an n f T collection, and you know, doing research online and learning about this, you know, there's a there's an argument to there's no
secondary value or very little secondary value of holding that n f T. Like, so, if if I'm buying the n f T to support sustainability at my local park, what is the value to the next person who may want to buy that thing? So? Can you talk about that concept and how to fix it? Yeah? So, so two things I would say. One is, if you are that type of organization or something like that, I'm actually
a really big fan of. Instead of the organization, especially like a nonprofit, like actually did a talk about this at n f T n y C. Literally, My argument was that UM UM nonprofits should actually, instead of doing their own projects, they should actually partner with artists. They actually partner with folks who have a value prop that extends beyond visiting you know, the rescue center or whatever
the case may be. UM because instead of like having their own n f T project or perhaps doing it in collaboration, now that that nonprofit entity can have their wallet address written into the primary and secondary UM sales of the of the chain in perpetuity UM being a partner to organizations that do have a secondary uh driver for for what's going to drive the secondary sales. So that's actually that's that's typically the strategy that I actually
um usually talked. Could you give an example of what that might look like. Yeah, Um, there's an n f T called I'll give you a good example. I'll give an example one that I I used literally use this at n f T MC UM a case study of this one project called Flower Girls, um. And they are it's an artist. Her name is Eva something I forgot her name. UM. So she comes from the traditional art world.
She has a huge community already. UM. Part of the project is they wanted to make sure that they were giving back to the community, so they give to women
and girls shelters. Um. And so as a part of they have a gamified component where they have like you know, I don't want to bore you to death, but it's like they have seeds and these different it's like very garden, you know, themed is the n f T. And so they have like this game ified thing where you plant your seeds and water the seeds and watch the flowers grow and this whole thing. Right, Um, But as people get into the game and they're playing it and they're
treating their n f t s back and forth. That's the volume that's happening on the secondary um. And because of the partnership they have with like the women shelters and things like that, those nonprofit profits are are benefiting um from all of the transactions happening on that on
that smart contract. So um, you had tweeted six months ago maybe about you were you were at Basil at art Basil, and you were talking about you wouldn't you wouldn't believe that the world of crypto is falling apart if you were in that environment, because the energy was so palpable. I want to particularly talk about the you know, the falling apart, you know part of that comment there, and because there is a sense that crypto isn't what
it was cracked up to be. We were Some people lost a bunch of money, you know, whether they were where they aped into stuff and whatever. People lost money. And there are some people who are really really big winners. It just came out a couple of days ago. Peter TiAl pulled out a bunch, you know, right before the market crashed. And so how does he know who knows, But the idea I wanted to discuss is what is your take on the world of crypto and it's long
term value. So I think this is where I think a lot of people could have a pretty bad misconception. The base layer technology that we're talking about is blockchain technology. The first use kid is the first the first born child use case of blockchain technology is cryptocurrency. So usually when I'm having this kind of conversation, I love to kind of have a first principles conversation around the use
case and the efficacy of blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency is a use case of blockchain So, um, cryptocurrency is not going anywhere. This is I think a lot of people. So if you go back and kind of do some history, um, seventeen was the last time that there was a really big influx of users and and and onboardings into the block blockchain and crypto space. One was just the last
most recent version of that. So um, if you look back at any of the trading charts since the beginning of Bitcoin in two thousand nine and ethereum in two thousand, I think it was like twelve. I think, Um, this this kind of rise and fall is normal to be quite frank, and you don't lose money if you don't sell. So there's no such thing as there's There are realized gains and realized losses um. And so everyone who has held and gone through um all of these cycles over
the last decade have gained so UM. So if we're looking it really depends on what perspective. Perspective your chart is that you're looking at your chart, um. But if you're looking at in the last filled months, well then yeah, everyone's crying right now. But if you look at the next three years until the next bitcoint goole cycle, UM, if you hold, perhaps you'd be giving people kiss. Cryptole goes up, crypto goes down. Some people believe us all
the fantasy in the first place, and others are true believers. Myself, I foundationally believe that there will be a mainstream digital currency now, whether it's ethereum or bitcoin or some other actions yet to be seen. But I do believe at my core that there will be a digital currency that is widely accepted. Is this then a good base idea for investing k Let's peaks on it. Yeah, No, I I agree wholeheartedly. Um. That is the question back in
two thousand and seventeen. Uh, it's what we called like the I c O boom um um uh initial exactly. And so there are a lot of really terrible projects out that didn't do anything, and so the same it was. I mean just look at the you know, copying paste. What happened in one is the exact same thing that happened back then. Um, you got a lot of people excited about making money. Nobody actually wanted to provide value to the marketplace. Cool, it was a big bubble, it popped, um,
but the real players I do feel confident. Um, bitcoin is the most Like if you were to look at this on like a on a on a on a line and look at you know, on one end you have the most decentralized blockchain, and then on another end of the spectrum, you have, um, the least decentralized blockchain. Let's describe what that means for people who may not get centralizing. Decentralized means before you go too far. Yeah, so decentralization is it's really like the reason why blockchain
was created in the first place. I don't want to go to in the history, but the reason why bitcoin was created was out of the housing crisis of two thousand and eight. Essentially, the idea that we were as as you know, my parents put their money into real estate, put their money into therefore one case, as you know, that's what everyone was told to do, is like the safe way to invest your money. UM. And yet you
have banking bankers who do UM uh fractional reserve banking. Right, they're allowed to leverage the funds of inside of you know, your bank account. You put your money into the bank UM or into some type of investment vehicle. They take those funds, invest them, they give you a percentage back of what they make. Right basically how it works. They lost their money, they were doing really risky UM investments UM,
and they lost your money. They lost your investment UM and so essentially because of that, the value of you know, putting your money into those investments. So anyways, long story short, the person or people Satoshi Nakamoto who created bitcoin was piste off and was like, UM, instead of putting our money in the hands of the government, we want to be self sovereign and control my own value, and so I created UM bitcoin and UM. The idea of decentralization
is that no one entity. Most centralized currencies are you know, uh, you know, central bank or central reserve issues that currency. The I D is that no centralized entity UM issues the currency. And it's also deflationary because there is a max supply. So the idea is that, um, you can print more, you cannot print you cannot print more bitcoin, and so over time, as more people adopt and use it,
it becomes more and more valuable. And what you were saying previous to that was if you look at the bitcoin on a line and you you were going to go down the trajector, I would't. I wouldn't bring you back to that. Yeah, exactly. So in a spectrum of like most decentralized is bitcoin, Um, you have a bunch of different validators all around the world. Um. You think about a WS and they have like centralized hubs where
there's where their servers live. And that's why AWS is able to provide you know, hosting services to companies all around the world. UM, imagine a WUS. But like AWS doesn't own all those servers. We do right as as just individual people. I can run a validator on my computer right now. You can run a validator on your we're all keeping Bitcoin running. UM, no one owns it. Essentially, no one person and no one entity owns it. So that's what decentralization means. On the other end of the spectrum,
because people have seen how valuable these networks are. UM, you have companies that have you know, created their own blockchain, which means it is aws essentially and so UM. It's this is why it's so important to understand and to really be educated on the the a b c's of blockchain and why it was created in the first place. UM. So going back to your original question of like what block chains are going to survive over time, I think bitcoin is a really good bet simply because it's the
most decentralized no one controls it. UM. That's also why bitcoin is also the hardest to build on top of because no one controls it and no one is in charge of actually maintaining like the technology is fantastic. There Bitcoin UM foundations and you know dows decentralised autonomous organization sans UM that vote and have governance and say, okay, great, we're going to vote to agree to upgrade this part of the network. UM. But no one owns it, and
so Bitcoin is really safe. In my opinion, Ethereum is also really good. Ethereum is kind of the middle of the road. They're they're decentralized enough in my perspective. Uh, but you also have people who are really intentionally building on top of it. So you've got a bunch of companies n f T s. Let's talk about n f t s for example. People are not building n f t s on top of Bitcoin. People are building n f t s on top of Ethereum. So it's it's
it's just an interesting use case to look at. Okay, well, what how are people using the technology? And more and more companies um are are using Ethereum. So those are some of the blockchains I think are our safe butts. And so there are people who are still excited about purchasing n f t s. And since we're talking about decentralization, you could hold you could put an n f T on a WS and because you're just referencing it, right
the artwork, Yes, you're referencing the artwork. So can you talk about the value in knowing where your n f T the artwork is is hosted? Sure, Yeah, that's okay, that's a good question. I to two parts to that. One is that I don't know that that is necessarily like the artwork in the same way that people can like copy and copy in um like download the artwork. I don't know that that's actually the value of the
n f T. It's really the serial number. So like even if the artwork itself is not on chain, if it's hosted being hosted on like I, uh, you know Piniata for example, we've used to pinata as a service to host the artwork and things like that. Um, it's really about like the artwork tied to the tied to the serial number, almost like the certificate of authenticity if you will, that it that does live on chain. So um, there are some projects that are like our artwork is
on chain. Cool, Okay, that's fine, that's uh sure if that tickles your fancy. UM, I personally care to know that that artwork tied to the serial number. That's what I care about, is the serial number that says this serial number owns that artwork. As long as that serial
numbers on chain, that's personally what I care about. And so I want to talk about your company a little bit, and you you help companies and organizations grow and manage you know, the communities that they that they are desiring, even hybrid communities that they're desiring to collect UM, what are ways that companies and organists that are not super sophisticated can you know, use the blockchain to engage their people.
We really think about it UM in from the from the standpoint of community, and actually talked about this at afrotech. I talked about how can as a consumer, how do you get the most out of your consumption? As a creator, how do you capture as much value out of what you're creating? UM? And then as a community and as an ecosystem, how do you have your your incentives aligned? UH? And I think that that's ultimately UM. How we think about it is how do we create ecosystems and communities
where it's a sustainable community, where all incentives are aligned. UM. I really like, I really like the use case of memberships personally. UM. The idea of creating like a parent n f T is how I typically call it UM. Going back to let's let's for example, go back to the example of like the higher education project that we did, there was a parent n f T and that parent n f T basically produced two other n f t s every year, and that n f T was your access that you could burn to you know, uh, get
your discount, claim your discount for each semester um. Because that that n f T, that second child n f T was decoupled from the parent one. Now you have the control as a consumer to say, Okay, great, I want to be a member of this group, but I don't necessarily plan on using the benefits of being a member of this group today. So because I have my n f t s, my other n f t s that represent the benefits of my membership, I can store them away and use them later, or I can sell them,
or I can gift them. And so it's giving people in your in your in your community, and in your membership organization more control and in fact more value for being a member within your organization or or within your community. So that's typically kind of the way that we think about U n f t s, at least at this stage. There's things like ticketing for events. There's a lot of other use cases that we're that we're kind of exploring
with as well. Um, but I just know for myself as a consumer, I'm like Okay, Well, if I own this on chain and the only way that I can extract value from it is by selling the n f T, well I don't want to sell the parent n f T because that's like how I continue to get benefits. And so you have to be able to extract and decouple the main membership n f T from all the benefits that you get from that n f T. Particularly
because we've brought up organizations. I'm interested in your take on because if you've got a token out there and you can't control whether somebody resells it, you can't control, you know, how you distribute them in the first place. People can apply to be able to purchase, but the resale is up to you or me, right, And so if we create a project that says we want to save the whales, I'm making I'm making this up. We
want to save the whales. And now you've and we've all bonded together to create this thing we've all got in n f T, I decide I don't like whales anymore, so I'm gonna sell it to a killer, Like how do you protect That's a very gruesome way to set this up, But how do you put all the all the po folks are gonna come. Like, how do you protect the community is let's say we're creating anyone for all black techies, and now you've got people who are not you know, even allies, who are buying this thing
because somebody sold them. Yeah, that's a really good question. So this is UM. Last year, UM, there was so Vitalic P. Terran, who's one of the creators of the Ethereum blockchain, wrote a white paper called UM talking about s bt s or soul bounds tokens and UM it's basically a non sellable n f T. And so this is a really good use case for things like that you probably shouldn't sell, like your social Security number or your driver's license or your passport. UM. These are things
that are unique identifiers to an individual. UM. So that actually allows an individual to create an identity based off of data on chain. Right like right now, when we think about like, you know, identities and with the metaverse and web three, we're thinking about the p FP that pick the picture that are what about the actual substance of the person UM And that's where soul bound tokens
come into play. And so we've actually been Um, we're kind of in the process right now of of of of creating a couple of use cases around spt s UM, and I think that that's a solution for something that you're talking about that actually again kind of goes back to the model that I was just describing of like cool, now that you're in you're cemented into this group, and now you get these other like kid n f t s that represent your membership, so you can sell those things, um,
but you can't sell the SPT that is tied to you. So maybe you still have like a you know, maybe only one a thousand people in your group. And when someone says, hey, I no longer want to be a member, great you can burn. You can have a burning mechanism that burns so that they're no longer an active member within your community. Um. And then now you have a
spot that's open and available for someone else. But then you have a vetting process and maybe some kind of application process to see if you want them in your group. If you're looking at the ocean of opportunity, are still out there to be had by innovators. When you think about black techys and black innovators, where should we be looking for our lane when it when it comes to the blockchain, not just n f t s and not
just cryptocurcy, but the blockchain and that ahole. Where would you like to see more of us and make that case please? Yeah? I think that there's still um what is it? What is this saying that? Like when when there's a gold rush, UM, sell sell thee Yeah, yeah exactly, there's still plenty of picks and shovels to to be sell sold. So UM. Most of the biggest winners UM in this most recent uh you know, UM bull cycle,
it was open Sea. Who's a marketplace. It was the exchanges who were just essentially selling you and creating tools for you to buy and sell crypto. UM. Those were
the companies that did the best. And so when I think about even the tools and products that we're thinking about building ourselves, it's okay, great, what are the what are the SaaS products that make it easier for people to UM build on create the tools to help other people build and so UM, whether that's logistics UM, I think uh, like I think FedEx and ups um are creating their own internal block chains UM to help them not a cryptocurrency simply just blockchain to help them with logistics. UM.
I know that Amazon's creating their own coin. UM. A lot of companies are creating this so and I think one of the biggest issues is helping more and more people to onboard successfully and quickly. UM. And they're being less friction so security measures. UM. These are all things that you can just honestly just try to sign up for meta mask and discover like five businesses that you could probably make because you're like, take, this process sucks,
so uh, there's lots of opportunity. And because you just said that, because I love that you just said, because you know this process sucks quote unquote, because it was a quote I think it was Paul Graham. It might have been Paul Graham, might have been Market Injuries who talked about, you know, there is the wealth is made before the user interface is actually easy to use. That's not that's not the actual words to use, but that's
the point he was making. And so when the user interface is super easy, the people who were a billion things have already made their money, right, And so it was very difficult. It was a strong learning curve for so many people just to figure out what the blockchain was, and so how do you admonish people to not be afraid to jump into this thing? You start talking about wallets.
Now you got hot wallets and cold while let's talk about meta mass, talk about you know, coin base, and all you see is bad news, bad news, bad news. How do you, um, how do you preach this to where there's easy entrees into these opportunities? Well, I don't,
I don't. I don't. Necessarily I'm not going to encourage for it to be easy, because I think to your point, it's in the it's in the friction where the where the fortunes are made, right like, um, it's it's being able to come up with the you know, the technology that makes the smooth paved road, um for everyone else to be able to follow after you. Um. So I think that it is, you know, number one, what is your expertise, where are you good at naturally, what are
you doing currently that makes you money great? Identify that and then as you start exploring. We have a community, so people are welcome to join that and to join our community, but it's really focused on helping other people who are builders in Web two to start becoming builders and Web three and so um, yeah, we go through the basics. We go a lot of the stuff we talked about on this right on this on this episode
of what is the blockchain? What's decentralization? Why does decentralization matter? This is literally this technology was built out of philosophy. So if you don't understand the philosophy of it, um, it's gonna be hard to wrap your mind around why the technology even is is so fiction filled to begin with, Well, why don't we just do well because it's not decentralized. You asked the question, well, why isn't the artwork on chain?
Well does that matter? Right? Like, these are all the things that you have to kind of like start taking those baby steps and understanding I'm getting your hands dirty. Um. I think that's the thing is just don't be afraid. I started this in UM at the end of seventeen, I dove deep into n f T or to blockchain technology, started investing lost money. UM help parents, you know you got a little bit it is it is right like, and they're like, Okay, well I made a mistake, you know.
And it's not like I had a lot of money at the time, so it was just being willing but part of part of this experience is the value of learning. And so if you're willing to kind of um, not to say that you need to be willing to lose money in order in order to learn, but um, but but you know, you gotta be able to be in community with other people who are committed to learning about this space as well, and it's they're what they're learning
is going to rub off on you as well. It's interesting you say that, and because I've heard so many people say almost the opposite about it's not so far a departure from what you just said. Is like you do have to just get in to figure it out. Like if you're spending your all your time on the sideline reading books and you just have to get in, you have to buy something by you know, an n f T or you know, convert some money over to
etherory or whoever. So I'm going to give you a couple of different examples, and i want you to tell me what you would do. So you got a hundred dollars and we do that, it's thousand dollars, five hundreds at a hundred dollars, what would you do dealing like what like, what would you do you want to get in? Should I buy an n f T all have to invest, you know, discretionary in this particular vertical is a hundred dollars? What do I do with it to get the best education?
And then do it f five hundred and a thousand? This is good, This is good. Okay, So I think step one hundred dollars um what I would do a lot of that by the way, yeah, um, yeah, I think a hundred bucks, So I would I would literally actually just uh convert it into ethereum, go to an exchange um, convert by some set it all up, buy some ethereum, put it into your metal mask. So basically by the etherrem on exchange put it into your metal
math um. And now you have gas fees and so um even with like some of these and at these free n f T projects out there, Uh it's like free plus gas. Yeah. So gas fees are the toll by the way, they're just there's just a toll. If I get on a turnpike, you're paying to play exactly the transaction. It's it's what pays because there's no again, there's no centralized company that's paying the engineers to make sure that the blockchain stays running. You're paying the folks
who are keeping the blockchain running. That's what it is, UM and so UM. There are plenty of free n f t s, and free n f T s are actually a trend right now because because we're in a down market, you have a lot of folks who are putting out free n f t s. So what I would do is I would put that hundred dollars into gas fees, and you're met a mask wallet and go and go n f T hunting for some free n f t s and have just enough gas money to be able to actually mint the free n f T
That's what I do. Five dollars I would UM, I would take that initial hundred dollars, put it in the gas fees, take the rest of that four hundred dollars and just buy ethereum and keep it in your wallet and take it off of the exchange and put it at the very least into your meta mask wallet. And I assume once we get to a thousand dollars, I can tell you what I do after that thousand dollars. UM, I would do those first few steps, but you know,
put a hundred dollars into gas fees. I think with a thousand dollars you can you can get away with buying one n f t UM with the price of eight being at around dollars. Right now, most n f t s are selling at like you know, UM, at mint, at launch UM, you know, around point zero five maybe point one eight, so that's a hundred fifty bucks UM. So you can go and buy an the thing, though again is doing that due diligence. Who are the who's the team? Are they publicly known? Publicly known? What are
they trying to accomplish and build? Awesome? Alright, make sure that you get on the allowed list because of course they're trying to do supplied to the demand dynamics as well. So you gotta be involved in the community UM, which usually is going to be on Twitter and Discord. So
get involved. That's free, getting involved as free UM. And then if you get onto the allowed list, the v I P list UM meant your first nf team for like a Black Tech Green Money is a production to Blackvity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast network and I Hired Media is produced by Morgan Dabon and me Little Lucas. But Thedditional Productive Support by Sarah Argony, Rose mc lucas. Special thank you to MIKEAE Davis and Vanessa Serrano.
Learn more about my guests of the tech this roout that's an Innovatives at afro tech dot com, Join Black Tech Green Money, Share this with somebody, get your money, pace and love. I'm Will Lucas in this podcast. If you haven't heard, has been nominated for an inn Double A CP Image Award and I need your help. The Double A CP has recently opened up the opportunity for the public. That means you to weigh in and vote on this category. Head over to vote dot Double A
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