We're in an NFT Moment w/ Will Lucas

but the truth is we're in a moment. And by that moment, what I mean is there was a quote and I couldn't find the quote, but I'm gonna give you the paraphrase of the quote, and it was talking about, you know, some years ago when the Internet was really

in its um it was in an upward trajectory. There was really no social media at the time, but more people were leaving things like the A O, L C D that would come into mail, and they were starting to use more things like Internet drink, like like web based browsers, things like you know, Google, Yahoo, um Um, asked, Jeeves,

info Seek, things like that. And so the point of this story, that was a long way to get to the point, but the point of this story it talked about when the user interface becomes something fluent, easy to use, that's when tech can realize mass adoption. So it let me break that down. This is important we buy and large as a community do not embrace technologies software hardware that are complex to use because it's just complex. We

want things to be simple. We believe inherently that technology is supposed to make things easier, it's supposed to make things more efficient. And so when technology does not make things more efficient, the user interface is complex and it's hard to learn and it's hard to navigate, we just don't gravitate towards it. The problem with that is is you can miss an incredible opportunity to take advantage of a landscape that in the future more people will be trying to purchase land on if I can use a

real estate parallel. And so today there's so much opportunity in the world of web three, the metaverse, um, digital art in, etcetera. And more people tomorrow will be coming when the unity, when the user interface becomes more fluent, more people will be trying to take advantage of something

because it's easier to get in. But today, when it's difficult to get in, only the people who were patient enough were in a mindset of a growth mindset, and we're in an opportunity where they said look, I'm going to take the time to understand this. I'm gonna learn it, I'm gonna become proficient at it. Those are the people who get the opportunity for the land grap So if you think about a lot of the software companies that have um you know, come to proficiency over our you know,

the last decade or two. Think about like Facebook, the Twitters, the Google's, etcetera. The people who made the most money, those were the people who bet on them before anybody else really believed they saw something. And so by the time you and I got an opportunity to bet on

these companies, that's when they went public. But the money was already made with the first people in the early adopters, the early believers, when it was complex, when it was still hard and it was a little bit ugly in etcetera. But they saw something that in the future would be more widely accessible and they took advantage of that moment. This is that moment with n f t s right now. It is very challenging, complex to engage with crypto with

blockchain enabled technologies. If you want to buy an n f T, you've got the first and most every circumstance, you've got to first convert your dollar over to some sort of cryptocurrency, and then in order to get your dollar over to some sort of cryptocurrency, you've got to use some sort of exchange, whether that be something as simple as like a coin base, whether it would be something as a little bit more complex, maybe just a little bit more complex in coin based, but something like

meta mask is which is really not designed as fluently in my opinion, as something like coin base, but it can be done. People do it every day, but I do not recommend it for a new bi I recommend something like a coin base because it's just it's designed for the beginner. And so there are ways of designing software that enables more people to get in the game, and these include accessibility, trust, transparency, design colors, fond choices, navigability,

and more. And unless I have to read an instruction manual or pull up a YouTube video to learn how to work it, the more likely I them to engage in it. It's just a fact people wanted to be easier. This is something people like Steveles understood. If you're old enough, you'll remember that there was a lot of discussion about iPads when they first came out, and because they were the first among you know, a sea of hardware technologies that you could buy that didn't come with a paper manual.

If you remember the iPads, and they still don't, they still don't come with you know, paper manual that they were actually designed in in a way that you should need a manual in order to operate it in the way that it was intended. They worked it out so you can take all the guestswork and confusion out of the iPads functionality. So as soon as you powered it on, you knew how to work it. You know how to

get the most out of it. And today so far n f t s don't work so simply, you know, playing this game digital asset ownership, you know there's a learning curve which many of us do. However, we approach things that are complex or require effort is bilout. We throw our hands up. And what I'm trying to do today is get you to not do that at this time to convince you that this is a moment in time regarding the potential impact of n f t s. This is a rare one both from a producers and

a consumer standpoint. Games changed. The game has been changed, and consumers can now get access to digital art and more, um way more than just digital art, but that's another conversation for another day. And reap the benefits of that ownership as well as the creator. They can reap the benefits of their production and in perpetuity. It's not just you sold it and now you're out of the game.

Now you can produce something, sell it, and every time the next person sells it again, you get a royalty back. That's possible these days with an n f T. So you can imagine, if you're savvy, what that might mean for people who produce music, or people who produce visual art, or people who produce you know, spoken word, or people who produce audio, or people I mean a whole lot of things. There's implications here for all of you artists

or just producers at large. You know, one of my favorite books, UM, and it has been for at least five or six years, has been Ready Player one and UM I learned something about myself some time ago, quite possibly around the same time UM Amazon bought Audible that I mostly enjoy reading or listening to near future science fiction. And by that I mean I do not get into aliens. I don't enjoy stories about space travel by and large, and I have no interest in dragons and things like that.

What I'm most interested in is near future science fiction. And these are stories that are set, for the most part, no more than like twenty thirty sometimes forty, that can be reaching a little bit twenty thirty years out. And these stories rely on um at least the good ones in my view, and arc that is reasonably foreseeable based on our present day technological advancement trajectory. And so if you look at what we have today technology wise, consider

what we had ten years ago technology wise. If you were to kind of like plot that on a chart with the advancements made over a ten year period, and then like you continue that path out into the future like ten, another ten, twenty years, you can imagine where we'd be. So that's like my definition of near future science fiction. The books I'm interested in reading are just slightly dystopian, like the govern ment has probably been overthrown in these books and a new order is in place,

like we likely have more strongly monopolistic companies. Like imagine if like Amazon was where everybody worked and we all worked there, and we also had Amazons like our only outlet, the only major outlet for like anything you needed you had to get it from the same place you worked, and you lived at the Amazon plant, like you lived there eight there, you worked there, like your life was at Amazon. Like imagine that kind of like things. So like that's kind of crazy. It's probably not likely, but

it is. It could happen. Like that's the kind of stuff that I like to read, like a wild future, but one that isn't like unreasonable or fantastic. That makes sense. I hope it does. It makes sense to me. Um, So before you continue this episode, I will say I must tell you that this story, this episode does contain spoilers, particularly about Ready Player one. So if you've not seen Ready Player one or read the book, I'm gonna be talking about it, So just a heads up for you.

It's Already Player one. Um. It's a book that helped me understand my book reading or listening interests. So I didn't know I was super interested in science fiction until I read it. And what immediately caught me about this book was that there was a story inside of the story.

If you're paying attention, like one of those stories was more fully fleshed out in the book, and that was the world inside the metaverse, the world where you could be dirt poor in the analog world, the quote unquote real world where we you know, we where we are, but it didn't matter if in the digital world you had more stuff. More means more assets than others. Digital assets.

I mean, whether that be like weapons and ammo or like don't virtual cars, or like a crazy house in the metaverse, or your avatar was super good looking, like all of these things matter so much more than their physical representation in the real world. So in the real world you can have a decent place to live, but it isn't what It didn't matter as much as if you had like a crazy mansion in the virtual world. You would trade your real world circumstances for a better

virtual world circumstances. That's the world of Ready Player one. And it does strike me as interesting because these were the days before like Fortnite. When I read this book, like there was no Fortnite, and when I read this book, there was like no roadblocks um which are like new phenomena, and so the that the world would ultimately be this way was not at least to me a foregone conclusion when I was introduced to the book, and it certainly

still isn't a foregone conclusion to many other people. There's still people who don't believe, or don't want or don't wish that world to come. But I'm it's happening in so many ways. It's already here. But we'll talk about that. And so it's you who I want to, you know,

kind of have this conversation with in this episode. Those who are still trying to figure out what implications n f t S will have on their lives and like on a daily basis, not like just you know, a virtual art gallery, but like what will n f t S mean to your life? And those who are anti you know, you just against the world moving in this direction. Like I want to talk to you in this episode because I think that we can have a really cool conversation.

So I don't know if I'm in the mind of trying to persuade you on this episode, but what I'm just trying to do is to just point out a few things. And they things that at least in my mind are like undeniable, and those are one we're increasingly dependent on the digital to have a relatively good quality of life, at least by mainstream definitions, where increasingly living

digital lives, our businesses are virtual. We meet with clients and partners face to face via the internet, you know, via internet connection, or we spend alternative currencies for goods and services. We build our brands on social media, technology and um. At some point hint, hint, in present day people will want to own things like I would want

to have ownership in the digital world. And so it's really has it's really hard to have a genuine conversation about the merits of those concepts if we can't agree that their valid. So our lives are becoming increasingly dependent on digital things and so much so, like if you think about these things that if if our lives are becoming more digital and I can only today own things in the analog world, why not can I own anything

in the digital world? How can I gain some sort of power and authority over how my experience in the digital world operates? Like how how can I, you know, start to level up? How can I get promoted? How can I gain authority over community? How can I what can I do to increase my standing in the world. These things are possible now, and you gotta think about that. We don't have autonomy over our virtual lives via social media,

like we don't own it. If you want to engage on its grand Facebook, TikTok or whatever, they can take you down tomorrow because they don't like what you publish. And so how do you gain autonomy? How do you gain ownership of your experience and what you put out in the world. You used to couldn't do that a couple of years ago. You couldn't do that. You couldn't own it. You had to play by the rules of

the platform. That's changing. So honestly, I want to spend like fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of giving a very high level overview of UM the state of our community. When you think about things like n f t s, you think about things like smart contracts, you think about

things like dows, you think about things like cryptocurrency. And so what I want to do today is because number one, because I don't believe I can go deeply talking about n f t s and we don't have an appreciate and for the entirety, or or at least a good appreciation, a decent appreciation of the implications of the block chain, and all of these things I just mentioned smart contracts, n f T, s, dolls, cryptocurrency are all enabled, are

all possible because of the blockchain. So what I want to do today is begin an intelligent conversation about what an n f T is, the steps you can take for purchasing your first n f T, which sadly is not yet today super simple like many of of us would have it. Um, and why now is it time for you to find your way in no matter how

confusing it might be present day, So let's start there. Um. So first, what is an n f T. I've talked about this in a previous episode called how to mention first n f T. But an n f T is a non fungible token. Fungible means you can trade it for something like and it doesn't matter. So think about like this. If I give you a five dollar bill and you give me five ones, we got the same thing. It's it's interchangeable. Um, you can give me any five

ones inside the stack of one dollar bills. It doesn't matter, it's five dollars. But if I have the Mona Lisa and you have Cahende Wiley's memling, and we try to trade that. You can't really do that. It's not equal no matter what you do, it's not equal because it's different. It's not interchangeable. We have two different things if we decide to swap hands. And this concept should not This is not a trick concept, so this shouldn't be super hard.

So we understand that there are some things you can trade with somebody else with and they be pretty much the exact same thing. So you ever asked somebody you got a twenty dollar bill and you're like, hey, you don't any can anybody break this twenty Somebody comes to you with five ones or five dollars bill in a ten and you still got twenty hollars, but you got it broken down into pieces, but you still got twenty hours.

That's fungible. Trading a piece of art for another piece of art, or trading a piece of art for dollars, or trading a piece of art for light coin, that's non fungible. Like you, you're getting something different in exchange. They're not the same. So so why does it matter at all? So if you think about this, like if you know, like I, let's say you have any nieces and nephews, or you have young kids. You know, if you think about and they let's say they play Roadblocks

or they play Fortnite. If you think about this, and I said the same thing, and um, how to mention first n f T I have young children, and I would bet they would struggle if you said, here's a hundred dollars in cash or a hundred dollars in roebucks or v bucks. They would struggle with deciding which is more valuable to them. That's the world we're walking into.

It is just as almost almost just as important to them to have status in a virtual world, to stunt in a virtual world than it does in a real world. In real life, status matters, which is why almost why we collect anything and want to show it off. It

gives us status. It's in our DNA. And so that is inherently moving to a digital landscape where more and more of us are spending our time and we, like I talked about the key principles, See if we can't have a conversation about are we living more and more digitalized? Are we relying on the digital things more and more to enable to us to move in the digital world. Therefore, if that's true, we want to have status in that world. And that's the world we're coming to. It's the world

our kids are already in. So with that, getting to the place where you can purchase your first n f T, you've got to first convert your dollars, your US dollars to some sort of cryptocurrency, and typically UM by large, these work on the Ethereum blockchain. So you want to convert your US dollars to ethereum, and you can do that, and we'll let's just talk about coin base because it's the easiest one to use. You can use others, there are many others, but coin based, in my experience, is

the easiest to use. Meta mask is also one that is widely popular. Coin based. Will just stick with that for the taking this conversation. We can talk about meta masking a different um in a different episode, because maybe we'll have an episode about wallets and exchanges. Coin based

is most widely used. So let's say you go, you download coin based on your phone, UM, you sign up for an account, and you you connect your bank account to it, you connect the debit card to it, and you say, I want to buy and I'm not even looking at exchange rates right now. But let's just say, for simple math purposes, I want to buy one ethereum and last I look because I have a bunch of have ethereum um, but I have I don't watch it,

but I have ethereum. And so let's just say the last I looked it was like, you know, four thousand dollars for one eight. I heard there's some violatility in the market right now, But different conversations for another day. But let's say um, just for simple math purposes, let's say one dollar to one thousand UM. One thousand dollars in US dollars get you one eighth. So one thousand

to one that's not correct. I'm sure that's not correct, because goodness gracious, but one thousand dollars will buy you one eight. And then I want to go by UM an n f T. So I've now had I've exchanged my one thousand dollars for one ethereum token. What I'm then going to do is sign up for an account on something like open Sea, which is one of the

biggest platforms. So think of it. Think of it like Amazon for n f T s. Think of it like like eBay for n F T s. So if I've got uh digital art, I've you know, produced, I can go to Open Sea and I can put my digital art, my song, my j peg, my ping, my PNG file, my Jeff, my raster whatever that raster file is, I can produce. I can I can publish um my digital art to open See and put it on the marketplace. So you know, somebody else, Sally and Utah can buy it if she likes it. So I'm going to connect

my wallet. This is where it starts to get tricky because I mentioned this. I told you you have a conversation about complex things today. You cannot let the complexity of doing this get you out of the game. Because just because you bought one thousand dollars worth of ethereum, which is one in our world the exchange right, I don't know what it is right now, but it could be more. I'm sure it's more. It's like four thousand dollars the last time I look you you went and

bought one. E took your thousand dollars to buy it, or your ethereum is still not yet in a place where you can actually make transactions with it. If if you bought it on coin bay dot com, if you bought it on the coin based app, you have to move it over to your wallet and that costs minor fees. Minor fees are fees that are paid to people who mind cryptocurrency validate transactions all over the world. They get incentivized to do this and to verify to keep the

block chain honest. They do this for those fees, so they put computer power to work in order to earn cryptocurrency. So you've paid one some sort of fee to buy the cryptocurrency by the ethereum from the coin based dot com or the coin based app, and then you're paying again to move your money from the coin based dot com site or the coin based app over to a coin based wallet which enables you to be able to

make transactions with your currency, your cryptocurrency, your ethereum. Now, the cool thing about once you've downloaded both the coin based app and the coin based wallet, it's very simple to move the money between the two. Now, you're gonna pay to move the money between the two, but it's very simple to do. It's like a one button you know, by transfer whatever um. And then once you have moved your money into the wallet. You're using that wallet to

sign in. It's like logging credentials two things like open Sea. So that's that you're going to Facebook and you're trying to sign into Facebook using an email address, a passwords, signing up for user name, all of these things well in the world of crypto, like your wallet is getting you access, so you don't have to go through all the processes of you know, confirming via email, adding an email address, all of these different things. Those days are done.

When you think about the world that we're moving into, particularly when they involve interfacing with the blockchain. You're using your wallet to get access. Your wallet is your key, so you're going to open see dot io and you're looking for the log in button, and the log in button instead of asking you for again a user name, password or whatever email address, is asking you for your wallet. Which wallet are you using and in this example, we're

using your coin based wallet. So once you've signed up for a coin base, you move your money over to the coin based wallet. Your wallet now is your access into open sea, and you're you're all of your credentials are already stored in your wallet, so who you are is stored in your wallet. Your your profile picture is stored in your wallet, like all of who you are is your wallet, so you're not having to sign up in this long, arduous process. It's all stored in your wallet.

So you you connect your wallet to open see um and then once you connected your wallet, now you are in a position to be able to purchase things. Again. Every time you interface with the blockchain, you're paying because you're putting a record on the ledger that computers all around the world have to verify, validate and ensure our secure. So every time you go to buy sell a n f T or whatever, you're paying a fee, and so

this is important. This is an important distinction to make with regards to buying something at a store where there's hidden fees. There's things like actual gas to get to the store. There's things like your time spent you know, traveling from your home to the store, and you're instead paying gas fees proverbial gas fees, which are like in the form of like minor fees to validate the transaction on the blockchain. This all sounds very complex, at least

it does to me explaining it. It was to me the first time I did it, and hopefully it is not so complex. And my job here today is at least give you a primer on what you can expect when you go do this using this step by step to make sure you understand that this is not the world that you're used to living in. This is a different world. And this world is going to leave a lot of people out who are against learning something new.

I don't want that to be you. I want us to be continual learners, continual people who are open to, you know, being new at something. You haven't been new at something in a long time. I wan be honest. The first time I did this, when I when I do this for the absolute first time, trying to connect my my coin based dot com the app to the wallet and then the wallet to um open see and all, it took me about an hour or two just to figure out why. And it wasn't an hour or two

of actually trying to figure things out. It was an hour or two of trying to figure out am I doing it right? Because I'm paying for everything that I'm doing, and so I got to be doing something wrong, and so it was like I'm okay, I'm like should I be paying again? That's what I was concerned with, which is why it took so long. But yes, every time you interface with the blockchain, you're paying because you have

to validate that transaction the system has. The blockchain has to be validated by people who run a gazillion computers all over the world, and that you know that stuff costs money to do that light's got to stay on. So because this is still as complex as it is, we're not yet at a moment where there's mass adoption, but that's where the opportunity it is. It's already a lot of hype around certain n f T projects like v friends or crypto punks, which drives up the cost

of them. But imagine when having a crypto wallet is as ubiquitous is having a debit card, or as having an account on Instagram. That day is coming. When it does, it will be even harder to break through the noise and get attention for your project, to buy a project at a price you can manage your otherwise. This is a moment where you were doing the homework, having the

patients and spending the time can read huge rewards. Will it be impossible a year from now, two years from now, No but it will be harder because even more people will be in the thing about n f t s, just like it was with Instagram, TikTok you know, Twitter

and more. Is the early adopters get rewarded. The earlier you are and on the project, the earlier you believe in an artist, and earlier you put your tokens to work, the more opportunity you can take advantage of, the more upside you have the potential for Black Tech Green Money is a production to Black of the Afro Tech Black Effect podcast Network and I Heart Media and it's produced by Morgan Dabon and me Well Lucas, with condition to production support by Love Beach and the Russa Lewis Special

thank you to Michael Davis, your main hall in c carzavan Jan you know like the wine. Yes, that's his real name. Learn more about this topic of the tech destruct that's the innovators and more at afro tech dot com. Enjoying Black Tech Green Money leave us a five star rating on night Tunes. Go get your money, peace and love