What Is A Crypto Wallet w/ Will Lucas

high Water for the Official afro Tech Conference in November. UM. We're taking the show in the road too. So if you remember, afro Tech started years ago in San Francisco, then we after a couple of years moved over to Oakland. We're moving again this year. You can meet us afro

Tech Conference in Austin, Texas. We are coming to the lone star state, Austin and you're getting to find amazing food, great life, music and come this November twenty thousand, Black tech Y's will converge on the city for the first in person official afro Tech conference in two years. We have missed y'all and we are long overdue for this party and learning experience from my group of people out there. As the early bird tickets are live now, don't delay

in getting yours today. Get um yours at experience dot afro tech dot com and also, guess what we are also pulling up this month March in Brooklyn for the second afro Tech Executive of afro Tech Executive Brooklyn will be there and talking about women in tech and women in leadership is going to be a vibe. Tickets to a t Exact Brooklyn are also available now at afro Tech. I'm sorry, Experience dot afro tech dot How so what

is a crypto wallet? Um? You've likely you likely have a wallet, you know, sitting nearby you somewhere, probably in your pocket, maybe it's in your backpack or in your tell far back. Maybe you know the concept, but your wallet is likely where you store your physical credit cards, your I D. Maybe you even have a little cash in your wallet. The point is we're all familiar with

this concept. You have a physical storage container, usually like leather or fold leather, where you store things that you need access to, but you want to keep them secure and somewhat organized. Uh. Typically these things have to do with storing currency. These wallets do paying for things or validating who you are, like in the case of having your idea in it. A crypto wallet UM is effectively the same thing, but it's specifically designed to store crypt

though in like passwords. There are hardware wallets, cold wallets, UM and hot wallets, and we'll let's not get ahead of ourselves, all right, So let's let's just walk this out, because I don't want to jump too far ahead, because it's very tempting to right now. But hardware wallets we call them cold wallets, or you have like online wallets that are called hot wallets. But first let's talk about

the purpose of a crypto wallet in any case. All right, So, if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, specifically like in the last well since two, specifically, we've been talking a lot about crypto n f T s, things like that, and hopefully by now I've built up some kind of appetite in you to invest in yourself in web three, whether it be buying in n f T, exchanging your US dollars or rubles for ethereum or a sheep of coin um. But just like we describe what

we're all pretty used to the wallet. In the crypto wallet, these things store things that you might need access to, like your currency cryptocurrency. It allows you to pay for things in Web three, and it allows you to validate who you are your crypto wallet. It does and among the most important things of crypto wallet it does. And I just alluded to this is regarding the storage of

things you may need access to. Now I set this up in the form of storing crypto, but there's a level deeper that are wallet stores and that and that's what we call keys. So not like physical keys today that you know may turn on your vehicle or let you in your house, and one day I'm sure we'll get there, but I'm talking about your public and private keys,

the passwords that give you access to your cryptocurrencies. Um now you might be asking, you know, I thought my crypto was stored on or in the wallet, and well, you may have crypto, but it's not like physically in your crypto wallet, like your U S dollars might be in your Louisatime wallet. In Web three, your currency is basically just a recording on a ledger. There's no physical coin or token you can see. It's a record. It's a line of code. It's an instance that is secured

by the blockchain. It can be altered or forged. It can it can be stolen. But again let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're gonna talk about that. But the record does last forever um that it was in your proverbial hands. I want to give again a quick primer on how the blockchain works because it's important for this conversation.

The blockchain is a distributed database. Think of it like a hard drive or a computer that is replicated in A gang of people all over the world have the same copy, the same version of this hard drive or computer with the storage devising it, and they're constantly validating the files on each other. So the computer, the the hard drive that's in you know, Mississippi, is validating the same storage and records of the computer that I may have in Las Vegas, or in Atlanta or in New York.

So they're all like you know, validating each other to make sure they're correct and to verify transactions that happen on the blockchain. So you can't say, like, you know, I have a valid copy of Donda two on my node with your computers like your node, that node on the blockchain network, because all the other nodes, all the other computers out there are going to check the record and say no, no, no, no, no, it's not valid.

And then when they verify that your node has you know, malicious file on it or you know invalid filem it's not necessarily be malicious, but it's invalid. Your no, then your computer, your hard eye that's trying to insert that file, that invalid or malicious file is gonna get banned from the blockchain network because they try to insert an invalid transaction.

So anyway, the blockchain is a database that stores information electronic, electronically, uh digitally, and it's redundant, so it's there's same copies all around the world. Then they're being stored by miners, which we don't have to get into that today. But what's so cool about the blockchain is that it's NonStop guaranteeing the purity, fidelity, or you know the cleanliness of the data that's being generated, and you don't have to rely on like a government or any institution um to

protect that data. It's you know, it's a democratized authority. So it's probably by as far as I'm gonna go with explaining what the blockchain is in this episode, because I really only referenced that to help us understand cryptocurrency not being in our wallets physically up the record of how much ethereum or light coin or sheba I have um is stored in this distributed decentralized ledger miles long spreadsheet, if you will. So. Your wallet then stores the keys

that unlock your crypto. Your wallet opens the door for your crypto to be used in the transaction, So like you're buying in f T or a cup of coffee in some innovative, forward thinking coffee house, your wallet allows others to send you crypto, as your wallet has an address that anyone can see. Again, we'll get into that private first public concept shortly, and it can serve as an actual key, like instead of using an email address and password like you might sign into like you might

use to sign them too, like Instagram. You could use your crypto wallet to sign into an online service, for instance, open Sea, which we've talked a lot about on our episodes about n f t S open seas in exchange, like the Amazon of n f t S, you can use your wallet to sign in to open Sea without using like an email address and password, passwords and email justice to log in our so web two all right, And so the wallet could also store your dial token,

your distribute, your decentralized autonomous organization token, the things you use to give you access to a party at the upcoming afro Tech conference in Austin. You know that could be stored in your crypto wallet. The token that you used to get into the dial like Friends with Benefits is a dial um for you by a black man um to get into that party, you know you're gonna have to bring your crypto wallet to get access because your wallet is storing the token that that validates that

you have access to said party. Your wallet, so as you can tell, your wallet has a variety of functions, and we just talked about some of the most criticals. So what else should we know about a crypto wallet? Then, well, how do you get one? UM? I'm gonna say that conversation for a little later because there's a bit more foundation I want to lay so you really get a handle on what it is the wallet is and what

it does and the implications of having one UM. I've said this a few times use these terms, these phrases. A few times I mentioned keys, private keys, and public keys, So this is a few times already, and I want to dig in right now. UM what um what they are?

Because when I say things like a public key that allows any one to see you on the blockchain and your activity on the block chain, that might scare you, Like, you know, why why does everybody get to see that I bought said n f T. Why does everybody get to see that I sent John? You know one? Eight? Like why is that public knowledge? Well, you know number one, Like, there's no more privacy that that concept of privacy is you know a web two thing. Again, the world is changing.

So that's a different conversation for a different day. But the the public key is something that anybody can see and you're not at risk of being hacked or someone still in your crypto because they have access to your public key. Your public key is supposed to be used. It's supposed to be um seeable because that's how you can make transactions. Your public key is it's a cryptographic code.

It's a set of numbers and letters that allows you to receive crypto or better, it allows the record of an amount of crypto to move from my you know point on the ledger the global ledger to your name on the global ledger. So m walk with me for a minute, because I don't want you to get confused about this concept, and if it does, just hit rewind and listen again. The public key that you have if

you have a wallet. Everybody has one. If you have a wallet, it's it's like a two hundred fifty six bit number, so but you will likely see more often is the wallet address, which is a scrambled version of that number. The address is a set of random characters, and not Russian say random, but there are a set of characters that have both letters and numbers in it, and the address will always begin with A one, A three,

or a B C one. Digging deeper into that is outside of the scope of this episode, but it's good to know that. So let's say you want to send me your address to send you an eat a single ethereum coin. What you could do is on almost every wallet, cold wallet or hot wallet software or hardware, there is a copy paste feature that allows you to copy the set of characters like a forty two you know character um address, which is the public address of your wallet

um or, and most wallets give you this feature. You can just pull up the QR code that I can read with my smart device, my you know, iPhone or whatever, and the QR code references your address that forty two character A code. Um So, then just by doing that, I can send you THEA that I owe you. The private key, however, is what allows anyone to put their hands in your cookie jar. So stick the nubs into your wallet and snatch your cryptough you don't want that.

Your private key is something you should never share. There's no reason any reputable transaction on the blockchain requires you to share your private key. Any transaction you may engage and should only require your public key. Think of it as your token or ticket into the door or one the one way door that allows money to you put into your wallet. But by providing your private key to others, you allow their unfettered access into your chips. You don't

want that. Typically, the private key is another set of alpha numeric characters, and you unlock access to those characters, which really don't do often what should you like to These wallets give you a recovery phrase. So I'm gonna dig into a cold wallet that I use really quickly. Cold means it's hardware. It's like not on the internet. Um, it's a it's a device, you know. Most of them look like a USB like little thumb drive. And so Ledger is the one that I use, a Ledger nano

x UM it's a cold wallet. More on that soon. But they provide a recovery phrase which I have stored, and once I enter that recovery phrase, it unlocks my private keat again. Without that recovery phrase, I have no access to my crypto, no reputable wallet again, hot or

cold should be storing my recovery phrase. In fact, when I signed up for Ledger, they give you a couple like pieces of paper, a couple of cards like physical pieces of paper that I can copy down with a pen my recovery phrase and store it in a safe place like whise choices, maybe a safe deposit box or a fireproof box or in your gun safe or whatever.

And so your private key is protected by a recovery phrase that are typically like words like these random words' alleg you gives you twenty four words that are that are in your recovery phrase, and they're like super super random words like have house chair bright like these they're just random words or they seem random words that don't make any sense other otherwise. But they are the recovery phrase that is used to unlock your private key. So

there are types of wallets that I want to discuss. UM. There are three types that are most prominent, or really there's three types. I should say that you should be familiar with UM though you'll find I'm sure your groove with probably one, maybe two of them, but I'm sure you'll find one that you probably prefer first up. UM. I would say it's probably lesser used, but that's speculation because it's just harder to do it. It's it's paper wallet.

It's a paper wallet. As I mentioned before, your crypto, your wallet, I'm sorry, it's just like a set of alpha numeric characters that are your private key that unlock your crypto. So a paper wallet is a sheet of paper that you write down your characters, and using those characters, you can unlock your assets. It's clunky this way, but it's legitimate. You just need a sheet of paper that has you can you can you can memorize them, you know, if you want it. But it's a piece of paper.

A paper wallet, it is that UM records the characters of your private key. Paper wallet UM more common because it is easier, is an online wallet. These are things like the coin based wallet, which I have. I have one UM, I don't use it as much anymore UM, which will discuss my reasons why. But a coin based wallet, and there are others. UM is software. It's an app that is typically protected by like a two step encryption UM.

So it's likely gonna need like it's gonna send you a text when you're trying to sign in, or it's gonna require something like Google Authenticator UM that code when you try to sign in. But with your online wallet, they're largely easy to use, which makes them attractive to many because for people who are looking for simplicity and don't want to have all the responsibility of meaning maintaining a small device, like a hardware wallet, it typically is

keeping it safe and remembers location. UH. A hot wallet, which is the software wallet UM is attractive, which brings me to the hardware wallet UM. The this is called a cold wallet UM. A hot wallet again is the software the app that does it. The cold wallet is hardware UM. Again, I use ledger. I have a nano x is by ledger. UM is a wallet that is not connected to the internet unless I plug it in. UM. But it's it's storing my keys offline. It's stored my

keys are stored on the device. It's safer UM, provided I don't lose it. UM. But it does require me to be incredibly more responsible. Is that all it makes sense? I hope it does. Cold wallet is hardware. It's offline. It's not online, you know, unless I plug it in. A hot wallet software which is like coin based wallet. And there are many many others UM, but they are on line, and there are third parties managing your crypto, managing your keys. They both have their own bit of attractiveness.

If you are if you do not want to be responsible for knowing where your device is, knowing where your that paper is, knowing where that little thumb drive that we call a that I call a ledger in my my my respects a nano x or other device that you use. If you don't want to be responsible for that, something like a coin based wallet might work for you, Which brings me to UM. The topic of a const custodio or non custodiol at this stage because they have

so many implications too. Hot or cold wallets, hardware or software wallets, UM, custodio and non custodio. It makes sense to discuss those now because the definitions go hand in hand with the wallet types. Custodio wallets are like software.

Those are the wallets that we are trusting knowingly or unknowingly a third party like coin base or some other company to manage our crypto with a custodia wallet, while it might be encrypted, it's throwed on somebody's server somewhere like maybe AWS, or maybe that company has their own server farm. But in any case, somebody else, the custodian is managing their holding tight to our private keys. The benefits of this custodian wallet is just what we discussed convenience,

playing simple. They're a lot easier to use. They're built for the lowest common denominator. Not to say that cold wallets are not built for the lowest common denominators, but they are custodial that they're somewhere we get to hold somebody's hand when we crossed the street. All right, so beautifully designed, um, but we don't have to a lot of responsibility to get to point B from where we

are in point eight. But God forbid that coin base gets hacked, because that means you are susceptible, and whatever you know, coins I have left in my coin base is susceptible. So I don't leave my crypto in my coin base app. I choose to be responsible, So I choose to go the non custodial route, which means that I am fully grown, no longer holding anyone's hand when I crossed the street. I am taking full ownership of my future. In Web three, my data isn't stored on

some company servers. The only records present of my private keys are you know the record actually the only records present about anything about my activity or or either on the blockchain or on my device. There is no like online service hold onto will Lucas data. I own it. It's in my It's right now, sitting right in front of me. And whoever records whatever records I keep on my person or in my house, let that be my private keys or whatever. There is no authority or company

or app holding onto it but me. I own it fully and outright, both the benefits and the responsibility Lastly, UM, as we've talked a lot about coin base and Ledger in this episode, I want to take a final few minutes here and set the record clear about the differences

between an exchange and a wallet. Um. In most in the most basic terms, a crypto exchange is like you ever been in the airport and next to like Chick fil a, they have a counter where you can exchange your euro for US dollars or exchange your U S dollars for renman. B Um, it's an exchange desk, and there's an exchange rate. And so I'm gonna make this

up because I could look. But unless it's a matter of fact, let's let's do the real work here and find exchange rate from U S d to Euro Boom okay, So for one U S dollar I can get eighty nine cents in euros Okay, one one dollar equals eighty nine cents in Europe. So it kind of works the same, well it does. It works the same way, So one dollar one type the same one U S dollar to one So for one dollar, well not much. Let's just do it backwards. If I want one, if I have

to pay two thousand, eight hundred dollars as of right now. Okay, let's did it backwards, because it's going to be like points years years, years, years, ARLs or something if I do it the other way. You guys are pretty good at math. So for one for two thousand eight dollars, I can buy one at president value that is the exchange rate, and so on an exchange, I can trade my US dollars for ethereum, or for a bitcoin, or for dose or for shiba. And exchange is not a wallet.

But in this case, like coin base, a company who develops an exchange can also develop a wallet. They they are mutually exclusive, but they don't have to be. The coin Base could have just said we're gonna think in the exchange game, we're not gonna do a wallet, but they decided to play in the wallet game too. I mentioned that I also have a coin based wallet, So that wallet, whether or not it's developed by coin based, is software or hardware. In the case of my ledger

that allows me to store my coins. I can make transactions using my wallet. I cannot make transactions with dollars that are stored on the exchange. The exchange is just where I'm playing the money game. I'm going back and forth exchanging my dollars from our bitcoin or from more ethereum, retcetera. But if I want to go buy a cup of coffee at some you know, cool, you know coffeehouse, I need to have my money moved off of the exchange and into a wallet. I can't also sign into a

service using an exchange my exchange account. I need to have my wallet set up. So let's use open Seed. We use open see a lot as an example, because I mean, we're heavy users of open See, the Amazon of n f t s, and so if I want to sign in to open Seed to buy an inn f T, I cannot do it using any you know password or user name that I have on coin based the exchange. I need to have a coin based wallet set up in order to sign in to open See and many many other Web three platforms require you to

have a wallet. You gotta have a wallet to sign into these things. So whether or not you use something like Ledger or coin based, one of the features of the wallet. It's also that they show you how much you own of a particular coin, and some may even show you the present value of those things. So if I own one eight ledger, the dashboard might show me that that one E present value is two thousand five dollars.

So I love doing these episodes about crypto, blockchain, n f t S, and more with you guys, And I want to know where questions you guys have because I'm gonna be having some really really cool conversations with even more experts in the field of crypto on this show. And so I want to know what you guys have questions about. If you have specific questions that you want answered, and you know nobody answers questions like we do, send me your questions, d n me. I am on Instagram,

I'm on Twitter. On Twitter, it's Will Underscore Lucas. On Instagram, it's just Will Lucas. W I L L l U c A y S follow me, shoot me a d

M ask me what you got. And I'm gonna be having more interviews and conversations where I would do things solo, just talking about um getting you educated in order to play well in the game of Web three, whether it be about n f t s, you have questions, send them to me, crypto currencies, you have questions, send it to me, blockchain, send it to me because I want to make sure we're giving you value on this show.

If you loved this episode, please go to iTunes and drop five stars and then it means a lot when you do that. I really appreciate you guys for taking this ride with us. I hope to see you in real life and either Brooklyn coming up that were announced at the top of this episode, or Austin this November. So afro Tech is back and we're gonna have a ton of conversations about crypto, n f t S and more this November. So we're gonna just keep building this

thing up, keep building. You know your expertise and domain knowledge about the blockchain, so stick with us. I promise you you will not regret him. Black Tech Green Money is a producing the black of the Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast, Ask Network and iHeart Media, and it's produced by Morgan Dabon and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by love Vicha Marissa Lewis. Special thank you to Michael Davis, Germaine Hall, and ce Car savan

Yan you know like the Wine. Yes that's his real name. Learn more about this topic over at afrotech dot com and if you enjoying yourself. Leave us the five star rating on iTunes, Go get your money, Peace and love,