Entrepreneurial Appetite
Entrepreneurial Appetite is a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism, and supporting Black businesses. This podcast will feature edited versions of Entrepreneurial Appetite’s Black book discussions, including live conversations between a virtual audience, authors, and Black entrepreneurs. In this community, we do not limit what it means to be an intellectual or entrepreneur. We recognize that the sisters and brothers who own and work in beauty salons or barbershops are intellectuals just as much as sisters and brothers who teach and research at universities. This podcast is unique because, as part of this community, you have the opportunity to participate in our monthly book discussion, suggest the book to be discussed, or even lead the conversation between the author and our community of intellectuals and entrepreneurs. For more information about participating in our monthly discussions, please follow Entrepreneurial_ Appetite on Instagram and Twitter. Please consider supporting the show as one of our Founding 55 patrons. For five dollars a month, you can access our live monthly conversations. See the link below:https://www.patreon.com/EA_BookClub
Entrepreneurial Appetite
Bitcoin and Black America: A Conversation with Isaiah Jackson and Demetric Byrd
Two visionaries at the intersection of cryptocurrency and Black economic empowerment deliver an electrifying conversation about how Bitcoin is creating unprecedented financial opportunities for marginalized communities. Isaiah Jackson, author of "Bitcoin in Black America," shares his journey from skeptical teacher to cryptocurrency advocate, explaining why he believes Bitcoin represents true financial liberation for Black Americans historically excluded from traditional banking systems.
The discussion pulls back the curtain on discriminatory practices that continue today—from redlining that devalued Black neighborhoods to excessive fees that extract wealth from vulnerable communities. By contrast, blockchain technology offers a transformative alternative: a financial system where your zip code, appearance, and credit score don't matter, where wealth can't be confiscated, and where transparency replaces discrimination.
Far beyond price speculation, Jackson and host Demetric Byrd explore practical applications that make this technology accessible to everyone. They break down how to start with just a few dollars, explain revolutionary concepts like earning 200% interest through decentralized finance (compared to banks' fractional percentages), and discuss why teaching children about blockchain prepares them to lead rather than follow in the digital economy.
Perhaps most compelling is their vision of building autonomous economic communities. Through initiatives like Bitcoin summer camps, Black Bitcoin Billionaires, and local blockchain meetups, they're creating educational pathways and support systems that position Black Americans at the forefront of financial innovation. This isn't just about individual wealth—it's about developing sovereign economic infrastructure that can't be undermined by institutional bias.
Whether you're completely new to cryptocurrency or already investing, this conversation offers clarity, practical advice, and profound insights into how this technology addresses systemic inequities while creating remarkable opportunities. Join these forward-thinking leaders and discover why Bitcoin might be the most significant wealth-building tool for Black communities since land ownership.
Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's good everyone. I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. Welcome to another throwback episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite.
Speaker 3:And now I have the great opportunity to introduce you all to today's guests, Demetrik Bird and Isaiah Jackson. Demetrik is a mentor of mine.
Speaker 1:He actually did the premarital counseling for me and my wife before we got married. He is the founder of 300 Seconds, a nonprofit organization here in San Antonio.
Speaker 3:He also has his own cryptocurrency coaching business and those of you who made donations and are supporting this event today.
Speaker 1:we're giving 10% of everything that we got to 300 Seconds to support their mission and I'm going to have Dimitri talk a little bit more about that in a second. We also have Isaiah Jackson, who I guess in my mind he's a cryptocurrency activist, innovator thought leader for the Black community, and so we're going to have him introduce and talk a little bit about himself as well.
Speaker 3:So, dimitri, sure For us. You know, god has graced us, me and my wife, to create what we call the ecosystem of impact, and that pretty much just deals with three key areas in society, which 300 seconds is our community arm, in which we strive to reach the community. You know, five minutes at a time. It's building relationships and emulating the negative effects of social conditions. And then we have the Journey, which is a life group here in San Antonio, where we strive to mentor. It's a grassroots mentorship program where we study the text from a Christian basics and foundation and we also share financial principles, growth principles, there. And we also have Team Bird, which is here Inc. Which is a creating value club that we mentor and coach families to succeed and to become more than, and in that we started the blockchain coaching group because we realized that, hey, there's two worlds out there and you could choose to operate in the old one or the new one that the whole world has come to, which is blockchain technology. So that's a little bit about me.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I'm Isaiah Jackson, the author of Bitcoin in Black America versions one and two. Also the host of the daily show, the Gentleman of Crypto, longest running daily show in crypto history. Also, I have a weekly show called Community Crypto, number one rated show on Coindesk TV and the co-founder of Black Bitcoin Billionaires, the largest Bitcoin group on Clubhouse in the world. So do a lot of things in the space and been around since 2013. And definitely glad to have this conversation because I want everybody to get good information and to learn about this technology that is coming, whether you want it to or not, and I'm just glad to have this conversation, too, tonight.
Speaker 3:Isaiah. Thank you, man, for being on and taking the time to be present. I think one of the main things that you just mentioned that a lot of people really don't grasp is the word technology. A lot of people, when they first hear about Bitcoin, the first thing that they say, man, that's that digital money. Right, when I first heard of it, in fact many years ago, a friend of mine named Spencer Dawkins called me and I was driving like hey, what do you think about digital money? And in my mind I had a closed mindset and I instantly said man, nobody don't want to be part of that Ponzi scheme. Digital money doesn't even make sense. God forgive me for that closed mindset and I see people respond that way today, but that was important. The word technology how important is that word to you when it relates to Bitcoin and viewing it as a technology, before we even begin to talk about the book?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So when it comes to technology, if you think about the Internet in the 90s there were people who actually said, why would I need the Internet? I don't need to talk to anybody in China. So in retrospect people are like, well, you know, now the Internet is everything, even down to some of the stacks of Wi-Fi and things that we all need Bluetooth, and you know, technology is all important because if we get too deep on price, a lot of people are turned away or they don't understand it because they're not technically investors.
Speaker 2:But if you focus on the technology, bitcoin actually solved a longtime problem called the general Byzantine problem. It's the ability to have a trustless system which literally they have to take that out of the textbooks now because it's not a problem anymore in computer science and I am a computer science major, I went to NC State. So the tech is all important and we're getting into the book. And if you read the book you'll see where I started off, thinking about price and how much money I can make. But when you realize the tech that's behind it the ability to move money through space and time can transact with aliens Technically the tech is amazing and that's all. People should be focused on. The price comes later, the value is there, so we'll definitely get into that.
Speaker 3:But yeah, and I remember that section where you mentioned that in the book to where listen? And we're going to have a general statement of where how the book came to life. But now that we're on this subject of technology I think it was around K-7, you said that in 2014,. Right, it was an important year in cryptocurrency and you learned that the price meant nothing. Pretty much what you just said verbatim that you looked at Bitcoin through the lens of desperation rather than emancipation. Could you kind of highlight that and how important it is for people to really consider Bitcoin, being that that's our topic in that light, or how did you gain that lens?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. When you think about technology, one phrase I always like to use is software eats everything. So any issues that you have at some point, there's tech that catches up to solve that problem. And I mean even thinking about the black community. It was hard for people to catch a taxi in New York for a while and then Uber came along. Software solved that problem Then now that's gone away. Same thing with some of the other issues that we've had being able to use tech to solve that issue.
Speaker 2:And Bitcoin gives you an amount of freedom, the ability to hold your own wealth the first time in history, I believe, where you can hold your own wealth and it can't be taken away from you Definitely in American history, I mean, I don't think people understand how valuable that is because of the technology of being able to hold your private keys being unconfiscatable.
Speaker 2:That is the essence of what money should be, and because of that technology, you have freedom now to transact with whoever you want, whenever you want, and nobody can take it away from you, because a lot of people talk about a lot of things, a lot of investments, but they can all be taken away from a third party. Only Bitcoin is the only one, where at no point can they take your private key unless it gives it away. So, yes, that is why I said I looked at it through the lens of desperation because I didn't have much money. I was a teacher, second lowest paying state. But when you really understand what Bitcoin can do, the emancipation that comes from it opens up your mind, your thoughts, you go down the rabbit hole, you learn about economics, cryptography, history, I mean. I know some people didn't even understand money before Bitcoin came out, and then they understood. You know what happens from there. So that's what I mean by freedom and the ability to free yourself in your mind as well as your money.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. And just to piggyback on what Aizel is saying, in my research I realized that Bitcoin and not just Bitcoin, just blockchain technology as a whole was one of the greatest technical advances for humankind in the past two or three decades. You can think about the technology creation. I tell ones that listen if you think about the Jetsons or smart cities, there is no smart city without blockchain technology. It does not happen. If you think about self-driving cars or anything, the way you imagine the future of life, the future of life does not happen without blockchain technology. That's just, it's a transition to that future. So that's awesome. So, man, that's an awesome statement that you mentioned. Pay attention to technology.
Speaker 3:Now get into the book, right, get into the genesis of the book, and so on page two I believe it was you mentioned that you and your friends were sitting in the living room of your apartment and how y'all were in despair and someone opened up a conversation about money, right, and someone made a statement Really, it's the genesis kind of what started this movement that what I picked up from the book was that hey, I need to make more money. I think it was Brad or someone that said, hey, I need to make more money. I think it was Brad or someone that said, hey, I need to make money. Y'all started going through a list of things about money and then a friend parents were in Bitcoin and he threw the word Bitcoin out there. And take us from that place to where now the book was birthed. Give us the genesis, but also kind of pull us from, put us in that scene. Help the people.
Speaker 2:Awesome, matt. You're taking me back, brother. Well, October 2013,. I had just started teaching. I was teaching high school. I started in August and by October, after the first two paychecks and I was like I can't even barely live off of that. I have just enough money to be broke, like I say in the book. And you know we're sitting on the couch hanging out and drinking beers, talking to each other. We're all fresh out of college. I was 23.
Speaker 2:And you know your first job isn't really that good their jobs, you know entry level stuff. So of course, it started out with you know how can we make more money? And you know we kicked around ideas. None of it really made sense because, you know, we did have sort of a mindset that we wanted to make money now, and that's kind of how stocks and real estate kind of got thrown out. We was like, well, maybe in the future, but I don't have money for that. And my friend literally said we discussed something at my job today called Bitcoin, and I don't know what the hell that is. He's too techie for me, I don't understand it. And he worked for Charles Schwab. So this is what I mean when I say you know a lot of the banks already knew about it. They just didn't act on it. He said I didn't understand it. I have a tech background. So he kind of passed it off to me and was like, yeah, my parents are thinking about buying some, you know, just in case, because the future is probably going to be digital, and his parents were millionaires already. So I was like, well, if you don't have money, you should copy the general Byzantine problem.
Speaker 2:Being in college during the recession, I was beyond broke when that happened in 09. I was in college, could barely afford a four for four from Wendy's, and then the recession came and I'm scraping together pennies to try and get chips. But yes, it blew my mind because I was like man, somebody figured it out. I don't know who Satoshi is, I don't know if it's him, her, they doesn't matter. Just like we don't know who technically created the internet, we know that it works, it's open source technology. And I was like somebody figured it out. And in the second book I say this it's almost like when you fall in love, you want to tell the whole world. You can't.
Speaker 2:Now and when, looking at where we were going, I understood that digital money would be, would be a part of our economy, as we can see now, and that Bitcoin was sort of the black swan event that people talk about. That shifted everything, and not only did Bitcoin do that blockchain technology and then later other cryptocurrencies. But reading that white paper, seeing that there was an ability of a trustless system to transact without any third party, definitely opened up my eyes. So if you think about that scene, just think about you know, anytime you've been sitting around talking about money, most of the times you don't come up with any good ideas, but just one time it just was like lightning in a bottle and just took it from there. So I pretty much been studying Bitcoin every day since that point. So the last eight years pretty much dedicated my life to it, even with having a few jobs in between, went full Bitcoin in 2017. So that was the genesis of it and that's why we're here today.
Speaker 3:And so what kind of led to I want to write this book called Bitcoin in Black America.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So Bitcoin is the hardest part of finance and the hardest part of tech put together. So, as a Black person who has dabbled in both, in the financial world, they don't really mess with you because they think you don't know what you're talking about. And in the tech world, same thing. They discriminate because, oh, you're black no-transcript was you know, it was because of proximity, but then I thought about it and I was like this is a match made in heaven. We should be on top of this.
Speaker 2:And I've said before on other interviews that, from a stereotypical standpoint, we have people that say, oh, my lawyer is always going to be Jewish or my accountant is always going to be Asian, and I wanted our stereotype to be Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Black people are taking over this industry and that is what I wanted and that was the beginning of it. And I actually talked to Brad same Brad from the beginning. I remember going to his house 2017 and telling him about this idea and he was like, dude, you should him about this idea. And he was like, dude, you should have wrote this book yesterday. He was like it is perfect. He was like why, why would you? Why would black people mess with the banks and he wiped. So he was like I don't even know why black people, even you know, acknowledge banks as a solution because they've obviously done things to take it away. So we need a money system that I think gives us leverage, and I wrote the book with the intention of giving it to black people. It's for everybody, but oftentimes everybody tries to appease everybody, so you end up appeasing, you end up helping nobody. And I wanted to target it towards the black community, that they realize this message is for you, but it can be applied for other communities as well. And I'm glad that the reception was good behind it because I got a lot of pushback early on before I wrote the book.
Speaker 2:The book came out, price started going up and a lot of people started reshaping their thoughts. So that was a process behind the book and most people that write books they have more of a like. I write five pages a day, 10 pages a day. That wasn't me. I kind of had so much in my brain. I had six writing sessions total to write the whole book and I wrote about. It was about 280 pages at first, but I cut it down because I realized nobody understands what I'm talking about, so I had to make it simpler. That process actually took longer than the book, because it was just like I was just spilling out on pages. So that's how the book came about and it came out July 2019. And here we are, almost two years later, and it's definitely resonating.
Speaker 3:Wow, no, it has. I read the book. I've been in cryptocurrency or blockchain technology since 2016,. I want to say 2017.
Speaker 3:And even for me, having some knowledge concerning this space, I thought the book was written well, that it was down to earth. Even the spacing right it made it easy to read and I don't know if that was intentional, but that was like a genius awesome, a genius. You know, this is pretty like that, because sometimes a book especially for the African-American, not just for the African-American intimidate people, right, when they see a book with small print and many words, it's like, oh man, don't, I can't read this. It's just too much weight on my shoulders, you know, and on my shoulders, you know. And so the book was very digestible, you know, and it was easy to try, easy to follow, and so I think you did an awesome job. For those that haven't gotten the book yet, this is the book right here uh, uh, bitcoin and um in black America. Uh, he has a part two, which we would get in a little bit later on, with seven new chapters later on in this interview, but part one would get you a good way.
Speaker 2:So part two probably take you to another mile marker. But can I comment on that real quick. When you said the spacing, there were people that thought that the spacing was because I didn't write a lot and, like I just told you, I wrote almost 300 pages. I did the spacing because I actually gave the first version of the book to my grandmother and she was like I can't, I can't really see it and and I was like, well, if I want everybody to read it, I need older people to read it as well. The second thing was I gave it to a cousin that was 16 years old and he immediately was like dang, this is way too many pages. Then he opened it and he was like oh, it's not that many, it's pretty spaced out.
Speaker 2:And I remember the interview Jay-Z said. He said I could rap like Talib Khali, but you should make your content at an eighth grade level because that's most people's reading level, and I took those things, applied it to the book and most people don't realize it. But the ability to read something fast gives you the information quicker, because a lot of people start books but they don't finish it. One of my favorite books is Basic Economics from Thomas Sowell, but it's like 500 pages and most people are like I'm not reading that. So the ability as a teacher to take hard concepts and make it easy. That's why the book was presented the way it is, and the second book will be similar.
Speaker 3:Hey, it works, it works right, it's really easy. In fact, audience, I read the book in a day, day and a half at the most, exactly, but you know picking it up here and there and going through it. So awesome book whenever you get a chance to go through it. So, listen, one of the things that you just mentioned before in the genesis of creating Bitcoin in Black America, you talked about how your friend Brad was like hey, I don't know why people will. Black people will use banks anyway. So in the book you said that, man, if the ancestors of the past had Bitcoin, this is what they would be using. Right, can you somewhat highlight for the audience your mindset behind why they would be using it, like your stance on that, but also like some of the things that banks have done that your friend Brad would say, being Caucasian man, people shouldn't be like what are the offenses? But also and also explain why you believe Harriet Tubman and many others would have been using that to do what they did.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So a lot of our revolutionaries, especially in the 60s, were broke. People don't realize. People like Harry Belafonte, other people with money, had to fund their actual, their tours or their books or whatever they had going on. Malcolm X, martin Luther King, people from the Black Panther movement they did not have money.
Speaker 2:And the thing is, if they did try to raise money, a lot of times it came from someone who wanted control, and that's how we got a lot of the black groups that are out now. You know there was money given from other communities, but they would have used Bitcoin, in my opinion, because they would have realized I want to raise money or if I want to earn a long term in order to fund what I'm doing, I cannot. I cannot use this current system because even even if you raised a million dollars, it has to go into a bank which then is in a part of the current federal banking system which gets devalued by inflation and all of that which I'll go into in a second. So the reason I said that is it doesn't matter what type of economic or what type of social change you want. It has to be economic foundation and I think they would have realized that and, honestly, when Martin Luther King started saying we need to have an economic solution, he got killed two weeks later and most people don't realize. You know, that is the thing that most people. That's what changes things mostly, and some of the reasons why I was so adamant about writing about Buck the Fanks, which is the name of the chapter, is because some of the things they've done have been so egregious. We owe them nothing For one redlining. Most people don't understand redlining. They literally drew red lines around certain areas.
Speaker 2:Black people couldn't live effectively, making your property value stuck or go down, and they did things such as build highways smack dab through black neighborhoods. That's why when you drive down 85 in the South or highways in general, when you get off the exit it's usually a black neighborhood first or, as some people say, it's the hood. They did that deliberately, they built it straight through, so you you have no chance. Or steel mills. I know in the Midwest, in Detroit, in Ohio, they have steel mills where the smoke would blow a certain direction Black people on the side where the smoke was blowing because property value goes down. These would deliver things done by banks and then loans getting loans for business, getting loans or personal loans or getting educational loans. Before we had the big government, most banks would look at you and say what zip code are you in? Oh, you're black and you're in the zip code. No chance. And most people think I was talking about a long time ago.
Speaker 2:In the book. I made it a point to start it the year 2012 up to now so this is current. They're literally paying because they don't care. They can print money at will, take it, pay off these lawsuits, and they're doing it today. In fact, in the second book I just used 2020. That's it.
Speaker 2:So you can see how grievous these banks are under your nose. You don't realize it. They don't care about you. We have payday loans in a lot of black neighborhoods. We have overdraft fees. I think JP Morgan made more in overdraft fees than Coinbase did the entire year.
Speaker 2:You're taxing poor people for being poor and not saying all black people are like this, but from coming from where we're from, if they tried to hold you back to gain wealth, there's no reason to cooperate with these people. There's no reason to use their services. And if you work for a bank, like I said in the book, I'm sorry I have to flame your profession, but you're helping your own oppression and, at the end of the day, you have to make a decision. If you are good at what you do, look at the people who are at Goldman Sachs, who are at JP Morgan who left. They all work in the crypto industry. Now the new chief policy officer for Coinbase is from Goldman Sachs. The new CEO of Binanceus is Brian Brooks, who used to be the officer of the Comptroller of Currency. So even if you do work in banks, you need to figure out a Bitcoin or blockchain solution and leave, especially if you're Black. They don't have your best interests at heart and there's plenty of examples in the book for you to view for yourself.
Speaker 3:That's good. That was listen. That was a lot of information, so I want to kind of like help that information to be digested right For those who be. The first time hearing it was that he mentioned that banks could just print money, and we're talking when he mentions that, he's talking about fractional reserve lending right, which came into play once Nixon took us away from gold from the dollar, disconnected it Back in the 70s. The banks were able to now print at will, to print more money than what they actually have on hand, and that's called fractional reserve lending, and this is what kind of created the boom with many other things that he mentions in the book in 2008. The crisis that literally shook America well, did shake America in many ways.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I was going to say there's a difference between commercial banks and Federal Reserve banks. So commercial banks were more of the in-your-face racism that we speak of. Federal Reserve actually affects everybody, but people often say when America has a cold, black people have the flu. So if it's bad for all of us, it's really bad for us and the Federal Reserve. Literally every time they print money, they're stealing from you. They just passed a bill to try and print $6 trillion more and people don't understand that. Inflation, hyperinflation, is because you print too much money. If you need an example, look at Zimbabwe. If you need another example, look at Nigeria. If you need another one, look at Venezuela. And if you think we're immune to it, let me give you this statistic Every single fiat currency that's ever been created has failed. Every single one 100%. So if you think we're immune to our currency failing, our dollar is down 99% since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. How much lower can we go?
Speaker 3:were, that they would be just dust and ashes right Home is just a memory. Now you know and so, but when you look at the length, or study the length of reserve currencies, how long they last, like, and even the transition of the economy to a new economic, it seems that it lasts every 30 to 50 years we go to a new monetary system and there's no coincidence that Bitcoin, like you mentioned, was floated out there as a white paper in a mysterious way. Same way, the internet was created in a way, and now that every government is prepping to go to a digital central bank currency, can you talk a little bit about that? You mentioned in your book that the United States we know China, we know Russia's work and we know Africa connected with a blockchain company called Cordano. We know that Cambodia already has turned all over to a digital currency called SOR Mitsu and their technology, and can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So, and I also want to add in Bahamas they have the Sand Dollar first ever. I think a lot of people don't realize that the ability to own your own wealth is not just for individuals, it's also for nation state, and currently I'm right here in Barbados they're separating from the United Kingdom after this year as far as, economically, they're going to be by themselves. So one solution that I'm working on down here and other places as well, is that if you have Bitcoin on a balance sheet, much like a lot of these large companies, that's the next step. Nation states are going to use Bitcoin as backing for their system in order to ensure that the money system is fair and or, at the very least, that they have a money system that's transparent, because a lot of the printing of money moving to Cayman Islands Federal Reserve losing a trillion dollars. How does that happen? All of this stuff is a result of humans making choices with your money, and when you change it to math and verifiable software, I think that's what that's what the change will be.
Speaker 2:And there's even more countries that have a plan with CBDCs, which I believe you know. Cbdcs was in the plan all along More surveillance, the ability to use cash money going away. All of that was the plan. But again, like I said before, bitcoin and cryptocurrency was like the black swan event they didn't see it coming. They didn't have a plan to stop it, and they have tried before. But if they could, they would have. They can't. At this point, it's too late. All they can do is adapt and get on our own realm. So I think we're definitely seeing the change into the digital future and again, with blockchain technology, there is no other way for us to achieve the future that we're speaking of. So I think these countries realize that and are on board.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's awesome. You mentioned in the book also that, because I want to talk. We talked about the history. We talked about the problem that's currently going on in the in the world, in the transition of the world's economy to a digital age. When we talked about this technology, which is very groundbreaking, I mean, if people take the time to look into it, they will realize that, wow, this is this, is it right? Pretty much this is it. It's not going anywhere. You can't erase it. To erase it, you have to turn off the whole internet, right?
Speaker 3:So, with that stated, you mentioned in the book that you don't need to know how to change your transmission, you don't need to know how to fix head gaskets in order to drive. You just get in the car and drive. And so this was dealing with people getting involved. So how can the audience using all these big words like we want to try to make it simple when you hear trustless and this and blockchain, blockchain, and how can you make it the audience getting in the car and starting to drive this get involved with Bitcoin?
Speaker 2:right. It's always three simple steps Buy it, store it, earn it. Very simple. So, as you're sitting here, if you have Cash App, for example, you can buy a dollar worth of Bitcoin on Cash App right now, as this is going on. So get some skin in the game and buy Bitcoin. At least you'll see how to transact, how you can send it to your own wallet. There are other wallets where you can do that, but buy some, get some skin in the game, all right.
Speaker 2:Second thing is to store it, because there's no point in having Bitcoin and trying to store your wealth if you can't own it. And one thing I always say is no keys, no cheese. So you need to own your private keys and by storing it, you will want to get something like a Trezor or a Ledger, which is just a small USB stick where you can store your wealth, much like a safe for your money or for anything else. You store your Bitcoin on there. That's called cold storage, which all that means is it's offline, nobody can steal it, it's safe and you want to be able to store it. And then, last thing, you want to be able to earn Bitcoin. If you have a business, you can accept Bitcoin right now for payment. If you have a Shopify website, they have it built in already. If you have any website, you can use BTC Pay Server and implement it. But also you can earn it through services like Lolly. There's a service called Lolly L-O-L-L-I.
Speaker 2:You get cashback rewards in the form of Bitcoin. So, for example, I buy way too much Postmates way too much but every time I do I get 3% cash back in Bitcoin. So the $500 worth of Postmates I spent last year is worth about $2,700 now, and that's one way you can earn it. Another way is Fold the Fold app. They have a Visa card Every time you buy anything.
Speaker 2:I've seen people buy cars, pay taxes, buy a house, buy a boat. I've seen all types of ways to spend. With Visa. You get cash back rewards in the form of Bitcoin and if you hold it long term, it'll probably pay for the item that you bought, because I've seen that before. So you want to buy it, store it and earn it. Those are the first three things to do and that gets you started without having to have all of the technical knowledge and all of the other stuff, because, again, most of us cannot explain layer two, wi-fi, tcp, ip technology. But you know, when you click on your Wi-Fi, you type in your password, it works right. That's all you need to know about Bitcoin. You buy it, you store it, you earn it.
Speaker 3:So that's good. In other words, don't make it too complicated, just get involved and use it and learn it as you go. Like a car, most people don't know how to fix parts on a car, they just know they want to drive. So what he's saying is get in and get involved and drive, just drive. So that's awesome. So let me ask a question. So, isaiah, you're a former teacher. We hear a lot about African-American studies being taught in schools, k through 12. There's all this stuff going on about critical race theory in schools. Most people really don't even know what it is and whatnot. From your perspective as a former teacher, how do we get, how do we start, the momentum for our children to be learning about Bitcoin in Black America or cryptocurrency in Black America?
Speaker 2:So if you're a parent and you have kids, you should be teaching them about Bitcoin, because a lot of us, including myself, did not learn about finances early, did not learn about tech early, and now you have the perfect fusion of both and something that is here to stay. Kids should know about it, because any kid under the age of 12 has never lived in a world without Bitcoin. So it's imperative that we teach our kids about Bitcoin, about smart contracts, about blockchain technology, about building the future that we want, because in the internet age we missed it. We didn't build the web, we didn't build the Googles, we didn't build the Facebooks. But if we had seven, eight year olds learning about tech in 95 and 96, we would have. That's what I see here. So make sure you teach your kids.
Speaker 2:And one thing I'm doing to make sure I'm helping with the solution, because I'm a solution oriented person having a summer camp Charlotte, north Carolina I'm having a Bitcoin summer camp. I have 25 kids in person, 25 online, teaching them about how Bitcoin works, blockchain technology, building smart contracts, making their own NFTs so they can auction them off all those things, and one of the biggest parts of this industry that I've always told people is that you can't really teach an old dog a new trick. There's a lot of older people who just will not accept it. I mean, it's just. I've talked to thousands of people and they just won't accept it. But if they have a kid or a nephew that is in the industry and then all of a sudden they have more money than them, or they can pay for their own college or they can establish themselves in industry, like blockchain engineers make 30 percent more than the other industry. If they do that, they usually convince them that this must be real, because I've seen it.
Speaker 2:I helped a 15 year old kid getting the Bitcoin in 2016. He paid his own way to college. His mom thanked me profusely and then asked me can you teach me as well? So I'm telling people that, as far as kids go, that is the future. That's what we. My attention is going really like 90% of it is going towards kids, and I want them to understand that in the future especially black kids we can run this industry if we want to. We're only 12 years in, so we have the opportunity to do it now and I believe it's imperative. We have to have a sense of urgency. Stop telling. I mean, I won't tell you what to do with your kids liberal arts, psychology, whatever they are If it's not Bitcoin and blockchain technology. They're not prepared for the future. They're prepared for now, and because of technology, most of the things you learn while you're in school are going to be outdated by the time you graduate. The only thing that sustains is technology, so that's why we should have that focus.
Speaker 3:So my follow up question to that is this You're an Afrofuturist of finance. You're thinking about where we're going to be, where we were 12 years ago, but like where we could be like 50 years from now. Right, and that point about we missed the boat on getting our kids maybe computers or early internet access in the 90s, so we didn't get to make the Googles and the Facebooks and all of that stuff I'm in the process of shifting this book club, these book discussions, into a business. I'm in the process of shifting this book club, these book discussions, into a business, and reading the book has motivated me to think about well, how do how do I get to a place where I'm doing monetary exchanges in Bitcoin, where I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, how do I build a community of people that I'm exchanging the currency with? Like, what would be your first step if you're? You have a small black community where you are Like, how do you get those people together to just start doing the exchange between ourselves? How would you begin that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So I would say to download the Black Wall Street app. Good friend of mine, hill Harper and Najah Roberts. You may know Hill Harper actor Arthur he wrote letters to young black men, I believe and they have the Digital Black Wall Street app coming out, which is coming out June 1st, and that is literally the solution. We've been talking about the ability to have a community of people that not only use Bitcoin for, maybe, peer-to-peer loans or storing or dollar cost averaging, but they're going to be businesses listed on the app so that you can transact with them in Bitcoin, because that's how you start a circular economy.
Speaker 2:Now, I know some people have reservations about spending it, about spending cryptocurrency, because they want to save it for the future. That's fine, stack, all you want. Thing is, when we discuss the medium of exchange portion of Bitcoin in America, we're kind of spoiled. Right, we have a relatively stable currency, but when you start talking to, I have friends in Nigeria that are like the Naira used to be the same as a dollar. Now it's 510 Naira to $1. You think volatility in Bitcoin scares me? No, this is better than anything we've ever had. So we have to start thinking along the lines that transacting across borders and transacting with each other is imperative to start this circular economy because the dollar stays in our community. What six hours? And during the actual Black Wall Street in the 20s in Tulsa, it was actually more like two weeks. So we have to get back to that point.
Speaker 2:I think it's very possible with something like the digital Black Wall Street app or the ability to have meetups, so in your city, having Bitcoin meetups, meeting with people to see who has Bitcoin, who you can buy it from, who you can transact with, and also giving discounts to people for paying with Bitcoin, because then what does that do? That gives people more purchasing power, just for using Bitcoin. I've seen that everywhere People are giving $20, $30. And I think it's only going to increase as Bitcoin becomes more valuable. People are going to get desperate. I think even governments. They're going to get desperate, like we don't have it enough. We'll give you a 90% discount. Just give us Bitcoin. So I think if we start now, we'll have the infrastructure in place to accept payments, to also understand how to do accounting and also, as far as medium of exchange with other people, the trust that you have between humans meeting with each other. We'll establish that now Got to start, now Got to have a sense of urgency.
Speaker 3:So that's how my favorite point in the book before everyone got on, I was like blew my mind.
Speaker 3:I hate it when, when people say black people have spending power, and in my mind I'm like that's dumb, right, we try to leverage the amount of money that we spend in mainstream institutions as if we are the ones with power. But we are the spenders, we're not the producers, and so I think people it's just kind of like a slight way of saying that we are in the higher in the economic hierarchy we're still beneath, we can't make demands as the people who are spending, and so I like the reframe that you have. You frame spending power as, because we don't have access to capital, banks have done us wrong in the past. Our wealth and our families isn't what it should be as compared to other groups, even other so-called minority groups. That spending power for us has to be framed around getting more for less, and so I'm wondering could you talk a little bit more about how you view spending power and how the cryptocurrencies, the blockchain technologies, allows us to get more for less?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Like I just said before, as the value of Bitcoin increases the medium of exchange portion of money, which is three parts store value, medium of exchange and then unit of account. We've already established that. As a store of value, bitcoin has established that. But the medium of exchange era that's starting that era happens when people understand that this is a better money system. So then people will transact. But the thing is they will say I'm not giving you my Bitcoin or I'm not giving my cryptocurrency without a discount, and what businesses will be able to do is give these discounts to people so that that increases their spending power. And what I mean by that is I have a story in 2016, I bought a $1,500 burrito because $15 at the time, and since that time, the Bitcoin that I spent has 100X. And all that means is that now, if I had that same amount of Bitcoin now, I could have bought 100 burritos five years later. That increases your spending power. That's what that means. That means that if one Bitcoin equals $1 million and you have one Bitcoin today, one Bitcoin today could buy you what a car, small house, one Bitcoin in five years could buy you a mansion or could establish you as one of the top 1%, and that's what I mean by increasing your spending power. Bitcoin increases your spending power every year. It is in existence. I mean the network effect of Bitcoin, or, if we get into Moore's law, technology doubles every two years. So what that means is that as the tech gets better and as you hold Bitcoin, your spending power will increase because the value of Bitcoin will have gone up and that means that you can buy more goods. That means that people who cannot necessarily buy things they need now, holding an asset like Bitcoin will give you that power later.
Speaker 2:You just have to have delayed gratification and change your mindset. I say that all the time. You can't think I need this now, I need this tomorrow. If you have that mindset, you're always gonna be perpetually in that state of mind. But when you say, yeah, I don't really need to eat out this week, I'm gonna save. That's how I started. I mean, I don't know why, but people think I started out rich. I was like no, I just started out taking delayed gratification, not eating out, not buying unnecessary things, and then your spending power in the future will be much higher. That is so true.
Speaker 3:Y'all. I know there's a lot of things mentioned that probably go over the head. If this is your first time kind of hearing about digital currency or even just Bitcoin, blockchain technology right, Because there's a difference between a cryptocurrency, even though they all operate on blockchain technology, but not all assets that are on blockchain technology is a cryptocurrency, right. But we're talking about Bitcoin right now and I want to kind of just touch on, just to try to simplify things, because people may ask hey, why are you so sure that Bitcoin is going up in value? And so, listen, audience, Bitcoin has a limited supply, which is 21 million. Right, I think there's a certain date that's coming up. Many of us probably won't be living when the last Bitcoin is minute, but there's more millionaires than there are Bitcoins that would be in existence. So that means there will be millionaires that won't even have a fraction of a piece of a Bitcoin once it is finished. And not only that, but like the add on top of that is that when you think about the boundaries of our world, we're separated the US has the dollar, Russia has the ruble, Europe has the euro and the Chinese have the yuan, and so on and so on and so on. Well, oftentimes we can't invest in things that are in another country, another company that's in another country. Those boundaries tie us apart, right? Well, cryptocurrencies, or blockchain technology is one of the only assets being decentralized that the whole world invests into one thing. So the whole world, meaning the billions of people that exist on the world, can only invest into one Bitcoin. That makes the asset. You can't even put words to what that does, right? So when people talk about Bitcoin going to a six-figure asset, that's easy.
Speaker 3:Bitcoin, let's talk about something a little bit more complicated, right? Bitcoin going to a million dollars, that's kind of easy too. It's just easy to simple math. Right, it's simple math. It'd be, it'd be more complicated to, say, Dogecoin going to a hundred thousand dollars than Bitcoin going to a million. Right? That that's just simple math. Once you understand the technology and what IZEL is talking about with something that is peer to peer technology and what IZEL is talking about with something that is peer-to-peer but trustless that visiting fault problem you realize then that this here is an asset class. No matter how big the dips you may hear about on the news, the FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt, it's an asset class. That's just going straight up Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And can I share a chart here Because I'm glad you're watch. You know the ups and downs of a market. I want to share this with people who are watching. The value of Bitcoin from its inception to now is up over 8 million percent, right. So, like you just said, it was harder to go from zero to 40,000. Where we are. That was the hard part. Going to a million is just a 25x. That's that's child's play in Bitcoin terms. I personally think one Bitcoin will be worth 100 million at some point. Based on the bond market, gold market, silver market. Everything will capitulate at some point into Bitcoin and right now we already have negative yield bonds. Who wants to hold that? If you look at this chart, this is where we started.
Speaker 2:And the number of profitable days 97.3. This is a layup investment. 97.3% of the time Bitcoin has been profitable, no matter when you bought it. You're pretty much in profit. And there's another statistic that anybody that buys Bitcoin and holds for at least three and a half years is in profit. And the reason why is Bitcoin is programmable money.
Speaker 2:It's programmed to succeed because as more people come into the market, which more will? You already see billionaires coming in and businesses. It's still a scarce supply. It doesn't increase the amount of Bitcoin. It's still a scarce supply. That's on a curve, so not I'm going to get rich quick scheme is because that value is going to continually increase. It's programmed into the money.
Speaker 2:It's just that these dips in between scare out newbie investors. I mean, I know people that were calling me after this last dip and I was like you just started two months ago. What are you scared about? You haven't even helped either. You don't understand. So you have to think to yourself that this is something that you should be thinking about passing to your grandkid. I in no way intend to spend any of my Bitcoin right now, simply because we have a lot of stuff in place.
Speaker 2:But if you're talking about, like you said, the ability for Bitcoin to go up constantly, that's why and we have the data to also support that that's why I'm so confident. And some people are like, yeah, where do you get this confidence? Because it's mad. I don't get confident from people's rhetoric. I like data statistics. That's why my book is written the way it is. I'm not necessarily a writer, but I understand. When you get to the point and there's data behind it, it's not much to argue. We can stop talking and just start. So that's what I want people to understand about this market Constantly going up because it's programmed that way.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, and listen y'all. I know we're talking about Bitcoin, but there are so many more digital assets out there that you can look into. In fact, I think you mentioned in your book Ethereum right, and Ethereum is just another blockchain. But because you mentioned smart contracts and I want people to know, so the difference, what the difference is between Bitcoin and Ethereum, is just by having that smart contract feature. Can you just speak briefly on that so people can grab that portion?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so Ethereum is essentially going to put lawyers out of work, because smart contracts being able to be executed based on a set of rules that are set before the lawyers that basically siphon off a lot of the money that people have in order to execute a contract, either through housing, either through criminal law, whatever, ethereum can do that with a simple smart contract. And because it's very early and Ethereum is going through a change right now, a lot of people don't see it, but you have to understand. They have Bitcoin and Ethereum have two separate goals. Bitcoin is trying to be the global reserve asset of the world, but Ethereum is trying to be the smart contract platform of the future, meaning that, no matter what you interact with, there's a smart contract software that can execute without the need for a third party, which makes it cheaper, which makes it faster and, again, trustless. You don't have to depend on such and such at the bank to approve it. So that's really where Ethereum is going Right now. They have decentralized applications, they have NFTs non-fungible tokens which is just a one-of-one digital asset, either with art or music that can be sold. So I do think that Ethereum has a chance to change the way we think about law the way we think about, again, the contract system, because I used to work for a real estate law firm.
Speaker 2:After I taught, I was in IT. I worked for a real estate law firm and I saw the steps it took to buy a house and I was like Jesus Christ, all these people in between you got to go to the banker and then go back to the loan officer and then come back here with paperwork. All that's gone. With Ethereum and also decentralized finance, we talk about black people not being able to get loans With DeFi. You don't need any of that. All you need is the collateral. It doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter your zip code, your mama, your daddy, none of that your credit score, nothing. You just need the collateral, and that's what it should be. If you have the collateral, you get the loan.
Speaker 3:And that's decentralized. In other words, there's not a central authority that's over it. Right now, we have a system for our world which is the bank, and the bank says hey, you spent so much money at Target, you spent so much money over here, and you could go and calculate, by looking at your bank statement, where you spent your money at, and now you have a social security number that they could go, based upon your payment history, how all that works. Well, in the blockchain world, all of that gets thrown out the window. There's no centralized authority. That the code, the actual Bitcoin, is the decentralized platform.
Speaker 3:So you become your own bank in a way. There's no more fees and with decentralized finance, there's no credit check. You just get a loan. It doesn't matter who you are. You could get loaned off your cryptocurrencies no questions asked. It's just here's the money. Figure out what to do with it. You put your crypto up as assets. So it is a game changing technology in the way of the future. If you, as a person or individual, would take the time and not be closed minded, but to be open minded, growth mindset and really embrace what's going on around you, it is game changing. So the book is, on a whole nother level. I want to. We got a question from the audience.
Speaker 4:Great discussion so far. The question I have is around opportunities for careers in the crypto space. So everyone is not going. Obviously, we have our side hustle and our understanding that we'll have for personal investments in crypto. The question that I have is more so for careers in that space. Right, Everyone's not going to be a technologist. What do you see as the opportunities for a career for a non-technologist kind of going forward?
Speaker 2:What exactly are you thinking about? Because I can whittle it down to your current sector.
Speaker 4:I happen to work in product management, but I'm just asking for the broader group. I had a conversation with my niece Get ready to graduate another year, that type of thing. General question.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, first thing, accountant. There's not many crypto accountants. Trust me, if somebody who's been in crypto, there's not many. That's literally a wide open field. You can take it over. Matter of fact, if you're an accountant, you won't have a job. Taxes. So that's one. The second thing is project managers for these companies, because they're great technologists, but getting from there to product for a lot of them is a struggle. A lot of smart people but not really good at getting the product out, because you can have cryptocurrencies, speculate all day, but where's the product? So project managers are good.
Speaker 2:I would say front-end design you don't have to be a technologist, but artists that can create actual, good user experience. User interface Because, again, there's a lot of smart people in this space, but it's a lot of ugly apps and Dimitri knows what I'm talking about. A lot of these applications are terrible looking. If you saw Coinbase when it first came out, it was one of the ugliest websites I've ever seen, but that's the thing. That's one of them.
Speaker 2:Another one is also the ability to do business administration for these companies, because, again, smart people, tech world not really apt at running a business. So that's other ways, anything that you can do in the regular world right now. You can apply it to Bitcoin and blockchain Plenty of jobs available and I would say, if you are in the banking industry again, take your skills that you learned in the traditional finance system and take it to the crypto world. I promise you, those skills are much better used in a system that's being built, in a system that's already established that's crumbling as we speak. So those are a few different ways to get into them without being a coder or technologist, and even if you're educated, like myself having a book, having podcasts, having your own show, doing webinars like this with people these are all ways that you can get involved in the market and just find your niche, something you're good at, and that is definitely how you can win in this market. I wanted to ask in the DeFi space, you spoke with a collateral.
Speaker 3:So what type of collateral are they looking for? Like other digital wallet or just like tangible collateral?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So what we mean by collateral is that you can use Bitcoin, ethereum, you can use other cryptocurrencies as collateral for a cash loan, so there's services such as BlockFi. Right now, you can have $50,000 worth of Bitcoin and put it up as collateral. You get a $25,000 cash loan and you can use that as you please. Now, if you're a business, you can get the same loan and the interest that you have to pay back can be written off on your taxes and you never have to sell your Bitcoin. That's the best part. You give it as collateral, you pay it back in cash. They give you back your Bitcoin, so you never have to sell it. Essentially, celsius Network is another one. Nexo is another platform that does that. Decentralized finance is amazing, and I'll let Demetri jump in here, too, if there's other platforms you can use.
Speaker 3:No, don't go ahead, you got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I would say that this is a better way of lending, a better way of moving money, simply because, again, we don't have the barriers to entry that black people once had. If you have a collateral, you get the money, that's it. There's no questions asked big deal about. You know where's the money going with it. You have a collateral, here's the money, and that's how it should work. That's how peer-to-peer lending should work.
Speaker 3:And we actually have a billionaire that's taking it to a whole nother level named Microsailor. This is what he's doing Now. Process this he's getting loans on his Bitcoin. So picture owning some Bitcoin not even a whole one, a percent of one. He would get a loan on the Bitcoin. It's not that you lose your Bitcoin, the money that he gets a loan with. He goes and rebuys Bitcoin with it, game-changing philosophy, right and then off as it increases in value. He takes that, pays down the loan and he gets another loan on the meat and it just perks and it keeps going. And so he just keeps stacking and stacking Bitcoin, all for loans, but never giving it up. Game changer, uh-oh, he owes a lot of Bitcoin.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I want to say for a regular everyday person, if you're not a billionaire, that strategy works if your loan time is more than four years, so if you got five years to pay it back, remember the statistic I gave you anybody that's bought Bitcoin is up in profit after three and a half years and not just up at least 1800%. So literally that is a strategy. I'm working with real estate people now because I'm telling them like, yeah, you can put a Bitcoin for a loan, use a cash, buy a house, pay back a loan with the cashflow in two or three years and the Bitcoin that you had will probably be increased in value by the time you get into the back. We got another question. Yeah, my question was for Zay. I was wondering, with layer two solutions on Bitcoin, how long do you think layer two?
Speaker 4:solutions would take, and do you see that basically stopping the need?
Speaker 2:for things like Ethereum and other coins. So layer two is already here. Lightning Network is pretty established Strike app. You can use it. Bluewalletio, you can establish it. If you go to GetUmbrel G-E-T-U-M-B-R-E -L, you can actually establish a lightning node. People will pay to use your channels.
Speaker 2:Do I think it will make all cryptocurrencies obsolete? No, Do I think it will get rid of the cryptocurrencies whose only claim to fame is that it's faster? Yes, Because there's a lot of cryptos that come out and say, well, we're faster than Bitcoin. Well, who cares? Nobody's using it. Your blockchain is empty. The way we always describe it on the show is that, hey, would you rather be in traffic in LA or would you have an open highway in Idaho? That's the difference in blockchain. So faster the faster coins will probably be obsolete. Also, the coins that say they have a lower fees they'll probably be obsolete, but not all. There's plenty of cryptos that will survive, and layer two will give people the opportunity to transact at more of a private level. So there are some privacy coins that may be a little shaky, because once you go into layer two, there is no tracking of the blockchain like there is at layer one.
Speaker 3:So, and once again, let me try to simplify this, so for those who don't know about layer two, picture Bitcoin as this road right here, right? Well, because Tesla wanted to build an underground thing but picture a platform going on top right. So everything is transact and happens here, All the action happens up here and it gets settled. Oh, this is what happened up here and that record is stored on Bitcoin. So that's what we mean when we say layer two. And there is a blockchain out there that's actually striving to take to add smart contract features to Bitcoin called Stacks, and Stacks is striving to take Bitcoin to a whole nother level to challenge Google and Apple to store decentralized applications acronym as DAPS on it, based on the Bitcoin platform itself.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and another one is RGB. Rgb is doing that as well. Yep, so, and I just talked to a developer he's building NFTs on the Lightning Network. So it's coming, it's all coming. You just gotta wait. Technology is like it always comes.
Speaker 1:One of the goals of Entrepreneurial Appetite is to build community, and we've had a number of authors and entrepreneurs come and talk.
Speaker 3:We had a really good brother named Calvin Williams Jr come speak, and he has a company called Freeman Capital, so it strives to make financial planning more accessible, and so one thing I noticed when I was doing my research on him is that there's all these black fintech people or there's all these black VCs getting started and whatnot, and in these sort of really niche communities, there are black communities within these niche communities, and so, as a Bitcoin person, a crypto person, an Afrofuturist of finance, can you tell us a little bit about the black community that you have around?
Speaker 1:you, the support system that you have around you in your field and what you strive to do.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So I will say it was real lonely at first walking this road alone. It was hard finding people, black people in the industry. But now we have established, like I said before, black Bitcoin billionaires. We have over 100,000 followers on there on Clubhouse. That is one community that is huge. We'll actually be in Miami at the Bitcoin conference, the first conference where there will be hundreds of black people at a Bitcoin conference.
Speaker 2:I used to go to conferences. I was the only black person A lot of times. I used to always say it was like a fly in milk. I was the only black person there. I speck out like a sore thumb, you could tell. But now those communities have started.
Speaker 2:So Black Bitcoin Billionaires is one element of crypto we have. I forget how many subscribers over 10,000 at some point. That community we definitely stick together. We share ideas, give each other tips. That community is large as well, and I will say that in the city of LA, where I've lived for the last five years, a lot of the small groups that meet at meetups are mostly black. That's one thing that was great to me was that man, it's not even a black meetup, it's just a Bitcoin meetup. And then boom, it's like 90 percent black, because Coinbase did a survey. Seventy five percent of black people are interested in crypto, but 33 percent of them have no clue how or what it does or how it works. So we have a perfect storm of people who want the information but don't have it.
Speaker 3:So they go out to every, every event, everything they can find, and those communities, I think, are growing by the day. So one I want to ask is you mentioned that the camp this summer in Charlotte how can we get our children and maybe ourselves connected to folks who are teaching about blockchain technology and Bitcoin, and this is for both you and Dimitri?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so for the camp, I would actually I want to invite you out, dimitrik, if you want to come teach, because I will have guest speakers there. But I'll show this real quick. The camp is Innovative Learning Virtual Bitcoin Summer Camp. We're actually raising money in Bitcoin. We partner with BitGive. This is the camp that we'll be doing and our overview basically teach children between the ages of, or between the grades of, six through 10 about Bitcoin, about smart contracts, nfts, how they can benefit. We also have different games available, like Bitcoin Monopoly. That just came out literally just came out yesterday and we'll have that game there. There's games for mining. All those things will be available for kids at the Bitcoin Summit Camp and I'm sorry, and sign up starts in June, so I have to give that information when it comes out, but it will be on the website at Innovative Learning and I'll put that out. I'll give that to you guys as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. I look forward to hearing more about it. So my goal is really to help families and people thrive right. So what I strive to do as a coach is to take people by the hand and teach them from square one, like I wish someone would have did for me. I rode the whole when Isaiah was talking about the three, four year, five cycle plan, because you realize that Bitcoin goes on a cycle. Most of these cryptocurrencies in the market operates on a cycle and if you give it five years, you're always going to it's always going to be higher than where it was.
Speaker 3:With that stated, in the past we did really well. My wife, when I started investing and I saw all that money would go straight down because I didn't understand the cycles. I didn't have no one to take me by the hand to explain to me what was going on. I thought it was going to continually keep going up and up and listen. If someone was there to take me by the hand back about four or five years ago, we could have brought close to 50 Bitcoin back then, because that's how high money, that's how low Bitcoin went and that's how much money we were up. We could have bought 50 Bitcoin and so, but I learned and now I teach what I learned to. I think we have one of our members on right now, crypto Carmen. Shout out to Crypto Carmen. That's on right now.
Speaker 3:But so that's that's pretty much what I do here in San Antonio. I strive to take ones and to help them not experience the same lessons learned to where they could benefit in if they want to trade. I teach trading strategies and from there I teach them what platforms, how to operate these platforms, how to get involved, how to research smart cities, utilize Twitter and other platforms to learn about blockchain technology, because it is another world. So, for example let me close out with this, langston, because I think this is important I sent this to you earlier on today.
Speaker 3:I asked our learning community about hey, I remember invested in the CDs, right, and there's like, yeah, how much interest. You used to get Two to 5% interest, langston, I sent you a screenshot today about the interest that we're getting by putting money into DeFi. What was that number that you saw, man? You're going to put me on the spot, man, I got to give them. So the number here is 203% 203% interest on the money that we have sitting in a decentralized token. This is a whole nother world. You talking about getting 3%, 4%, 5%.
Speaker 2:Like that is like that's when you realize banks are robbing you, when you start seeing I mean literally, you could stake a stable coin and make 8%. That's four times as much as most banks. I mean savings accounts. We don't even talk about it, it's like 0.75%. But yeah, 8%, 10% using with stable coins, and that's not even a speculative token. I'm just saying like banks are. In my mind, banks are already obsolete. They're just scrambling to figure out how to take advantage of the market. Because if you can have a stable coin, one-to-one, just like your dollar, digitally, earn 8% on that, Then you can buy cryptocurrency with that, earn the type of interest you're talking about 200%, 300%, whatever I don't see a reason to use a bank, I mean outside of getting your paycheck at that point. You should just be funneling it straight to this system.
Speaker 3:Listen, that's what I'm striving to teach. One's how to transition their whole financial gameplay, but on blockchain and how you could, because, listen, there are Visa cards that you all could use from cryptocom that you get money back. Like he was saying earlier, you get money back in crypto. You know, 3% and so on. But I'm going to finish with that, because I could talk a lot about this, just like I'm passionate about the subject because this is a new world and we invite more people to come over and get involved. So I want to thank you both for joining us Great discussion. Isaiah, thank you for your insights on how to get the black community more involved with Bitcoin.
Speaker 3:Dimitri, thank you for level setting for us with some of the terms that maybe we didn't understand and breaking it down because y'all was over my head at some points. But, dimitri, you just made it palatable for me, so I appreciate that.
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