Vincent Owens at ETH Denver · Park Hill Financial District, Cyber Panther Party & Black Web3

0:00All right, all right. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of We Them Niggas. We’re out here at ETH Denver, connecting with the people leading the way, representing the culture out here. Today, we got V. Appreciate you, my man. You’re based from out here in Denver, pulling up to the conference. Yes, sir. I’m super excited we got to connect you out here at the Proof of Vibes event that Russ organized. How has your ETH Denver been so far this year? Man, it’s been interesting, to say the least, as I was telling my partner We did a podcast earlier at Eat Differ Oh yeah? And one of the things we talked about was the melanated representation inside of this Web3 space

0:37And, okay, and how long have you been in the Web3 space? For about five years now And what started off with these, how did you know this was a space that was of interest to you? Five years is a long time Yeah, so just kind of when I first got into it, it was more or less for the DeFi side, getting into it, and then about three years ago, we started a NFT project, a social justice project called the Cyber Panther Party, and how it started is one of our friends, he was incarcerated, and you know, they didn’t give him any bail for about 18 months without even, he was incarcerated without having a trial, so we rallied together.

1:18to put this project together to kind of raise funds to get him out and then it kind of took a life of its own to where the Cyber Panther Party is still on chain right now, Ethereum. And for people who hold the NFT, we created a bail fund. So there’s a partnership with Zcash Wallet to where if you get arrested while you’re doing like an act of social justice or civil disobedience, we’re coming to get you. Oh, that’s super cool. That’s super cool. And being, like, you said five years you’ve been in this space? Yeah. And the Cyber Panther Party is now three years old. Like, what are current initiatives? Like, what does that look like, like, today? How big is the community? I heard you guys are on-chain on ETH.

2:04Yeah, well, the community’s steady growing. You know, we’re doing a lot of different in-person events. Here in Denver? Yeah, here in Denver. We started out here in Denver, and we’re still looking to grow the community. So you can find us on Discord, more than welcome to join the community I’ll come to a community call, I’ll come to a Discord call Yeah, so what we’re doing is still kind of growing the community But how we’re doing is kind of onboarding people into the space Education is key when we’re introducing our people to the Web3 space And financial literacy, now Web3 is the new financial literacy just because how cryptocurrency and DeFi is kind of shifting how we deal with the economy.

2:52So we want to be able to educate the people in the space by onboarding them, teaching them blockchain one-on-one, you know, how to create a wallet, how to, you know, protect your C phrase, knowing the difference between a non-custodial wallet and custodial wallet. So just integrating this thing slowly but surely. And, you know, when you enter a new space, you know, there’s a new language for every level of consciousness. So you want to be able to educate the people on what we’re talking about. And as you were coming into this space, who do you feel like were the people that were educating you, were the people that like you could that, yeah, you could lean on for

3:29that? One of the founders, another founder of the Cyber Panther Party, Ryder, that’s his name, or Gucci Ape. He’s one of the Ape holders. Okay. Or, yeah, Ape. Mm-hmm. and Chicago Crypto Block Bully, he’s very revolutionary in the space. He has a Block Wall Street where he’s creating Black Wall Street on the blockchain. He’s very instrumental in creating the new money matrix. As far as his education, you can catch him on Instagram. He can do coffee and crypto every morning. He’s on there giving information freely. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah That’s dope, shout out his, shout out his gram Give him his gram, we’ll put it somewhere in the video

4:17Okay, okay Just do this, just do this Yeah, and then just

4:23Congratulations

4:25But, Chicago Crypto Block Bully And we’ll make sure to put his information in there But he’s been a great resource for me in the space We brought him out here for, we did a conference called Empower24 We had 19 Keys, Collier Crypto Bully, Queen of Four, KT to Arch Degree, just to name a few But, you know, we want to empower our people with the right information I like that, well, when you guys are doing events, we want to amplify them I think that’s super dope, you guys are bringing people together I feel like that’s really what excites me about this space And I’ve been thinking probably for the past few years about what should my role be in Web3

5:01And I feel like it’s very much to document Like I’m interested in bringing this to people like you’re talking about The education is so important and help people understand these different distinctions about the walls and I feel like there’s, the barrier to entry is so much in the world of knowledge and the spaces for education are so few and far between that people like yourself are creating those spaces, creating opportunities for financial literacy education, I think are really, the revolutionists will lead in the way as you say, so definitely kudos to you. I acknowledge you for doing that and I appreciate that and I’m excited to see what kind of events

5:29you all are doing here in Denver and pop out myself. If I came for Eat Them, I can come for something else, so. Yeah, and you know, ETH Denver is a great event to watch this grow over the years, but we was talking about, we need to create a space for us. Yeah. If you’re saying we them niggas, we really is them niggas. So we need to create these spaces to where we’re implementing, you know, our own type of EG Denver events all around. So we just want to be able to do that. That makes a lot of sense. And I guess I’m curious to hear what, like, a core memory has been for you being in the Web3 space.

6:05Well, I think I mentioned my first NFT, the first NFT I mentioned was on Cardano, it was an Adapunk, so just learning about the terminology, I think that was a key thing, and I like coming to these RL events to meet a lot of the people you meet online or in the Twitter spaces or in the Discord, and to put a face with the actual NFT I see that, you know, everybody uses their NFT as their profile in the Web3 space so it’s like to have that sense of anonymity and to really meet the people behind it is a key thing. I think it’s dope.

6:48I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. I think community is definitely so sensitive to this space and I agree. I think one of my first like online Web3 communities was Wild Art Music and they do research on the music and like tech space really broadly. but they were focusing on music NFT and like why people are collecting NFTs for musicians for a while and I got involved in that music project and I learned so much there and I feel like it really gave me the opportunity to see people that I only saw on Discord and they started even hosting like music conferences like for people that work in the music industry and so it was cool to see like a Discord server scale to you know like a professional undertaking that is generating revenue and publishing collaboratively too.

7:27Yeah, I was, I started off on Audius, I’m an audio engineer and music producer by train Oh yeah Yeah, and I started with Audius and we did like events to where, you know, they gave us a grant to put on an event So I think that was pretty dope too So just how the Web3 space for creators, there’s endless possibilities Yeah, absolutely And are you still releasing music on chain now, collaborating with artists in this space? I haven’t did too much music on chain but I’m working on a documentary that I want to release on chain as well so that’ll be coming out in the summer. I do an annual backpack giveaway where we put financial literacy information inside the backpacks and the documentary is going to talk about one of the initiatives that I created called Let the Creators Create where I empower artists and what we did was we did a couple of basketball courts in the city

8:23We did a basketball mural of Chauncey Billups and then we did another basketball court for the people of Tigray that was going through genocide Yeah, yeah, in Ethiopia So we did a mural to honor those people as well That’s beautiful, I like that, A Man from the Diaspora, gotta respect that That’s super dope, I’m excited to see this documentary, excited to amplify it Is that part of an art existing initiative that you’re working on? Is that part of an organization that you’re a part of? It’s my company, I directed, I shot it, I directed What’s the name of your company? Park Hill Financial District Park Hill Financial District

9:00And the initiative is Let the Creators Create campaign So we want to tell the creators all around the world Continue to create man, you know Even during turmoil or circumstances You know, create despite that Absolutely, and I think that’s such a big part of what we’re doing here with this podcast podcast even, is highlighting the creators in this space, like myself, I found a patron probably after maybe like 16 months in this space, who’s been supporting me with my, like giving me money to work on this project. How’s that been? Is it beneficial for you? I mean, absolutely. I mean, I went from like living off my credit cards, which are now maxed out, and off my

9:35money to buy a car, which I didn’t buy, to feeling like I could pay my bills, get my parents money so that I’m not just living there like a mooch living off women. And I feel like it’s giving me a lot of space to also just feel relaxed, you know, I feel like before I was doing Uber Eats at night, trying to work at a cafe during the day, thinking I was thinking about what my interview would be, trying to edit it, trying to put it up, trying to write a caption, trying to write an article to go with it, and I feel like it was just like there wasn’t any space, I was always doing something, something, something, and so I feel like this, like being able to shoot all these interviews here, like if I go home with 10 interviews, that’s like 10 weeks of content, that’s a fifth of the year, and so I feel like it’s just giving me space to strategize in a way I really didn’t have space to before because I was always like just doing one thing or the other, one thing or the other, and so I think space has been incredible to me and I’m excited to continue to think about what role I can play in this space and I really think for me that

10:18My role is to amplify other people of color and really other creatives, other people who are here with a passionate commitment to making a difference because at the end of the day I do see Web3 as a number of movements really like this financial movement away from like centralized currencies but also this movement for the internet towards more open source and composable internet where our data is more our own but I’ll see it as a movement really just towards bringing the world together and creating like a like a layer where we can all interact and transact as peers and I feel like that world doesn’t exist quite yet so I’m a I’m a

10:48I’m excited to be here, excited to connect with you, Vee I appreciate you for having me Yeah, absolutely, absolutely I mean, the work you were doing, even just talking to you outside for a moment I was like, okay Most definitely, man I admire what you’re doing We Them Niggas Yes, indeed And we’re gonna continue to be them niggas and create on a high level And we gotta make some music I hear that you’re a producer now, I’m a rapper, so... Sure What artist do you wanna get some music with? More or less, I mean, how I create now because I’ve been a producer for well over 15 years. I look young, but I’m up in age a little bit, but I just create before the creation, you know, when I release music, I don’t even look to collaborate with artists no more. I put out a project like my first movie was a silent movie where it’s just me production and scoring. So that’s how I just utilize my music production for my content now. So it’s like if I work with an artist, I got to really be in tune and

11:45You Know Some Artists Is Just Really Fickled Like They Don’t I Know Shit Happens And If They Not Making Money Or You Know Life Happens And I Watch A Lot Of Dope Artists Fall Victim To You Know Circumstances Then They Gotta Go Get A Job And Then They Just Don’t Create Anymore So It’s Like You Know As A Creator I Always Continue To Create But You Know I Just Do It For The Love Of It Really So If It’s If I Ever Made A Dollar Or Collaborate With Anybody It’s Great But if I’m just making it for myself or my family and the homies to here, they love it too.

12:21I like that. And what’s your artist name? Where people find your documentary, your music? If you go to my Instagram or everything, it’s phfd, as in Peter, Henry, Frank David, phfd80207.com, that’s the website. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, at that same handle, phfd80207.com Alright, thank you so much. Anything else you want to shout out to my audience? Shout out to all my niggas out there, We Them Niggas. Shout out to everybody who came to ETH Denver. You know, let’s continue to grow in this space. Web3 is the future, and the future is now. So let’s connect and do what we gotta do, keep creating, let the creators create, yike, yike, yike, yike, I’d say booyah, so hit him with a booyah, booyah, booyah, thank you everybody for tuning in to another episode of We Them Niggas, here we are out at ETH Denver, hope to see you here soon, and if not, hope to see you online sooner, peace.