1:07Kamal HubbardUh, we were told by several attorneys that it was a no-no for us to go that route, so we just didn’t do it. Um, any funding that we received, we got, you know, small grants here and there, um, but it’s been primarily sweat equity, um, and any retirement funds that I had to basically build this project. Um, as a woman, I heard in an interview earlier, she said you can’t pay developers with hugs, right? Yeah, ain’t that the truth. And then, and I will say, I had to learn, uh, on my own how to become sufficient at, at some coding, some web design. I just had to do it.
1:07Kamal HubbardUh, marketing, Um, so some of those things you’re kind of like forced into doing it, you know. If you have a passion for a project, you don’t let anybody stop you from doing what you want to do. So that’s one of the challenges. One of the other challenges, um, that was -- that’s been a little disheartening, um, for some people in our community, they’re just not interested, not interested in crypto at all. Um, you try to talk to them about, you know, you know, bank closures. You know, if you look at PNC Bank, for example, uh, Silicon Valley Bank, uh, banks are closing. If you look in your, your neighborhoods, you drive down the street, you’ll see a lot of empty banks.
1:07Kamal HubbardUm, the world is changing, and I try to get people on board, and I try to talk to some people, and they’re just not interested. Um, but that’s not going to stop me. I still have hope. for those people that are interested. But those are the challenges. Being told that you’re not interested, that’s definitely an unfortunate challenge. And I don’t know if you’ve had similar conversations with people or made attempts to have conversations. I’m that family member during the holidays where they’re like, here she comes. She’s gonna talk to us about crypto. Yeah, no, I, I, I stopped talking to people unless I’m doing something like this.
1:07Kamal HubbardI’m not as willing to be forthcoming with people as much as I used to, um, when I first started. Um, I have to know that someone is in the room because they said, what, crypto? I’m interested. And then they want to engage.
4:28RJ McDowellYeah, I mean, I started out as an evangelist myself, and I, you know, I had those conversations where people are like, I’m not trying to hear this, you know. And that you get to a point where, um, to a certain extent I am now, where it’s like, well, you can’t save everybody, right?
4:47Kamal HubbardExactly.
4:48RJ McDowellBut the thing in our community is there are some people out there who just don’t get exposed to it, you know. So to a certain extent, yes, I feel like, hey, you can’t save everybody, but I’m still out here trying to -- even if people aren’t interested, at least they know about it, you know.
5:08Kamal HubbardYeah, because I like, I like the fact that you called yourself a crypto evangelist.
5:14RJ McDowellOh well, yeah, no, that didn’t last long. I actually took that to church one day and didn’t go Over so well, so I had to drop that very quickly.
5:24Kamal HubbardAnd yeah, there are people who think that crypto is the devil, digital currency is the devil.
5:33RJ McDowellI got that.
5:33Kamal HubbardI mean, I had someone call me six thirty in the morning my time. They live in Italy, a friend of mine who’s in the military, and I didn’t mention to anyone who wonders what’s my background. I’m an Air Force veteran. I have been in the IT technology space for over 23 years, probably more than that. I’m telling my age. But I basically, I worked in government contracting for many government agencies, and a lot of the contracts that came across my desk, you know, were technology-based, things that I can’t talk about. But yeah, so that’s, that’s my background, and I try to talk to people. And for me, one of the other challenges -- I, I would be remiss if I forget this -- being a woman, and being a woman, a Black woman in this space.
5:33Kamal HubbardI have gone to events in DC. I’m in the Washington, DC area. They have lots of crypto events. Um, they have them at, you know, happy hours, things like that. I show up, I kid you not, I’m the only one in the room. And when I say, you know, hey, my name is RJ, and I start talking about my very own crypto project, they look at me like, are you kidding me? Well, who, who’s really in charge? I had one guy ask me that. Who’s really in charge? I said, no, it’s me. It really is me. I don’t I don’t have anyone else, you know, pulling my strings.
5:33Kamal HubbardSo I would be remiss if I, if I didn’t mention, um, and for listeners, I’m a, I’m an African American. Yeah. But I would, again, like I said, I’d be remiss if I, if I didn’t mention that that was one of the challenges as well.
7:26RJ McDowellWell, I will, I need to first off say thank you for your service to this country. And it has got to be so challenging, you know, ’cause I mean, I know it’s challenging just being, you know, a founder. I’ve, I’ve done it before and of color, being Black, being a Black founder. Let me not say of color, but being a Black founder and having that experience of just like you said, you go into rooms, especially when VCs are around. people just don’t like, they either don’t want you there or don’t take you seriously.
8:05Kamal HubbardYeah.
8:06RJ McDowellAnd it’s very, very difficult to find the right venture capital entity that wants to welcome you with open arms. I, you know, I’ve been a part of, you know, pitch projects, done over 100 pitches and You know, same thing. People won’t respect your NDAs, or they just wanna sit there and listen to whatever information they can glean and take to their own projects and all sorts of stuff. So it is very frustrating. And like you said, being a woman, I’m sure it’s even worse where people are either trying to undermine you or -- discourage you from doing what you do. And I’m also not surprised to hear in DC, when in this space you’re the only Black woman there. And so thanks for your courage. Well, thanks for your service to this country as a military veteran. Thanks for your courage to continue to be strong in Web3 and have a project that you want to create an impact, especially for our community. You know, can’t say enough for that.
9:24Kamal HubbardAbsolutely, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you for having me on this, on this, on this platform. Uh, it’s important. It’s of the utmost importance because, um, our community has a tendency to wait until something is required of them instead of getting ahead of it. Um, and one of the things I, I just like to let people know Uh, Bitcoin, we talked about it earlier, um, is approximately $28,000 to $30,000, right? In 2010, it was only 8 cents. 8 cents, people.
10:01RJ McDowellRight.
10:03Kamal HubbardAnd, and trying to get people to understand that crypto is not a scam, that’s the first thing they say. Um, I had a conversation with a young man and I was trying to talk to him about it. he said to me, oh, my friend lost $30 million in crypto. I’m thinking, sir, you did not have a friend that lost $30 million. You did not. I mean, cut it out, you know.
10:28RJ McDowellYeah.
10:28Kamal HubbardBut, and, and, and the funny -- and here’s a funny, a funny story, and I’ll make this quick. Um, I was at one of those conferences and events, and I was having a conversation with, um, uh, a Black man that was at the event. I think there were 3 of us in a room of maybe 200, there may have been 3 of us, and I was the only female. And I was having a conversation with him, and he began to tell me, uh, his apprehension with, with doing business with some cryptos because he doesn’t know who the founder is. He doesn’t -- nobody knows who the founder of Bitcoin is, and nobody knows who this founder is.
10:28Kamal HubbardAnd I said, do you have any stocks? Do you invest in the stock market? He said yes. I said, do you know who the founder and owner is of all of the stocks you invest in? And he made this face, and I was like, I bet you don’t. I said, that makes absolutely no sense. That basis for your excuse is useless. Um, so people, they make all kinds of excuses. If you don’t want to get involved with crypto, I’m not going to force your hand. You just wait until it’s required, right? The government tells you that you have to participate. Right.
11:40RJ McDowellYeah. And I think that kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier is like, when it’s required, I would at least want someone to say, okay, hey, this guy was talking about it. So I have some frame of reference. I may not have been paying attention to them, but at least I know what they’re talking about. But I think another thing when you talk about Bitcoin and really when we talk about projects that impact our community is like, well, You know, there’s people out there who will -- who believe in Bitcoin to the extent that it is the value it is today. There’s people who believe in Dogecoin that is a meme and has absolutely no utility.
12:26Kamal HubbardYep.
12:27RJ McDowellBut then a project like yours that is trying to do the things you’re trying to do, and people are like, well, I don’t know. This is, this is the power of this technology, right? You know, people --
12:42Kamal HubbardExactly.
12:42RJ McDowellIt’s the power of faith and belief, right? And that’s the thing about fiat currencies, right? The reason why fiat currency has value is because the government says it has value. So what’s to stop our community from saying, hey, here’s a project that is going to help our community, I believe in it, and I’m going to put some money behind it, and I’m going to believe that I’m not going to get scammed. I’m going to believe it’s not going to vanish, or I’m going to believe that it has value because it has value to me. That’s really all it takes. But once again, historically, the financial industry, the traditional financial industry has not done right by our community. And that’s where those beliefs come from, which once again are well warranted. And so there’s almost like a whole nother, uh, gap that needs to be traversed, right?
13:37Kamal HubbardAbsolutely. Yeah, you’re, you’re correct. Um, we’ll get there. We’ll get there eventually. Um, you know, slow and steady wins the race. Unfortunately, technology is not slow and steady.
13:53RJ McDowellRight. I mean, hey, a week in crypto feels like a year sometimes, or a month. But, you know, and I mean, I know earlier you talked about regulation and the challenges that come with regulation. How do you plan to address potential regulatory issues or changes in regulation that could affect your project in the future?
14:17Kamal HubbardSo one of the things, we have an attorney, our general counsel, Mr. Toppan. He is one of those attorneys who went through the process. I think he started out in -- he may have been a real estate attorney, and then years ago he started going through the process of making sure that he got certified in crypto. So he went through the whole -- I believe it was the MIT certification process -- and learning the foundation of crypto and everything that goes along with it. And he has recently moved to a new law firm where he has a larger umbrella of attorneys in the Philadelphia area where they’re paying close attention to this.
14:17Kamal HubbardThey’re playing -- they’re paying close attention to the governance and things that are taking place in Washington, D.C. And one of the telltale signs will be when the SEC uh, case between, uh, Ripple ends and there’s a decision that’s going to be made, that is going to affect everyone in the crypto community. And we’re all waiting to find out what’s going to happen with that. So, um, we’re fortunate enough to, to, you know, we have weekly meetings, um, to find out, you know, hey, there’s certain things I can’t say. I can’t make promises. I don’t tell people to invest Um, we went through the process of the Howey Test and, you know, we ripped our white paper apart.
14:17Kamal HubbardThat’s one of the other things I like to tell people. If you’re going to, uh, get involved or invest in crypto, read their white paper. Their white paper should be available on their website, you know. Um, read that and the Howey Test should be attached to it, you know. Um, a lot of these tokens are not. They don’t have this information available. Meme coins, Dogecoin for example. This stuff is just not available, and people are just hopping on the bandwagon of what they think is going to be the next big thing instead of really taking a look at, you know, what’s this project all about.
16:29RJ McDowellYeah, I mean, the regulatory landscape is so difficult right now as it ever has been, right? What was that?
16:43Kamal HubbardThe United States is behind.
16:45RJ McDowellYeah, it’s -- we are behind, and unfortunately it’s stifling innovation. And, you know, that’s sad from one perspective. And yes, you know, my project spent quite a lot of money trying to do compliance. And, you know, we met with different officials at different agencies and the federal level. as well as the state level. And those conversations, we were seeking guidance. However, they were asking more questions of us in terms of what the technology was and how it works than we were getting questions -- our questions answered from them in terms of getting regulatory guidance. And at that point, I was just like, you know what, we should really just focus more on the technology and marketing rather than compliance, even though we put compliance first. And at the time, it just, uh, led us down a path of just burning more money because they couldn’t answer our questions, and they didn’t know any better than we did, which was --
17:48Kamal HubbardThey don’t know. They still don’t know. And here’s, here’s something funny, right? So one of the things is kind of like in crypto, if you pay attention, it’s like a soap opera, right? Um, I don’t know, her name is escaping me right now, but you, you know who the former uh, Department of Treasury, that Rosie Rios is her name. If you look at a $10, $20 bill and you take a look at it, there’s a signature on it. That signature was Rosie Rios.
18:16RJ McDowellOkay.
18:17Kamal HubbardShe was basically the -- I don’t know what her, her official title was, but she signed the dollar bills. That’s her signature. She left the government. Guess where she works? Coinbase? No, Ripple.
18:32RJ McDowellBinance?
18:34Kamal HubbardRipple. Okay. He works at Ripple. And if you go to their website, you will see all the former government officials that work at XRP now. That’s very telling.
18:49RJ McDowellYeah, yeah, very much so.
18:50Kamal HubbardYou know, I -- yeah.
18:53RJ McDowellNo, I, I, I Completely agree. And in fact, you know, Ripple has obviously been in that ongoing battle with the SEC, right? So you have people who are formerly government officials who are now on Ripple’s legal team and, you know, executive team, but they’re saying it’s costing Ripple almost $200 million.
19:18Kamal HubbardAbsolutely.
19:20RJ McDowellTo mount that legal Uh, battle. And that’s a whole nother discussion because, oh my God, that is --
19:28Kamal HubbardYou know, I, I have a question for you. I have not -- I have been focused on my own project.
19:34RJ McDowellYeah, that’s fine.
19:35Kamal HubbardThere are some things that I have not paid attention to. Did Gary Gensler get fired?
19:39RJ McDowellAs far as I know, he’s still in place. I know there was that, uh, that hearing that he was a part of where he just didn’t have a good showing, and a lot of, uh, the Republican members of the Finance Committee just really tore him to shreds. And, um, I think he may have been considering it, but I did not see a headline of him stepping down or getting fired.
20:06Kamal HubbardI, I had heard some, some mumblings, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. Um, and for those listening, Gary Gensler, um, I His official title is escaping me right now, but he’s in charge at the SEC right now.
20:20RJ McDowellYeah, he’s the chair.
20:21Kamal HubbardHe’s the chair, yeah. And, uh, he was involved in some questionable antics, and he is the one who brought the lawsuit. Actually, no, he’s not the original person who brought the lawsuit. The original person who brought the lawsuit against Ripple is not with the SEC anymore. Gary Gensler picked up the baton and decided to, uh, finish, uh, taking it to Ripple, or trying to anyhow.
20:50RJ McDowellYeah, yeah, as far as I know, he’s still chair there. Uh, you know, once again, there’s been some scandalous -- even though scandalous, but dubious or questionable ties to, uh, Sam Bankman-Fried. And then I don’t know if you heard that story about him loosely promoting Algorand prior to his stint at the SEC. And, you know, so yeah, yeah, it was a very funny story. Yeah.
21:30Kamal HubbardYeah.
21:30RJ McDowellAnd, you know, meanwhile, Tom Brady and Shaq and Steph Curry are saying, hey, what’s the difference between him and us? You know, Which, you know, to a certain extent is a good question. So, you know, that aside, uh, you know, I also wanted to ask you, just to kind of -- in trying to close things out here, what advice would you have for others looking to get involved in crypto that haven’t made the leap yet?
21:58Kamal HubbardOkay, so my first thing is, um, I recommend that people, you do your own research. Um, I had a woman, uh, reach out to me. Like I said, at 6:30 in the morning they called and they wanted to discuss -- they’re calling from Italy, they wanted to talk to me at 6:30 in the morning. She said there was a man that was saying that he could take her money and invest it in Bitcoin for her. And I said this to her, I said if you went to a casino and someone walked up to you and said, hey, give me a grand, I’m going to go play this money at the craps table for you, would you let them do it?
21:58Kamal HubbardNo. I said, with crypto, you have to have a public key and a private key. You never share your private key. No keys, no crypto. I said, do your own research, get a crypto wallet, Keep your private key as secure as possible. Don’t share it with anyone. Um, do put it somewhere in a will or somewhere where someone can get a hold of it in the event something happens to you. Um, but do your own research and, and, and look into the details of a crypto to find out what is the utility of the crypto. Do they have a white paper? Um, Is the founder someone that you can actually find?
21:58Kamal HubbardAre they available, uh, somewhere? Are they, are they on LinkedIn? Are they on any social media platforms? Have you ever heard them speak? Um, those are important. Um, you can tell pretty quickly those types of projects that are looking to make money quickly and then disappear. Um, but that, that’s my advice to anyone that wants to get into crypto. And my other advice is to follow Repar Global Coin on Instagram and then also follow us on YouTube. And that’s also Melanin eCommerce is our platform where we are the home of the Repar Global Coin.
24:03RJ McDowellAwesome, awesome. We’ll make sure that people can find those links in the description. Um, and yeah, that’s so important for people to do their own research. A lot of people who are new, they’re like, well, I don’t know what that means. Like, I’m new, I’m here, people are talking about a coin, I buy it, I lost money, and then they tell me to do my own research. And, and that gets people out really discouraged and, and mad about this sometimes.
24:31Kamal HubbardBut well, it’s so crucial. I will say this, I will say this really quickly. So there are a couple of tokens, and I have a, I have a t-shirt that I designed myself. I can show this to you. I don’t know if you can see this. You see this? Okay, you can see it, but listeners can’t, but they can see it on Melanie Ecommerce. The shirt says, if you know, you know, right? And what I’ve done is I’ve put, um, some of the ISO, right, the ISO 222.
25:02RJ McDowellAh, okay.
25:02Kamal HubbardThat’s basically a membership, right, of a standard, financial standards for the banking system, right? These are native tokens that are already involved, involved with the payment rails behind the scenes of digital currencies globally, the CBDCs, right? Central bank digital currencies. You’re going to hear about it. It’s going to become a requirement in other countries as well as this one, right?
25:29RJ McDowellSure.
25:30Kamal HubbardSo on this t-shirt, I just have some of the top, the top tokens. Uh, so I have XRP, which is also Ripple. I have XLM, which is also Stellar, Stellar Lumens. This weird-looking H, it’s for HBAR. XDC, this one is Quant. And then I have Algorand, right? So each of these tokens are involved behind the scenes with payment rails, and they have real utility for digital assets. That’s all. That’s those tokens alone. I’m going to say them again. XRP, XLM, HBAR, XDC, Quant, and Algorand. Start with those, look them up, read their white papers. A lot of the individuals who started those projects came from MIT.
25:30Kamal HubbardUm, I want to say for at least 4 or 5 of them, XRP and XLM, they have a relationship because the founder of XRP Ripple Uh, the co-founder, I should say, is also the founder of XLM. So they have a relationship, and these people have been around in the crypto space for a very long time. They didn’t disappear. It’s not like they created this and then no one knows where to find them. So those tokens have real utility in digital assets. So I like to share that. And by way of Stellar, is Repar, which is our token. Um, yeah, so that’s my, that’s my advice.
27:03RJ McDowellWell, awesome. Definitely, folks, check into those projects, look into the documentation in particular, and then, you know, do some fundamental as well as technical analysis if you get the chance. Don’t just buy them to buy them, but understand why you’re buying them and understand why other people are buying them. Understand the technology behind them. and what the use case is. And, um, hopefully that will help you come to a more informed decision and, um, you know, you become a long-term investor. I mean, you know, I think it kind of goes into our previous discussion. You know, it seems like, you know, you’re looking for growth opportunities in, in crypto, and, you know, uh, I’m looking for, you know, more long-term diversification as well as growth opportunities too. But You know, I’m a believer in the space and I do what I can. I can’t retire just yet, but, uh, you know, um, I’m just trying to grow some momentum in all this and, um, along the way bring some people with me. So thanks for joining the show and helping, uh, you know, just our community with your projects. And, um, I’ll let you have the last word here, RJ.
28:21Kamal HubbardOkay. All right. And thank you again. Like I said, thank you for having us. For your listeners, thank you for taking the time to listen to what we had to say. If you guys have additional questions about what you’ve heard today, feel free to reach out directly to Kamal. I don’t know if you have, um, an email address that’s part of this program, or you can reach out to, uh, me on any of the social media platforms. or from our website, and we’d be happy to answer any questions. Our white paper is available for you to read. We actually should call it a black paper. We made our white paper black. Our colors are black and gold. And that’s basically it. And I hope that this information was practical, that you could understand it, and that we didn’t, you know, use terminology that was too far out there. But again, we’re here to talk about it and any questions that you have. Again, you’ll be able to follow us on social media platforms or our website. And that’s it. I thank you again.
29:29RJ McDowellAll right, well, thank you, RJ. And for all of you listening, wherever you may be, don’t just make it a good day, make it a great day with crypto, Crypto with Kamal. And I will catch you on the next one.
