0:41TrapDeFiAnd I got into Bitcoin. You know, I was a Bitcoin maxi, still a Bitcoin maxi, to be honest. I’m a crypto maxi at this point, but Bitcoin was my baby. I didn’t know anything about any other coin. I didn’t care about anything else. It was just Bitcoin, Bitcoin. But at the time, it was, uh, you know, I was at a depressing stage in my life, so it was kind of do or die. It was like, okay, I saved this money, which is around $16,000. And I didn’t know what to do with it. I was in debt. It was either pay my bills or buy some Bitcoin, you know?
0:41TrapDeFiSo I bought Bitcoin. And I struggled for a while. And it paid off, man. Like, I think 2021? 2021, yeah. Like 2 years later, it popped off again. Went from $4,000 to like all-time highs. So it was crazy. We enjoyed it. So that put me in the game, man. But I’m just a regular dude, man. I love crypto. I don’t have a project. I don’t have any set community that I can call my own except for on OpenChat, which is on ICP. We’ll talk about that. But I’m just a regular guy, man. I’m just here.
2:27Kamal HubbardYeah, no, I like that story. Definitely just to demonstrate to people that you can be a regular person and come to this, uh, come to crypto, come to blockchain, and, and really chart your own path, right? And, and really find a new way to, you know, exist in this world. And so I also saw that you’re part of From the Block to the Blockchain. So can you explain that whole movement and what that’s about?
3:03TrapDeFiOkay.
3:04Kamal HubbardOkay.
3:05TrapDeFiYeah, it’s basically just combining, um, Web2 IRL things to Web3 slowly but surely. So we started off from the block, we went to the blockchain, you know what I’m saying? So once I started getting into crypto and I started dipping and dabbing, making money and positioning myself well as far as learning the technology behind it, how transactions work, smart contracts, etc., I started to realize, hey, this is just like the streets, bro. You know, you buy low, you sell high. That’s it. You flip the prop, you flip it. And I was like, wow, I can be good at this. I can be good at this.
3:05TrapDeFiIt’s all about sacrificing and staying down. So I noticed a lot of DeFi projects out now. DeFi is real big now. But in DeFi, what I’ve noticed, people don’t hodl, you know? So that’s the difference between me and the next man. I came from that world of hodling. So I don’t have an issue with it. That mixed with the DeFi skills has put -- has gave me an edge, if that makes sense. I know how to cheat and I know how to hodl. It doesn’t affect me. From the block to the blockchain, you know, that’s my shit. And, uh, a lot, you know, people starting to say it now, and, and I appreciate you acknowledging that, bro, as it being a movement, you know what I’m saying?
3:05TrapDeFiSo I appreciate that.
4:22Kamal HubbardI, I really feel like that’s really how we should be looking at it. Like you said, going from Web2 to Web3 and, you know, our, our general condition in, you know, it’s about time that we start moving from being consumers to being builders. And I feel like Web3 is the best way that we can do this, right? Like we’re not tangibly building things, really the way that we should be. But this is the easiest way to begin doing that and begin taking ownership. And I mean, you know, not just sit necessarily like on Facebook or any of these other social media platforms, and now we can be participants and actually profit from it.
4:22Kamal HubbardAnd then, you know, really it’s going from the block to the blockchain, back to the block, in my opinion, you know, I wrote a book called DeFi for the Diaspora where, you know, at the time it’s looking at how we all link up through DeFi. And that’s what we’re doing now as part of this conversation. But really just, we got to do it on a local level, a regional level, and a global level. But I think the big thing about it is even though these are trustless systems, we still need to have trust amongst each other. And I think we can build that trust and still do and still operate once again in these permissionless, trustless environments.
5:51TrapDeFiI agree with that. I agree with that. And you’re gonna have to send me the link to that book, bro.
5:58Kamal HubbardYeah.
5:58TrapDeFiI’m saying.
5:58Kamal HubbardNo, no, I got you.
6:00TrapDeFiI like to read people, but especially people, you know, that I come in contact with in crypto spaces. And I’m gonna be honest, bro, just get trapped like 3 minutes, 2 minutes, man. I’m gonna be honest with you, bro. This space is weird, man.
6:15Kamal HubbardI know.
6:15TrapDeFiI want everybody to realize that it’s money enough for everybody around here. You know what I’m saying? If somebody like myself can do it, trust me, bro. Like, if you’ve seen the lifestyle, I mean, it wasn’t the worst life, but if you’ve seen it, I’ve been tricked a lot, you know, by the people I know growing up, certain, just certain influences in my life, not in the crypto space, you know. So it’s like, it’s amazing to be here, but anybody can do it. I know I got partners over in Africa right now, bro, that’s coming up. I’m saying in Africa, in Africa, you know, they got beautiful things over there.
6:15TrapDeFiPeople over there after got money, but some of them don’t. And some of my African partners over there making money off crypto and converting it to USD and living like a boss. You know what I’m saying? Making more money playing the system. They’re playing it the right way. They add liquidity. They’re not being scared because they bullish on crypto. It’s not going nowhere. We don’t complain when the light bill come. We still pay it, don’t we? Because if we don’t pay it, what’s gonna happen? Ain’t no lights, right? So that’s just how it is. The same thing with the crypto market. If you don’t buy it, You won’t, you won’t get that pump.
6:15TrapDeFiEverybody know the old saying, and I’m sorry, bro, I had a couple drinks. I’m fired up now. I was a little nervous, but I’m fired up now. Everybody know the old saying. It’s not about timing the market. It’s about time in the market. How are you going to catch those Xs if you’re so scared every time it dips? If you believe in it, why are you selling all of a sudden? You’re not trading, you’re not on Forex, you’re not on TradingView. You bought this on fucking -- on a DEX. What are you getting scared for? You know what I’m saying? Unless it’s a shitcoin, then, you know, you got to get out.
6:15TrapDeFiBut I don’t know, man. I’m fired up. I’m excited, bro. What you got for me, man?
8:17Kamal HubbardNo, no, I mean, I, I think you’re right. You, you’re, you’re saying it in plain English. And, um, you know, it is about that. It is about time in the market. And You know, I mean, this -- I don’t want to go off in another direction necessarily, but let’s keep things germane to really this new community that I’ve been really brought into and really welcomed, ICP. Now, you talked about being a Bitcoin maxi. I’ve always been a blockchain maxi, a DeFi maxi. And so, you know, for a while there I was really riding with Ethereum and EVMs, but when I saw DeFi on Bitcoin, it, it changed my mind about Bitcoin and Bitcoin maximalists to a certain extent too. But then when I learned that ICP was integrating Bitcoin into its chain, it really does make sense to be an ICP maxi, especially also they’re integrating Ethereum onto their chain as well. So how did you get, uh, exposed to ICP, and how did you become an ICP maxi?
9:35TrapDeFiInteresting, interesting story, man. Uh, I got a good friend of mine I met in the crypto space a couple years ago, 430. Shout out to 430. Everyone knows 430. If you don’t know, you just don’t know. But I miss my guy. He’s going through some hard times in real life. Um, so shout out to him. I miss him. I can’t wait till he comes back. But my boy 430 was stressing to me about Web3, with real Web3, true Web3, being paid for our time, being paid for our content, for our actions, just anything. He kept stressing it to me like, bro, you’re doing so good on Twitter, like, stop grinding for nothing, you know?
9:35TrapDeFiHe kept stressing, we paying Twitter Blue and etcetera, and I just won’t listen. I was not listening. Like, I’m not a social media type. I’m just get. I’m just pretty good at it. That’s all. But one day, bro, he told me about ICP for like. Okay, what’s this month? This month’s February. Maybe I want to say about eighteen to twenty months ago, he told me about ICP. And that wasn’t too long after it came out, but I ignored him. I ignored him all the way to October 10th, 2023. I’ll never forget October 10th, 2023. My account got suspended on -- no, I’m sorry. My Telegram got suspended, right?
9:35TrapDeFiThey booted me off Telegram. And my homeboy 430 said, look, man, open chat. Get on OpenChat. It’s on ICP. It’s peer-to-peer. You know, all this weird stuff. So I get on OpenChat, right? I found out they got a wallet. So I’m stoked. I’m looking at all these tokens. Ghost token, ICX, chat token, etc. So I’m just buying tokens. I don’t even know what they mean. I don’t even know what they mean. I bought chat at 14 cents, bro. At 14 cents. I bought Sonic token. I think it was like around like 9 cents when I bought it. Crazy. Anyway, but, uh, I get on OpenChat and it changed my life.
9:35TrapDeFiI was like, wow, people can send me money directly. I can send, uh, I can, uh, send airdrops directly to your wallet, straight to your account. Boom. I don’t need no PID, no wallet address, nothing. This is amazing. The internet ID. So at that time, the price was 286. 286, because actually September 22nd, 2023, the price was 286. That’s when I bought. October 11th is when I ate in. I bought 796 tokens with my own money from crypto.com. I sent that over to the NNS. I started swapping. Crazy gains that I was making on different blockchains from Solana because I bought Solana at $8. I sold at $55.
9:35TrapDeFiI sold 80% of that for ICP. I took one whole Bitcoin and burnt -- well, not burned it, but I minted one whole ChainKey Bitcoin. So I’m super bullish. So I’ve been in since October -- well, fully since October 11th, 2023. But my first purchase was in September. Since then, nothing but ICP. I’ve been in crypto only for the money. When I found out about ICP, I realized that it’s the actual internet, bro. When I made my internet ID and I seen all the dApps, I thought about everything that I do on Web2 and how can I convert it to Web3, you know what I’m saying? It started with the YouTube.
9:35TrapDeFiThe social kind of whack. But it started off with the YouTube app and I downloaded D-Mail, all this stuff, right? And it’s been changing my life, bro. $286, the price is $13 now. We sitting pretty. I don’t really want to say how much ICP I got, but I ended up with over 10,000 ICP since October. I swapped out a lot of my positions. You know what I’m saying? So now we sitting pretty. I bought Chat at 14 cents. It’s like 90 cents right now. We cool. I got Chat token staked. We cool. Sonic token is staked. We cool. Did we make gains? Yes, we did.
9:35TrapDeFiBut I’m loving it, bro. I’m loving it because it’s the real internet. It’s like AOL. You remember the AOL disc, bro?
14:10Kamal HubbardOf course, of course.
14:14TrapDeFiAll right, let me ask you this. Um, did you know that what was on that disc wasn’t the internet? Like, when you put that disc in and you got connected to the online, you wasn’t on the internet. Did you know that?
14:31Kamal HubbardRight, yeah, to a, to a certain extent.
14:36TrapDeFiTo a certain extent. Do you know why that’s the case?
14:40Kamal HubbardWasn’t that just because the AOL, that suite was just really some software and your mail and all that, but it wasn’t the actual connection, the internet service?
14:51TrapDeFiThat, that, but the main part, the, the, the bottom line is that disk was scripted. So everything that you seen was able to click was already written on that disk. You feel what I’m saying? It wasn’t no updates. It wasn’t live news.
15:10Kamal HubbardRight.
15:11TrapDeFiIt was already written on the disc. You was just able to access it. So that, that shows me that this is a new version. ICP is the new version of the internet, which will be Web3, real Web3. Why? Because you have an internet ID that gives you access to what’s already scripted. You understand what I’m saying?
15:33Kamal HubbardYeah, yeah.
15:34TrapDeFiThat’s the, that’s the builders, that’s these platforms, these dApps. Those are the things that’s already scripted. Now what happens after that is new data that gets stored on canisters. Oh man, we’re gonna get freaky now. I need another drink.
15:51Kamal HubbardLet’s do it, because, uh, you know, I’m learning something right about now myself.
15:57TrapDeFiYeah, bro. I mean, I mean, when you look at it like that, like I say, when I came into crypto, I came in for the money. I didn’t know nothing about no tech. I don’t even play video games. You know what I’m saying? Like, I don’t watch TV. I don’t do any of that. I don’t click buttons. So, but ICP, it gives me that tech vibe. It makes me want to learn. You feel what I’m saying? It makes me want to be involved. And ICP is -- even though some of the people in the community, they dislike me because I’m not that developer, I’m not that influencer, but I have some type of clout.
15:57TrapDeFiThey don’t like that, but I don’t care. I love them because I know that they are here for the platform. They are here for ICP. They want to protect it, you know what I’m saying? It’s not that even though they might dislike some people in the community for whatever reason, I can respect them because they want to protect this, man. They know that this is something special. They know that in the future, this will be the people’s crypto. This will be the people’s internet. And when Web4 comes, and Web4 is already integrated, shout out to Apple Pro, the, uh, uh, what is it, the Vision Pros.
15:57TrapDeFiShout out to Oculus. Web4 is already here. So once it’s integrated, guess who’s going to be there front line and center? And then that computer gonna be there, bro, because you can build on it. Bitcoin been out since what? Uh, they just now doing Ordinals? You just now? I mean, don’t get me wrong, people have tried to build on Bitcoin, but you just now building the past 2 years? Talking about Ordinals? Come on, bro. Come on, bro. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s ancient technology.
17:38Kamal HubbardRight.
17:38TrapDeFiLitecoin was a fork of Bitcoin, bro. You feel me? Look how well Litecoin performed. but you still wouldn’t have did as many X’s as you did if you would have did Bitcoin, even if -- even from a year ago. You know why? Because it was a fork. Even though people believe in Litecoin, people don’t respect Litecoin. Does that make sense?
18:01Kamal HubbardNo, no, it does make sense.
