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0:00ARight here this whole time?
0:01BOr you could clip it on your jacket.
0:02AI didn’t even see the clip. I don’t -- I -- this is the first interview I think I’ve done ever. Yeah, I think so.
0:07BStop playing with him. Foreign, uh, foreign from Newark leading the wave. Stop playing with him. Oh, that’s good that you can clean it. I probably should have read the instructions harder on here when I opened it because I definitely didn’t know you could open this. I did used to call myself a champion. I know, I used to call myself a champion. That was my Instagram bio for, for a while, just period champion. This girl said, what are men? And I said, champions. She didn’t like that. I think I called women whores the same day. It was a bad week.
0:38AThis is crazy. It takes 3 niggas to figure that out though.
0:54BYou know we got to do data collection. Data collection is not complete. Here, you can hold it. I’m done. No, no, no. I have my haritos. All right, everybody. Okay, okay, okay. We’re out here at East Denver and with another episode of We Them Media, We Them Niggas Podcast. Here today, I’m with Fournier Calix. Booyah! Connected with with Fournier back in September. Shout out to Chris on his birthday went to the. to the Dot Connector event in New York, and we connected with Fournier there and circled back, talked about ETH Denver. He said, oh, we’re sliding to ETH Denver, want to get in the B&B and join the B&B. He did. I appreciate you pulling up. I appreciate you being interested in what we’re doing with the podcast and thinking about how you can support and really just holding space for community, living with us and everything. Like, I appreciate the way you, the way you shared space with us and the way you’ve, you know, participated in the fellowship that this is. This is community building, and I feel like you get that. So how was your experience at ETH Denver been this year?
1:47AIt was great. It was great. Thank you for, you know, inviting -- like, you know, staying with me and working with me and everything, bringing me into your ecosystem. Um, yeah, I mean, I just -- I learned more about crypto than I anticipated that I learned.
2:04BMm-hmm.
2:06AI realized I was part of communities that, you know, it was more going on than what meets the eye, you know. Uh, being a part of --
2:14BHe knew we had motion like this.
2:15AYeah, I mean, we -- I had motion too, and, you know, we just -- we got the ball rolling, all of us together, you know, because I was doing -- I mean, I’m, I’m still currently enrolled in this program, the second cohort, cohort of, um, Near Protocol Horizon Accelerator, and it’s great to be with them. Shout out to Jared Barnes.
2:39BShout out Jared. Okay.
2:40AYeah.
2:40BAnd how’s that experience been? How was this, uh, how has the accelerator been and how did ETHDenver like shape that experience further?
2:45AIt’s, it’s been great just meeting everybody in real life so far. You know, you usually work digitally, you know, and it’s just a lot of writing, taking notes and, you know, data collection, testing things out, you know, building on top of, you know, work that’s already been done in a new type of way. And meeting everybody in real life, it’s just, it puts the cherry on top. You know what I mean? Because it’s, it’s really been a great program to be a part of. We had a private dinner, uh, with everybody in the second cohort that could make it. Met a lot of people from my team, you know, ’cause everybody’s remote all over the world in different places.
3:27BMm-hmm.
3:28ASo that was great. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I’m -- I’d love to come back, you know. We -- it was a great experience.
3:35BI’m happy to hear that. I think it’s, uh, I think like you said, the cherry on top component. I do feel like a big part of Web3 for me has been like recognizing that the URL turns into IRL in Web3 in a way that I’ve never really seen in any other like internet space I participated in.
3:51AYeah.
3:52BUm, and so being able to come here and see folks from Kernel, which I really didn’t get to go to their dinner, but That’s what I was interested in doing, but the car broke down and things happened. But getting to meet more people that I’ve seen in 40 Acres DAO, people that I’ve seen online on Instagram, Telegram, um, I would say for me that was definitely a highlight. And even get into, like I said, like you said, really bringing you into the ecosystem per se. You’re getting to meet Julian, you’re getting to meet Gabrielle, you met Drew before, um, and it’s just been, uh, it’s been cool. Yeah, to see you become part of our community. And, uh, yeah, I’m excited to, to see what else you’re up to this year. Uh, walking away from ETHDenver, what do you feel like are your Your primary takeaways?
4:23APrimary takeaways from ETHDenver is there’s always more to learn about what you can do and, you know, make your ecosystem better. New skills are important to, you know, realize the skills you have and realize when you lead and when you follow, you know. And there’s really a lot of different ways that crypto is being applied now, yet, but it still hasn’t been applied. Or it doesn’t necessarily even have to be just crypto technology in general, which is blockchain, you know, or AI, whatever the case may be. It was, it was really great.
5:08BI got that. And I’d be really interested if you could share with my audience, like, kind of how you got into Web3. Like, how did you even end up at Ethend or at Dot Connector? Like, How did Web3 and crypto become a part of your life?
5:19AOkay, great. So I started with crypto, like, seriously, like, job-wise, in probably about 2021. I invested earlier than that in the bull run in like 2017, uh, caught, caught, um, Bitcoin at, you know, a decent price, you know, and, uh, invested like a decent amount, like over, over 50% of, you know, what one Bitcoin was. So, and then it went up to $20K that year. You got out of that, and then I joined PubDAO later on. So big -- that was, that’s what made me interested in the first place, just catching Bitcoin at the right time and, you know, seeing the price go up and, you know, this is the mass like hysteria around it. And, you know, and then now in 2024, we have the, the Bitcoin ETFs, you know. So it’s just interesting to -- it’s, it’s interesting to see the transformation of this, like, yeah, of the space and how rapidly it happened, you know.
6:34BAnd what would you say has been a core memory of your journey from, you said, like 2017 to now?
6:40Aa core memory of a journey is just seeing, um, seeing all the progress of the people that I’ve known in, uh, you know, just technology in general, whether it’s, uh, crypto or, you know, blockchain, AI. I mean, the, the decentralized aspect of everything, um, really just changes the dynamic, you know what I mean? So I mean, yeah, that’s the best memory, is just seeing, seeing the growth and the new ideas and, you know, the different ways we interact, the different ideas now, you know, and just create a whole different dynamic.
7:21BI got that, I got that. I guess my final question would really be, um, to like someone in Newark per se who doesn’t know anything about crypto, what would your advice be to them, um, if they’re interested in getting in this space?
7:32AIt’s always -- the internet is the most powerful thing, but it’s also the most dangerous thing. You know, you just got to do research. There’s always new companies being created, new technologies being discovered, and it’s all out there. And you, if you research it and find stuff that you like on the internet, when you see it in real life, you know, it’ll make you want to, you know, do, do what you’re doing even on a greater scale. You know, so I say research, teach yourself as much as you can, you know, and recognize what gifts you have and use those to your advantage, you know.
8:07BMm-hmm.
8:08AAnd, and try to help other people as well, you know. Make sure that it’s a win-win situation with everybody you’re working with, you know. Um, and anything’s possible, you know what I mean? You could live in a city like Newark or never leave the block for 20, 25 years, or, you know what I’m saying, you could get your passport and, you know, see what’s really out there, you know, and don’t take it for granted being so close to your resources, you know what I mean? So all that together, it means like anything’s possible, you know, and you can reach any, any goal, any, any height, you know.
8:46BYeah.
8:47AThat you aspire to be.
8:49BYou know, all right, my man. Well, I appreciate that, and I encourage people, like he’s saying, to do the research and to find communities like this one, uh, where you can find people who do want to, you know, pay it forward, the learning we’ve been doing and the teaching we’ve been doing. So, uh, shout out to you for being here. Shout out to you for being a proponent of people educating themselves on what’s available and using the internet, uh, this hugely powerful resource. You know, I feel like I really didn’t start really learning about on the internet until it came to crypto. I’m not gonna lie. I feel like in high school I didn’t use YouTube to learn math. I wish I had. I feel like, but when it came to crypto, I was like, I’m gonna watch every YouTube video I can find until I figure out where these airdrops come from.
9:20AYeah, absolutely. Like, airdrops, even, even that, that’s like something new that it’s like, it’s, it’s so much out there and you just got to do the research. Yeah, you know what I mean?
9:31BTo find the opportunities.
9:31AYeah, people farm airdrops and they make so much money. You can make 6 figures, you know what I mean? Yeah. And, and it all depends on how you apply yourself as, as as far as you could reach is what your imagination can like see, you know what I mean? So it can -- anything can happen. You just gotta really believe that you can do it and put in the work and get out there and go after it, you know? You can’t just hope for it to happen. You gotta actually go make it happen.
9:58BYeah, so, and take the feedback. Make it happen and take the feedback.
10:01AAbsolutely.
10:02BUm, so yeah, everybody, thank you for tuning into another episode of We Them Niggas. Thank you for any My manager is --
10:08AWhat?
