0:13BI’m from, uh, DC.
0:15AOkay. And, uh, you shared me that you’re Jamaican as well.
0:18BYeah, I was born in Jamaica.
0:20AOkay. And so tell me about how you experience being Jamaican looking Puerto Rican and like what it was like for you navigating that Black identity. I purposefully haven’t interviewed anybody today that wasn’t Black, and you just happen to share with me that you qualify.
0:33BEverybody, uh, everybody just thinks I’m Spanish, Puerto Rican. I don’t speak that. So being born in Jamaica, if you go to Jamaica, there’s a lot of colorism. Like dark skin don’t like light skin, vice versa. But when you come to America, everybody just officially just knows you. Oh, he’s Puerto Rican, he’s Spanish. Then they already give you that little label, so it’s a little different.
1:00AIs that a good experience, bad experience?
1:03BI mean, I mean, it just depends. I stay to myself a lot, so I really don’t care what people’s mindsets and judgments are. But it’s just very different, you know what I mean? Like, different cultures think different things. You gotta fit in when you get in, you know what I mean?
1:15AAmen.
1:15BYou gotta get in when you fit in, you know what I mean?
1:17AAnd I’m here for this crypto conference, the Black Blockchain Summit at Howard University. Um, you know, and I’m curious, what do you know about crypto?
1:29BOkay, I know you can make money off it, but that’s it.
1:33AOkay, what questions do you have?
1:37BUm, I mean, how that works, how y’all -- how can you benefit from it?
1:44AHold it. Now you’re a cameraman. It’s my streamer, streamer error. Work with the people. So, I mean, how does it work, right? People talk about blockchain. That’s like the underlying technology of crypto. It’s, uh, you think about how the cloud works. The cloud works. If Apple shut down one day, you will lose your whole, like, family photo album, maybe, maybe all your personal data potentially.
2:03BWow.
2:04AAnd so the blockchain, which is the technology underneath cryptocurrency, which makes it cryptocurrency, is this, uh, cryptographic technology that aspires to essentially create, um, An uncensorable, unchangeable ledger, essentially online database, right? An online cloud that nobody can tamper with. And it does that by distributing the cloud across different people’s computers. And so now you have a database, I have a database, and when we mine Bitcoin, we’re collectively maintaining what state is the truth of that database. And so even if you publish, oh, actually I have his Bitcoin, 100,000 computers around the world have -- are saying that’s not what I have on my record. And so we immediately know who’s a bad actor, who’s intentionally trying to misrepresent the facts, you know.
2:47AAnd now that has enabled us to have a decentralized ledger for where value can be stored. And Bitcoin’s value comes from speculation. Like, there’s no real inherent value behind Bitcoin, but that’s true about money in general. And so, you know, a lot of people here in America have never experienced hyperinflation. We experienced the dollar being a relatively high purchasing power asset. Um, but you know, that could change one day, and that would really impact a lot of people across America because work every day for dollars. Uh, and some people, they think of inflation and they get afraid, and so they’re thinking, how can I hedge against inflation?
3:21AUh, inflation is what happens when the government or anyone who has the power to prints money, putting more dollars in circulation, or any government-controlled currency in circulation, or really any, any currency that can be controlled by anybody, right? When they, when they create more of it, they’re devaluing all the other uh, you know, pieces of that currency in circulation. So your piece of the pie is worth less, you might say. Which, at the -- the government will tell you, you know, inflation is the price of goods going up, but it’s actually the value of the dollar going down in response to certain monetary policies which are being sponsored, moved forward, advanced by the powers that be.
3:59AAnd so people say, well, damn, how do I get out of that? So it’s only supposed to be 21 million Bitcoin. So people are mining it right now because they’re getting, you know, that for maintaining the network. But the question is, you know, if there’s only 21 million, then, then what happens? You know, we hit that, then people think, oh, well, that means the value is -- it can only go up because they’re not going to print anymore, essentially. And so people, they want to see it become the new gold because they’re like, oh, gold used to be the reserve. Now in Bitcoin, I mean, gold was scarce.
4:32ABitcoin is finite. There really is no more than there actually is 21 million. And so, you know, the US dollar since the world -- mid-World War II, it’s been essentially the world reserve currency. Maybe a little bit later, whenever we went away from the gold standard, though, essentially. And so people around the world are losing confidence in the dollar. And so they actually want to see, you know, the US stop being their reserve currency. But I’m curious, what do you think would happen if people around the world started saying, I actually don’t want to hold the dollar? How do you think that would impact our economy?
5:03AI know it gets heavy, right? Don’t worry.
5:04BI think, I think it’s, uh, I think it’s honestly going to be easier to manage. But then again, it’s like you just always think about that when technology shuts down, then what you got? You don’t got nothing. So sometimes it’s good to like feel it, you know what I mean? As a working man, anybody that’s like, if you work, you kind of want to feel the, the real thing to just get that satisfaction. satisfaction of, oh, I really did that. But then again, it’s like, it’s easier when you got it on the system. You don’t lose it, you don’t misplace it, it’s right there when you need it. You like to see the numbers pile up and just add up. So I think it’s easier, but then I can see the other way around it. So I always think of 2 different ways of both issues.
5:48ASo what did you learn from what I said?
5:52BI think I think it’s dangerous. That’s that’s my my my real opinion on it. It’s very dangerous because people just because Bitcoin really is kind of new to everybody. So you got people just going at it like full throttle, and they don’t know too much about it. Even if they learn some stuff about it, they trust it so much. It can really be a dangerous thing. And then who’s the run-by? You gotta understand that part too. So that’s why to me it’s like anything, anything with money that’s involved with the gambling or just anything to deal with like actual like money.
6:35AWhat do you think about all the sports betting right now?
6:37BThat’s dangerous too, but they’re making, they’re making money off like the people that actually make it. They making money off of the people that just gamble. Gamble and lose their money all the time. It’s like casino online. Yeah, on the app. So it’s very dangerous on every part of it. I think crypto might be a little safer because you can actually see it. You can actually do your research on it. Gambling casino, gambling on the sports, it’s just like a person could get hurt big game and you’re -- you lost your money, you know what I mean? So it’s a bigger risk on that. But, you know, I just feel -- I just think it’s dangerous when it comes to like Because this is where I got off this link. Oh, oh, are you using L’Enfant Plaza?
7:20AYeah, that’s where I got on actually, the other one. We still got like 15 minutes, right?
7:25BYeah, about 15. I got messed up when I first got here.
7:43AI’m just trying to understand where are we right now. Okay, we’re gonna go up there. Okay, awesome. Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. I just want to make sure I didn’t see it on that list. The last thing I wanted to say to you, right, is that, um, I have to do one more time, is that a lot of people, they think when they’re buying Bitcoin, they’re gambling, hoping they make money. But I think the people who really buy Bitcoin for the long term, they’re concerned about what happens if the US dollar -- that you go to work every day working for the dollar. What if they wake up one day and it’s worth a lot less?
8:18AAnd so people are buying Bitcoin with the hope that, you know, they’re able to exit that system and actually have some money for themselves in a society where our whole money system has kind of gone to shit. And most Americans don’t think about what that could look like or what that could mean for us. Can you hear me? And so for me, I just want people to understand it’s less about gambling and hoping we make it big and more about making sure that we have a safety net if the systems that we participate in every day fail us. Yeah, that’s the whole point is that no matter what, you’re in a casino.
8:49AAnd as Americans, we don’t really think about inflation as a part of a casino.
9:00BThat addiction. The addiction of gambling is like instead of being on drugs or being on, you know, drinking or whatever, people try to find every any type of avenue to where addiction plays a part in their life. Gambling is a big addiction. But people take like it’s like energy for them, you know what I mean? Like drinking a Red Bull or Monster. You do that, yeah. You know what I mean? It’s like. It’s a it’s an adrenaline rush that you can’t find somewhere else. To you, he just thinks like it’s easy. You just put in like five bucks down or a hundred thousand down, a hundred thousand dollars. I’m not saying you sound like that. Like one of people like bank. I’m broke. Shit, we all are. But it’s like anybody that gambles, to them it’s just like oh here’s the money. Because either I don’t see it no more or it gets flipped. And it’s just that, that hope, the hope is more dangerous than like fear for real. Because like I can be scared that I’m gonna lose it, but hoping that I’m gonna win it is way -- it’s bigger. So that’s why people keep gambling, because the hope is bigger than the fear of them losing money.
10:12AYeah. Yeah.
10:13BSo that’s, I mean, that’s the process.
10:14AI mean, I think that no matter what, you’re kind of gambling, right? You go to work, you’re gambling. You’re assuming that that money’s gonna be there 2 weeks from now. But you just have conviction. And so I think the question is what --
10:24BPatterns today.
10:26AYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s called, um, inductive reasoning. We maintain these assumptions that things will be the same way because we have no evidence to dispute that. But I learned that in a philosophy class. I really hate it. But, you know, it’s just the point is that when we start to think about it, we’re gambling when we assume the dollar is going to have value tomorrow. But we don’t even think about it that way. But we have an assumption baked into that. And so I think the question is like, how big of it is it for us as a gamble to continue to put our faith in American government, American currency, when it continues to actually disenfranchise us year over year? Inflation happens every year. And what happens if inflation is 100 times worse than it was the last 30 years? They’re saying all these AI IPOs are bigger the last 3 than every startup IPO ever before. So what happens when the inflation one year is bigger than it ever was ever before? So what’s that going to be like for working-class Americans?
11:21BOh, we’re, we’re going to have to find different types of jobs. That’s, that’s really going -- not -- it’s basically like we’re gonna work for the AI, bro. Like, it’s gonna go back to the, to back in the day when we had to hunt. Like, oh, we’re gonna have to Beg and strive to please the upperclassmen, and you know nobody wants to do that. So it’s getting worse, but it’s been getting worse for years. You know I mean? And everybody keeps talking about let’s make it better. We gotta do better. But it’s just all talk. Nobody’s doing nothing about it. I think that’s the issue. People just talk like how we’re talking. People do this shit every day, all day. But what happens to make it better? You know I mean? What’s what’s that? I think that’s the issue. We just like people like to hear themselves talk instead of action. It’s like it’s like if you’re dating somebody and they tell you all these good stuff, but you see the opposite, you still want to fuck with them?
12:19ANo.
12:20BExactly. It’s the same thing.
12:23ASo what are you doing?
12:25BI’m I’m just working.
12:26AWhat are you doing to make the world a better place?
12:29BI’m just being positive because I think you know the things out here is real negative. People want to bring you down. Like you got the devil on the left shoulder, telling you all these things. You just gotta get all the white noise out of it. Like this train right here is loud. I don’t even hear the train. I’m just I’m hearing myself talking to you. So it’s like you gotta you gotta know how to get that white noise out of your head so you can pay attention on what what really matters to you. Everybody got personal things that matters to them, whether it’s crypto, whether it’s Uh, they’re the kids, they’re the wife, whatever it is, you know, you just gotta focus on that.
13:04BSo I feel like people talk about inflation and stuff like that, they don’t focus on it afterwards. They just be like, all right, cool, we had a discussion. Next thing you know, they’re out there getting drinks and getting drunk. They don’t really care too much. They just want to make it seem like, oh, we care. Let me let you know that I care. To me, that’s not -- that’s not enough. And last question, if you could ask people around the world, what question would you ask? Um, if, if your, if your grandparents, parents, ancestors can look at you right now, would you think they’d be proud of what you accomplished?
13:43BThat’s my thing, because every day I always think about that. Well, my mom, my dad, my grandparents, the ones before them, and They look at me like how I am right now. Would they be happy with what I’ve done? And if the answer is no, you gotta keep going. If the answer is, the answer is never gonna be yes. You know what I’m saying? The answer is never gonna be yes because they always gonna want you to do better. So the answer is no all the time. Keep going better. That’s it. Keep going for the things that you want.
14:10ADo you have a message if I talk to people in Jamaica?
14:13BThey’re not gonna understand nothing. Uh, I really have none. I’ll be honest with you. Uh, I really have none because it’s like the same thing. The thing is, I don’t even know how to translate it to like saying it that way.
14:34AI don’t remember.
14:38BOh, I know, it’s not like you remember it.
