Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey money Movers, Welcome
to another episode of the Money Moves podcast powered by
(00:22):
Green One, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Web three, ethereum, metaverse, n f
t s. To some, I may sound like I'm speaking
a completely new language. Others might have heard these buzzwords
flying around the Internet and then the news of late
and too many, like myself, it's all I can think about.
I'm excited, y'all. Blockchain technology and its application to Web
(00:42):
three are a new technological frontier, and I want to
make sure the Money Moves audience is in the know.
So welcome to a segment we are calling a crypto school,
and to keep you up to date in this fast
moving and growing sector, We've decided to bring in one
of the future leaders of the Web three space. Money Movers.
It's time for crypto school with Elen Halpern. Hi Ellen,
(01:04):
how are you. I'm doing well? How are you? I
am great? I am great? All right? Ellen? Web three
and the metaverse and all these buds words are plaguing
so many of us and I am so excited to
have you on the podcast today to kind of break
it down for us and get everyone excited about what's
happening in tech these days. Yeah. Absolutely, And first off,
(01:26):
just thank you for having me. I'm super glad to
connect and be on the podcast here. Um. And you know,
this space is so fast, it's so ever growing, there's
so much buzz around it. So really excited to try
and break it down for the audience here and get
everyone on the same page. So first I want to
introduce you to our audience. If you could tell um
(01:46):
everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got
into technology and where you're at now. Absolutely. Yeah. So
first off, hey everyone, I'm Alan and I have been
at Alchemy of the platform off me dot com check
it out for a little over a year and a
half now. It is uh the kind of main developer
platform that people used to build blockchain applications. Background on myself,
(02:10):
I'm born and raised in New York City, went out
to school for college in in the Bay Area. I
went to Stanford and studied you went to Stanford. This
is like Smarty Smarty pants. This sister is not playing
Oh my god, Oh no, as I. Yeah. I studied
computer science at Stanford, UM, did software engineering roles at
Facebook and Instagram before joining Alchemy, and really joined Alchemy
(02:34):
UM in this role called developer experience, where I'm helping
people build an onboard into the web three space and
getting them up to speed on building applications here. Um.
And so my journey to Web three has really been
from a builder's perspective. I think a lot of people
get introduced to this space as as an investor or
for an investing purpose, but I came at it from
(02:57):
the angle of like, how can we use this technology
to build new applications? So I think is really what
encompasses Web three here? Wow? I love that? All right.
So we've already said web three a couple of times
if this was another world, which might be a drinking game.
So I want to back out and ask people, or
just explain to people, what is Web three and why,
(03:18):
in particular should people of color be really excited about
what's happening in this space. Yeah, definitely, that's a great question. UM.
So I think to understand what web three is and
really unpack it, let's start at Web one. What is one?
So Web one is the first version of the Internet,
and not a lot of people know this. I mean,
I wasn't really like I was alive, but I wasn't
(03:40):
like using the Internet at this age. Um. But really
Web one Internet was this static, like read only website.
So what this means exactly is as a user, I
would show up to a website and I couldn't interact
with it. I could just read stuff from it and
maybe scrool, but like all of that data was fixed,
nothing was dynamic, and the creators were very limited, right,
(04:02):
So it wasn't like I could like a photo and
make a friend request and comment. It was just like
all you can do is consume. And so that's Web one.
It's sort of this very static, almost boring version of
the Internet. But it was revolutionary because now you can
kind of share information in a different way. And then
Web two came along, and this is really what we're
all familiar with today. It's like how you're streaming this podcast.
(04:24):
It's how you know you can type on Google Docs
and use Facebook and use Instagram. So Web two is
this sort of dynamic version of the Internet. You can
now read and write, and what reading and writing means
is you can consume stuff and you can interact with
it and make changes. So these are all these applications
that were all super super familiar with. That's Web two,
(04:46):
and I want to just piggyback in on there and
give some great examples. It's like we're talking Google, the Facebook's,
the Amathons, kind of the like giants that we now
think of of the Internet, and they've made tons and
tons of money and we kind of can't live without them,
like this is sort of what our whole world revolves around.
And now welcome Web three. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and thanks,
(05:08):
I appreciate you adding that. I think an important distinction
with Web two is that all of these companies own
the data. Right, They're all in these little kind of
data silos where they control the user information, they control
the applications, and all of it is within the individual company.
So let's talk about Web three and how this is different.
(05:29):
Web three is now read, write, and own, So there's
this concept of ownership on the Internet that was not
possible before. And really for users, what this means is
you can now own your data. That data that is
owned by by Uber or Facebook or Amazon whatever about
your user is now in your hands. You control that
(05:51):
it's completely decentralized. It's no longer these individual companies controlling everything.
You can now have this kind of ownership. I love this,
and this is what gets me really excited because oftentimes,
especially for people of color, like this is playing out
in a way that historically, like we didn't have ownership.
We didn't own the land, but we worked the land.
You know. We couldn't buy in the right um neighborhoods
(06:12):
because someone else said so, there was a gatekeeper. And
so what's really exciting to me is like at its
most basic level, like web three refers to this decentralized
like online ecosystem, and it's based on this buzzword buzzword blockchain, right,
But all these platforms and apps that are built and
elon your like the Quintessential Builder on this they're not
owned and maintained by this central gatekeeper but bias for us,
(06:36):
it's kind of like fooboo, you guys. I mean, it's
really cool that this whole data model is just flip.
I mean, this whole model of the Internet is flipped
on its tet with website. It's completely ripping out the
current structures that we have for the Internet and saying,
you know what, let's give power back to the people.
Let's let users own their data and they can dictate
(06:56):
what the moves are next, not companies. Yeah, and so
this is why, you know, I keep coming back to
this and wanting everyone to be educated on this because
you know, it seems really scary. It seems like, oh,
is this a scam? Is this something that's going to
be you know, here today and gone tomorrow. What are
your thoughts on that when people ask you that, Yeah,
that's a really good question. I think just taking a
(07:18):
step back and and thinking about traditionally marginalized communities, I think, um,
oftentimes there's this there's just kind of tug and pull
with that where you want to bring them in early
and educate them. But some people feel like, oh, no,
we should protect people from these sort of rug pools
have been traditionally disadvantage in the past. And my thing
(07:38):
here is I think a lot of people are like, no,
we shouldn't bring marginalized communities into crypto and web three.
It's kind of dangerous. It's like they could get scammed.
But really, the biggest detrimental thing we can do for
these types of communities is not educate them is not
informed them about this space. So like, I am super
anti anyone who's like no, like, don't do that, like
(07:58):
anti crypto, I'm like, no, like get educated, and I'm
here to help you get educated and let's get you
up to speed because there's a huge opportunity and like,
this is the last group that should be missing it.
This is a group that should be at the forefront
of it. So we need to do everything we can
to to make sure everyone's up to speed there. And
to your point, I feel like I've worked in technology
and venture capital for the past ten years. I have
(08:20):
worked really really hard to sort of write the disparities
that everyone talks about. We know, we know so much
about how underfunded women are, especially black women people of
color in terms of getting venture capital in the technology space,
and so it's like we've been fighting this uphill battle
to sort of um up end and disrupt those statistics
that are abysmal. Y'all. It's like one of funding goes
(08:42):
to black or women founders of color. But what Web
three offers us is this opportunity to be at the
table at the creation of something. And that's why I
want everyone to be really excited about this and as
they say, and sort of like the metaverse, where do
your own research? So you were here doing your own
research to understand and like have a seat at the table. Absolutely, yeah,
(09:03):
I mean and you know background myself, like I am
half I mean Puerto Rican till I learn. Um. Oh,
oh my gosh, guys, this is a fun fact. That
was my alarm going off because um, I wanted to
get in on a pre mint release of an n
f T. Yeah, okay, and black people, well this is this,
This might get you guys really excited. Okay, So basically,
(09:25):
Gucci did this really rare n f T drop with
super plastic, which is like this very famous um collectible
item kind of think um cause, et cetera. Anyways, like
the discord has been going crazy, the Mint keeps getting
pushed back because so many people are in on it.
So it's what for twenty right now? And that was
my alarm going off. This is how crazy passionate people
(09:47):
get about n f T s and stuff. So sidebar,
either keep that in or edit it out. But it's
kind of funny, y'all. Um, sorry about that. Did you
want to fause? No? No, no, no, there's two mint windows.
There's two mint windows. Okay, good, great, I might checking out.
UM yeah, I mean a little bit of background on me.
(10:08):
I'm I'm like multi race, kind of mixed, and my
mom is Puerto Rican in Chilean and my dad is
African American and um kind of Eastern European Caucasian, um.
And so I've been very very like in touch with
a lot of these communities and don't come from a
lot of um wealth financially. I had a full scholarship
to Stanford and really kind of crawled my way into
(10:29):
the tech industry. Um. And my eyes have been just
absolutely opened in Web three and how accessible and low
barrier to entry it is, and not necessarily from like education,
what I think a lot of this stuff is hard
to understand, and that's why I'm kind of at the
forefront of trying to break it down for people. But
really from just like you can just jump right in,
Like there's no you don't need to have a degree
(10:50):
from Harvard, you don't need to have a degree from Stanford,
you don't need to have any background at all. Like
it is, the door is wide open and it's yours
for the taking. And that's what's really really idea about this. Yeah,
I mean this is the other thing you know, I've
watched over the past, you know, a couple of years,
we've had COVID, We've had this really um deep social
(11:11):
justice movement where you know, we've watched black and brown
people be killed and just so much has come out
of it. But one of the things that I think
has been really interesting the timing and the confluence of
all those things, is we've seen so many people passionately
dive into this web three world and invest in cryptocurrencies.
They're investing in n f t s, and it's global.
(11:32):
It's not just an American thing. You know. I've met
friends who were in West Africa who started with you know,
the Internet and being able to like dive into discords,
dive into these conversations, and they're building wealth from it.
And one of the things that I want everyone to
start conversating about and having conversations about this is like,
no more fear. You know, fear has held us back
(11:53):
in all in many different ways as people of color,
and so you'll have people who were like, oh, be afraid,
it's scam. But you know, there's this expression in the
South that I didn't know. I grew up in Canada
and it was like scared money, don't make no money.
And I'm just saying, like, do your research and get involved,
learn about it so that it's not, you know, five
years down the road and you're going, oh, whoops, I
(12:16):
didn't get on that space ship. Totally, totally, I completely agree.
You could not agree more. I think one of the
really cool things, at least in my experience talking to
people who have who have been learning about this stuff,
is I have not met a single person who got
more educated and more skeptical at all period. If you
get more educated about this space, I can promise you
(12:36):
that you will only become more excited and have more
opportunities like want to jump into it um And that's
really really powerful. It's not often that you learn more
about something and then become less skeptical, right that you
kind of pull this threads and you're like, oh, that
looks us But in this it's like you know, and
I'd love for for people to prove me wrong. Right
If if you get more educated and you become more skeptical,
(12:58):
definitely tweet at me and let's have a conversation and
figure out why that is. No. I love that because
it is so true. This is absolutely one of those things,
and I'd love to find the naysayers about that. But
you know, this was a great episode. This was just
segment one of Crypto School, and we just wanted you
guys to dip your toes in and have a good
understanding about what we're gonna be talking about in future episodes. So, Ellen,
(13:19):
thank you so much for joining us today. You dropped
some gems. I loved having this conversation, and I hope
that you guys will tune in for future episodes where
we do a deeper dive into more about what is
the blockchain, what is crypto what or n F T
s UM so that you guys can learn more. Ellen,
can you tell our Money Moves audience where they can
find you on social and where they can catch up
with you? Absolutely? Yeah. So on Twitter I'm zero x
(13:43):
Alon uh so zero the number X and then my
first name, and then on Instagram I'm Helpernesta. So it's
my last name with S T A. Don't ask me
why it's that name. I think it just sounds fun.
On Instagram, definitely check it out. We love it. Alright,
Money Movers. May sure you follow Ellen on all her
social media handles to keep up to date on all
(14:03):
things crypto and web. Three and if we have helped
you make your money move, please make sure to let
us know by sending a like, sharing the knowledge on
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two can have the keys to financial freedom you so
(14:24):
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(14:45):
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