Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Your On-Ramp to Cryptocurrency with Brit Morin

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

In this episode, Sharon gets the scoop on the emerging space of cryptocurrency from well-known entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Brit Morin. Brit is an expert who founded BFF, an open-access community where women and nonbinary people can connect, exchange ideas, and grow their knowledge in crypto. Blockchain, Bitcoin, NFT, web3… if these terms leave you feeling a little uncertain, consider this your easy on-ramp of understanding. This episode is full of amazing 90s analogies which Brit uses to help break down the complicated language of web3. 80-85% of the web3 ecosystem is currently occupied by men, and Brit is working to encourage women to participate and shape the direction of the crypto future–now’s the time! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. I am very excited for this episode because I have Britt Morin with me. You probably are very familiar with her company, Britt & Co. She is a founding partner in a venture capital firm, and she is also a crypto expert. And so I wanted to have her on because you guys like to ask me your crypto questions, and Britt knows way more than I do. And you are going to learn something during this episode. Even if you're like crypto, I hate that. It's still important to learn about even if you learn about it and then decide that's not for me.

It's still important to know what it is because it is going to affect your life, whether you like it or not. So let's dive into my conversation with Britt Morin. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Well, I am so excited to talk to you today because this is a topic that my audience asks me about all the time. And I am very excited to hear from somebody who is actively involved in this space, who is working at it on a daily basis, but also who can help us understand in ways that are accessible, where you don't feel like you're being talked down to. I'm talking about crypto. Do not click away. This is something you actually need to learn about

because crypto is not going anywhere. And I know that some people are like, but I don't like those words. Thank you for coming, Brent. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And yes, please don't go anywhere, you guys, because trust me, this is going to be a really subtle on-ramp. And for those of you who already know about crypto, we can take it further, but we're going to talk about it in the way that we learned how to understand it. Right, Sharon? Totally.

Not the finance bro way of being like, well, you just got to get into the wallet and then you just execute some trades. You know, sometimes people hear those words and they're just like, I don't care about this. I'm checking out. And so in some cases, there's even a willful ignorance where it's like, I'm choosing not to care. Yes. Well, because a lot of, to your point, a lot of people think this is just like a fad. They're like, Oh, this is a phase, this like Bitcoin thing. And it's not going to apply to me in like three to five years. But the reality is it's definitely going to apply to you and you should get in now if you want it

to apply in the best way possible. Okay. Let's start at the very beginning. First of all, what is cryptocurrency? Well, the notion of cryptocurrency evolves from a technology called the blockchain. And what the blockchain is, is you can literally imagine is like a chain of blocks, like a storage unit, right? There's different garages in the storage unit that maybe you put your like old dressers in and your old files or whatever. But in the crypto world, the digital world, this is where you can put actual files. And this is stored on

the blockchain in a way that is verifiable. So we know exactly when it was sent there, who it was sent from. And even if it gets erased later on, if the file gets deleted, it always was there in the first place. The blockchain technology is owned by no one. It's not like Facebook runs this or a big company runs this and it's replicated across millions of servers. So it's like ultimately pretty much unhackable. Like if one server crashes, your files don't get deleted. So what's happened is now this has become a really secure and verifiable way of sending currency, secure and verifiable way of sending currency, of making transactions, sending things back and forth to one another in the digital world. And it's so much more simple than doing this on paper.

Like if you were to go to your bank or something and go like write a check. So cryptocurrency is the sort of financial side of that. And this is about like, okay, we can buy a digital currency and send it to one another, but it really expands beyond that. The term crypto now means so much more. Okay. Here's a question that a lot of people have, and we'll talk more in a moment about the other things that are under the crypto umbrella. But a lot of the questions people have is like, okay, so let's say I'm willing to accept that there is this blockchain, a chain of computers, and there's files. Where does the money come from? So it depends which currency you're using.

Bitcoin is probably the one that has the most hype. It's been around for quite a while. And it was really the most hype. It's been around for quite a while. And it was really the OG cryptocurrency still is the leader today with the majority share of the digital currency market. People are actually mining Bitcoins like you would imagine mining gold, except in a virtual way. So it takes actual computing power to do this. As people are mining, there's more supply that's being created. But the thing is there's a finite supply just like gold. So that's what creates the inflation of the market, right? There's only so much of this. That's why

the prices go up and down so substantially. And now there are hundreds of these different types of chains, as we call them, of coins, not just Bitcoin. It's almost like you would have a different currency like yen and euros and USD. And oftentimes you'll use multiple different types of currencies in crypto. Okay. How, though, is the mining done? It's a pretty technical process. I don't know if we want to take your audience super deep in there. And frankly, like I haven't mined, just disclosure, I haven't mined Bitcoin. It requires a lot of servers, right? You need a lot of computational power. It's one reason

why crypto has gotten a bad rap because some of these chains, some of these currencies are more energy inefficient than others. However, a lot of chains are actually really recognizant of the fact that they need to change their technologies. This is not going to be sustainable. You can't have servers lit up all around the world mining Bitcoin for the rest of our lives and taking so much energy. So the cool thing is there've been so many shifts to much more sustainable cryptocurrencies. There's one called Solana, for instance. Polkadot is one that are all extremely like 99.9% energy sustainable. And the second biggest one other than Bitcoin is called Ethereum. And the cool thing about Ethereum is that actually this year, they are

upgrading the chain, the blockchain of Ethereum to a much more energy efficient technology. So we aren't going to be having to use all of these computers all the time to not just mine, but also verify transactions, which is another part of the computational power required. And so mining involves solving very complex mathematical computations. Something that a person could not just, they don't, they do not have the time in the world for a person to sit and solve these computational problems. You need a large amount of computing power to be able to solve these equations, so to speak. Many computers worth of computing power. And then once a correct answer is achieved, then the blockchain rewards that miner with a coin of some kind. Yeah. But they're literally called server farms,

meaning you have chains of these servers, of these computers, because you need that much power and that much energy. And the cost to run these things, I mean, look at Facebook and Google and all these companies, they have massive server farms just to run Google. Similarly, they have to pay for that energy. So the people that are also mining, it's kind of a big risk and a gamble, right? Because they have to make sure that they're mining the coin and they're having to pay. My husband actually went on a journey to mine a currency called Chia last

year. And like our AWS bill was insane. And I was like, we're done mining. You're done mining. We're not mining anymore. Shut down the farm. Like let's just buy in on Coinbase. So I don't think the everyday person is probably going to want to get into the mining aspect of this, but you're right. Like it's good to know how it's done. And I think that the key thing to know is that it's about it's supply and demand. And it's much more like gold than it is like dollars, right? It's much more like, oh, I mined this thing. Now, if the supply is constrained, like the price is going to go up. And I might want to hold onto this for a long time because if it's a thousand dollars right now, it might be worth a hundred thousand dollars in 10 years.

Yes. So the people who are miners are undertaking a significant amount of financial risk, kind of like people who were gold miners were like, well, I'm going to put my life on hold, not run my normal business, go to California, go to Colorado and see if I can strike it with rich. And most people did it and still undertook that risk themselves. And some people do. So it's much more, people have to think about it much more in the space of mining for gold than creating dollar bills. It's not creating dollar bills. Yeah. There's not a central bank that's producing Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Why don't you tell people what the benefits are of there not being a central bank? Why is that a good thing? Or maybe why is that a risky thing? Sure. Definitely has pros and cons. And just so everyone knows, like this is early days. I've been in tech for almost 20 years, believe it or not. And then prior to that, you know, and as I was like a teenager at home, I was, I was playing around with the internet in 96 when it was dial up and we were on instant messenger and, you know, and as I was like a teenager at home, I was, I was playing around with the internet in 96 when it was dial up and we were on instant messenger and, you know, like it, it feels like either 96 or 2003 right now in 2022. So just everyone knows, like you are on the precipice of a major technological shift. However, there are a lot of things that need to be built right now. I mean, you asked about why is it similar to a bank and are different than a bank? Well,

I think the first thing is, again, no one owns this. It's community owned. Everyone that is buying into one of these currencies is really just transacting on one of these chains, right? One of these blockchains, Ethereum or Bitcoin. When you purchase Ethereum, you hold it in your account, just like a bank account. Coinbase is probably one you might've heard about, but that would be like an account where you could hold this type of cryptocurrency. And Coinbase is not the bank in this case. They're just facilitating the purchase of the currency. And Coinbase is not the bank in this case. They're just facilitating the purchase of the currency. Just like if I wanted to go to an exchange and go buy euros or yen or whatever. But because of that, you are free to buy and sell and trade this currency however you want to.

Your ID in this world is not like your name and driver's license. It's your wallet address, which is like a 42 character string of letters and numbers. Something like you would see on like a receipt, like if you've got like your UPC code, but that address says like, okay, I zero X, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sent 100 Ethereum. That would be a lot of money to you, Sharon, at address blah, blah, blah, blah, blah on, you know, June 30th, 2022 at this time of day. And that is forever going to be written in the blockchain for anyone to see. Anytime, anywhere, which is kind of crazy. And you're like, oh my God, privacy concerns. But because it's masked with this random string of numbers and letters, no one knows who sent what to who. They just know that it was sent on this day at this time for this much, right?

And I think that's really compelling because again, you now could have a record of every single transaction you've ever made. It doesn't matter which bank you used. It's just like what you bought, when you bought it, that you own it, which is really important or that you sent it to somebody, right? The reasons why this is not a great thing right now is because it's not regulated like a bank. If you gave me your address for me to send 100 Ethereum to, and I accidentally got a number or a letter wrong and I sent it to someone else, I can't call a customer service line to ask for my refund. There's no customer service line. So you've got to be really careful. You've got to make sure that,

you know, you aren't getting hacked. You aren't giving away your, you know, your privacy phrases, et cetera. And a lot of people are right now. And that's a really big concern. And there's a lot going on, at least here in Silicon Valley where I live, to create better platforms that are privacy-oriented, that are security-oriented, and that are also considering ways to help people understand this world better with easier on-ramps so that they're getting notifications. Like, are you sure you want to send it to that address? You know, double check it right now. Even insure like crypto insurance is like a new type of startup industry here in

Silicon Valley. So I'm excited to see where we take it, but because it's not centralized, it's really hard to regulate. And Congress is certainly diving into this like headfirst trying to figure it out. And because it is complicated and the vast majority of people in Congress are over a certain age, not that people who are over a certain age can't learn it, but the current model of currency is very deeply ingrained and important to them. It is sometimes they're slow on the uptake in terms of what should we do? Because it is difficult for some people to understand, it becomes difficult to create meaningful regulations around. Yeah, that's interesting because like I said, I've been here in Silicon Valley for almost

20 years. I was at Google and Apple and my husband was working early at Facebook and social media wasn't a. And so technology is moving so quickly and the government is trying to catch up so quickly, but it's going to take a while. And so it's actually really difficult to be a builder in this space as someone who just started a new company in this world, because we're in the gray area in a lot of ways. There's like not one right way to do things for certain types of things that people are doing. We're trying to define like, what is a security and what is property, for instance, when it comes to things like NFTs, which we can talk about. And if your user or someone buys something from you and then they put it on a secondary

market, do you have any claim to that? Like, should you, should you be taxed on any of the, you know, just all of that stuff is, is still being figured out. So I think that Congress is moving, but it's been, it's been difficult. What do you like about this space? What do you like about the crypto space? What excites you about it? So I like to actually call it web 3.0 or web three more than I call it crypto, which is more of like an expansive macro term that encompasses really two things. One decentralization for the last 10 or 15 years, our internet lives have pretty much been run by like five companies, right? Facebook,

Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Fang is what we call them out here in Silicon Valley. For better, for worse, they are taking up most of the business models on the internet and they're setting the rules. And what I like about this new model is that everyone is potentially an owner. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure thing. And the reason why you want to do that is because the community effectively in many of ways, in many of these cases is a part owner of these projects from the start. It's like everyone gets a small portion of stock in the company just for participating. And so there's real financial

incentive that is potentially aligned. This distinguishes Web3 from Web 2.0, where these companies owned all your stuff, right? Your profile photo on Instagram, technically you uploaded it to Instagram. They have every right to own that photo and license it to you to use on your profile. The content you're creating belongs to them. At the end of the day, they're figuring out where they're distributing in it, what algorithms they're putting in front of it, et cetera. In web three, the idea is like you own all of that stuff. You own your profile.

You can take that with you now around the internet. You have your wallet address, like I said before. I think in the future, you're not going to have a password for every different internet site. You're going to log in with that wallet address and it's going to tell whether it's a shopping site you're purchasing something from or a social network, what kind of stuff is in your wallet. And so that might be a profile photo that automatically gets put into your account profile. That might be, maybe you own a copy of a Michael Jordan slam dunk video. And you're, you're now, you just signed up for a new game

and now you can like use that video as like a superpower in this game that you want to play. All of these different things, these assets that you're collecting are going with you across the internet and you own them. You get to do whatever you want with them. And so I think it's just a paradigm shift for where we're going with the internet, which is why I think Web3 and decentralization and ownership is so much more interesting than just crypto. I'm Jenna Fisher.

And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve!

It's Steve Carell in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

The FBI announced this huge, the arrest of people who had stolen billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency. And some people DM'd me and they were like, I thought you said it was unhackable. First of all, they were caught. But secondly, how are people able to quote unquote, steal billions of dollars of crypto on the system that's supposed to be really secure. Do you know, do you have an idea about that? I do. And billions of dollars, I don't think happens every day, but definitely, I mean, these hacks happen a lot and it's why I'm like so fearful for anyone getting into the space without doing the research on how to make sure that they have a secure account set up from the start. So typically when you create your Coinbase account, let's say,

which is like where I point most people to go first, it's like your bank account for buying crypto. Like I said before, you will get a 12 word seed phrase. This is like a password on steroids. There's literally 12 different words that don't make sense together at all. That needs to be like buried under your mattress, written down eight times, memorized in your brain. I don't know what you need to do. That is everything. If people are able to get that, if you put that like in a word doc on your computer and someone hacks on your computer and gets that seed phrase, they can get into your wallet and they can take all your crypto. Also, the other thing that people are doing is creating like dummy websites that

look and feel like a legit crypto kind of website and asking you to log in. And when you log in, in this type of world, again, you're connecting your wallet. And when you do that, oftentimes they're getting your wallet credentials from there too. So you always want to make sure that you're triple checking every website that you're on, especially when you're connecting a wallet into it, making sure it's legit, making sure you know who is behind it, like who runs this thing before you're just handing over your wallet address and your seed phrase to anybody. So it's not that people are hacking the blockchain. It's that people are hacking individual users' accounts that are perhaps not secure or tricking them into giving away their credentials via a variety of methods.

It's not the blockchain itself that's being hacked. It's the features. Yeah. I obviously recommend that if you're going to be purchasing a lot of crypto or a lot of NFTs, just be super careful with that seed phrase and with what you're clicking on for sure. Don't store your seed phrase on your computer. On your computer, unless it's like triple password protection. I use one password, for instance. I have with all my passwords, I think it's good hygiene for anyone out there, by the way, not to store your passwords anywhere on your computer, other than like in a password authentication app. I know it's a pain in the butt to have to log into it every

time you want to log into something else, but truly it's the most secure thing to do. Yeah. Just like we have now become accustomed to this idea that like, you don't carry your social security card in your actual wallet, you know, so that if you drop it, somebody gets your social security number. We now are like, that's crazy. Don't do that. And so we've just become accustomed to that. But like when my grandparents were young, yeah, put that it's wallet sized. Yeah. Or your birth certificate. Yeah. That's a great analogy. It's like, I have my birth certificate somewhere in like a file cabinet that's locked some, you know, just don't do that. Okay. What is an NFT? My son who is very into crypto is like, mom,

you've got to start selling your own NFTs. Cause I am a, I'm a terrible artist in a funny way. And I make, I make drawings of funny things, bald eagles sitting on a nest, et cetera, whatever. They're not cute, but they are amusing. And so he's like, people would definitely buy NFTs. This is my imitation of my son. So people want to know what is an NFT. Is it just a JPEG? Why do I want that? Why is it worth anything? Yes. I love NFTs and I love to explain NFTs because I thought that at first too. And I was like, what is happening? Like, what are people doing? There's so much more to it. So just bear with me, everyone. So the term stands for non-fungible token. I don't know who makes up these terms. It's not a good term. It's not the

best term. NFT is cooler than non-fungible token. Fungible is just a weird word in general. When something's fungible, it means that like you can exchange it for something of the equal value. Like if I give you a dollar and you give me a different dollar, like we both got a dollar, but if I have a dollar that's signed by Barack Obama and you just have a plain dollar, like my dollar is not fungible. Like it's not worth a dollar. Like it's definitely worth something more. It's unique. It's like a one-of-one. So NFTs are non-fungible pieces of content. And that could be art in a digital form, right? It could be music. It could be a recipe. It could be poetry. It could be a video. It could be anything that is non-fungible, that is unique

in itself. Because it's unique, there's a value to it potentially. And so a token means that it is basically something that you can trade or buy. It's kind of confusing because a token and a coin kind of get called the same things in crypto, but essentially it's a store of value with something that looks and feels like really unique and distinctive. The most interesting thing though, is that you've probably seen what like pictures of NFTs that are JPEGs. And like some of them are going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you're like, why are people buying these things? I like to think of them more like a loyalty pass or a membership card or an actual investable product. I'm thinking of what women would deem really like a vintage Chanel 1972 bag that Jackie Kennedy

held at the inauguration on eBay that might go for like 50 grand because Jackie O held it. Maybe she signed it. Maybe her lipstick is still in it. And you want that. That is non-fungible, right? This used to belong to Jackie O. And so that in digital form is what an NFT is. And it's why people are willing to pay so much for it because it's so unique. And maybe it has a story behind it, or there's a legacy to it, or there's something that you can use it for in the future. People believe that that has real value and they're willing to pay for it. And really all currency, all things on the free market have value because people believe they have value. You know, why does this house sell for a million dollars and a house in a different place sells

for so much less because, you know, there's a supply and demand element, but the house is worth what people believe it's worth and they're willing to pay for it. The same thing is true of non-fungible tokens, which again, I agree is not the best term, but the same is true of an NFT. People believe it's worth money. USD is worth money because people believe it's worth money. Not because a piece of paper with green ink on it is inherently valuable. Right. Because we collectively agree. on it is inherently valuable. Right. Because we collectively agree. We agree. It's like rookie cards. That's the analogy everyone uses, right? Like the Michael Jordan rookie. I keep bringing up Michael Jordan for some reason. Clearly I'm a child of the nineties, Michael Jordan's rookie

card from whatever 92 on the bulls and the NBA, like the year they won the championship is worth like so much money now. Back then it probably wasn't, but people have come to believe that that's like, so cool. Like that is the coolest rookie card, but people would bet on characters and teams and cards and the design of the card, you know, and there are so many different ways people collected and still collect these, you know, trading. And it's similar in the digital world. But what I Last year, literally about almost a year ago, drew 268 images of animals by himself, like on a sheet of paper, he doodled animals. There was like a penguin and a tiger and like, whatever. He's not an artist to remind you. He said, okay, each one of these is different. I drew these all uniquely. I digitized them.

Each one of these is different. I drew these all uniquely. I digitized them. They are now NFTs. And whenever you buy one of these, he called it VFriends, you get a pass to my upcoming conference that'll be held in May 2022. You get sort of exclusive access to my online community group that I will be in all the time. my online community group that I will be in all the time. And 20 lucky NFT holders at random assigned to some of these different, like the tiger and the penguin will get to come play

basketball with me or come play chess with me or come zoom with me and get basically access to me. And so these things went on fire because he has a really engaged community that wanted to go to the conference, wanted into the exclusive online channel and definitely wanted to play basketball with him. Right. And so those specifically the ones that had like the real Gary V access, like sold like crazy. Right. Cause there's so much demand for that. But again, it wasn't about the art in this case, the art is fine, but it was about the access. It's about you're in the club now, you know, and it's a ticket to something that you can hold or you can sell if you want. So if you were going to sell one of those V friends, would the membership to his exclusive

community transfer with that V friend? Correct. Yeah. Which is what creates the demand, right? If he only has a thousand of these, but a hundred thousand people want to be in the community, they're going to be willing to pay a lot more than you probably did. And that's why people are actually making a lot of money selling and trading NFTs because they're trying to buy in early, assuming that these things are

going to be really popular and a lot more people are going to want them later and then flip them, you know, when there's a high enough price and demand point to do so. I have a friend who actually bought one of Gary V's NFTs and dang, she was so excited to get it. She was setting the alarm at like 4 AM for like when these were going on sale. And that was one of the reasons she wanted it was she wanted the access to be able to talk to him. Um, you know, she runs a business. She really respects his, he gives constant business advice, et cetera. The one that she wanted to buy came with like a 15 minute meeting, uh, you know, with him and she set the alarm and was up at like 4. And, you know, West coast time to be able to get this NFT. And she did.

And then she got her 15 minute meeting. And I said, so was it worth it? She said, 100%. It's a hundred percent worth it. But my question though, is that now that she's had that 15 minute meeting, if she sells it, would the person who bought it get a new 15 minute meeting? So is Gary then on the hook for unlimited 15 minute meetings associated with that NFT? A really good question.

And the answer is it's up to Gary and how he programs this thing called the smart contract. The smart contract is basically the underlying contract of what happens when you buy this NFT. Every artist or creator of NFTs does it differently. And it could also vary. He could say, okay, the next person that buys this will definitely still get into the VFriends conference, but there's only one Zoom call with me available. The problem is if you're like a financial nerd, you'll probably realize this kind of changes the inflation value, right? Because now this NFT is like much less in demand because he doesn't have that 15 minutes.

And so Gary's got to be okay with that, right? He's got to believe that people will still want to buy it for some price, even if it doesn't have that time with him. So interesting. What are you bullish on? What are you excited about? What are you like looking into the future? You're like, I feel really optimistic about fill in the blank. I feel really optimistic about creators getting paid for their work and fans getting financial

upside and finding the best creators early. And another example of this beyond NFTs is even just in terms of like a celebrity or a fan coin or token, right? Again, you can interchange those words, but I use this example often, which is like Destiny's Child. Let's go back to the 90s again. Destiny's Child was like a band I listened to in the 90s. When I first heard Destiny's Child, if you're not familiar, like a three-person female R&B group in the 90s, Beyonce was part of it. I was like, this Beyonce chick has like something going on. Like this one of the three is the one I would bet on, right? Similarly, NSYNC was around at the time.

I was like, that Justin Timberlake guy, he's the real deal. I want to bet on him. If there was a Justin coin or a Beyonce coin at the time, and I put in $100 to buy Justin coins or Beyonce coins, the cool thing for Justin and Beyonce in these scenarios is like the fans are like kind of voting on them. They're getting actual inbound revenue coming in, which when you're like this early starving music artist, like that matters a lot. And ultimately they're able to grow their career much more quickly because they don't have to rely on these huge deals with Sony and universal and whatever. The cool thing for me as someone that was able to bet early on Beyonce and Justin is like fast forward 20, 30 years.

And now they're like the world superstars. And like that $100 is worth a hundred thousand dollars. And I got in on that just because I bet on them early. And it's again, similar to startup investing. It's like what I do. I run a venture fund in my other life and I try to find startups with the most promise and founders with the most promise as early as possible and try to write them a check as early as possible because those that make it are going to return my money tenfold. And I think the same is true for creators of all types, And I think the same is true for creators of all types, artists, music artists, poets, authors, like you, for instance, in your community, your fan base could be betting on you with the Sharon coin. And they're like, oh my God, I'm going to buy a Sharon coin. And I know that in five years, I'm going to make my money back. But also it allows me to get perks along the way. Like I'm getting the first pre-look at the book. I'm getting the signed book. I'm getting like secret Zooms with you along the way. I'm getting like the secret podcast, you know, like what are all the things I'm getting? Cause I'm

in your fan club on the flip side, you're getting all this revenue from your fans in your community who are now financially incentivized to make you successful. So they're telling their friends, they're like spreading your social media everywhere. And it's just like a beautiful flywheel, right? It's powerful for you. It's powerful for them. Everyone wins in this scenario. And I think that is what's going to change the internet the most dramatically, because again, there's so many creators in the world, but we've all been like under these algorithms and these financial constraints of how to build our communities and how to grow. And our fans haven't been able to participate in the upside of that. So you're saying I should make NFTs.

Either NFTs or like just a Sharon coin, Sharon token. Either way, it works. I believe that most creators will, to be honest. In the next five years, I believe it'll be weird if an author, a podcaster, an artist, an influencer, anyone you follow doesn't have a token that you can buy. Let's say that someone has the Sharon token, the Brit token, and the Beyonce token. We can see our overlap of our audiences. We can do really cool things together for the people that love all of us.

And because it's all verified on the blockchain, we know how long someone's been a part of this, what else they love. And again, this is not just data privy to someone like Facebook who has all your interests and they're selling it to advertisers. This is data that we can all use as we continue to create, you know, our businesses, our brands and our communities. That's super cool. One of the other questions that people ask me is how do I pay for stuff in the real world with crypto? Some brands, very few are starting to do that. I think a lot of talking about it. I think JP Morgan as a bank was like the first one that just even like recently to

announce that they're going to create a whole crypto division. So many brands have open positions for crypto experts and their teams. And it's everything from like CPG brands to banks to tech brands. I think everyone is realizing this is inevitable. This is the future. And we've got to serve our users somehow. The sort of scary part about accepting crypto as someone who has like the brand's perspective is that the markets are really volatile. So if you say like, okay, well, I'm going to charge a hundred dollars for this cool sweater. And so that's like 0.01 Ethereum. And that's the price I listed at. That's cool for today's price of Ethereum, but Ethereum goes up and down 20, 30% regularly. So it creates a lot of really interesting accounting complexities on the backend.

These are all things that people are trying to figure out right now and figure out what is the norm? How are we all going to do this the same way? So it's not that it's not going to happen. It's just that the parameters of it are still being discussed. One of the people that I know who is not just a crypto aficionado, but who actually makes a living working in this space, has said that you're going to start seeing a significant stabilization of some of the biggest

coins like Ethereum and Bitcoin. You're going to start seeing hopefully a slow, steady trajectory upward instead of this incredible volatility. And as things become more accepted, more mainstream, more widespread, the consumer confidence will continue to grow and that will decrease some of this volatility. And then as the consumer confidence grows, so too will various corporations begin to allow you to, when you go to check out at J.Crew, you can choose from a drop-down menu which currency you want to pay with. currency you want to pay with. And as consumers become more savvy, and you can tell me if you agree or disagree with this, but he says, as consumers become more savvy, they will, of course, look for the best exchange rates for the currencies that they hold. The default will not be USD. The default will be what is the most financially advantageous for me. He also feels like as people begin to hold larger quantities of their personal wealth

in various cryptos, that eventually cryptocurrencies will be used by the general public as a way to signal approval or displeasure with governmental action. I agree with that. with governmental action. And that now when we have a bad thing happen in the country, you see the stock market react immediately. For people who don't understand this, not that the government calls the New York Stock Exchange and is like decrease the value. It's the public perception of like, oh no, bad things are happening. And so it tanks the stock market. Or when you have a really great run in the stock market, it things are happening. And so it tanks the stock market. Or when you have a really great run in the stock market, it indicates consumer optimism.

So his belief is that in the next probably 20 years, when people disapprove of an action, let's say Congress or the president takes, they will dump their USD and take their money out of the United States economy and put it into crypto as a way to signal their either approval or displeasure for governmental action. What do you think about that? I understand that. And I can totally see how that would be a viable future. I think the difference is cryptocurrency is a global currency in nature. Currently, actually, the majority of which I believe, the majority, someone fact check me, is being held outside of the US, especially in Asia.

And there are a bunch of whales, really large holders that are able to control big parts of the market, which is also why you see these giant swings quite a bit. So A, it's going to take time to your point of stabilization to get more of the market, which is also why you see these giant swings quite a bit. So A, it's going to take time to your point of stabilization to get more of the mainstream onboarded, more of the US onboarded. And so that it's truly like global and long tail in nature. But I do wonder if like, I believe that like people might pull USDA and put it into crypto. I just wonder how much that'll impact the crypto markets, if it's a global market and not just a U S market and how much authority or influence the U S crypto market will have over that global number, which I think will be something

interesting to see. I want to hear more about what your new company does. Yes. Well, I mean, for years I've been mostly invested in helping women rise to their potential in general. That means their financial potential, their creative potential, their entrepreneurial potential. And in particular, as you can imagine, the female participation in crypto has not been high. It was 4% in 2018. It's now like 15 to 19%, give or take. And there is serious wealth being generated by the men right now. Like it's already a multi-trillion dollar industry on its way to like a 10 to $100 trillion industry. So not only am I passionate about women getting financial value out of this, but like just being able to shape the framework of how we're going to participate in this going forward. We can't let the male population write the rules. So in the spirit of decentralization and collaboration, that's all part of this web

three ecosystem. I rounded up about 50 of my friends who are everyone from celebrity types, like Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, Tara Banks, to like the top venture capitalists, top entrepreneurs, top authors, creators, activists, athletes. And I said, let's come together and try to onboard more women and non-binary people into this space, give them the education they need because people don't know much, let's be honest, give them access to like really unique deals, like opportunities, you know, being first before, you know, a bunch of the men's groups are and ultimately find a way to financially reward them. And we called it BFF. It's my BFF dot X, Y, Z. We just kicked off just a few weeks ago and already we are off to the races. We've got 30 to 40,000 members of the community. We've got an NFT collection coming

up soon. That to my point will serve as a membership pass to a bunch of things that are going to unlock with a lot of these core members, as well as, you know, the value of the product itself. And we've got more to come. We want to let the community help guide where we take this next. So if you guys are interested, please jump in. We would love to have you. Tell people about the.xyz because I think people will be like, say what now? Yeah, I know. People are like mybff.xyz. Is that even a real URL? In web3 world, crypto world, .com is so passe. So people- It's like using AOL. You have an AOL. Yeah. You're like, oh, you're a.com.

So.io and.xyz often tend to be the domain addresses of the types of brands that are popping up in this space. Can you buy those on GoDaddy? Where do you buy a.xyz? You can. Yes, you can. And pro tip pro tip for anyone out there who's buying crypto, maybe for the first time, you can also buy your username on, um, Ethereum. So I'm Brit dot ETH is like, and that correlates to like your wallet address and all these different things. And so I'm telling people that now, because it's like, if you didn't get your Twitter username early in 2006, like then you had to use like more in five, seven, two, one, four, you know? And, and, um, I think it's cool for people to go and claim ownership over their brand, their name. Totally. And that is evidenced by the fact that on Instagram, you are at rent.

That's right. And Twitter. Yeah. I'm like, dang, that is an early adopter right there. I was an early adopter. Yes. Yes. You got me. So if people, particularly women are interested in learning more about the space and getting an education about this in a way that makes sense to them in a way that they can participate and help shape what kind of learning they need. How can I, like, I don't get it. Can somebody help me? They really need to go to your website, say it one more time and where to find you. Yes. It's my BFF dot X, Y, Z, or follow us on Instagram or Twitter at my BFF. Our goal is to be your BFF in crypto. We actually are discussing even like a crypto concierge program where we will go one-on-one with people who are like, help my wallet.

I don't understand how to do this thing or buy an NFT. And we also have tons of educational content, et cetera. There's a Discord community, which is like a fancy kind of slackish group of people that are helping each other out. So all the information is at the website, mybff.xyz. This was so good. I know a lot of people are going to leave this episode and find their interest peaked. They're going to at very minimum have a better understanding of what the system is so they can decide if they should get in now,

which you probably should, and to be able to hold their own. I love what you said too about this. We cannot let the rules be written by people that are not us. Like we have to participate in the rule writing because the lack of participation is exactly how humankind existed for thousands of years. It's way more difficult to take back ownership later. Right. We fought so hard to get to this place and we cannot create a revolution with half the population. I love it. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. This is really fun. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick

favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.