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I am a firm believer that cryptocurrencies, blockchain, Web3, or whatever the latest term is, is a transcendent innovation. For younger millennials and Gen Z, the invention of the blockchain will be arguably the first revolutionary innovation that they have the chance to participate in during its infancy.

In December 2017, during exam week at Morehouse College, a classmate of mine and I happened to be studying in the same section of the library. Prior to leaving the library, I said, “what’s up” as I normally did to my classmates and asked an unneeded question regarding the Chinese exam that we both had coming up. I really just went over that way to talk and procrastinate. I noticed he was on his phone and I saw him open this app that I had never heard of before called Coinbase. My friend explained to me that Coinbase was the place where you could convert “real” money to bitcoin. I’d heard about Bitcoin before but only through this decently entertaining movie that I saw in movie theaters called Dope. Ironically, Dope displays images of people selling drugs over the internet, receiving bitcoin as payment, just like Ross Ulbricht's, Silk road. However, as you can imagine, after watching the movie, I dismissed it as fiction.

Well, after my friend told me that there was a real opportunity to make money by investing in Bitcoin, I saw the graph in which the price of the coin was starting to skyrocket. I fell into the“rabbit hole” and when that happened, I started researching and discovering more about what cryptocurrency and blockchain are. From that point forward I ended up trying to find a community, which is one of the central tenets of the crypto industry.

In the first half of spring 2018, I found a space in the Morehouse Business Association called Opportunity Hub which was a designated classroom that attracted forward-thinking students who chose technology as their way to make an impact. Ironically, the first event that was hosted was focused on cryptocurrency and featured speakers who were from underrepresented communities. I ultimately began developing my crypto circle through this program, gained mentors, and developed relationships with crypto native folks who were eager to drive adoption and contribution in the space.

During this same time frame, my pursuit of an internship included predominantly big tech companies, and my curiosity for the crypto space grew significantly. I sent a cold email to Barry Silbert, the founder of Digital Currency Group (DCG), to see if there was an internship at the firm or the firm’s portfolio companies. I will never forget that I received an email response, and although there wasn’t any available opportunity at that moment, I was very grateful and excited that I even received a response. I thought, if Barry can take the time to respond to me, I can meet many more successful people in this industry. Since hearing from Barry, I have since gained valuable mentorship from successful people in the industry.

In the summer of 2018, I ended up interning at PayPal. Being surrounded by other interns who had a tech-first career mindset elevated my passion for technology. It also allowed me to be around folks who are some of the earliest adopters in the crypto space. This point is where I started thinking about the financial impact of cryptocurrency as well as the social impact it could have on the world.

Over the next 2 years, I remained curious and invested in exciting projects. As someone interested in the venture capital side, it was fascinating to learn about the various investments that crypto native funds such as Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and DCG were investing in and how these innovations were poised to gain traction today and will gain large market share in the future. They also provided strong indicators on which projects to do further research on to further explore my intellectual curiosity.

Today, I am still intellectually curious and am more excited than ever to continue to learn how Web3 will shape and scale the cryptocurrency industry. I have invested in myself in this space as I am taking Pomp’s Crypto course in the program’s 10th cohort to increase my knowledge and understanding of key topics in the industry. Beyond investing money into the industry, I look forward to contributing toward driving the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain products. I can’t wait to see what DAOs I contribute to, what companies I help scale, and what ventures I create, which will help scale the disruptive Web3 industry.

Thank you for reading this piece. If you LOVE this article, you can send a tip to Cryptojeter.eth (my ETH address)! Follow me on Twitter @CryptoJeter and retweet this post! Feel free to shoot me a DM as I love meeting new folks!

https://twitter.com/CryptoJeter/status/1486178056981073921?s=20&t=Zx0Ie92PQrJVnfm8CuyQMg

Thank you for the support!

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