• 😅 No one I knew owned an NFT

• 🖼️ Marking a work anniversary

• 🐇 The Start of an Adventure

• 🏗️ Next: four goals until day 90

😅 No one I knew owned an NFT

May 2021. My time as a program manager was over.

I applied to be an engineer for a different team at the same company and got the offer. To celebrate, I set up a lunch with a number of co-workers to break virtual bread over Zoom.

We met. We laughed. We swapped stories. The conversation was fluid and I loved the camaraderie. One of my co-workers brought up the subject of art and asked if anyone collected. I didn’t personally, but many did! As dialogue quelled, I asked them if they could share any artists they enjoyed and any specific pieces they’ve purchased.

I browsed through their suggested galleries and enjoyed browsing.

But nothing compelled me to make a move.

The conversation took a turn when one my co-workers asked:

“Does anyone own an NFT?”

The silence was telling: no one owned an NFT or understood what they were there for.

Our lunch time quickly concluded, but their question left an impression on me.

I asked myself:

“What are NFTs and why is there so much excitement over them?”

May 2021 to September 2021. I took a break from the crypto space to focus on my new role as an engineer and to take time for my mental and spiritual health.

October 2021. I decided to get back into the space and I remembered Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast. It had been a guiding light in previous months to get perspective across spectrums. I hopped back in and what caught my attention was this episode when Laura interviewed Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto. Cuy shared why NFTs were his favorite topic and how they have the potential to level the playing field for black artists (and artists in general).

For as long as I could remember, if I wasn’t paying in cash, I was swiping my VISA. And, to know that a company I had long relied upon was going into crypto sent a signal to me.

I finished the episode and I experienced cognitive dissonance. Up until this point in my crypto journey, the general impression of NFTs were largely based from my peers’ opinions. Many described them as an overhyped scam built on technology that would never stand the test of time. And, I believed it without questioning it.

Knowing what I know now, they weren’t entirely wrong. There are still folks out there that are out to pump and dump. It’s not great, but not every NFT project is like that as I’ve come to find.

I decided to learn more about the space by listening to more podcasts and consuming Real Vision’s articles and videos.

Fast forward to November 2021, I listened to Cuy’s interview with the Bankless team, Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman. After that episode, I asked myself:

“What could the positive side of NFTs look like?”

🖼️ Marking a work anniversary with an art NFT

December 1, 2021. My official “start” date in web3. It was my 6th year work anniversary and I wanted to buy a piece of art to commemorate the occasion.

I checked out Foundation, Zora, and OpenSea, but I didn’t have enough ETH to purchase anything that really resonated with me. I had some SOL at the time and I checked out SolSea, the Solana “fork” of OpenSea. I filtered for pieces related to art and AI and I found the Ghost Machine collection.

According to their profile, each piece is generated from an AI trained on hundreds of hours of art history and is 1 of 1 unique and part of artificial intelligence history. It was created by an AI artist and everything was minted on the Solana Chain.

It all started with this NFT:

Ghost Machine 0096 , also known as “The Woman in White”, resonated with me for these reasons:

• The composition caught my eye

• I could afford it

I purchased it, chose it as my avatar in the metaverse, and I acknowledged the author for their work on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/almndbtr/status/1470812605937717248?s=20

This marked the beginning of my creative journey into web3.

🐇 The Start of an Adventure

I created a Twitter account after spending years away from social media. I reveled in being completely disconnected from platforms that hijacked my attention.

On the advent of web3, I knew that if I didn’t connect to Twitter, I knew I would be deeply missing out on context and building meaningful relationships with other strangers on the internet who were geeking out on the same stuff I was on.

I yielded. 😎

My first tweet back on was replying to AbJo’s question about an upcoming drop:

https://twitter.com/almndbtr/status/1466654337745096705?s=20

From there, I felt like creative dominoes started to fall. I started to see the way commercial investors, culture investors, and creators were interacting in a new fashion unlike anything I have seen before.

Five examples of signal

• Industry

• Musician

• Developer

• Skeptic

• Community

[1] Industry Signal: Through Real Vision’s Takeover, I discovered the way investors, musicians, and artists were mobilizing around technology for different causes:

https://twitter.com/RealVision/status/1469492982030102530?s=20

[2] Musician Signal: Through AbJo, I learned about sound.xyz and their listening parties. When you buy a song, you join a community of #sound-holders . I lost my first bid wanting to mint AbJo’s Genesis NFT, but I won my second bid for AllanKingdom’s Reasons. When I became a #sound-hodler , I joined the community and provided engineering and product feedback to team in their Discord:

https://twitter.com/almndbtr/status/1470877683873554435?s=20

[3] Developer Signal: Through Chase Barker, I learned about pencilflip.sol, Katherine, and the Mycoverse:

https://twitter.com/almndbtr/status/1470815416880537608?s=20

This led me to discover @marcelc63 and their work on smart contract breakdowns along with their project Retro1990.xyz, their NFT project inspired by ‘90s nostalgia. I minted five to show love and acknowledged how it made me feel seen as an Asian person:

https://twitter.com/almndbtr/status/1479281509446025218?s=20

[4] Skeptic Signal: With any new advancement, it is important to consider the other sides of the argument. These pieces helped me see where the space could use thoughtful consideration and more activists (like me!) to help shape and make it better:

• My first impressions of web3 by Moxie Marlinspike

• The Case Against Crypto by Stephen Diehl

• Cooper Turley’s Apology Note by Cooopahtroopa.eth

• Amid the Hype over Web3, Informed Skepticism Is Critical by Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

[5] Community Signal: Technology is great, but can we talk about community?

In my past life, I was a support engineer and a community manager for a large tech company. I wasn’t involved in Twitter in any “professional capacity”, but I re-discovered the joy of spontaneous interactions and social events through Twitter Spaces.

James and I discovered each other over Twitter and Twitter Spaces and I started following his work. He’s extremely encouraging, shows up for other people’s Genesis NFT launches, and is just available to help people when they need help.

One of the first Twitter Spaces that I hopped on as a speaker for was with James and Pat Junior. I took extensive notes, chopped it up, and learned so much from just listening to different perspectives in the room.

That led to another Twitter space debuting #web3 Black Notes. James and Pat Junior are excellent communicators and interviewers and I took a background role in being the “notorious notetaker” (🎩 to JPReynolds for that one 😉) until the security question came up.

From these collective conversations, I learned:

• One of the most fruitful ways to learn is to ask questions, write down answers, and reflect on them before asking new questions. 💭

• You can’t embark on any new journey without finding people that will walk alongside you. It’s just, going to be way too difficult otherwise. 💯

• It’s totally cool to make friends on the internet and sharing what you feel comfortable sharing. Just, please use wisdom. 🤗

• James and Pat Junior are incredible human beings and I want them to keep making music. 🎶

• It’s important to make space just as it is to occupy space. Be mindful of what you share and be sure to acknowledge those who go before you, the hosts, and anyone that you recognize in the audience. 🎯

🏗️ Next: four goals until Day 90

• 📜 Publish three end-to-end smart art+music contract overviews in Almond’s Field Notes and in Twitter threads.

• 🖤 Launch my Genesis NFTs (poetry, visual art, and/or music). Because gas fees on Ethereum are just way too high, I’m highly inclined to launch on Metaplex and see where it goes from there.

• 🎹 Continue being a part of the Web3 Black Notes as a notetaker, contributor, and technical advocate.

• 🏦 Acquire either a McClenney, Pat Junior, or Soulection NFT.

Peace & love be with you. Stay tuned. ✌️

Crypto at the dinner table 🍷

I traveled to Boston for a business trip back in 2018.

On the first night, our company organized a dinner for our team. We were mostly remote. Our seating arrangement was randomized and the group I was placed in were with co-workers I informally engaged with in Slack, but never in person.

We introduced ourselves by our names and our handles. We started with small talk: how the flights and check-in went, where we’re usually based, and what music we liked. Someone brought up that they felt trapped in the Spotify loop listening to the same sets of songs over and over again. This discussion made its way into big tech’s social graph and after a few drinks, made its way into crypto (specifically, cryptocurrency).

I listened in. Well, I tried to. I understood 100% of the words in English, but I hadn’t a clue around what it meant to manage a portfolio of digital currencies that I had only ever heard of in memes and GIFs on Reddit.

The attention suddenly focused on me: “Almond, do you own any crypto?”

Bashfully, I replied: “no.”

After an awkward pause, I continued on: “I’m not really sure what it’s all about to be honest. I mean, can you really make money off of it, and is any of it even real?”

One of my colleagues shared that she managed a portfolio and did her own research in online forums and reading others who were well-versed in the space. She cheerfully added that she managed her boyfriend’s portfolio for him; he allotted a sum every once in a while and enjoyed allocating to wherever she saw it fit.

She encouraged me to do my own research, but to not worry about it if I never got into it.

Today is December 15, 2021. I started to look into crypto at the beginning of the year, and I cringe whenever I recall how I used to think of it as “funny money”, dismissing it without a second thought.

It turns out the joke was on me for having not paid even closer attention.

Fiat: Uncle Sam's Dollar is as good as he says it is 🇺🇸

I have a good friend named Lex. He’s a lawyer.

When I ask for his perspective on certain topics, I’ll get an evaluation that’s informed by his own interpretation of the law and the implications on our society, and a second take on how he really feels aside from how the law’s standing. His stance as a Christian is also very interesting and helps me in my own faith walk.

Cryptocurrency came up as one of our garden variety of conversation topics. In his fascination, he proposed that it could be as a possible replacement for a fiat currency.

Side bar: after our conversation, I summoned the appropriate page on Wikipedia:

Fiat money is a currency (a medium of exchange) established as money, often by government regulation. Fiat money does not have intrinsic value and does not have use value (inherent utility, such as a cow or beaver pelt might have). It has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value.

Cool. At the time, I understood all of the individual words in English. But, I didn’t understand its implications in relation to cryptocurrency.

I remembered in our chat that he pointed me to a political commentary on the federal reserve printing money, where you can view the real time supply of money in circulation on this governmental site. Several trillion of what’s in circulation… had been printed over the year of 2020 during the pandemic.

That made me wonder: why is that important?

He then pointed me to a documentary about how many became worthless, and my main takeaway was fiat currency, like the US dollar, isn’t back to gold or to another “hard” asset, but to what the government says it is. (Recent learning: if you’re interested in learning more, I recommend checking out Robert Breedlove’s What Is Money?podcast on The Ultimate Macro Framework with Raoul Pal.)

My mind broke. It’s when I had this question come to the forefront of my mind: when will there be a time when the countries who bought treasury bonds from the U.S. government demand that cash up front, but the U.S. Government doesn’t actually have anything to give them?

Can they just keep printing, not knowing what the ramifications or consequences are if they print too much?

Cue the money printer. 🤑

That thought concerned me. And, I recognize that there’s so much more to this story than I know, #learning , so bear with me!

And so, off I went to learn more about this cryptocurrency thing. (Thanks, Lex. ✨)

Research 🕵️‍♀️

I asked co-workers in our #cryptocurrency channel, researched every term and expression about crypto I didn’t understand, scoured technical documentation, and even bought my first $200 in BTC from an exchange last week. In some way, I felt like getting skin in the game is the best way to pay attention to something.

Here’s a compilation of resources that I’ve benefited from ever-evolving, that I can personally speak to based on my own consumption and use.

Starter Guides 💁‍♀️

• Ledger: Ledger Academy

• Unchained Capital: Gradually, then suddenly

• Blockchain Basics: book bridges the gap between purely technical and purely business-focused explanations of the blockchain.

• ELI5 Bitcoin

Whitepapers 📄

• Bitcoin Whitepaper

• Ethereum Whitepaper

• Solana Whitepaper

• Uniswap Whitepaper

Exchanges 💱

Here are some places that I have used where you can trade your fiat money for cryptocurrency.

• Blockfolio (now FTX)

• Binance

• Celsius

• Crypto.com

Wallets 🧧

• Etherum's recommended wallets: I like using a cold storage wallet for assets I want to keep offline like Trezor or Ledger. For interactions with Web3 applications (like Sound.xyz), I use Metamask.

• Solana Wallet Guide: I like Phantom.

Podcasts & Videos 🎧

• Unchained Podcast by @laurashin

• Bankless by @BanklessHQ

• Coin Bureau by @CoinBureau

• Real Vision Crypto by @RealVision

Open Questions 💭

Exploratory topics that I don’t have the answer to, wrapped in questions. 🌯

• What are the implications of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) in relation to not just the financial industry, but any organization that relies on financial contracts?

• What does the “market” look like for programming smart contracts, and where's the best place to start learning by example given that Solidity is the dedicated language for writing them for the Ethereum platform? Coins may come and go, but someone will need to create those contracts for humans to interface with and send money through.

• Given the government's open data sets, what would it look like to "replay" every one of those interactions on a public blockchain ledger and track future transactions by appending to it? Could this provide the redundancy in the case the servers and backups containing those records disappeared?

Disclaimer

tl;dr | This is not financial advice. Please do your own research and consult with your financial or investment advisor(s) before making any decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. I do not guarantee any specific result (profits or losses). Please be aware of the real risk of loss in following any strategy or investment discussed here. Strategies or investments discussed may fluctuate in price or value. Investors may get back less than invested. Investments or strategies mentioned may not be the right thing This material does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. You must make an independent decision regarding investments or strategies mentioned. Before acting on anything in this post, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and strongly consider seeking advice from your own financial or investment advisor(s).