Then Facebook and Twitter, then Foursquare and Instagram on to Pinterest and Snapchat and countless others all the way to most recently TikTok. Every single time, there would be naysayers that would exclaim “that’s dumb” or “no one cares” or an eye roll…flash forward in each instance to a few months later and they are posting, tweeting, taking selfies and dancing with the best of them.

In these times, I would never gloat. It wouldn’t help my case in the future if I was a know-it-all or “I told you so” type.

Being a part of the last generation that sits on the fence of the real world and the internet hasn’t been easy, but I like a little chaos in my coffee….keeps me young. I like to say that I am a Gen X kid with a Gen Z heart. That or it’s my hyper-vigilance at play. Either way, it’s my comfort zone.

So in 2016 or so when the bitcoin conversation started, I got a Coinbase account, bought some BTC and honestly forgot about the whole thing because at the time, I really didn’t fully grasp the concept. *I made about $250 forgetting about it actually

Then along came Ether and what I thought for a time would be the “one blockchain to rule them all”….or at least in the small business scope. Being a rediscovery of crypto during Covid shutdown, it gave me the advantage to sink my teeth into something, filling a void just like a lot of us did.

The music industry was dead at least in the way we knew it to be, so I was looking for a new hope as it were.

I came across crypto-possibility champs with the likes of Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner and Gary Vaynerchuck of Vayner Media. These days, I watch Gary Vee get on stage telling millions while also making them. A modern day pastor yelling about how TV is the radio and our phone is the television…he’s right you know.

These pioneers of potentials seemed less concerned about making gains trading the stigmatized sheckels and more about what the smart-contracting in definitive digital ownership and perpetuity would mean for the future.

My brain was on fire. It was then I knew that web3 tech was going to revolutionize the way we conducted business….and no one was paying attention.

I remember a statistic that x billion dollars traded that year by less than 100K people. Lack of interest could be a way for me to be an established resource when everyone finally came around.

Learning A: what the blockchain was and B: what an NFT was and what it meant to mint one, was fairly easy to wrap my head around. I had been making efforts in front of and to get in front of a computer since I was eleven. Like most things in the digital space or irl, I have to do it or live it to really understand it. I read every article available about the tech and learned how to mint an NFT….for free.

It was fairly simple for someone who knew some HTML and CSS. This was enough of a learning curve that at the time could be capitalized on honestly and who better to show the arts and music community that it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors than one of their own?

Bonding your music to a smart contract on the blockchain would mean that a royalty that YOU set would be made every time that master changed hands…it was a revelation and unheard of. As someone who was in charge of tracking, making money off of and fighting for those royalties, it was a no-brainer.

I started chatting everyone that was as possibility driven as I was about NFTs and minting master recordings, artwork and the like and mostly it fell on deaf ears.

So I started building a course to help artists learn about the wonderful world of crypto (still largely being referred to then) was my next adventure, but nobody seemed to bite or care. Six months later, when this thing I had been plugging away at finally made national headlines, it was struck down as being a “Ponzi scheme” To be honest, at the time, was understandable.

Listen, I get it. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. Those hyenas who knew they could prey upon the uninformed made swift work infecting the landscape. Making largely a hunting ground and hoisting a red flag made of the carrion of those whom they preyed upon. This proof of necessary caution still deters the more modest of investors and less adventurous of entrepreneurs to this day. The act of still having to play somewhat of a convincing game is partially the impetus of this pub…as I am sure you may be no stranger to as well.

*If you are reading this, I know you are at least a participant of the blockchain in that you had to purchase ETH to read this in it’s entirety. So, either you like/believe in me enough to do that or you are already a believer in it’s future.

So, feeling largely defeated and not being able to pull up and tighten any metaphorical polyester tie and sell this idea with the stigma of a used car lot of lemons, I kind of gave up. I knew it would turn a corner one day and while I may have to act fast, I would be armed with more knowledge about the subject.

This is my recount of how I went from here to there and back again, with even more of a toolbelt and arsenal than I expected, landing exactly where I am supposed to be.

Thanks for being a part of this developing next adventure in web3 as it unfolds. I can’t promise the end result, but I can certainly guarantee it will be interesting…

To be continued…

*all type in bold will be “bunny trails” to fill in context with other posts as links to videos, pics, etc. No affiliate traps, just funzos