 Welcome to Office Hours for the Accelerating Makers Program. Thanks for joining us. Azim has been gracious enough to join us again for an Office Hours session to help those of you with questions, answer those questions, or just have a conversation about your own journey in Web 3 or the decentralized web. So we're going to kick it off by asking you to plug into the chat by letting us know where you're zooming in from, let us know what your role is in your organization, and anything else you want to share. And then we'll just go around the horn and give you all an opportunity to ask the questions that are top of mind. We're also joined by Ann Connolly, our subject matter expert for Web 3, the decentralized web, and my colleague Eli, who runs the Accelerating Makers Project with me. So with that, I'm going to pass the mic to Ann and let Ann jumpstart the conversation and wish you all well. That was great. Thanks so much, Billy. So yeah, today we have the opportunity to ask any questions. That can be about content, things you don't understand, but we can also learn about your organization and help you look at different strategies in blockchain and Web 3 that you could possibly explore, give you a few avenues to look down. I know I think we had something from Jackie in the chat. Jackie, do you want to tell us a little bit more about your organization and what you're up to? Absolutely. I come from, my organization is Minority World Cup. And we're just focusing on creating alternative paths, better career paths for minorities in California. It all started out after COVID when we took a tremendous heat in terms of, most of our community was in health care, lots of death. And we finally found out that people were not financially prepared. There was no sort of estate planning. So we're just trying to raise awareness to do a better job in that area. And as well as working with employers to create a pathway to good quality or better paying jobs. So many immigrants come to the US and they basically stay in low-end jobs and they're trapped in a cycle of poverty, basically. So the whole point is to say, to just expose them to the different career paths that, by the way, have retraining, if anything, apprenticeships also. Just something that creates like a straight shot to a better standard of living. And so they, hopefully, have a time that they do better. They're able to buy into houses and all the opportunities that this country offers. We're so excited to partner with TechSoup because one of the things TechSoup provides is such information and the best way to do it as an NGO. But we do realize that Tech is the future and we have to be ahead of a game. So most of our parents may not exactly be TechSoup, but the kids are TechSoup, given that we all know what happened during COVID. So we want to continue lighting that fire with tech information and hopefully some of them can transition into tech careers over time that are the future. So that's basically what we're working on. So the reason I logged on here is because during COVID, some of the ways that I managed to survive was I did have a few crypto assets here and there and I was playing around with it to see what I could make of it and I didn't make some money and I'm like, oh my goodness. So whenever someone's talking about some sort of crypto element, I'm all ears because I've seen the power of knowing this information. So when it comes to our NGO, I'm really looking into alternatives on how to raise money. So when I saw this topic, I was very interested. I did attend, I think, the last workshop which was very enlightening, but as usual with crypto, you really have to understand the basics so I'm trying to get a grip of that. I think one my question would be is if someone was to join today as them, what are the steps that they're looking at in terms of using Gitcoin or fundraising? What are we looking at? What are the takeaway points of this is what you're looking at? I think that would be helpful. Thank you. So for Gitcoin itself, we end up running these grants rounds on a quarterly basis. The next grants round that we're going to run will take place on November 15th to November 29th and that means that on November 1st, we will open up the open application period for the different grants rounds or the vertical that we'll be running rounds in and that'll involve all of the criteria for being able to apply to a round. If I'd say to get involved in the Gitcoin ecosystem, that would probably be one of the best things to do. As a whole though, one thing that I've found that's fascinating in the Web3 ecosystem is how much of it is online and so how much of it you can do in a remote way and so by spending time on Twitter and then by spending time on Discord, it takes a bit of sweat equity in that fashion to be able to start figuring out who you should follow and messaging those people and being able to start setting up times to chat with them. But even my role at Gitcoin happened not intentionally but because I had set up a call with the founder of Gitcoin to chat with him about a grant that I was looking to apply for in a Gitcoin grants round and we were just overall chatting and he was like, you seem to have a lot of experience in partnerships and sales. Would you be open to joining the team? And so it wasn't a call that was by any means supposed to be a recruiting call and ended up turning into, yeah, maybe I'd be open to that. And I ended up setting up or he set up calls with a couple more people and from there it became the thing that I started working here. So a big thing in this space for me has been literally that Ann is the reason that I was able to speak to all of you and the way that Ann and I met was that she is a steward for Gitcoin in the governance side of things and she was on one of the calls where I was presenting things about Gitcoin. And because of that, I reached out to her, she mentioned something about some of the work we were doing and we had a chat and then I actually gave a guest lecture at the class she teaches at Boston University and then she offered this opportunity to me and what I find that's so interesting about this space is that while it's not entirely meritocratic, the fact that it's still so nascent and early on means that a lot of people get opportunities not because they're the best at the job but because they're the most interested because there's not really a best at the job yet. It's not something like traditional finance where you have this truck record of 30 years of doing this or if you wanna go to this job you need to have gone to this school because none of those things exist as a whole spending more time on the internet with Discord and Twitter and just reaching out to people having conversation has definitely been the thing that I've found to be the most powerful. And would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. The sweat equity thing is so true that there's a million opportunities that you can create for yourself in this space. Now, the pros and cons to that, the pro is that it costs you nothing but time, the con is that it costs you time. So it's, again, here and there, but everything's remote, everything is about just connecting with other people. I had also thought about your organization and easy steps for you to take. One would be like setting up a crypto donation program if you don't have one already, super easy with Yucca Pay is a good one. Giving Block is another quite famous one. So those would be good spots to start and then just thinking around the education part as retraining for that, but an official group. There's a lot of free training at different hackathons through a group called ETH Global. So you can encourage the kids or youth to get involved there or anyone really, to be honest. And then, yeah, I think that's something that's so cool about blockchain is all the information you need is available for free online. And most of the jobs are remote. There's lots of opportunities. So that would be a good industry to point your participants into. And one last question. So when you say that groups on Twitter, which group are you talking about? Do you have a recommendation in mind? Not necessarily. It ends up being, that's another part of this. What equity is that finding the ETH people, whether it's organizations first, I would say, is that you're like, oh, the Gitcoin account is one that I'm going to follow. And there are a handful of organizations like a Gitcoin or ETH Global, like Ann mentioned, and starting to follow those orgs. And then as a result, you start to see who are the accounts of people that are a part of these orgs, like myself. But we have a total maybe 50 between full-time and part-time people that work at Gitcoin. And so you start to find their accounts on it. And then there are Discord accounts, which are basically Slack, but for GenZ people, is essentially what I consider Discord to be. And it's just like Slack with the different user interface. And you go into there and then there's channel setup for all of the different things. And so it ends up finding the communities or the groups, usually end up working that way. And why it can be difficult to say is that there are NFT communities, there are decentralized finance communities, there are public goods communities. And so being able to do that depends on where your interests lie. And then doing a little bit of research on, oh, I'm really interested on the decentralized finance side of things. And then that means that you'll be following different companies and the different individuals within those companies to be able to better understand where you wanna have conversations. Yeah, the good thing about decentralization is there's a million different paths you can take. The downside to decentralization is there's a million different paths. And so the path is not necessarily quite as clear as it might be if you're going to become a doctor or a lawyer where this is how you do it and then you just follow the path. I would recommend finding someone that you really like on Twitter, like a coin or a Zeme, and then just going through who are they following. Literally just follow all those people as a starting point. And then as you start to get involved in the conversations, you'll see, okay, this person that I like, their ideas, let's follow them. I would also actively encourage you to follow people whose ideas you absolutely hate just to get the other side. I have a really interesting social media feed where half the people on it are hyper-socialists from the non-profit space and the other half are hyper-libertarians from the crypto space. And you get a really interesting world view when you open your minds or open your, I don't know, the information that's incoming. Awesome. Yeah, if you have any more questions for sure, drop them in. John's got his hand up, so let's switch over to you, John. Thank you. Super to have, sorry to make it last week. It was really great though. I heard the recording. And so this question could be targeted toward ASEEM as well as any. So basically there's this concept of cultural versus a transactional mindset when developing an idea for a DAO. And we're looking at all approaches to this, whether building a discourse platform, a Discord platform, and just distort the conversations as well as a Twitter account. We have an existing Twitter account so forth. And so I realized this, the grounds, well, the task at hand is building a conversation. And that is what leads me to the idea of cultural versus a transactional mindset for a DAO and the whole fundraising aspects and alliances with organizations such as Gitcoin, a column in our organization, probably has a bad word. But groups like Gitcoin, and so we can develop tools, tools to build out this concept or idea. Any thoughts on what I just said? I've learned to separate them as like the cultural and transactional ones. I would, Gitcoin is one who's been very much based off this notion of vibes for a while, of just a bunch of people culturally who got together that have mission aligned values and how they feel things should operate. But at the same time, it ended up moving towards something where a lot of transactions have happened and we've been able to distribute tens of millions of dollars. But I do think in the beginning, the most important thing would end up being finding people who are mission and values aligned to get together on that cultural side of things to be able to help set that cultural tone. Yeah, but the transactional side, I would say it ends up being almost a necessity to make things sustainable. Even at Gitcoin, one of the difficulties that we have, and I have spoken about this too at length, is that the model with which Gitcoin operates has not been one that creates sustainability. And so while it puts us in a really good place and has put us in a good place, thinking about how it creates viability for the organization 10 years from now or 20 years from now is actually quite difficult. Yeah, I would agree. I think Azim's got some really good points there. Like the culture and lore that has been created at Gitcoin is incredible for bringing people together. But in the end, the DAO has to have function and something that sustains it longer than that. So it's thinking about if you're creating a club, what's going to keep people coming back to the club? Is it the culture and the people? But if the club isn't doing anything, is that enough? Will people show up just to see people or do they want to have like collective action? I think they keep on it that way. Okay, so how much of this do you think is a digital, for lack of a better word, digital marketing component versus attraction? Because we all have to raise, in the cybersphere, so to speak, we all have to raise a voice above the noise. And there's a lot of noise right now. How are we gonna, first of all, get our value, I call it a value problem. It's more of our change. How do we build on that to get it to the point where it's above the noise, so to speak? Yeah, I know, I'll jump in here Azim first because we had talked with John at the last office hours about his visions for the Dow. And I think that was maybe one of the bigger pieces was the why a Dow. And I think often in the crypto space, that why is what brings people to the Dow and that's what cuts through the noise is literally that people believe in your why so much that they want to be a part of it. And so I think less, less focus on how do we get that message out over what is that message? I think we'll help you probably achieve your goal in the end, that makes sense. Okay, so a little bit of an inventory. I don't know, do you have other thoughts on that Azim or? No, I agree with that, I agree with that. I think also it's just been tough because we're at such early stages that I don't even know how to have times to find a Dow as much as I would love to be able to say. Like the earliest definition that I've seen and still resonate are just like it's a chat group with a bank account. And that really is like the simplest layer of it. And then over time, it's a digitally native LLC. So it's a chat group, it's a digitally native LLC with a bank account. It has regulatory issues almost anywhere in the world. And then it builds on top of that and it's just how corporations, at least here in the US, you can do a million things with any corporation. And so it usually ends up being, getting the right group of people together or understanding what you want to build and being able to go after that. I would also look to the startup world for that as well where the whole premise of starting a company is build something that solves an enormous problem for a very small number of people, like five people. And they're gonna be so obsessed with what you've built because it changes their lives that they're going to bring that their communities did and then it's gonna start to grow quite organically. So I would say look at, again, like your Dow has to solve a really important problem for a couple of people and just start there and then it'll grow over time. And so really, yeah, just look at that piece of it. I think that'll help. I know Jackie had a question. Oh, sorry, okay, go for it, John, and then we'll switch over to the next person. One last question. So the decision as to whether to, as far as the fundraising side, and I realize this is way down the line, but to go with a cryptocurrency or regular fiat dollar or is there any, do you have any observations on that? Because when you're bringing in helpers and facilitators, there might be some expectation of renumeration. And so the question is, is there a bias either way for whether it's crypto contribution or fiat? I would say it completely depends on the regular or environment that you're in. Bitcoin originally raised $11 million in fiat and then later launched a token and distributed that token. And so based on the investments that were made by the angel investors in the venture capitalist, they got a respective amount based on the valuation that was chosen at the time. And then they were given those tokens in a way that would best over a period of time. And so that was one way to do it. And it's the way that Bitcoin ended up going about it. You can raise directly in crypto as well, but this one ends up being one of those tough things is just because of the regulatory environment and how that affects potential taxes and anything else that needs to come with it. So I tend to usually say it's a tougher question to answer because of exactly that. If you're based in Switzerland, it's a much easier question because you can set up a Swiss foundation. If you're based in the United States with the SEC consistently making it harder and harder to have regulatory clarity and you wanna be in a place where you're sure that you're not doing something wrong, it can be a little bit tougher. I would add too, I think that definitely applies if you're creating a token. If you're not creating a token, then you're just gonna maybe gift the Dow a certain amount of starting funds. I would say there's two key considerations around whether to do it in fiat currency or cryptos. Number one is, are you making cross-border payments? And if you are, so if you're paying staff or contractors in different countries, crypto is probably a lot easier. And number two, do you trust one or two people to manage a bank account? And if you do, then your Dow is, you know, just an association with a bank account. You might not actually need all of the functionality of a blockchain-based Dow. And if you don't, then crypto, crypto is great because everyone has a better viewpoint on what's in the wallet and you can set up smart contracts to ensure that money doesn't go out the wallet unless people vote on it and that kind of thing. So those would be two things I would look out for. I know Jackie had a good question in the chat around, let me just find it here. How are we on the regulation side of crypto fundraising? So that again is going to depend on your jurisdiction, but it's pretty simple, to be honest, it's not too bad. So if you think about accepting crypto being just like accepting gifts of stocks or equities, if you're accepting the crypto and selling it right away, then it's really no different than accepting securities and selling it right away. The difference comes in is if you accept the crypto and then hold it, and then that will get into capital gains tax laws in your jurisdictions. The other piece would be for your donors to know, for example, in America, if they donate crypto, then they don't pay capital gains tax on that donation. In Canada, they do. So just understanding for, yeah, I know it's really bad. Very upsetting, we have all these donors, these stupidly wealthy donors just waiting for the tax laws to catch up. And so just making sure your donors are aware of what the laws around that are and how they'll be impacted from a tax perspective. But if you're just wanting to do a really super simple crypto donation program that just accepts and sells, then you're totally fine as a charity to do that. And you can either do it yourself or you can use, yeah, you could pay or giving block or two good options. And I dropped a link to a book called Bitcoin in the Future of Fundraising that walks you through everything you need to know about blockchain and setting up a crypto donation program as a part of your fundraising program. I love this book and I'm biased because I wrote it, but I still think it's good. Is he many other thoughts on like crypto fundraising? Really, I just hope we get regulatory clarity sooner. I would actually implore all of you, especially if you're in the United States to call your local congressman and tell them that you are a pro-crypto, because the lack of clarity around this has been really difficult. And I was in Washington, DC a couple of weeks ago on behalf of Gitcoin, Coinbase had us go out for a stand with Crypto Day. And when we were out there, it was meeting with a lot of these senators and congressmen and all of them said, they wish that crypto people did more in real life activism. They said that they think that crypto people think that sitting on Twitter is going to help them, but it takes calls from their constituents. And it was just a random thing. If you're especially here on, and I know Justin Perdue is absolutely not a fan of crypto at all from what I've seen either. So that would be the only thing I would have to add, which would be we need more regular people being able to see the benefits of it and imploring their politicians to help us in those regards. Does anyone else wanna jump in with a question that could be about something you don't understand from crypto or blockchain? Or if you wanna tell us about what your organization does, we can help you maybe with some starting points or some things that you could look at. Feel free to jump in. We are here for you. There are no stupid questions, promise the system over to ask everything. Take advantage of Azim and his brilliant mind. Yeah, this is John again. I just like to say that I know, and I saw an article someplace at the White House is currently divided about crypto. And so it is very relevant conversation going on right now at the highest levels of government in the U.S. You have these, and so there's gotta be a dialogue going there. And I think there's a little bit of pushback as a result of FTX and all the bad stuff that goes on. And I think if people can realize that this is, this tool we have before us, web 3.0, blockchain is a tool that's that. It can be used for the good or it can be used for the bad. Yes, I would urge everyone to speak to their congressman or senator about some sort of frameworks. I think there's been some overtures in the U of, best on that about certain frameworks, but we got a long ways to go here in the U.S. definitely. Charity also a nonprofit is one of the greatest ways that we can help create that change because it's such a no-brainer. It's like people, we've accepted that cryptocurrency is a thing that's happening. The J.P. Morgan's of the world are getting involved. And lots of people have made lots of money in this space the same way like Wall Street people have made money on stocks since they want to give. They want to make donations. How can we make this as easy as possible for that to happen? And so I think for a government to start to change their mind about the technology as a whole, I think just enabling and facilitating good regulation so that we can make those donations happen seamlessly and just make people feel comfortable. I think it's really good. And then I would also say back to, I can't remember who we were speaking with before. I forget which participant it was, but the one talking about the job programs in California, again having a clear regulation also helps companies come to the U.S. and hire American people. But if that regulation isn't clear, people start to leave. They take their companies elsewhere because they don't want to end up doing something wrong by accident even if they're running a very above board company. Yeah, add to what Anne said. It was on a giving block report that I've read from 2022, I believe, and it was the average value of a cryptocurrency donation tends to be 82 times larger than that of a fiat one. And there are a lot of statistics on how crypto giving is one where the donors are much more likely to give. But what's been also interesting is that they have a completely different profile of what they're looking to give for and they're not as interested in giving money to the Met Gala and some of perhaps the museums. And so there's a huge divide in understanding what the older population and the younger population are willing to give to. And that crypto charity portion is something that I don't think is really that well understood, but there's a lot of really interesting insights to be gleamed from it. Yeah, one of the things I spend a lot of time with when I talk with nonprofit organizations is helping them understand the culture of the blockchain and crypto community because this is even says we are not your average donor and that comes down to what we give to but also how we give and how we like to be communicated with. So where you might see a donor in their 60s or 70s from the traditional world wanting to name a hospital wing after themselves or have their family credentials up on a big wall for everyone to see, crypto donors actually really like to be anonymous. They don't want to be known. They don't want to be celebrated. They want to be quiet. Case in point, the Pineapple Fund was a fund that gave away $86 million worth of Bitcoin a couple of years ago. Was it like 2017 maybe? Something like that anyway. Nobody knows who that is. We still have no idea. Somebody gave $86 million away to a whole bunch of different registered charities and just didn't want to be recognized. And so I think getting fundraising departments and nonprofits to understand that community is really going to help them steward and acquire donors in ways that maybe they're not accustomed to or haven't done before. Yeah, there's so many instances of that. All I know is their name is Momus, M-O-M-U-S. They're an art collective in the crypto space who have tens of millions of dollar collection of crypto art and for years now give us between six and seven figures a year to distribute in our climate solutions rounds. At the beginning of the year they always top off. This year they give us a million. They're talking about giving more than a million next year. I say they because I have no idea who they are. I don't know if it's a group of people. I don't know if it's an individual. I don't know where they live. All I know is that they have tons of crypto art that they end up selling in auctions and then they use that money to give away. I have no clue who they are and that it's the exact opposite of naming a wing in a hospital or having it as a university. If anything, just the understanding that like the meme or the joke of giving it away as like an anon or a pseudo anon and calling it things like the pineapple fund is more funny and unintended to some of these people than like being able to get the name of a hospital named after them or their family. Yeah, I did a whole session with time with the charity on memes and just how crypto people like to throw memes back and forth at each other and what that looks like. And so instead of writing a two page thank you letter if you created a meme that was about their donation they'd probably send you another check honestly because one of the greatest things about the crypto community is we're a whole bunch of weirdos who found each other and there's this incredible sense of belonging. And so crypto people really don't want you to look at crypto as a way to make money. They want you to see yourself as a part of our community and to be a part of what we're building and doing and a part of changing the world. And so if they recognize that you're in it for more than just money and that you really understand who we are as a community they're gonna love you. So I would not overestimate the power of taking the time to get to know this community a little bit more. Does anybody out there want to jump in tell us about the organization? Let us know what you're up to maybe. I don't know, Jackie you'd ask questions about fundraising do you wanna, do you wanna have them? Or was Jackie, no Jackie might have been the woman who spoke before. Anyway, I'll leave the floor open if anybody wants to tell us a bit more about what they're up to or asking questions. I'll sign in real quick. I don't wanna hug things. Jackie, do you wanna go ahead first? Yeah, so I was gonna say if the crypto that you want cause some of the crypto that I hold, honestly I was given the KYC and the US option wasn't there. And it's a bummer. Like how are people exactly trying to cause I'm like if this crypto goes up I may not be able to pull the money out. So I don't know how else I was trying to Google how else people are able to create maybe the entities in another country. Does anyone have any lead on that? I don't know how people go about it but I just feel like cause when it started it was in the US and then slowly they all went away because of a regulation space. And so I'm stuck with all these cryptos that they've been anything happened. I may not be able to make a move on that. I don't know if you have any sense of direction as to how people are going about that. I don't know. Go for it Azim. Expensive lawyers, sadly. This is why like we were saying earlier about calling their representatives and telling them that we need more clarity here in the US so that's not the case because there are a lot of opportunities that the United States is not able to partake in their billion dollar companies that do not hire or offer their services to United States citizens because of exactly this situation. And so there have been countries like the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands or Switzerland or some places that are offering ways to be able to do those kinds of incorporation. I know Gitcoin did that. I can't speak to the cost of it or the headaches and difficulties that come with it but by assumption it's not cheap and it's not easy. But it's exactly why I'm a big believer in trying to get clarity here in the US because it's inhibiting so many people from being able to do a bunch of great things while our government still keeps giving it this like blanket thing that all crypto is bad. There is also this amazing meme that I'm gonna get slightly wrong but it was a play on, I can't remember what it was a play on. Anyway, it was a little boy talking to a man who says, oh, like when Bitcoin goes up I can sell it for a million dollars or something and the man says, oh, when Bitcoin goes up you won't have to. And the premise being that by the time Bitcoin gets to be worth a million dollars everyone will just be using it and you won't have to actually trade it for anything else. That will be the de facto currency of choice. And so that's the hope I would say but I can totally imagine that between now and then trying to get your money out is an important part of participating in crypto. So I don't have a lot of advice for you there besides what Azim said, changing jurisdictions but obviously that is neither easy nor cheap. So I think it's just a waiting game. Any other advice I could give you I am choosing not to for legal reasons but yeah, it's tough. It's call, call your representative is the next big thing. Jod, do you wanna jump in with your question? Sure, I'm in the same situation. I'm not a lawyer, don't play on TV but what I know just as observation that making a distinction between certain coins being used for donation. There are coins that are trade on pancake swap or sushi and then there's coins that trade on a coin base and things like that. So if a dollar to take in certain coins they can, I guess it could be viewed as an endowment in a way would you take in a coin that's traded on a an exchange like coin base and yet it might have a certain value and due to their volatility and value and go up and down you could almost feel it like a real world parallel of an endowment if you will. So let's say you got coins as a donation to your organization and in a down market and they're worth some amount of dollars or cents and the dial could maybe hold that coin till the value goes up. Again, doesn't help the case when you're trying to operate but the ongoing operations of Dow when you're trying to meet I think most people prefer to be paid in fiat but not all the time. Maybe certain people would take a coin and with that mindset of maybe the coin increasing in value at a later date. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's if your Dow decides to hold funds it would just be like an endowment. And so the real question I think to think about is if someone gave your organization a million dollars would you buy all those random tokens that you could only trade on pancake swap? And if you do hold those tokens who's deciding when to sell them and who is managing the capital gains on all of those tokens? So these are key things to think about. Obviously if you've got more standard tokens Bitcoin, Ethereum stuff that's traded on normal exchanges it's a lot easier to manage. It's a lot easier to get out back into fiat currency if you want to. If you're trading tokens that are only traded on crypto to crypto exchanges it just means it's a little bit harder to deal with. You'd have to trade it for Bitcoin and then trade the Bitcoin for fiat if you want to get it into local currency. And I would also say that typically tokens that are only traded on more niche exchanges ones that don't do on ramping or off ramping into fiat currency are riskier. They're a little bit less likely to stick around. And so that's just something to keep in mind as well. And if they're only traded on say one exchange what happens if that exchange goes down or if that exchange decides they don't want to list that token anymore that puts your organization at a risk. So I would look at your endowments line the same way you would look at it is if you were starting one up fresh. So if you had a million dollars what would you put in it? How much would be high risk? How much would be low risk? How much would be no risk? And then really look at the management of it of yeah what are the parameters of holding and selling? What do you do if the price of the tokens drops? How long do you hold on? Or do you sell it to save what you can? And then yeah, I think it really comes out for just having a really strong thought out policy as opposed to just being like oh someone gave us Shiba Inu token let's keep it because that's cool. And then having to make those decisions on a day-to-day basis is just really think it through in advance and then I think you'll be better off in the longer term. What John was saying about people if they're being paid in crypto I haven't been paid in US dollars by anyone for an actual portion of money in years now since 2020 what's going on four years now you all have like random bits of money for certain things come in but in terms of full-time employment in any way or the majority of where my income comes I do not get paid in dollars to my bank account and I definitely prefer it that way just gotten used to it now. Diana or Christine just anyone wanna jump in? Bye, good morning. Thank you so much for having this. Good to see TechSoup bringing us into the modern age around donations. I'm the executive director for a nonprofit called the Bridging Tech and we bring computers to youth who are experiencing housing instability across the country. I feel as though my clients may have crypto and wanted to ask what are some ways to telegraph people that they should think about giving you crypto? I can imagine your website having that but what are other ways that people have made it clear that's another donation vehicle that works for the nonprofit? Yeah, so this is probably the biggest mistake that organizations make is they'll set up a crypto donation program and then tell no one because they are usually they're nervous or scared or they're worried about the brand blowback which I think was more relevant maybe five years ago to today it's a total non-issue you've got organizations like Doctors to the Borders, UNICEF, Save the Children, they're all accepting crypto, that's fine. If you're a climate organization maybe different story, but yeah. So what I would say is I used to work in direct marketing what you could do is put a QR code that links like directly to your donate page on your coupons. Start putting the Bitcoin logo on the front page of your website put it out in your email newsletters because I think one of the biggest things is you may have crypto owners in your database that you don't know about and then think about you how are you going to tag those donors as being crypto friendly in your database so that maybe you market to them differently? So once you find out that they're pro Bitcoin, then I think the other thing too is if you can get them to make like a $1 worth of Bitcoin donation, you can search or track their addresses and see how much money they actually have in their wallets and that can give you a sense of where they would be in your major donor kind of standard donor profile and figure out who to target as a result of that. Now obviously you'd have to have their name and address type information linked to that wallet address but it's definitely a great way to do prospect research is just can you get a dollar in the door and that'll help you. So I think just all the standard ways and then I think also in terms of donor acquisitions put a blog post out and then tag it on Twitter with Bitcoin, try and get one of your spokespeople on stage at local Bitcoin events or crypto events that are happening. So are you, what city are you based in? North Bay. Merlin and Sonoma are- Oh, North Bay. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. You're set. There's so many crypto people in the Bay. Like, yeah, go to a couple of the meetups, introduce yourselves, get into maybe some telegram group. As Izzy was saying, get into some of the Discord chats and feel, okay, good to be here. I work with this organization. This is what we do, we're accepted crypto. And then I would also look at grants. So there's a whole bunch of different community grants across the different blockchain foundations. So if you look at Algorand Foundation, Cordano Foundation, Ethereum Foundation is not quite as generous but there's many out there that you could take a look at to see if that's something that they would support like the work that you're actually doing. So that's probably what I would say. Like, yeah, just the biggest thing is don't be shy. Tell everybody, make it known, put it on your front page, send any blast and I think people will find you. Thank you. Oh, sorry. One last comment, SEO absolutely is critical. So one of the ways that most crypto donors or yeah, crypto donors will find organizations is Googling how or which don't, which charities accept crypto donations? And then they'll like pick from the lists that are theirs. Yeah. Make sure you're coming up when they're Googling. All right. Anyone else want to jump in? Or John, do you have more thoughts, more questions? No, I think the time to start is now and if not just building conversation or whether it's just starting as Azim said, basically it's a discourse group or a chat group with an account whether it's crypto account or bank account or whatever. And just getting conversation started in the interwebs as they say and trying to find out maybe what the hot buttons are or your particular theory of change and working and building it from there. And I think if we could look at it from that point of view I think it's a great time to start. The regulatory environments do their thing and hopefully they'll do this thing soon. It's now's the time to start and build the conversation and however you, whatever tools you choose to do that with. That's the best advice ever. I'll talk to charity sometimes. They're like, we're not really ready to do this. I said, okay, can we agree that someday you will do this? And they're like, yeah, someday we can, we'll do this. Someday we'll do this. I'm like, okay, so between being in the time like how long do you think it would take you to convince your leadership to do this? Maybe a year, maybe two years. Okay, so then when do you need to start the planning to do the education, to teach the leaders and to teach the teams so that they can be ready to make this decision to start the program two years from now? And as John says, that day is today. If you're starting those conversations especially with organizations that are hesitant to start those conversations, get the training in get the education tech soups putting out some really good two-pagers like these little explainer documents that can teach people about different elements of the blockchain space and the web three space start sharing those around and start having the conversation about the timeline. And yeah, get that education going right away so that when you're ready to launch you're already up to speed. Any work with Sanctezim from your side on what you would recommend organizations do to prepare themselves to be successful in getting into the web three space? Honestly, it's just starting to have conversations as early as possible like you're saying because it ends up being quite a bit of a learning process. Even once you've accepted that you want to take donations in that way something as simple as setting up the crypto wallets we're gonna set up the crypto wallets and there's so many buzzwords that come with it. Are you gonna do a custodial wallet? Are you gonna do a non-custodial wallet? Where are you gonna store your seat braces? If you set up a multi-sig who are the other signers on there going to be? And so once you start trying to get into the weeds of what it means to do some of these things it can be a little bit more exhausting. And so for me it's definitely just start having the conversations at the earliest ages so that some of those pizzas can actually start getting worked out. Would you mind sharing why you made the choices that you did? I honestly have stumbled into a lot of the things based on interests that I've been in and then also jurisdictions that I live in. I've been using Coinbase since late 2013 as my primary off-ramp. And when I say off-ramp it's how do I turn cryptocurrency into regular dollars that can go into a bank account that can pay my bills and they've been the one that has been the most compliant with the SEC and the United States government. It's where my money has felt the most safe. I have tended to use them for my off-ramp but then at the same time there's a piece of legislation called the Bit License that honestly makes it quite difficult for anyone who lives within the state of New York to use a lot of different crypto products. And so when I try to sign up for a Binance or some of these other exchanges and I have to put in the KYC information and that includes my driver's license, I'm told that as a New York state resident I'm not allowed to use that. And so for when it comes to the exchange that I've used all of these years for about a decade now it's been based on my jurisdiction. And then other than a lot of it's been driven by interest and being way too online perpetually. And it's been a lot of Bitcoin was where I started and it's where most people started in this space. We've been here early on. And then when I started to look at what the possibilities were for Ethereum early on it was looking at Ethereum but there were a lot of competitors and there still are a lot of competitors in the space. But when it comes to where most of the software developers live in this space it's on the Ethereum blockchain. It's where most of the builders are making things. And so you tend to find that the projects with real users and in ways like a lot of legitimacy are coming out of the Ethereum ecosystem. And that's not to say that others are less legitimate it's just to say at this time Ethereum has not only a personal advantage but I believe somewhere between 80 and 90% of developers in the crypto ecosystem are building on Ethereum and a lot of the most successful projects that people know are based on Ethereum. And so in ways it's really just been a result of really bad has been stumbling into it as I've been perpetually online meeting with people that I trust reading things watching videos, going to events and trying to continually gauge how the industry is moving. But with that said crypto moves in a way where I would say every month in crypto is a year in any other industry and because of just how quickly everything is going. And so it requires that you still end up paying attention to everything else that's going on but I have people ask me all the time for advice on investing in cryptocurrencies and for the most part I say I give no investment advice but if you're looking to do something that seems like it would be the safest possible option it would just be buying Bitcoin and Ethereum at the moment and just like not looking at it buying it over like a five year or 10 year horizon. And a lot of it has really just been that the advice I was giving earlier about being online all the time it's so much of the daily square that happens is happening on Twitter or is happening in these telegram or Discord chats. And so being able to see what's happening and what founders are doing what who's raising money, where builders are going but it's a lot of intangibles and speaks to something earlier that Anne mentioned with then it's amazing because it's decentralized in that way and it's also terrible because it's decentralized in that way. I think with that we may hand it back to Billy. Does that sound good? Sounds good to me. Thank you all for participating. Thanks for your great questions.