 Hello, my name is Stephanie Barnes, and this is my presentation entitled, Cryptocurrency A Bridge Across the Digital Dubai. If I was again, I kind of want to go ahead and excuse myself. I've been under the weather. I probably sound very stuffed up. I sound stuffed up to my ears. My voice may be a little hoarse because I'm still getting over that. But I'll try to do the best that I can, but I wanted to apologize beforehand. That being said, let's move along. So who am I? As I said before, my name is Stephanie Barnes. I am a recent master's graduate with a degree in cybersecurity from Excelsior College. I also have a bachelor's degree from Excelsior in Information Technology. Before that, I had a psychology degree from Florida A&M. I've been in the infosec field for about four years now, working in the Security Operations Center as a SOC analyst. Excuse me. So of course, I want to start off with an agenda so that you guys can keep me honest so that I can keep myself honest. We're going to talk about the digital divide. We're going to talk about black people in cryptocurrency slash the blockchain, cybersecurity and cryptocurrency, the digital dollar and a cycle, I think, as a people we should avoid. So this is the Webster's definition of what the digital divide is. It includes not just educational, but social and economic inequality disparities between people who have computers, people who do not, people who have or readily have online access and those who do not. You can think that this could be a simple thing. And maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, it wasn't such a big thing, but now with the way that our lives are interconnected with computers, with digital media and with the internet, not having something like a computer at home or computers in your schools or online access that is unlimited limits your possibilities. It is the difference between somebody saying that they've been coding for nine years and somebody saying that they've only been coding for 29 years. The kind of portfolio that you could have if you had that 20 years head start is drastically different from somebody who just started yesterday. And to not see that or not recognize that disparity. Disparity does a disservice to us all. So a lot has been said and it's been written about the digital divide and it's been spoken of even in our kind of hiring practices. Right. That's why people have diversity and inclusion personnel. That's why we try to provide avenues for historically underrepresented communities to have access not only to computers and be online, but to also have access to the programs that will put us on equitable footing as others that already have that kind of access. So breaking off of that, did you know this is all coming from Forge? African American households only hold less than four percent of the one hundred and sixteen trillion dollars in wealth in the U.S. It's very, very small percentage. Like I can't give you the exact amount, but knowing that it's a single digit is enough to know that it's very, very small. But despite this, despite only having four percent of this wealth, we are the largest demographic of cryptocurrency investors currently. And that twenty three percent is set to double. But even when having only four percent of the wealth and being a large percentage of the investors. Thirteen percent of our households are unbanked. And when it means unbanked, it could be from from historical banking practices so that they they can't get. A an account or could be because there's not a bank in the neighborhood. It could be because the bank in the neighborhood is inefficient or it can be something like there are still predatory banks and still predatory banking practices. There can be that there's just a distrust of banks. But for whatever reason, any of those multitudes of reason and more that I haven't even spoken of, thirteen percent of African American households are unbanked. So this all feeds into each other because it's all about our wealth. It's all about how we spend our money, how we're saving our money. If we're able to save money, do we have the institutions in our neighborhoods that would assist us to to save our money to build up our communities to put the wealth that we may have back into African American communities? So how does that feed into cryptocurrency? And my research and in my view, black and bound people have a history of making their own way when the way forward has not been equitable is not about equality. We've always been able to kind of read the room and invent a way out of the situations that we might be in are. Develop a new way, right? So for our communities, it really is where there's a will, there's a way. Many black people in cryptocurrency and the blockchain and even now in NFTs see the potential that these emerging technologies have and it's appealing. And it could be because it's something new. It could be because we've seen in the past where something like Bitcoin has really skyrocketed. And we've wanted a piece of that and maybe because it's something new. And it's not burdened by all of the past problems and the past inequalities. We see that it might have a more likely chance of being successful for our community, for our individual lives, because they're not tied to the banking institutions or to the government that we might be distrustful of. So I can see why we would have that twenty five, excuse me, that twenty three percent that is investing into cryptocurrency because it doesn't have the ties and it doesn't have the historical baggage that something like a bank or even regular every day investing might have. It also doesn't have the cost barrier where you can put pennies into a cryptocurrency and then with the right turn of events come out of a thousand air or millionaire in some cases, you couldn't do that with the access that we have to something like a market account or are investing in stocks. It's happened, yes, but usually there's a higher barrier for entry, initial entry for those kind of accounts as opposed to cryptocurrency. But like I said, we've been there from the beginning. It's not something new that there have been black people investing in or developing in cryptocurrency. These four people are just a small pool of pioneering black people in the cryptocurrency realm. First, we have in the green. So I'm starting from is Cleve. The sidor and I might be saying her name incorrectly. And if I am, I apologize. But she leads the national policy network of women of color. And they advocate for diversity in cryptocurrency markets. Next, we have Vernon J. And he's the founder of Equity Coin. Next to him, we have Deidre Ramsey MacIntyre, who co-founded the support and advocates advocacy group black people and cryptocurrency. And then last is Sean Wilkinson, the founder of Storage, S-T-O-R-J, which uses the blockchain to aid in cloud storage. So there are black people out here that are making their own coins. They are building on the blockchain. There are people that have advocacy groups that are teaching others in the community about how to invest in cryptocurrency, how to use the blockchain, how to develop, how to use these kind of emerging technologies to build up, right? And there are other black pioneers than the ones that I have on the screen. And there are continue to be more, in my opinion, because we tend to seek out emerging trends and build our own off of those trends, because we've seen that they can be successful for others. Or like I said before, it doesn't have the barrier of entry that older avenues have. But with that and with building on these emerging technologies, we also have to take into account security, not just for ourselves, but for the community, for anybody that's new entering in. But also because in this day and age, security goes hand in hand with everything. We have to be more security minded when we build digital devices, digital technologies, because if we get to a far ahead in development before we think about is it secure? How secure can I make it? There's just a lot of backtracking that you have to do. But if you build something secure as you are building that thing, then security is always the first step. They always go hand in hand. They always are developing with each other. Excuse me. So that being said, what are some of the cybersecurity implications in cryptocurrency? And all of these boxes are a way that. Cryptocurrencies have been kind of targeted. For attack, there have been illegitimate exchanges that have popped up that will get not just people's money, but also a lot of their personal information because in many of these exchanges, especially now that there's been more of a governmental eye on it, they will ask you for personal information such as, you know, your name or even your social security number or something to identify. You may be a picture of your passport or a picture of your ID card. And that can be used to impersonate you, you know, in the wrong hands. Then there are some of these exchanges that the only way that you can get the coin or access any of your investments, you have to use like a third party application. And you know, as well as I know that the more kind of parties that you have to have into the larger the attack area, the larger the surface, right? Then because these technologies are still new, there's still a lot of confusion from the end user on what they're doing, how they should do it. Is this correct? Does this sound right? If I press this button, am I making a trade? If I press this button, am I buying something? Am I giving them too much information? Am I too excited about the possibility of making more money that I'm making a misstep and without the proper guidance there? You could be and it could be insignificant or it could be the difference between being able to pay your rent this month. And then there's of course fishing. It's always there's always going to be a target fishing for anything that's popular, any company, really. I barely have any crypto and I receive fishing emails about crypto exchanges all the time, exchanges that I've never heard of. But there have also been cryptocurrency schemes out there such as one coin, which turned out to be just a multi level marketing scheme. And besides just these things that I have on the screen, there have been recent attacks on things like NFT stores and cryptocurrency exchange. There have been cryptocurrency exchange that have kind of lost solvency and not wanted to give people their money so that they so that they went and closed down to avoid shutdown and that kind of thing. And because it's so unregulated, are not regulated to the extent that it probably would need to be. What's the recourse? Other than you being upset about it, what can who can you really call to help you? But the unregulated nature of cryptocurrency was the thing that pushed its growth. It's the thing that gets the coin and shooting up there to thousands and thousands of dollars. But it's also one of its most worrying, worrying attributes. And when we have that, that's where we get the push to have a digital dollar or the central bank digital currency as they're calling it right now. And this talk of it has been going on for a while. But with the current administration, they've actually put a little bit of money into researching it and to see how we might have a digital dollar in the United States. What would that look like? How would it work? And in their press release for it, they say that this is supposed to help the people who don't use bank. So be as we still have our 13 percent that's unbanked. This is for those people. But if, excuse me, but it also affects the people that are using cryptocurrencies and the people that are reliant on fintech and are banking online because it's not just a change in whether or not you can just use your digital dollar for things that are online instead of putting in your bank account. There's a lot of gray area, maybe even a lot of black area and how this would work. And that's because it's just in its researching phase. But it's something that you have to think about. How will this digital dollar work? Right. How will it affect the cryptocurrency that I have now? Is it the only thing that they're looking at just creating this digital dollar? I know for a fact that that's not true. It's not just going to be a digital dollar. Just this morning, there was an article wired about how the United States and Europe are looking at ways to regulate cryptocurrencies. And that's quite possibly because of all the recent news of falling prices and, again, of. Imple set concerns and. Breaches and excuse me. Well, excuse me. Imple set concerns and breaches and things of that nature that had happened with these exchanges that now that there are more people that are investing and have money tied up in this. Hey, we should make sure this is secure for the people or even if it's not about that and you think the words that you're just like, they just want to overregulate us to death. It's still something that they're looking at, right? It's still going to change the way these things operate. And we have to be able to either change with it or fight against it. But the only way to do either one or the other is to understand what's going on and keep up to date about what's happening. So what's the difference between the cryptocurrency and the CBDC? Cryptocurrencies are decentralized, right? They're peer to peer based and the price and worth fluctuates. Like I said, that's one of the things that drew a lot of people to it to begin with is because the fluctuation for a lot of people and a lot of coins, it meant coming up on a windfall. If you if you cashed out at the right time with the CBDC, it's government control. There's less price fluctuation and it's one to one with the dollar. However much the dollar is worth, that's how much the digital dollar is going to be worth, regardless. You know, it has pluses to it, especially if you are somebody that feels that regulation makes you safer, right? It's not something where you would get that windfall. It's just a translation of however much money you have. Do you have five dollars in digital dollars? You don't have five dollars in real life. If you have five dollars in Bitcoin. Up until I mean, even now, if you have five dollars in Bitcoin, it's a significant amount of money, but it could also be five dollars in less in a month, in two years and three years. A dollar is always going to be a dollar. It's not going to be worth the dollar all the time, but it's always going to be equal at least. So all those are both digital. They're not the same. They're not interchangeable, but they both impact our community. The development of both and they both have some sort of power, some sort of usage for us. Well, why should we care, right? If you're not, if you don't have any cryptocurrency currently are if even if there's a digital dollar and it's just like, oh, that's just, it just means that I can use it in cyberspace. That's great. Why should you care about these things? If you don't have any holdings and a digital dollar is just a thing that might exist because it doesn't exist now, why should you care right now? For me, it has more to do with something that could lead to a bitter cycle of us as a people being more oppressed are in a worse standing economically than to begin with. And I say this because not only are we the leading investors in cryptocurrency are not only are we significantly unbanked, but we're also the leaders in using digital wallets. We lead in banking through our phones and using fintech applications like Cash App, your Venmo's, your PayPal's. We lead in those kind of things quite possibly because we're unbanked. You can hold large amounts of cash in Cash App or you can do all your business transactions for your small business through PayPal or Square or something like that. And we've taken advantage of that, right? But with the move towards digital currency, those kinds of exchanges are interactions with these digital wallets, which are banking through your phone or being able to just send money with an app on your phone is likely to increase because we're going to be possibly more reliant on a digital currency if they have a one to one ratio that you have a thousand dollars in your bank. So that means you have a thousand digital dollars that you can use with a push of a button. It's ease, right? It's more likely for you to do it. You won't have to go to the bank. You don't need to have a bank in your neighborhood because it's all right here on your phone. And you always have your phone, right? We all always have our phones. So it's more likely to increase the use of digital services. But the problem with these services currently is that they have been rampant with complaints with the services just closing closing down accounts and taking people's money, money and scamming. And there have been data breaches at them. They are not regulated like banks are because they're not banks. Not all of them. Some some do have banks attached to them. Excuse me, because Cash App technically would have a bank attached to it. Now that it's bought, what is that credit credit karma? Not that they bought credit karma and credit karma has a bank or banking apparatus to it. Cash App with at least that bank apparatus would be subjects to some kind of regulations. But a lot of these don't have banks attached to them. So you have your money that you've never touched physically and you're unbanked and it's just in the ether really like it exists. But if this tech company decides that you broken some arbitrary rule are going against their terms of services that nobody reads because it's such small print, you've lost your money. And for somebody that is economically sound, it is a blip on the radar. But for somebody that's historically not economically sound, it's not a blip anymore. And that's the kind of thing that concerns me. Because there is this research for doing a digital dollar. It is supposed to help the unbanked, but it can hurt them. So if we are utilizing these services more often and these services aren't as regulated, they're not banks. If there is something that's negatively happening, it hurts those that are in a less equitable or are equal position more than somebody that is not. Right. And we want to avoid that. We want to avoid getting into a cycle where we're. Excuse me. Early adopters and early pioneers of this kind of technology because it makes our lives easier. And it also. Is. Helping us in a way to have thriving small businesses are to send cash to our family members. It just makes, like I said, it makes our lives easier. But because of the way that it's not regulated are because of the way it's not run by somebody that has our best interests at heart. It's a business, you know, it's not. It's not about helping the little guy, no matter how much they say it is. Right. So. If it's if it's if it's set up and it might hurt somebody, it's going to hurt those who are at the bottom the most. What do I think is needed? I feel like. There should be a focus on education to avoid exploitation. It's how you get away from users being confused. It's how you get away from people thinking in that they could put in a dime and make 10 million. Right. It's not just about educating about cryptocurrencies and about investing in cryptocurrencies, but also having community kind of outreach, which some of those people that that I talk to people, some of those people that I talked about on the pioneer page, have those kind of advocacy groups and other kind of groups that educate the community on what to look at, what to look at when you're trying to invest in cryptocurrency. Oh, this is how the blockchain works or this is what an NFT does. And I've seen that there have been a lot of outreach, especially in schools to teach the incoming generation about these kind of technologies. And that helps. That's how we use education so that you get older and you can invest your own money. Or you see that this could be an opportunity for economic freedom that you won't be exploited because you might be able to see the signs and you won't let others be exploited because each one teach one. That's the community thing that we've had for forever. Right. But also there should be diversity in development. And that's not waiting for somebody to say, hey, we want you to fill this space, but making our own spaces as well. It shouldn't just be an investment vehicle, but also like the maker of equity coin. I know that there was another coin that was started by brother. It was Guap coin, I think. Like developing your own coin, not in a scabby way, in an actual way where we're we're doing the programming or even if you don't go that avenue and it's more of how can we make this more secure? Or excuse me, what can we use the blockchain for other than coin other than investment? Like Sean Wilkerson did with storage and used it as cloud storage. How can we use this emerging technology to develop something new to fill in a void to. Make something that's going to last, right? And then if there is going to be a digital dollar, if there's going to be the government, whether it's here, whether it's in Europe, whether it's anywhere. And they're going to say, we're regulating this and we're going to do this, this, this, this and that to make sure that it's it's more safe for everybody to invest and use these exchanges. If that's what we're going to do, we should advocate for ourselves. Even if they're not going to regulate the coins that are already out there, which I sincerely doubt, even if they're just going to come up with a digital dollar, you can't help the unbanked without speaking to the unbank. This isn't a nanny state. That's not what we want. What we want is equity. We want is justice. And if you want those things and you're committed to having those things come to fruition, then those people that are you that you're talking about, that you're advocating for helping should be able to say, this is what we need and we need this because X, Y, Z. This is what would make it more equitable. This is what would make it more just and more fair. If these things were provided, you know, it's not just about having a digital dollar that doesn't help the unbanked. If the transmission of that digital dollar is subject to shutdown at any time, it doesn't help to have a digital dollar if the applications that are popular that they're using can't exploit them. Right. It turns this bridge that we we tried to pioneer that we've tried to grow that we've invested in into something that's just another way for us to be oppressed and exploited, then that's not what we want. Right. So if we're not part of the development, if we're not focused on educating each other and not just looking at it as an investment vehicle, but actually as an avenue where we could spin off into something else or develop something new, that we're just putting ourselves in a place where we can be exploited and we've already been exploited and disenfranchised enough. So for me, this is some advertised further reading. If you're interested in crypto currencies and Black America in the blockchain revolution in banks and why crypto currencies might be appealing to disenfranchised people. This is some further reason. There's more books that are like these, but these are the ones that I recommend personally. So I'd like to thank everybody for your time. Again, I can be found on Twitter at Barnes underscore S.N. I also have an Instagram Blue Team book club where I just talk about Blue Team books, really, all the time. Now to select the bank. Big Blacks and Cybersecurity for giving me this opportunity. It's been awesome. They are awesome. And everybody that's helped me told me that I should do this, even though it's kind of nerve wrecking and everything. I appreciate you guys. Are there any questions?