Crypto, Community & Cowrie Shells: Guapcoin

I sure have. So, I founded Guapcoin, well, we launched back in 2017. Crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin had been being brought to me for a while. Honestly, way back in the days when it was first brought to me, I just kind of totally ignored it, put it to the side, I didn't really understand the gravity of it. The person who brought it to me was probably a bigger pioneer than I was. He was like, "Do you see this? You need to do this." But he didn't get into it too much, so I didn't really know. But back in 2014, I had started my first startup, and I was struggling raising capital, VCs, et cetera, and that's when I delved in a little bit more, and found out the numbers, the abysmal numbers, in terms of Black women founders who actually get VC funding. So I circled back around to crypto and blockchain. I also wanted to integrate blockchain into a product I had founded, but my team was very old and outdated, and they were like, "What is this blockchain crypto thing?" and yada yada yada. So inevitably I walked away from that.

Well, first of all, it's our own ecosystem, not mine. I've been pushing for that for years.

The benefit of it, of course, is the segmentation of this data, and the specialisation of this data, to really see the spending impact of the diaspora, to really see the global wealth impact of the diaspora, because we're told stories, but it doesn't match up. In various different places, like even on a continent, you have so many resources that are going out. Same thing as in America, you've got resources going out, but not coming back in, and there is not an adequate or substantial impact on the community from what's going out. And, of course, on the continent, people are dying, wars are breaking out, people are dying, and they're still not getting the impact of what's going out and what's being taken out of the community.

Absolutely. It's a couple, and I feel like we kind of got a jumpstart, but you always get a jumpstart; then you need either the community or the capital to keep the engine going. So the jumpstart we got is: we did get businesses that would start accepting Guapcoin, start utilising it, figuring out strategies on how they could use it in their business. Some of the strategies we came up with, we were like, well, if you don't want to accept it as a currency per se, as a whole, because you still need to use fiat, then think about your saving strategy: how you want to pass on savings to your customers, how you want to do rewards or coupons or whatever. So whatever coupon, special or reward you do, you can use that with Guapcoin. You can say, "Hey, if you purchase this using Guapcoin," then maybe, it's a restaurant, maybe you can get this meal or this item with Guapcoin. We weren't just trying to force it on people. Of course, they didn't have full understanding or enough liquidity to be able to handle such a thing. But we're talking about you being able to pass off this and get a community that's dedicated to supporting you. So that's one thing.

Well, I think the biggest thing in making it work is seeing how much it meant to me. I can't talk about it if I'm not about it, you know what they say. So, seeing how it's a part of my everyday, and how I'm investing in increasing the ecosystem by building additional rails and products around it, you have to do that, and you've got to be willing to make a sacrifice. Because during that time, you're taking a leap. It's like you're leaving one capital system behind for a whole different one, but there is no in-between, you've got to make the jump. And during that process, you don't want to sell people on dreams; you want to get them on reality. So you've got to let them know that, "Hey, this is a difficult thing", but we're at a point where everything is difficult now. All of the things I've been saying are just literally playing out the way they're playing out, and people are more willing to make the jump now than ever.

Well, I would say potential merchants, because we started out just with some individual merchants, but what we expanded into is Chambers of Commerce and merchant organisations. So we do have quite a few organisations that have signed on board and said, "Hey, when you're ready, we're ready." So we're building the payment rails so that they can be ready. I never wanted to just turn it on for them, and then there's no way for them to have access to liquidity, because that's very important. I don't want their businesses to fail. I know we're still in the fiat world; I'm not delusional. So I want to make sure they're able to pay their bills at the end of the day, if they need to. And that's when you tap into the global rails of liquidity in some way. That has been a struggle, but I'll tell you this: whenever there's a downturn, then they listen to me. Then they come knocking on my door, like, "Oh, okay, so you're interested in this." But when it's bubbling, of course, they're not listening to me, they're not worried about it, they're seeing dollar signs everywhere. But when the dollar signs go away, then they start thinking about these people who are real diehards and real use-case type people, and they come knocking on our door. So I look for times like this to be able to now push the agenda forward more.

Yeah, well, of course we don't know how many people, but we do have well over a hundred thousand wallets out there. So that's about where we are. And one of the things I do know is that a lot of people know about Guap. I've gone places and people have heard of Guap, "I know about Guap." And that has been crazy to me, to go to places and have people have heard about Guap. So that, to me, is where it needs to start: planting the seeds, especially with the populace I'm trying to reach first. I come from the hip-hop era. They used to sell mixtapes out of the back of their car, and those mixtapes eventually turned into a billion-dollar system out here of music that we rely on today. So I'm very well aware of planting the seeds, and getting those seeds out here, and how important that is in the community.

I always go to represent, and I do talk about my other work as well. But I kind of go there to see, it's my gauge to see where everybody's at. And honestly, I don't think we've gotten much further, when it comes to blockchain, crypto, DeFi, than we were when I was back there in 2020. So that's an interesting thing to me. Because sometimes you feel like, "Well, maybe I've fallen behind," and then you realise how far ahead you really are. So that's very motivational, to keep you going along, you need that kind of motivation in this space. That's how it helped me, because I'm like, man, people are talking about things we've already done and are already doing.

Well, I'm not like everybody in terms of being anti-anything. I'm more of a moderate, in between. So I'm like, CeFi, DeFi, centralised finance, decentralised finance, there's a place for both. Because you have people out there who have difficulty managing their money, their portfolio, their whatever, and they want to have someone they can reach out to, to help them with these things. And that's fairly reasonable. So I'm very big on that, which is why I'm building a bank. I've been building a bank, a crypto bank, since right before the pandemic. I took a big hit during the FTX thing; I wrote about it. Our sponsor banks pulled out, said they didn't want to have anything to do with crypto, and kind of left us hanging. But, again, you know how it goes, it's a circle. Then people come back around, because they need new products, they need new customers, they need to save themselves. So we're telling them, "Hey, we can tap into the customers, and you can help provide the security that they need, in order to be able to take that leap over into the DeFi world." Let's bridge them together. So that's why I'm with that, I'm not an anti-bank person at all.

Yeah, because the people in my audiences don't pay any attention to that. They know very little about the markets. They know very little about trading and all this other stuff, that was never the thing that pulled them in here in the first place. So it really means very little, honestly. They're like, "Wow, Bitcoin's down? Okay, that's great. Well, how's Guapcoin doing?" That's what they ask me. And I'm like, "Guapcoin is going to do what the community brings it to do. We grow the community, then Guapcoin has the potential to grow." They understand how this goes. So it doesn't affect them too much.

If anything, it goes up. I think I said this on Bloomberg before, I was asked the same question, because crypto was down at the time, and I was asked, "How are they feeling about Guapcoin?" And I'm like, that's when more and more people come and actually pay attention to Guapcoin. Because the mass adoption of anything is going to come with the correction of all of this, all of the fluff going out the door, all of this "this is going to be a million dollars, this is going to change your life", all of that is going to fly out the door, and then this is going to become a normal thing, if you want it to be a normal thing.

Right, but I think it's shifting more in a permanent direction again. I'm a firm believer, I'm a spiritual person, and I'm a firm believer in the message that you bring, the initial core message; that's always going to be the leading factor. And the initial core message of Bitcoin was to be an alternative to the current financial system, and to operate as cash, as digital cash. So once you deviate from that, you can deviate all you want to, inevitably you're going to run right back to the original plan you set in motion, because that's what's going to build trust. People trust what you say, and they don't trust the volatility of what you say, they trust the security in what you say. And what you originally said was the thing that was bringing people security, because they were feeling the change, the ups and downs, the coming crashes and all this other stuff, and they wanted to have more power over their money, and that's what they felt this would allow them to do. So that gave them trust. You can't break that trust, you're going to have to go back to what you stood on. So that's why I think that's a very important thing: just staying with it, sticking with the message, and staying with what you stand on.

I don't think it will. I think it'll grow, it'll evolve, but the heart is the heart. So I don't think it'll ever lose sight of what it was meant to be, as long as we create this rock-solid foundation of what our core beliefs are, it'll never lose sight. And, like I said, it's not going to be perfect. You're going to have everybody everywhere using it for whatever they want to use it for. But at the same time, you'll have to stop one day and look back at the roots of where it started and how it started. And I think that blockchain can help maintain the roots of where it started, how it started. We have a lot of things where we have the stories of where it started, how it started, but we don't have the proof, we don't have it written down, and nobody believes anything. But this is all, from the Genesis block, it's right there. This is the story. The story is here, and it's written into stone from here on out.

Mm-hmm.

Well, first of all, the name comes from a cowry shell, I already mentioned the earlier forms of money being cowry, and where value came from. So that's where the name actually comes from. The concept of it is to provide a, you talk about the money, but now you talk about the house, the house of money. Because that's where people want security. They don't want their money all out there on the internet and in different wallets, yada yada yada, for traditional, old-school people, that's a little bit too much. So what we're trying to do is say, "Hey, this is a place where you have your banking, and this is a place where you can also access your crypto." If you want to get crypto, if you want to get into other cryptos, if you want to get education about cryptos, you have one place to go to do that. And I think that's just, what did they say? a no-brainer, that you're going to do for normal people. I've been through years of taking people through this crypto journey, and, like I said, many wallets, wallet upgrades, wallets where they have access to markets, they look like they want to cry at the end of the day when you're introducing them to all of this. And I want to make their pain go away, because to me it's just so simple to make it go away. I think people make it more complex because, of course, it's more controllable to make it uncontrollable for the people. And you can do what you do in the meantime, but once you start making it comfortable for people, they should know that mass adoption is coming. And perhaps that doesn't suit certain people who have a lot banking on the store-of-wealth aspect that they have. So in those ways, that might be a threat. But inevitably, I feel like everything becomes mainstream. Like I said, I come from marketing, I come from the streets, and I've learned that every single thing inevitably makes its way to the mainstream. And some people look at it as death, it's like a death to some people when the mainstream are doing it, because now it's not exclusive; you can't profit off the exclusivity of things anymore. And now you feel threatened, because everybody has access to what you have access to.

I go back to people. I may be an AI person, and I may be very technical, but one of the things I realise is that people love people. They love customer service. They love being able to access people, or have a point of reference. And AI agents are only going to be able to go so far, for a little bit, when it comes to people, especially their money. So what we want to do is integrate a network of financial coaches, real people who have spent their lives devoted to different financial subjects and mastering them, and this is their livelihood. So why not give them an opportunity to provide what the people are looking for, and, at the same token, give value to the people who are looking for that thing? They're looking for people, local people. Banks are disappearing out of real life, so it could be replaced with people who are there, financial coaches, investment coaches, people who are dealing with end of life, people who are dealing with legacy finances. There are so many different types of financial people in our community. So let's link them all together, let's bring them all in, and have a place they can tap into to deal with people, and where people can actually touch some real people to deal with as well, who can help them through whatever. And of course, create a standard for it, because that's what we do in technology, we create protocols, which are standards. So we'll create our own standard, our own protocol, our own measures to protect people. But at the same time, we're also allowing this marketplace. It's really a whole CeFi, DeFi marketplace that we're building, of services that people can benefit from.

Well, we have a body of AI products, but Melanated AI is about the democratisation of AI in and of itself. Because we feel like, just as with everything else, being excluded from something that's so important, and impacts so many areas of our lives, that literally changes our lives right out from under us, then we should have active participation in that, and a democratisation of that. So that's really what Melanated AI is about: making sure that we're not erased because of the lack of input that we have in AI.

No, at this point, AI models are being trained off of synthetic data. So they're still being trained off of the regurgitated data that they were already trained off of initially. So you're talking about no new data. So we know the data that needs to be there, and it's still not there. So no, we're not too late.

I have eight kids. I had to manage eight kids all at once. I mean, most of them are grown now, but I had to manage eight kids. I tell everybody my eight children represent the world. So somebody, somewhere up there, thought I was a good manager of different personalities and different things, so I'm a good manager of different projects as well. Yeah, I'm a geek. Anything technology is like a new meal for me. And people who know me, they know I'm quite capable of that type of thing. They don't even question, "How do you do it?" She does what she does. Anybody who knows me, because it's like, sometimes I even, with my children, sometimes I wake up and just give birth to something, and I can't let it go. I cannot. I have to see it all the way to college. So, yes, I have to make sure it's going to reach college. That's literally how it is. I get excited about it. It's what keeps me going in this crazy world, with all of these things that can really bring a lot of sadness and tears to you. The only thing I can do is continue to build what I feel would make an impact at the end of the day, and not stop.

Even though I do all of this, I've adopted a lifestyle of balance. So I might be painting for a couple of hours, and then go back to this thing I'm building, and then deal with my kids and my family. Balance is extremely important to me. It has to be real for you, it has to be a real love. If it's a real love, it's just going to work. If it's something you're just doing because you think it's going to make you wealthy, or get you here or get you there, then it's going to fall apart quite crass. But if it's something you have a real love for, and when you see it you're like, "Wow", like I said, this is something I gave birth to, I want to see it go to college, I want to see it succeed, you're going to keep on going, and that's what's going to keep you over the obstacles. Because you're sure to run into the obstacles. And when you run into the obstacle, that's really what's going to test you. People think it's outside tests, it's not outside tests, it's your own obstacle, your own life-journey lesson that you run into, and to see if you can get past that obstacle to the finish line. But it's not about working yourself to death anymore. We've got AI, why would you work yourself to death anymore?

I have 20 agents, 20 auditing agents, code auditing agents, security, all of these things, and I've stuck with them. I haven't jumped on the next trend, the next fad. I've stuck with the core things that I use. And it's really very basic, because I'm a very basic person, I'm a terminal person. People ask, "What IDE do you use? What do you develop in?" Terminal. Notepad, whatever. I literally use the most limited stuff. So, in that way, AI has been a godsend, because it's been a helper for me. Whereas I don't have the capital to have a team, I have had a team, and I couldn't even afford my team anymore, but the beautiful thing is, I was able to fire my team. Honestly, I'm sorry, it was that AI is taking your job. AI is taking y'all's job, for real. So I was able to move past that, and now have access to the tools that I need. And in combination, I would say it is good that you have a certain knowledge. I'm already a data scientist, I'm already a developer and engineer, and so it's not leading me, I'm leading it. And you need to be at the point where you can at least lead it correctly, and then it'll work for you. Because just having it build, but not having it audit, not having a human in the loop, all these other things, that could be really bad. So you have to be a person that's kind of already in it, that knows you need these things in order to be successful in what you're doing.

You're geeky when you speak a language that you think everybody is understanding, but then you realise you're speaking another language that other people don't understand. And then you get to that point like, "Okay, yeah, I've been in a bubble. I didn't realise I've been in a bubble all day."

You know, I think that when it comes to this space, try to find how it identifies with you authentically. Try to find a real, authentic drive and connection with it, because you won't be able to make it through otherwise, it's not the most lovable of spaces. Honestly, it's not the most fun sometimes, and it could be painful. Imagine getting out there and trying to preach something new to people, and they're throwing spitballs at you. So if you're not ready for that, I would suggest, you know, whatever. But at the same token, the rewarding thing in it is that you are innovating something that is likely here to stay. I don't care what anybody says, it's here to stay, and you're a part of that innovation, and you're a part of that journey. And it may take a while for you to be able to look back and see that.