Episode 33: CryptoWitch | 0xx - Crypto Community & Education Hub for Women Empowerment
Newsletter Copy?
Status
0xx Community founder (Cryptowitch) x Crypto Sapiens
Timestamps
00:00 - 00:44 - Crypto Sapiens Introduction
00:46 - 01:32 - Guest Introduction
01:33 - 02:10 - Choosing the name (cryptowitch)
02:11 - 03:06 - Reason behind 0xx community
03:07 - 05:02 - Experience after Defi explosion in 2020
05:03 - 09:00 - The thinking behind 0xx community
09:01 - 12:27 - The Early development of the 0xx community
12:28 - 17:43 - what drives people as a result of staying in the 0xx community
17:44 - 23:01 - How 0xx community makes web 3 education available to different communities to meet up with their behavior
23:02 – 24:46 – 0xx community documenting web 3 content in different languages
24:47 - 26:09 - 0xx community onboarding more members through health awareness and permissionless nature of web 3
26:29 - 31:33 - upcoming Roadmap towards the success of 0xx community
31:34 – Outro
Humpty Calderon: Welcome to Crypto Sapiens, a show that hosts lively discussions with innovative web3 builders. To help you learn about decentralized money systems, including Ethereum Bitcoin, and DeFi. The podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and it is not financial advice. Crypto Sapiens is presented in partnership with Bankless DAO, a movement for pioneers seeking freedom from the limitations of the traditional financial system. Bankless DAO will help the world go Bankless by creating user-friendly onramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of crypto sapiens. Today we are talking with cryptowitch, founder of 0xx. A community and education hub that empowers all women with the tools they need to confidently navigate the web 3 ecosystem. We kick off our discussion by exploring cryptowitch’s crypto journey, which started in 2017 with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
She shares how she went from learning about crypto to building workshops for friends and then launching 0xx. 0xx has now hosted four cohorts across 14 countries. The program was developed to onboard underserved communities, such as refugees and incarcerated people through NFTs and dev skills, especially inspiring. So, without further ado, let's get started
Cryptowitch: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to connect with you all and share more about 0xx, the name cryptowitch. I wish I had considered a little more carefully what the impact of choosing a name like “witch” name was going to have on my web 3 crypto future.
It was the first thing I thought of and I went with it, and now I'm like, do I still love that name? but I think it works, it's representative and it's fun, so how I got into the space. I first met tokens in 2017, the blue chips, Ethereum classic, which was around at the time.
And, I didn't think much about it again, to be honest until defi summer of 2020, when so much was happening very quickly, it was pretty exciting, pretty overwhelming, and confusing, but I could tell that there was something potentially important happening and I was seeing the opportunities regarding yield generation.
This got me thinking about how an idea that I had been thinking about for years might be able to work in this space using new tooling. We can maybe talk a little bit more about what that idea was if you want to go into it. But needless to say, I fell deep down the rabbit hole, and here we are today. I started 0xx, which I know we're going to get into.
Humpty Calderon: That's wonderful, so I want to explore a little bit more about that background in terms of getting these blue chip, defi tokens back in 2017, what would you consider a blue chip? You don't have to go through your entire portfolio, but what were you seeing then?
And maybe. Look at it again from the lens of 2020, when defi certainly had a huge moment. What did you see? what were some of the differences from your first experience where you were just collecting some of these tokens to when the actual utility of defi exploded?
Cryptowitch: Well, I bought Ethereum and Bitcoin back in 2017.
I didn't know. I mean, that's what the person who told me to get into crypto. They were like you can buy Bitcoin. I was like, okay. I bought some. And then when Defi summer happened as I said, I haven't really been involved in the space. I mean, very low-level kind of keeping track of everything. And it was really the defi applications that were being built on top of Ethereum specifically at the time and I could see all the potential, but what really got me in was from an idealistic perspective, I was seeing how this could be used for good and to think of a project specifically in 2020 was YGG and everything they were doing with AXI and how they were helping people generate income that had lost their jobs because of COVID and the Philippines and how they were helping them not only, recoup the income that they had lost from temporarily losing their jobs, but for the first time, actually, make more money. And for the first time thinking about investing and saving for a lot of these people. And that's when I knew that there's something bigger here than just investing. I can invest at that point.
I could invest in the stock market. It wasn't really that interesting to me. I didn’t come from a financial background. It was much more, again, just the potential and the possibilities that pulled me in.
Humpty Calderon: Obviously COVID had a huge impact across the world, both in terms of people's health, mental health, you know, physical health, maybe financial health, because they were maybe losing their work or maybe they were just having to work too much in some areas, you know?
So you saw this. But there was something there that to you was more interesting than maybe what the traditional market was opening to people in terms of what crypto represented, in terms of the type of technologies that were being built, and maybe the reason why defi was so big, you know, the beginning of that, how did that kind of inform some of your thinking?
You know, from what you were seeing happening, you know, across the entire web 3 space, what were you seeing that really informed your thinking and said, look, there's a place for me here beyond just investing in some of these really interesting projects to build 0xx.
Cryptowitch: At the time, to be honest, 0xx, wasn't even a thought, and to go back to YGG as far as what I was seeing, I have to say I'm super grateful to Gabby the founder of YGG because he actually just got on the phone with me. I was like, I have this idea. I have no idea how any of this works, or what you talk to me about it. And he was like, sure.
I don't even think I had my hardware wallet set up then, you know, this was the very very early date and it was 2020 though, not that long ago. And he got on the phone with me and he was like, yeah, this sounds a great idea. And again, this wasn't 0xx. The idea I had was for a long time, I lived in New York City for 10 years and when you live in New York City, you know, a lot of performers, actors, actresses, a lot of bartenders and waitresses, I was kind of getting to that age where we were thinking, you know, my friends and I were like, do we want to have kids? Do we not want to have kids? Some of us did want to have kids.
But, I economically identify as a freelancer, again, being a musician or a graphic designer or a waitress. There's no safety net. And so, I just didn't see how my friends and I, who I identified as economic freelancers were going to be able to have children in a nourishing way.
Like, look, I saw on the subway every single day parents were doing it and they were surviving, and they very often didn't look like they were thriving. And so, I know it's possible but I wanted to know how it was possible again, to be nourishing for the child, for the family, and for the community. And I always had this dream of some type of investment slash insurance hybrid mechanism that could create a safety net for new mothers who economically identified as freelancers. Still, I didn't know how it could ever work.
And then 2020 it happened. I saw these yield-generating mechanisms. And I was like, maybe this could actually work for once, this hybrid kind of insurance investment mechanism. And that's the idea I got on the phone with Gabby Dizon and he said, go for it. I just fell on a rabbit hole chasing that, long story short, how that all comes back to 0xx.
I started learning everything I possibly could about crypto, defi and web 3 and I started talking about it with everybody. I knew, especially all my girlfriends, a lot of them were like, oh, you should teach about this. You should teach about this. You're so passionate about it, you know, so much.
And I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to teach about this, and then one day I had the same conversation with 3 different girlfriends in a row at three different times. And honestly, I was just sick of repeating myself, I was like, okay, I need to package this in a way that is one-to-many, rather than one-to-one for just my own sake of efficiency and of my time.
And that's how 0xx came to be. It started off as a very humble workshop for my friends and my family and my friends' friends, and some people who follow me on social media and that's where it started. We've been just growing ever since then.
Humpty Calderon: That's wonderful, you know, I really like to hear the process from when someone's just themselves getting started, finding a fit for, you know, who they are and what they want to bring into the space, falling into that rabbit hole to learn how they can be of service to this community building out slowly, you know, these really valuable experiences for people to join, learn and do so in a safe way. Because I think that there are other ways people could probably get involved and go about doing some of that themselves, but there it's a pretty complex and, you know, a tricky space to navigate, especially if you don't know, you know, the right people to talk to.
So it's really wonderful to hear. That was very an intentional process to 0xx. So maybe you walk us through, then kind of some of the early developments of 0xx, you were talking about smaller scale events for onboarding and educating women, because it sounds like the focus was women, right?
Cryptowitch: Hundred percent. Our focus is on women. We have had a lot of interest from male allies in this space, and we have let the community vote on whether to allow male allies in this space. That's taken on a case-by-case basis. Every time we offer an educational workshop.
So what has it grown into? I mean, it started off as just like, a zoom call with some presentations and it was very humble, to be honest, it was like hanging out with your friends, talking about crypto, which we all love to do, I wanted more, I want more of my friends to know about this.
So I have somebody to talk to because at the time, you know, I think I probably had just joined crypto Twitter. Like I didn't have a lot of people to talk to about it. I didn't expect it to have as much interest or demand as it did and how everyone was so excited after the workshops and telling everyone, okay, when's the next one?
When's the next one? And you know, that very like organic word of mouth process, which has always been my favorite, I think it was originally like, I don't remember, maybe it was like a 2-hour workshop or something and now it's over 10 hours for the introductory workshop. I would say at least another 10 hours of evergreen content that our community can access any time for continuing education and what we already have banked in our library. We also have at least three continuing education events every month. Usually when our expert speakers from the crypto, web 3, and Defi space come into the community and teach what they're experts at, whether that is a concept or a protocol or, some type of tool or application.
And then we've also built out a quick, like how to reference libraries. So, when you're teaching someone how to use a wallet or do anything in the crypto space, in a live workshop format, they can take notes and you can provide additional resources. But when they do it themselves, sometimes they're like, okay, wait, how am I supposed to do this again?
So we built a video resources library that anyone can access at any time that has five-minute videos or less. So, they're very short and very quick for how to do the most basic crypto transactions for newcomers. And then we have a million other things going on as well. so, it just keeps growing, I'm always surprised that what we're building next, because we don't really have an agenda.We like to source everything from the community, all our inspiration from the community.
Humpty Calderon: I think that's one of the wonderful things about this space. I think your vision and your experience and kind of, you know, how that helps mold the initial product or project is important.
It's very valuable but then there's also that element of community to your point earlier, it's very different from maybe traditional finance or just traditional web 2 structures where the input from the community is not just more valuable, but it's kind of a bigger part of how we operate.
You know, an example is like, what we do at crypto sapiens is very similar, we are exploring ways to not just delegate work, but also decentralize the project because there is that intention that there is value in not just engaging your community, but doing so in meaningful ways to ensure that what you're building is useful and of service to the community that you intend to serve, you talked about your growing demand from that initial iteration of the project early on, you know, what was maybe some of the things you were hearing from people who were coming in and either wanting to contribute to the project or, wanted to learn more, you know, how were you engaging those individuals and, what were some of the things that they were saying that was important to them? to kind of become more crypto native.
Cryptowitch: Yeah. I love this question because the answer is so fun. I mean, in the beginning, it was a lot of, one-on-one just like talking to community members and asking, what's working, what's not working. What do we need more of? how do we ask about what excited them and how they wanted to get involved?
And, you know, I think when people come into this space, they want to contribute and to deposit their energy somewhere, but they aren't really sure of how the space works, especially to that point of decentralization that you were speaking to right now, I would say we have every intention of being more decentralized, but we do have a core team and we are centralized in that sense.
But as we grow, we're slowly decentralizing as it makes sense. We are launching a loyalty program token. We are launching our token gated NFT membership in the next couple of months. And it will help us with the governance mechanism.
What I was hearing from the community is the part I love talking about, we've done 4 cohorts now. We've had women from over 14 different countries. We have human rights lawyers. We have acupuncturists, we have moms, we have musicians, we have educators, the list is just so long. We have writers, investment bankers, and our community yoga instructors, and I could just like go on and on.
I was chatting with the human rights lawyer and she was like, okay, I want to know how we make sure that underserved communities that are always left on kind of the outside have access to this education. So how do we get incarcerated individuals into this web 3 education? There are so many art programs, like prison art programs that we could partner with and like teach them about NFTs and the NFT creation process so that maybe they can generate income for savings when they can exit a system or for their families on the outside of the system, or talking about how maybe getting them to develop dev skills, you know, and that kind of educational pipeline for people that are inside the system.
And so that was one example of a community member. Looking through the lens of web 3 and seeing, how does this apply to the work that I'm already doing out in the real world? A similar conversation I have with an educator from our community. That is what she knows. That is what she's an expert in.
And she's like, okay, I want to know what web 3 and crypto education looks like for kids. And after a long conversation, what the community, we kind of came out to the side where that it really looks like teaching about kids, about decentralization, because that's the world that they're moving into.
And a lot of us, we don't really necessary, unless we were very lucky, like have the skills like built into us, into our programming, to be able to quickly be able to acclimate to a decentralized system, but these kids are going to be growing into that world. So, it's like, how do we teach them about emotional intelligence that it takes in this space and to navigate these, you know, really new kind of ways of work and how can we help kids, you know, have more sovereignty and ownership and let their interest guide them.
Learn about new economic systems they can just grow up with them. They're not going to be new or novel that they're never going to know, like what came before. So, it's like, how do we make sure that they are prepared for that? There's just so many examples of the community, again, coming, bringing what they're experts in looking through the lens of crypto and web 3 saying, okay, how does this apply to my work?
There are just endless examples. And I love 0xx. One of the questions that like I have written on my wall and that we always are putting forth to the community is like, how can 0xx be a vehicle for your dreams? Like how can we help you? And especially if that centers around education is at the heart of everything that we do and if that, especially when it comes to women in underserved communities.
Humpty Calderon: Wow that’s so much to unpack, there's one thing that I truly love about web 3 communities and, I'll be more specific. The communities that I love in web 3 have a lot of what you've been talking about from the 0xx community and I think it goes to the diversity of people that make up the community. I think it's so important for there to be people from all sorts of backgrounds, this entire global group of individuals who are coming into this ecosystem and contributing, I think it's really interesting that you have human rights lawyers in the community.
I'm sure there's probably one in everyone, but maybe we're not identifying them very easily and facilitating a path for them to contribute because you mentioned the thoughtfulness of being inclusive, not just of people who may have easy access to a computer and the internet to do their own research, but you're talking about people in prison that just kind of blew my mind because I don't think to date, unless I'm hiding under a rock that I've heard someone talk so explicitly of this is a community that we are serving. Right. I don't want to dive too deeply just into one part of your community, but what are some of the thinking behind that?
Because I don't think I've necessarily heard what some of your learnings are, maybe how have you thought through them, these are ways to engage them so that they have the same tools at their disposal to contribute to this ecosystem.
Cryptowitch: I will say firstly, aren't just hypothetical. We are engaged in various levels of discussion with organizations on all the examples I previously gave. The week before Russia invaded Ukraine, we started talking to a refugee organization to make sure that refugees also have access to this education because this is a perfect example to answer your question.
Anytime you're dealing with a special population whether that's refugees or young people or incarcerated individuals, you have to curate the educational content for them in a special way because how you teach a refugee to use crypto and web-3 tooling is going to be different from how you're going to teach a house mom in Atlanta or something like that, you know?
And so. You have to partner with local organizations that have special expertise in serving in supporting these communities. So that's the first thing, we can't just boil the plate, send out our workshop and be like, here's 10 hours of free crypto education, good luck. Like that's not going to connect in the ways that we want it to connect.
The way that we want it to connect is for it to be valuable and actionable. It's not worth anyone's time. If someone can't turn around and actually do something with the information that you're providing and be supported. And so, one way that it looks for us right now is we are in the process of converting our entire educational curriculum and all of our resources into other languages because we think that the landscape of crypto education is very western-centric and we are committed to ensuring that women from all backgrounds have equal access to quality education and community support. And so, we're partnering with some amazing people in this space to translate all of our resources and educational curriculum into other languages.
Because again if you don't speak English, It's going to be hard to get a foothold in this space, because I think a lot of the resources that we are seeing are taught from a Euro-Western-centric perspective. And we won't be doing that teaching. We want to empower local community leaders to teach their communities.
And so we will be paying them for that work. We will be supporting them in that work, but there's something very special about being, you know, taught by a native speaker and from someone who understands where you're coming from. Again, if we were to try, we can use the migrant situation as a good example.
We want to make sure that the educational curriculum for that population includes, what are the best crypto apps for sending remittance, what is the extra security, operational security systems that need to be in place if you're going to be using sending money over, you know, across international borders, repeatedly and things like that, which we don't teach in our regular curriculum, because it's not necessarily compatible with our normal population, but it's something that we want to drill down hard on a specific population.
The same thing If we're teaching community members in rural Latin America, it's going the applications that are compatible for them, and going to serve them the best, they are going to be very different than maybe another population, it's really just about being intentional, being thoughtful.
Make sure that we're creating real value and not just lip service partnership, with local organizations that have expertise in these communities, paying them for their work, bringing them into this space, and informing a bigger global community where we can all learn from each other and grow together.
Humpty Calderon: That's amazing, you captured a lot of the intention behind the work we should be doing. And I agree with you, there's a lot of very English native content and that's just because there is a huge population in English, speaking communities or countries, that are maybe more engaged with this, but that does not necessarily mean that’s the do-all end all. We definitely need to be mindful of the fact that there may be others who are coming into this ecosystem and are finding very little information as to how to get started again, doing so in ways that are responsible or the other.
You know, generally that they don't know about it and that we should be democratizing this space more completely by creating or giving them the same access that we have to understand what this space is again, doing so in ways that are responsible
Cryptowitch: Yeah, I just have to like share this all again.
This all comes from the community. I would say about 50% of our community now has some tie or roots to Latin lineages or ancestors. And so, it was really from them. They were like, we love this, and we want this to be in Spanish and we will build this. And I remember one of our community members, she's been with us from, I think our first cohort.
And she got all of her cousins, all of her sisters, all women in the community. And now they're all teaching the aunties and the mamas and the grandmas, like how to use crypto. It's like that's what we want. To just grow that web, make those connections, and help each other. I just wanted to share that anecdote as well.
Humpty Calderon: Yeah, thanks for sharing that, that goes to making sure that you have a diverse community because a lot of times I think of something we talked about earlier, these people just want to come in and they want to start building, right? Because this is very different from the traditional, you know, you need permission for everything, both from joining that company to be employed to the work that you want to do.
A lot of that is permissioned, it's like, this is your role. This is the work you do. But in this space, it operates very differently in terms of the way that we can onboard people more permissionless, and also empower them to build, however, they feel will add value to the community that we already have but also the communities that we are trying to reach out to.
Cryptowitch: We just had a conversation about this in the community yesterday, we had a community event. Because May is mental health awareness month and mental health in the crypto space is a huge pillar of our programming. It's something that has been very important to us from day one.
We do a lot of collective processing in our community about, stuff around money, it all comes up with crypto, like how you spend, how you invest, are you more of like a gambler? do you do things irresponsibly and, to your point about it being permissionless, I think that a lot of people who didn't ever feel empowered in the traditional finance space for the first time, feel empowered in the crypto space. And that's what gets them so excited to jump in, to start participating, to start investing because of that permissionless nature, It feels like a big unlock for them.
I guess the other thing for me is like 0xx continues to build. We've heard that from the very beginning, it's definitely grown and evolved, with community input. What are some of the things that 0xx hopes to do in the future? Right. So, you're, you're wishing to decentralize a project in ways, through NFT and through some sort of loyalty program.
How do you imagine 0xx continuing to grow and evolve through the use of these new technologies or incentive mechanisms to serve the communities that you already do or to serve new communities?
Cryptowitch: Well, I think education is at the heart of everything we do.
I think that will always be the biggest offering. And that is where that's kind of the seat we sit in this space. We're not going to be building like some new blockchain. We're not going to be releasing the newest crypto app anytime soon. Like I said our new NFT membership, NFT that's happening next month, actually.
And then our loyalty token. So our on-chain loyalty token will be released in July. So that's kind of like some internal building that's happening, and that's just to really set up like aligning incentives in our community and, incentivizing more contributions. And all of that comes with scaling and growing, which is what we're going through right now, you know, six months ago, that didn't make sense for us, but now here we are. It's really exciting especially to see community members pick up those projects and project manage them. We're partnering with some amazing organizations on converting the entire curriculum and running those 4 cohorts and at least two languages this year, maybe more, but right now, for sure, I mean, just continuing to bring more women into our community and empowering them as best as we possibly can so that they can build. We could be a vehicle for helping them achieve their dreams.
And so we do have women who have left their traditional jobs and started working in the web 3 space, but you know, a lot of our committee members don't have ambitions for working in this space. You know, like I want that human rights lawyer to continue doing her work. It's not on our agenda for her to quit her job and come work in web 3 or to become a web 3 lawyer like that. We just want to have a very robust and diverse community where we can all learn from each other's varying expertise. So I think we're going to be, We want to partner more with web 3 protocols because our quote, unquote audience if you will still be in web 2. We want to be that bridge to bring them into web 3.
We haven't been spending too much effort on the web 3 sides, but that's something I think that we are ready to do now. And we are excited about doing and bringing those partners into our community and making sure that we identify projects or applications that are compatible with our community and making those connections. That's super exciting. We are also doing a lot more partnerships with other amazing, women-led organizations in this space and other women educators in this space, and we're excited about everything that's happening in regenerative finance. I know we're going to be finding those projects out there that feel like they fit with our community and seeing how we can work together to enhance everybody's mission. And I guess for me more personally, kind of on the side, I consult for companies that are kind of transitioning from web 2 to web 3. So organizations are companies that have a very robust, existing community web 2 that I am fortunate enough to say..
You have an amazing product. And this there's a thing over here called web 3 and I think that you can do incredible things using these new applic tools, helping those communities to make that pivot from web 2 to web 3. Some of the projects I can share is called thirsty-thirsty which uses food and wine events.
And other types of activating experiences to recenter ancestral agriculture. We partner with different food producers. So that could be even like a cheese maker or a winemaker or, a chef in different locations all over the world and bringing communities together with these, experts and also wisdom holders.
We are partnering with an organization in the Columbia and Amazonas for this next phase that we're going in now, for the product launch or the NFT launch in June, lots of exciting things. I mean, you know how it is in this space, it's just never-ending
Humpty Calderon: and that's a wrap.
I hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you'd like to learn more about cryptowitch and to connect with her, follow her on Twitter @cryptowitch6. And to learn more about 0xx, please go to 0xx.io and on Twitter @0xxcommunity. Thanks for listening to crypto sapiens. Please give us a follow, like, and a 5-star review, wherever you enjoy our podcast, and stay tuned for our next discussion.