To be honest, I’d been skeptical of the whole crypto space for many years. How could anything that didn’t really exist hold monetary value? Yet, the more I dug into learning about the space, for the purposes of finding a “play to earn” game, the more I learned about the underlying technology and financial structures being created to support said technology. I won’t bore you with all the technical jargon right now (maybe in a future post), but I will challenge you to start looking into the space and I’ll provide some of the steps I’ve taken to begin learning without dropping any of my “real” money into it.

Terms

Let’s get started with some terms that I think are important to know when diving in. I’m by no means an expert in any of this, but I at least think I’ve grasped enough of the concepts to explain the basics to those of you who may just be starting out.

Crypto – Basically a general term for any of the different coins/tokens available. Think different currencies, like the Dollar, Euro, Yen, etc. (These real world currencies would be known as the fiat currencies). Some popular and more well know cryptos are Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), etc., but there are thousands of different coins. Each different currency has different purposes and some have their own blockchains. Others, live all on the same blockchain, but I’ll explain that next.

Blockchain – The simplest way I can explain this is to compare it to a database (and even more simply, a spreadsheet). A database is composed of many spreadsheets, but at the end of the day is just one giant file sitting on a computer somewhere. This database gets backed up on a regular basis in case something was to happen to the original file, but if you were to maliciously edit that file, the backup would then take on that change. A blockchain behaves differently in that it’s not just one file, but a string of recorded transactions. They don’t just live on one computer, but on a network of nodes (computers) hopefully spread out across the world. Each time a new transaction is added, it not only has its data in that record, but also evidence of the previous transaction. In order for that new transaction to be written to the chain, a consensus of all the other nodes have to approve that it looks the same to each of them. This becomes more secure than a traditional database since now someone taking malicious action can’t just change the database, but would have to affect all of the nodes at the same time. I know that was a lot, but it’s import to understand a bit of the underlying architecture to realize why certain other things work the way they do.

NFT – Non Fungible Token – You’ve probably heard this term already and are just associating it to some picture of an Ape that just sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it’s much more than that. NFTs are basically just proof of ownership over an asset, mainly digital, but could be the future of how physical property deeds are recorded. Each NFT is just a contract recorded on a block chain that connects your wallet to the asset’s address on the chain. I think the utility around NFTs is the more intriguing aspect as many new projects starting up (companies developing a product or application) will issue an NFT that you can get that allows you early access or special perks once their product launches. Think of it like a membership card similar to your Starbucks Gold Card or the perks that come with holding a specific credit card.

Wallet – Crytpo wallets operate the same way your physical wallet operates… you open it up and you see your cash, family photo, membership cards, etc. In crypto wallet, you store how much of each currency you have and your NFTs (art, membership cards, etc). The difference is, the crypto wallet doesn’t actually store the data, but rather provides an address on the blockchain that all these assets are linked to. That’s why keeping your wallets secure is very important. There are many wallets out there, both software and hardware, but I’ll go more into that when I talk about the steps I’ve taken in my own learning.

Exchange – This is an easy one, just think of etrade, or any other stock trading website, but for crypto. This is where you can “exchange” your fiat currency for different cryptocurrencies. Some popular exchanges are coinbase, FTX, Binance. It’s important to understand that an exchange isn’t a wallet. You don’t have sole ownership for the purposes of staking your crypto or using it in different web3 applications when it’s on an exchange. If you’re looking to just invest money and trade, then maybe the only thing you’ll use is an exchange. If you want to really leverage the utility of all this stuff you’ll need to move your crypto to a wallet.

Gas Fees – Any time you move crypto from one address on a blockchain to another you will need to pay gas fees. This is basically just a fee for validating the transaction on the chain that the node holder then receives for doing the work. Depending on the chain your token lives on, the gas fees can vary. If you purchase a particular crypto on an exchange and want to transfer it to your wallet, you will have to pay gas. There are other actions like swaps and bridging that will require gas fees as well.

Swap – A swap is the action of swapping one currency for another. Think of it as exchanging your Dollars for Euros when you go to Europe. This is important and where the whole Web3 structure really takes off. Remember when I talked about how a lot of currencies (tokens) have particular utilities in different applications/games? Well, by swapping tokens, you can take value you’ve created from one game or application and move it into a different one. For example, let’s say you’ve invested a ton of time into one game, massing a large stockpile of it’s native token, but now you’re bored and see a new game you want to try out. You can now swap your tokens into the new games’ tokens and not have to start off in that game from ground zero.

Bridging – Some currencies can live on more than one chain (example: ETH lives on both the Ethereum and Polygon chains). Bridging is just the action of moving your ownership of that amount of ETH from one chain to the other.

Web3 – Web1 was your old original simple HTML sites that were made in 90’s for one way communication. Web2 is what you’re most familiar with, things like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Web3 is just the next evolution where the value you produce by using these new platforms is owned by you, and not only by the site owner. Think if you could get paid for Facebook giving out all your demographic information, or you as the user had a say in how the application operated. Web3 has the potential for each of us to have ownership in the things we use online. If the application you use is free, then you are the product. Wouldn’t it be great that if you’re the product you get something of transferable value out of it?

Airdrop – Giveaways from project developers to entice people to use their tokens or application. Some airdrops are used as rewards for early adopters and long time holders of particular tokens and NFTs.

I think that’s all of the important terms for now. There’s a lot more, but this should give you a good beginning understanding of this new space. Now, let’s get onto the steps I’ve taken to learn this stuff and see if we can get you some free crypto in the process.

Getting Started

The first thing I did was sign up with Coinbase. Coinbase is a great entry point because not only is interface easy to use, but they have this neat thing called “Learn and Earn”. Learn and Earn are little slide shows that teach you about particular currencies and after watching them and answering a few questions about what you learned, give you a small portion of that particular currency. I’ve probably made $15 so far and I’ve only been on it for 2 months at the time of this writing. Once you have the currency for your learning, you can swap it to whatever you want. Also, if you feel like putting our own skin in the game right off the bat, use this link to sign up. This will get you $10 in free Bitcoin after you buy or sell $100 on coinbase. I’ll also get $10, so you can consider that a tip for all this great information.

Next I downloaded the Metamask wallet on my phone. There are plenty of other wallets out there, but this is the one I started with because I was trying to figure out how to start playing some nft games and metamask works great with polygon chain related currencies. Metamask also has an extension available on chromium based browsers which is critical for interacting with web3 applications. I’ve transferred some Matic to my wallet in a roundabout way so I can pay gas fees for a particular game I’m trying out. If you have any questions on that process, leave a comment.

I also downloaded the Brave browser. Brave is a chromium based browser that does 2 really cool things. First it rips out advertisements on pages you visit and replaces them with it’s own ads. Second, it rewards you for looking at its advertisements in the form of BAT, Basic Attention Token. These tokens can then be saved in it’s onboard wallet, used to tip websites that you’ve found helpful, and also swapped out to other currencies. I haven’t reached an amount worthy of exporting yet, so I’m not sure how that exactly works. Stay tuned.

Finally, I started looking for projects that I find interesting. I can’t give any real direction on this, but it’s important to get in early on some projects and interact with the communities. Most new projects start up a discord server that you can join to chat with the developers and other people who are interested in the project. By being part of the community, you get access to airdrops that can come in the form of tokens or NFTs being used in the project. Some projects that I’ve started following are:

• The Dustland
  • This is an upcoming move to earn game where you download their app and listen to an audio story-like track that’s linked to the speed at which you are running. The premise is you are transporting goods in a future dystopian society and each run you take is a transporting mission. The more you run and complete missions, the more DOSE (fitness metaverse token) you earn. This token can then be used to upgrade your character or swapped to other currencies and then back to $$$$.
  • To learn more and stay up to date on this project, I highly recommend following them on Twitter and joining their discord.
• DEFY
  • This game is still very early on, but will be a location based augmented reality play to earn game. You can learn more details about the game by checking our their website in the link above. They’ve been pretty clever in their early adoption mechanism by releasing different puzzles to solve in lead up to the airdrop of their first NFT.
  • You can also follow them on Twitter and join their discord.

To Be Continued…….

For now that’s what I’ve done and learned. I have other things I’m poking around in, but not to the degree that I can explain it yet. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below.

Disclaimer: None of the above should be construed as financial advice. If you’re looking to make real money off anything crypto related speak with a financial adviser.

It was just like any other day in the IT department when the emails started coming in to random staff members from our teaching pastor. I began to receive messages from multiple staff asking if the included message was really from David. After a quick glance at the gmail address, and the poor grammar, it was obvious that this was a phishing attempt. It was then that I decided to have a little fun with “David”.  Below is how the email correspondence transpired. *Some names have been changed to protect the innocent

Subject: GOD BLESS YOU BETH

I need a favor from you, please email me back as soon as possible.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Blessings,

David

Sent from iPhone

The staff member replied prior to informing me. Mainly because it could have something do with this weeks service.

Sure, how can I help you?

– Beth

Good to hear from you, How are you? Its my niece birthday and  I need to get her an iTunes gift card that I promised her as

a birthday gift but I can’t do this right now because I’m currently busy checking on a friend at the hospital. Can you get

it from any store around you? I’ll pay you back .

Blessings,

David

Sent from my iPhone

It was at this point that “Beth” forwarded the email and the fun began. I replied back to both “Beth” and fake David.

David,

Beth caught me as I’m heading out the door. I can grab one for you. How much do you want on it? How old is your niece?

Matt Pugh
-Assistant to the Director of Weekend Host Teams

You’ll note that I am, in fact, NOT the Assistant to the Director of Weekend Host Teams, but I didn’t want it to be noticed that IT had been involved. “Beth” is the Director of Weekend Host Teams so it only made sense that I’d be running her errands. I also figured a nod to the Office was in order since we were going down this rabbit trail.

Thanks Matt.

-Beth

I had “Beth” reply all to make it look legit and that I was helping her out. When a few minutes had past and I hadn’t heard anything from Fake David, I decided to add a sense of urgency into the correspondence.

Pulling into Target now. Gonna be here a few minutes so let me know how much you want on it.

Sent from mobile

Thanks MATT,$100 is okay for her and can you please help me scratch the back of the card to reveal the pin, then take a

snap shot of the back showing the pin and have it sent to me.

Blessings,

David

Sent from my iPhone

An overall blog template change is probably in order too. Much to do, much to do.

Stay tuned.

I’m starting to notice an interesting trend in the people who are following me on twitter. Sure, I have people who follow me I don’t know. Nothing wrong with that. What’s interesting is that many of these individuals are so called Leadership coaches.

On the surface this doesn’t seem all that strange, but when I started to think about it more, I realized how ridiculous this was. We have to remember that one of the easiest ways to get new followers is to follow them first. Studies show that by using this method you will probably gain 1 out of 4 follow backs, as it’s common courtesy in the twitter world to follow back.

With that in mind I started looking into these “Leadership coaches” follow ratios. Most of these individuals tended to be following more people than were following them. This begs the question, how much of a leader are you if you have to follow others so they follow you?

Real leaders gain followers, on and off twitter, because of who they are. It’s their character, drive, knowledge, and ideas that inspire others to listen and follow, not some cheap marketing ploy.

So if you’re new to twitter or have already hit the 5000 tweet mark, join with me in not following these self proclaimed leaders. If someone has to go so far as to say they are a leader in something, they’re probably not.

Thanks a lot science. Way to kill my dreams of developing super powers.

[Graphic via infographicjournal.com]

There have been many great rivalries over the years. PC vs Mac, Lakers vs Celtics, U.S.A vs U.S.S.R, and Charlie Sheen vs himself. But one of the most important rivalries in the history of technology is very seldom talked about, Edison vs Tesla.

Let’s take a look shall we?

Edison may have invented the light bulb, and killed an elephant, but he lost the electricity war.

I have the honor of teaching a few classes at this years Dynamic Church Conference, and I’m totally psyched! To help drum up some buzz about the class I’m teaching with my buddy Scott, I made this little teaser.

Enjoy!

Charging up your flux capacitor? Jumping in that strange phone booth? Brushing up on your H.G. Wells? No matter how you do your time traveling you need to be prepared.  That’s why I’ve installed this little beauty in every Delorean I own.

Enjoy.

[Images via fashionablygeek and gawker.com]

Here’s the problem we face, no one knows what these strange boxes are. Well, saying no one is a little harsh, it’s more like 1 out of 5 of us know what they are. The percentage gets even lower when you figure in how many of the 1 in 5 actually scan them.  Needless to say, QR has a major PR problem.

There are a lot of marketers out there that think flooding the print ad world with QR codes will work. These marketing types think people will be curious enough to figure it out for themselves, what the strange boxes are and how to scan them. That’s all well and good if everyone is like me, but they’re not. I can count on one hand the amount of people I know that understand enough about QR codes to scan them regularly. This flood the market mentality is obviously not working.

It’s not a matter of the technology being useless, or even if we’ve passed it by. A well placed QR code can be very helpful. The problem is that the public has not been properly educated on QR codes. Currently, when QR codes are being used the most instruction you’ll see is “Scan this.” This leaves the normal person asking, “What is it? Scan it with what? Do I just take a picture of it?”

We need to treat QR like a cup of McDonald’s coffee.  Coffee drinkers know that the coffee inside the cup will be hot, but the unaware need a little warning so they won’t burn their tongues. An instruction if you will; “Contents may be hot.”  The same goes for QR codes.

We need to help the passer-by know how to get a scanner (Search your device’s app store for a “QR Reader”), how to scan the code (open the scanner app and hold it over the code), and what will happen after you scan it (Facebook page, entry form, map location, website, instructional video, etc.). There is nothing inviting about just seeing a QR code if you don’t know what’s going to happen when you scan it. A little instruction will go a long way.

We can’t just let this bridge between static advertising and dynamic digital interaction just fad away. We must try harder to educate, and use QR codes in a manner that makes sense. Otherwise,  

Update: QR codes finally took off because of Covid. Now take a look at another emerging technology I’m talking about, https://seaofgeek.wordpress.com/2022/03/22/crypto-nfts-and-other-things-im-learning-about/.