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The Interface Podcast Crew chats with Ifeanyi Ezeh, Chief AWS Infrastructure Architect at Deloitte.
Interface is a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by EMPOWER at PROS. EMPOWER is dedicated to attracting, developing and retaining Black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
Ifeanyi Ezeh
[00:00:00]
Jennifer Plummer:
Welcome to interface a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by Empower at PROS. Empower is dedicated to attracting, developing, and retaining black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
My name is Jennifer Plummer and I am your host. And my other host is here today. Siara, hello.
Siara Barnes: Morning. Good morning
Jennifer Plummer: And we are really excited to have Ifeanyi Ezeh. Did I pronounce that right? I should have practiced that before. It means king. I remember you saying that! Ifeanyi, who is chief AWS infrastructure architect at Deloitte.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Hey, thank you. Good to see you again Jenny, nice meeting you, Sierra. Thanks for having me here today.
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. So Ifeanyi and I go way back to the nineties we were both interns at NASA. I was an intern, were you an intern or did you work there?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: I started as an intern and then became a co-op student. So I kind of did the whole process.
Jennifer Plummer: So, this is at NASA Goddard space flight center in Greenbelt, Maryland. I was at university of Maryland, Baltimore county, Ifeanyi is at Morgan state and, I just remember, we used to go to lunch cause there's lots of buildings. Right. There's like so many buildings. So it was kind of like, you know, how bus pick kids up to go to [00:02:00] school. It was like the carpool that was going to go from building to building and picking up our lunch crew. So good times. Very good times
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. So long ago.
Jennifer Plummer: yeah, you were saying our kids are about the age now that we were, when we met each other.
Siara Barnes: Isnt that crazy? So yeah. I was just talking to a friend of mine yesterday and she's like, Zoe's nine and I'm like, wait, nine? The last time I remember her, she was four. And now I'm on the verge of having a teenager, which, I mean, I'm going to say that I'm not old enough to have a teenager. I'm just going to put it out there.
Jennifer Plummer: Wait, until they have degrees. And you're like, oh my God. Not even like high school, my kid has a degree.
Siara Barnes:. Oh man, I can�t
Ifeanyi Ezeh: I have one graduate, so �
Siara Barnes: Crazy.
Jennifer Plummer: So yeah, we're kind of getting into some of it, but, Ifeanyi, why don't you please, tell us a little about yourself. How did you come? You know, where did you start and how did you get [to where you are], what was your journey and how did you get to where you are today?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah, sure, definitely. You know, that's kind of, as we kind of start kind of give the, you know, standard disclaimer, all the views that you hear today are mine and those of my employer or my customers. That's when I kind of get that out there. I think I kind of look at my, career as having kind of, blessings all along the way and really kind of thinking of where I am today. You know, I grew up in Nigeria, never touched a computer in my life. And you know, watching a movie saw, Hey, computer science. I was like, oh, that looks good. And you know, when I came to the United States, I decided I want to do computer science, as Jenni mentioned, I went to [00:04:00] Morgan state university, you know, go bears. And, and that's where I, you know, I got my computer science degree. And as Jenni mentioned, you know, I met her at NASA Goddard and I got an internship over there. And even that again was, you know, it was a blessing, you know, I applied for the internship, probably over the Christmas break and I actually [got] rejected and I was working at another job. I [was] at Johns Hopkins and I thought I was actually going to keep that job for the summer and at the last minute, they were like, oh, you know, we can't keep you for the summer.
So I had nothing to do. So [I] was going to go back to my, you know, I used to work at McDonald's, you know, before that. So I was actually going to go back kind of try to get my job back at McDonald's, but apparently someone had dropped out and I lived in Greenville. So they reached out to me and was like, hey, you know, you want to start next week?
I was like, sure. You know, so that's really what got it [00:05:00] started. And really from there, you know, I got in as a co-op student, I mean, sorry, as an intern, they liked me for the summer, asked me if I wanted to become a co-op student. I said, yes. So really that started my journey at NASA, I stayed there till I graduated.
And then, you know, stayed along with them. And so when I started, I kind of, I was more of like a, like a programmer and eventually kind of had this little, you know, kind of manage the computers for this, for a small team. And that's how I got into that's kind of how my Unix journey started. So from there, I joined a company that's no longer around now called Deject.
It was a web hosting company. So Dejects really invented, you know, managed hosting. And that is, you know, but before that, you know, people would really just kind of, we had co-location you kind of go put your computer and, you know, they just provide a Rackspace and in the area and, you know, in a network and [00:06:00] you had to go manage, you know, kind of work on your computer and all those things, Dejects invented manage hosted.
So that's why I started, you know, so I joined them around 2000, just right at the peak of the .com bubble. And there is really where I think I really got my, I would say my base from, just to kind of look at things from an enterprise perspective. Because we had data centers in on the east coast, the west coast, in Japan, and London, and you kind of have to manage all those things.
And what that meant was really making sure you had standards. And that's where I dug into, you know, my Linux roots. So all my Unix roots. So from there kind of really stayed on that path until I would say it was like maybe five years ago. You know, I, a little bit, I went from, you know, from Linux Unix, Solaris to Linux, and about five, six years ago, that's when I [00:07:00] really realized the power of AWS.
I actually had seen it before, probably in 2013. But I guess I'm not smart enough because I got my account, I logged in, I looked at it, I was like, what is this? It makes no sense and then left it. So, you know, when I kind of finally kind of came back again, my second touch, I was like, wow, this is, you know, this is great. I think that it makes sense. You know, doesn't make sense to really kind of have being a data center. And, and that's when I wanted to, I decided, Hey, let me try to get with AWS and get on the cloud journey, took some training. And I was kind of talking to an old coworker and like I said, just the blessings.
He's like, hey, you know, we're looking to hire. You know, we're looking to hire someone for Linux and it's all AWS, you know, so I was like, great. So that's how I joined and really got the start of this position. And I got, I joined. I was the Linux guy really helped to work on [00:08:00] the bills for the Linux, all the standards and those kinds of things.
And then, you know, our original architect left and my project manager was like, hey, you know, the way you work, how you communicate with others, would you like to, you know, take on this role and, you know, again, I said, yes, and that's kind of where we are today in this current role. So that's kind of the, the whole story, from beginning to now.
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. When I saw AWS in your title, that's what I was like, oh, you know what? That makes a lot of sense from what I know now about cloud and from what you were doing back at NASA, managing those machines, I was like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Siara Barnes: Before we move on. I have two questions for you. One, I mean, NASA and John Hopkins, those are two very big names.
So I'm interested in, what job were you doing at John Hopkins?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So, actually Johns Hopkins, I was actually working, what was it?
Jennifer Plummer: Applied physics lab?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: [00:09:00] No, it was actually the space telescope Institute. So it was actually like a branch of actually, funny enough, NASA.
Siara Barnes: Ah okay. You were destined to be at NASA.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. So the group I actually worked with was, and it was tied to the Hubble space telescope. So the hubble would, you know, he's taking all this pictures with all this data. So that the group I worked with at Johns Hopkins in that lab, we stored all that data and we stored them on this, you know, these CDs that was like giant CDs.
So our job was to really make sure that the data was available. So there was archive data. And then there was sort of data that was used on a regular basis. So when someone made a request, we would get it. And if the data was more recently used, it would be sort of readily available for them to get. If it wasn't, we have to go find this CD [00:10:00] and a big tape and then loaded into the silo. So that was really what I was doing, was looking for the request, you know, and getting those things in there. But again, it was at Johns Hopkins, but it was for NASA.
Jennifer Plummer: So what�s the AWS equivalent of that activity, grabbing that thing from storage, because somewhere
Siara Barnes:, I'm interested techie at all, I'm here for the culture, which you will probably hear me say on every episode. So I'm interested in you explaining what AWS actually is for those who may not know, like me.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah, sure. So, AWS really, AWS let's you, is really giving you, you know, people, businesses given an opportunity to be able to host websites without really a lot of costs. So, and let me kind of step back a [00:11:00] little bit and sort of explain, I guess, get a little bit techie and let you know, hopefully not too techie, but, and kind of give at least the way I understand it, right?
When I got in, you know, into the, you know, my IT career started, everybody works on a computer, so it's kind of like we have now, right? You know, we have, when I'm on my laptop, now, everything is in this laptop, you know, and, and there's really, every computer is kind of made up of three core components:
You kind of have your CPU. That's what that's what you use to compute. You have your memory, that's sort of where you run your application. And you have your storage where you store things and then you have the network, right? So we have this physical system and where we started was like, I was talking about when, when people got on the internet and wanted to get their data on the internet, they'd have to go by physical systems and go plug it into a data center, [00:12:00] right. To get the speed. So, and again, and those were each boxes, right? So at that box would contain, would have those three main things, your compute, your storage, and it'll get you plugged in your network. So from there, we sort of went to virtualization and that was with VMware.
That's kind of VMware started that. And with virtualization, we abstracted, you know, instead of now saying, hey, I have this one physical system that I'm running. We now we're able to run multiple physical systems on a single hardware. So we sort of abstracted away the need to have the physical system. So now on my laptop, I can run, you know, one windows system, or Linux system, and both of those two things are running on the same physical hardware. So that was really the next step. And what AWS did is really to move even a level higher and not just abstract, not just abstract away the computer itself, but [00:13:00] also the data center and really abstract that away.
So what AWS did is to say, if you want to get on the internet, you don't have to go buy a system. You don't have to plug anything into a data center. All you need is a computer, and now that gets abstracted away and all those things sort of get put into this nice bundle. So now, if I want to put up a website, I go to AWS and I sign up, anybody can sign up and what that did is brought the cost down. So I can go sign up for AWS and just launch an instance. That's what they call their computers, that instance now, and then everything is a service. So the instance is basically called a service that is called EC2, so that's my computer, but then I need storage.
So I have to attach the storage to it. That's also a service it's called [00:14:00] EBS and that�s the storage I attach and then I have my networking that then gets me out to the internet. And so I kind of have to put all these things together. So from a customer side, all we have to do is really focus on how do I want to put my system together? And AWS actually, so they're still a data center, but AWS handles all that. So, so AWS is building data centers all over the world, have people managing it, you know, they're the ones, racking and stacking, but they have very specialized computers to really provide this service. So, that is really that [AWS] at a high level.
And, why would you want to do that, will be the next question. It�s like I mentioned before, if you want to start a business and you say, hey, I want to get on the internet. Well, before, you have had to go find an internet provider, buy the hardware, do all those things. And if you're not really sure how many users that you might have, you really, [00:15:00] it could cost a lot of money. So you have to kind of put money out upfront right?
Today, all you have to do is sign up and you can actually just launch it, launch one instance, you launch that one instance and run. The other thing that this actually now enables is that it enables automation. So you can now do things like saying, Hey, first of all, I'm starting small, but let's say automatically no, all of a sudden I get big and I'm going a lot of traffic. You can add automation to automatically scale your systems.
So really it enables things like that. A lot of that enables is that you can actually become a global business because AWS has sites all around the world. So you can say, hey, you know, I want to put something on the east coast. I want to put someone on the west coast. I want to put something in Japan, in Europe, which also helps you kind of, you know, if you have regulations, you know, for example, in Europe, you have the regulations saying, hey, you have to keep the data there.
So you can actually launch a service and keep it there. So really AWS really [00:16:00] enables a lot of things. And that's why you see, there's just so many startups today because the the cost to get in is extremely low. And now you can compete at a global level and all these things are built on top of AWS.
Jennifer Plummer: That was fantastic. Yeah. Does that, does that clear things up for you Siara?
Siara Barnes: It does. I have one follow-up question though. How does this now, considering now that the entry to this is in a very low cost where it used to be very expensive to do this. How has that sort of changed the landscape of what someone like you does and the consumer now, has that changed your world at all? As far as the volume of people who are coming into this, does it mean that there's a lot more? The word mitigation comes to mind. Is it just like anybody who has any idea can come on here and just launch whatever, and it creates problems on the [00:17:00] backend? Or is it so like, user-friendly that like literally anybody who has an idea, you can come in and do this thing, and then you're good to go.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah, so I think I'll maybe kind of break that into two different things. Right? So, the one question where you say, hey, does that cause trouble for me? And you know, not really, I would say to that. And the other point where you're asking, can anybody do this? It really, so the barrier, so what they have done is really bring the barriers to entry down a lot.
You still obviously kind of need to use AWS directly, right? But the one thing that AWS kind of started is really a lot of what they call, you know, SAS services or software as a service. These are companies that build on top of public clouds, like AWS to now give you the ability, you know, if you're not that technical to be able to spin [00:18:00] things up quickly.
So an example is, let's say you want to setup a company like Shopify today, you know, you want to open up a retail. Shopify, you can just go, kind of open up a store by just going to click on a few things and then all of a sudden accept payments and do things like that.
And a lot of these, you know, part of really moving to the cloud. Another thing that was, has been introduced is really, application programming interfaces, or APIs that allow you to sort of build or put services together. Right? So to accept payments, you might have to make an API call to a company like Stripe, that handles payments, right?
So you kind of have companies that went on specializing does say, hey, you know, I come to Shopify, I quickly can stand up my web store. I can accept payments. And you can kind of plug all these things in, and it's all you're consuming services from a lot of these SAS companies. And again, most of these, a [00:19:00] lot of the SAS companies are built on public cloud.
So like, you know, again like AWS, Azure, Google cloud, and they [are] really enabling these new companies to give it, to be built and to scale very quickly.
Jennifer Plummer: And that's what we do, right? So the product I work on is a company can call out and calculate their prices and real. And that's usually connected to e-commerce system or something like that.
So PROS is an SAS company. We don't use Azure. But that's kind of when you were talking about the evolution of kind of, you know, how we went from hosting to cloud. I mean, that's kind of been the PROS story as well. Like the products we work on were originally intended as something that was an application that was just installed somewhere.
And you had a lot of conversations with the customer about what operating systems we support, you know, what databases are supported, blah, blah, blah. And that was a big conversation. Now that we're on the [00:20:00] cloud, right. They don't have to worry about all of that. You know, we just say, okay, we're installing that for you.
You know, you just need to worry about configuring it for your business and that sort of thing. So that's the fun, that's the thing, the landscape changes every five years, who knows where we'll be five years from now.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: but it's just getting faster, right? So the, I mean, I think that's a difference.
You know, I just feel like it's just so fast now. And I think, you know, back in the day, the five-year cycle was kind of what you had, you know, things kind of took a while and now things are changing and moving really, really quickly.
Jennifer Plummer: Do you have predictions on what's the next big thing?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So I think, for me, one thing that I'm doing more, you know, not on a professional side, but more really on the, on the personal side from a technology perspective is really kind of, is really looking at, you know, Bitcoin and central and decentralization.
Right? So what we have today is that, [00:21:00] you know, we had the internet, internet is open and anybody could build on the internet. Right? So, you said you had this open platform. Anybody could come in and it's an information network that the internet built or that the internet really allowed for where anyone can get on to get and share information. So today, we have, you know, we're talking about the internet now, sharing information, you know, someone in any way, you know, someone in Nigeria could listen to this when he gets released, right? So that's a share of information, the one thing, and then what happened and, and it actually, the internet was decentralized.
It really was decentralized, right? Is that anybody can get on and put up a web server. But what happened is that we have a few companies that really got big. So you have Facebook that dominates social network, you have Amazon that dominates shopping, you have Google that dominate search.
And what they've done is like, you have this concentration where they've built on the [00:22:00] internet and really taking that and really kind of centralized things again. So now we went from, hey, I'm on this decentralized network. And now I have this centralized services and that gives them a lot of power.
Right. And really, it takes power from us because it's like, you know, Facebook, they say, if you're not paying for it, you got a problem. Right. So, you know, so Facebook, we give, the content, they don't do that. And then we spread and build a network and they sell the ads to people. Right. And we don't get any of it.
Right? I mean we are the ones that really built Facebook, right? It's all of us together. Well, we don't get it. We don't get a share of that. All the value goes to the equity owners who actually own Facebook stock, own Facebook shares. Right. So if you want to participate, you have to get into one of these companies.
Now, if it's a private company, you can't even get access to it. Right. So, then, that's one part of it. The other part of it is really from a censorship perspective, right. [00:23:00] Is because all these things are now centralized, anybody can censor you. So, you know, you sit around on YouTube and they'll take you down. If you say the wrong thing on Facebook, they'll take you off. And, you know, we've kind of seen the reports on Facebook where they have their special lists. So now they can say, oh, well, if I say something, I can take you down. But if this important person says something, oh, it's fine, we'll leave them because they are accepted.
So why is it that Facebook gets to make those decisions for all, for the whole world, for their users? Right? So that is what the promise of decentralization brings is that we can offer these same services, but with no one country with no one controller. And that is really where, you know, and that's kinda what the revolution that Bitcoin started is that Bitcoin, is a blockchain built on blockchain technology, which is an open ledger.
So Bitcoin is built on the internet and just like the internet is [00:24:00] open. And the beautiful thing is that anybody, again, anybody can participate in it. The only difference is that no one, it can not get centralized because everyone, so you have different parties that actually help to maintain the Bitcoin network.
What I'll say is a lot of times, a lot of people who have Bitcoin, you know, we kind of hear all the price and the hype or, or the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) where these people are saying, hey, it's fucking criminals it's is bad or whatnot. Right. So that's, that's kind of what people get. But what people don't know is that there are two Bitcoins, there is Bitcoin the network, and then there's Bitcoin the asset.
Everyone hears about an asset, but the network has three, is comprised of, a few components. You have the Bitcoin miners. These are the, you know, the Bitcoin miners people have to like get these computers that try to guess some number so that they can actually secure, [00:25:00] the blockchain.
And how the blockchain works is that, at least on the Bitcoin network, specifically, it's about every 10 minutes a block is created and all a block is, is just a list of all the transactions that have happened. And a transaction is really just, well, the block in Bitcoin is, the network, is this a ledger that tracks who owns what, and what they're tracking is really who owns a Bitcoin.
So if I own a Bitcoin, it's just tracking that, you know, you own three Bitcoins and that kind of thing. And when we kind of move that value around. So if I give you a piece of Bitcoin, you give me something is just tracking to say, hey, I know where all the Bitcoin is.
And about every 10 minutes, a new block of all the transactions that happened gets created. And that's really what the miners are really working to secure that because you want to make sure that [00:26:00] nobody, because it's immutable. Once it's written, it cannot be changed.
And what you don't want is someone to be able to sort of come out and because it's open, you don't want someone to start to attack the network. So these miners, the more of them that we have that are out there guessing and decentralized, it helps the network because it just means that nobody can see, you know, nobody can come and take over like 51% of it. So that's what the miner are here to do.
Jennifer Plummer: And this is just things people are doing in their free time. Are the people employed that are mining?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So mining Bitcoin is now almost like everything else. Bitcoin has become sort of big business, right? So when Bitcoin started, you could mine Bitcoin on your laptop or your computer.
And of course, nobody knew about it. It was a few people. Obviously as Bitcoin, as a network, as gold and Bitcoin has grown, you now have actually a lot of public companies. So now you have small people that can mine, but it's kind of hard for you to actually win the reward. Which is actually, so when [00:27:00] every time a block is created, whoever guesses it first, gets a reward.
Jennifer Plummer: You know what this reminds me of? Did you read Ready Player One?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: I didn't read it, but I saw the movie.
Jennifer Plummer: So the premise is right that this tech guy dies, but he has this network of games like this virtual world, and he's left these clues for like a big prize.
And part of the storyline is that individuals can do it, but these big companies are looking, you know, are looking in there so that it can get the rewards so they can control the thing. Sorry. That was interesting.
27:48
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. So, but I think even though you have these big companies today, that are actually mining it, I guess really the good news is that, you know, they kind of compete with each other and I think, the good news is even these big miners really don't even control the network.
So their [00:28:00] job is really to solve the puzzle that the network generates and then really produce a block. Right? You have another set of people who are the users and they run like a node, a Bitcoin node, the software that actually sort of, finalizes the transactions. Well, actually they maintain the record.
Right? So, the Bitcoin miners, what they do is to say, hey, I'm going to solve this problem. And I'm going to now put all these transactions in and attach it to the to the chain. And that's why I think they called it blockchain. So you create a block chain. So think of a blockchain, as you have a chain link and every 10 minutes a new link is added to it, right.
And it's going to get added forever. So you have this record starting from the first block that was mined, into forever. [00:29:00] So the miners generate the blocks that attach it and all the transactions that are in it. The nodes actually validate those transactions and say, hey, these transaction are good.
And they, and they can decide what blocks, what chain to follow because Bitcoin itself, again, it's open. The software is open source. Anybody can say, I'm going to take this software and change it. They'll do whatever and start their own fork and create a fork of the chain. Actually. And this actually happened in 2017, where there was an argument because everyone was saying, hey, Bitcoin is slow.
You know, it can only do this about seven transactions per second. And they were saying, hey, if you look at the white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto wanted it to be a peer to peer payment network. And you can�t make payments globally, if it's just seven transactions per second. So there kind of came an argument that formed [00:30:00] two big camps.
One camp said, hey, let's increase the size of the block so that we can fit more transactions into it. And another group said, hey, we want to make sure that to maintain the decentralization of this network. And that is again for the people that actually run the nodes. We want the, we don't want the blocks too big because if the blocks are too big, then you cannot run a node on a laptop.
So the miners need to have this heavy equipment that can really generate those blocks. And that's what kind of helps us security. The node operators or the users want to be able to run it on a smallest computer as possible. Because again, remember this is going to go on forever and if your blocks are too big, what you get is, I cannot run a node on my laptop because I don't have enough storage for that.
And during that fight all the big companies - this is kind of what would happen in on the internet - is all the big companies, a coin basis of the world said, hey, we want the bigger blocks. The users, the node [00:31:00] operators all said no and the user won. And so at that time that, you know, these individual users who are all over the place were running nodes, actually beat the big guys.
Siara Barnes: Which is almost unheard of nowadays.
I mean, you know, as you were talking about Google, Facebook and Amazon, it's like, they make the rules, you know, the users don't have much power and it's just changed the landscape so much. Yeah.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. And that's really the promise of Bitcoin is that this is decentralized and nobody, you know, you can�t have one company that has that kind of has the power to now just arbitrarily changed things and decide for people or those kinds of things. So that's what we have today is Bitcoin and there's other cryptos, and they're really what we hope people are not going to build applications on top of these blockchains [00:32:00] to replace these influx services that we have.
So, interestingly, one ally that actually Bitcoin has actually is Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter. He's actually working to try to create a decentralized Twitter, because again, today, you can get censored on Twitter, right? Because again, they own the platform and they can decide whoever they want would want to de-platform. So if, we now kind of get these applications that say, hey, I can get Twitter in a decentralized form, then we can just come in and get our users. Another thing to remember that, like you can't actually easily move, right?
So if you decide to leave, if you want to leave Twitter, you don't own your users. Right? You kind of have to try to get them over. And again, that's one of the promises of decentralization and blockchain is that, hey, when these services are built, I own my data. I own my information. I own my [00:33:00] users and I can move and they can come with me.
And really, I guess the holy grail is I own all these things and I can move anywhere I want.
Jennifer Plummer: Okay. So that means that Facebook or Twitter, if it's decentralized, can't use my data for whatever they're the ads or the, whatever what's going on. Is that the advantage?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Correct. So you would, so the, the really it's going to be that you own your data, right?
And you get to decide how they can use it. Um, so what you, and the way, and I'll say how that's kind of playing out a little bit today is isn't, you know, one thing that probably everyone has heard of is NFTs, the Non Fungible Tokens. So Bitcoin is a fungible token. So one Bitcoin is the same as another Bitcoin, right?
So if I have a bit, I can send it to you, you can send it to me, but it hasn't it has a a dollar value to it, right? This is not unique, right? What a NFT [00:34:00] is saying, hey, you know, and what you say, you say, can you guys see some of these pictures, right. Is a digital representation that is on the blockchain saying, hey, I own it.
And I own this, you know, this image on, and this particular thing on the block itself. Tt's almost like you think of a hard drive where, you know, if you, you know, when you have a file on the hard drive, there's a spot on our hard drive where you know it is. And now, as long as you're on, on the network, anybody you know, some people go, you know, you can prove that you own that token, right? No one else owns the token. If anyone wants to use that token, it's yours. No one can use it. Now you can, you can, I can send it to you. I can give it to somebody, but nobody can say, hey, I own it because that's all that, you know, you've authenticated. You can authenticate on a network that you own that. And, and one way, I guess, an analogy into the real world that I heard someone use is sort of like, he kind of [00:35:00] used an adjunct of the Mona Lisa, right? The Mona Lisa, anybody can go take a picture of it. Anybody can paint it. Right. But it's not the real thing.
Right? There's a Mona Lisa that has been authenticated. So even though you have millions of Mona Lisa is all over the world, the one that's authenticated is the most valuable. And whoever owns that, owns the Mona Lisa, everyone else just owns a copy. So that's what, so that's what non fungible tokens mean is, hey, I have, this item is mine, and I can actually prove that it's mine.
And if you want to use it, you have to get my permission to use it. So again, it's, we, you know, I have all this information, the information I own it, and I get to decide who can use it, how they can use it. And some of those kinds of things, and a way to kind of see that today in Bitcoin is that Bitcoin, you hold it.
You know, Bitcoin is a digital asset that you can hold on, you know, in a digital wallet [00:36:00] and any wallet I can hold in any wallet. I can join Coinbase and hold my Bitcoin there. If Bitcoin, if Coinbase doesn't treat me well, I can just stick my Bitcoin for Coinbase and take it to another service. If I say, hey, I don't even want any service.
You know, I don't like any of these services. I don't want it to be centralized. I can actually take the Bitcoin and get my own wallet and putting it where I hold it. It's not on anybody else's service. So I have total control of my Bitcoin. And if I don't like what someone is doing, I get to take my Bitcoin, you know, as they think of basketball and go home, I can take my Bitcoin and go home.
And now holding it myself.
Jennifer Plummer: So is that the equivalent of storing it under your mattress?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yes. This isn't pronounced under their mattress, but it's better. Right. Because it's digital and that's the beautiful thing of it, right? Is that once I hold it. No one else, no one has access to it,
Jennifer Plummer: right? No one can [00:37:00] jump in your window and steal it from under my mattress.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah.
Siara Barnes: That's such an interesting, um, concept where I, you know, I spend as much time as anybody else on social media and a lot of like content creators. They have such a hard time. I don't know if licensing is the best word to use, but it's like, I created this thing. I put it out on the internet and then sort of anybody can go and it's like, strip your name off of it and go use it, monetize it.
And then you really kind of depend on users or the people who follow you to say, Hey, that's not your original work. This person should be credited. And so I think this decentralization will give people who are creating their own things to say, hey, this is mine. You can't take it. You can't use it for whatever you want.
You need my permission. Um, it's also like a big thing in the music industry. You know, some people who these record companies have held onto their [00:38:00] like owning your masters is such a huge thing because you create, you do all this work to create these things, but if somebody else owns it, you know, you can't do anything about it.
So that's an interesting, you know, wave the evolution as you say, the evolution of this, this tech world.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: And I think definitely that path you're actually watching what you guys kind of talked about. Right. Is it kind of, is it kind of describes this again, this centralization problem, right? So today just using your creators example, you have to, you know, you basically, as a creator, you do, you do all the work, but the way the system is built today, you kind of have to, almost go to a centralized party, right. To kind of help build your audience. Right. And then they kind of get to decide what I'm going to give you this. I'm not going to give you that. Right. So, so as I thought, you could go now I start a YouTube channel and I build it up and [00:39:00] I work hard and I get a million users or whatever.
And then one day you say the wrong thing and they turn you off. There's nothing you can do about it. And actually this actually happened last week. There's this guy, Anthony Pompliano. He's a, he's a, he's an investor and a Bitcoin guy. He's actually the guy that, I think it was his video last year that really got me going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
So shout out to Pomp. Um, but you know, he's all, he's really big into financial education and he's kind of started a show. I was like, what do you call it? You know, the best business you're on something like that. And he had a guest on and while he was recording the show and he was live, they turned him off. Just gone. And he got an email saying, oh, you know, you violated our policies and we're going to take you off.
And they sent him an email saying, Hey, and by the way, you cannot create any more channels on YouTube. No reason, nothing. Luckily he has a big following on Twitter. So he goes and puts it on Twitter and four hours later, they finally [00:40:00] bring him back online. They don't tell him why, what actually, you know, like, why did you end up?
They told him, oh, somebody, one of our moderators decided that something that was said on a financial program talking about Bitcoin violated some policy, and he just got turned off. So what, so now we're going to, as platforms to monetize us and these guys can turn us off. The other thing too is also, we depend on them to pay us.
Right. You know, it's I gotta sell my ads. I gotta do. You know? So there's this model again, that where you're selling ads to monetize. If you think about a token world, and really what people can do and you'll see some people doing it now is you can actually now just build your own audience by giving them tokens. So for example, you know, I, one of the, one of the apps I use, uh, for, you know, for crypto trading is called voyage and they own token.
And when you hold that token, they can say, Hey, when you do [00:41:00] something, I'm going to give you a discount. I'm going to give you this or that . As a creator, you can not start doing those kinds of things. So at the very, at the very least, what you can do is when you create, like, if you create that piece of art or you create some content, you can say, Hey, I'm going to sell it to you.
And if, and if, if you sell it in the future, I can, I'm gonna also get some kind of royalty from it. And because its on the blockchain, you're always going to get there's no one can change it because it's actually programmed in the blockchain. Nobody can, nobody can change it. I want to sell this. And every time, you know, and every time it gets resold, I want to get ten percent of it.
So, if you think about it, someone today, someone makes a painting for like maybe, you know, $5,000 and then it goes, and it gets big and everyone's going to make money. But the creator doesn't get to monetize it. As an artist, you can tell, you can say, Hey, I want to create create tokens for my fans and say, Hey, I want to release a song.
And if you owe my token, I'll give you maybe [00:42:00] first access to it or I'll hold this, all the things that you can do to it. So you can actually now have people sort of, you know, kind of have this social movement where you create, where you have your own fans, you have these tokens and you can actually deal, you know, in business, right.
You always want to kind of be, you always want to kind of be direct with your customers. You don't want to kind of go through people, right. Which is what we kind of do now is go into Twitter. We'll go into YouTube. You can now have a direct relationship through your token, with your fans.
Jennifer Plummer: So the referencing system is kind of built in, in the system.
Yeah, that's cool
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So, so that's what we're kind of going for creators. And again, I think that's really, you know, the dream of decentralization of, Hey, we can now start owning things. And just one more thing to kind of point out, or to kind of reference is the internet. When we, you know, internet is made up of many protocols.
So like when, you know, we're now on the, on the web, that's an HTTP HTTPS protocol. And when we send the email is SMTP protocol, [00:43:00] Bitcoin is just a protocol, but on the internet, these companies, again took advantage of these free protocols and built the services and basically got all the value. With these crypto networks, we actually get to own a piece of the network. So I told, I told you, there were two, there are two Bitcoins, there's Bitcoin the network, that's where people are going to build on and, and all the technical part of it. And then there's the asset. And Bitcoin is basically owning the Bitcoin in a piece of Bitcoin is a way for you to actually own a piece of the network.
So as a network grows, anyone that has a piece of Bitcoin that value accrues for the people that own it. So yes, you can build a business on Bitcoin and be okay, but as this network grows, just like this, like as the internet has been growing, you are now basically as an owner. So now you have to kind of almost have an equity stake in the network.
And that again, that's a way for you to say, Hey, I don't, I don't have to bet on this company or bet on [00:44:00] this one. I just think, Hey, let me go bet on Bitcoin and just get a piece of that. And as it grows, the price is going to go up and you'd benefit from, from this, from owning a piece of network.
Siara Barnes: I feel like now I need to go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
And now I'm interested in how, you know, are these mega conglomerates, how they fare in the future as this, you know, becomes more popular. So, you know, will Facebook no longer be the Facebook that we know it as you know.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: And you see them too now trying to sort of get into it. So I don't know if you heard, you know, trust is not what I want to get into crypto.
You know, they wanted to make their own coin. Um, you know, you have PayPal, right? PayPal, you can not buy Bitcoin on PayPal, visa, MasterCard, they're getting into it. So (Siara: Wow). They can see it coming and they have to, they have to basically get, you know, it's like one of those things, you know, the, you know, the train has [00:45:00] left the station and you got to get on, right.
It's not, you know, it's not coming back and Bitcoin where it is today with where it's going, these crypto networks are going to disrupt a lot of these centralized businesses. And just like AWS that we talked about, we have all these new companies that were built and different business models that were created.
These crypto networks are going to do the same because they there's all this that you can now do. And you're going to have new business models and they're going to disrupt a lot of all these old, old businesses and business models. So people, you know, so the smart businesses have to get on board. Right?
And I, you know, the guy that talks about it, you know, some people would say, oh, Bitcoin is a bubble. And I, there's a, there's a guy named Michael Saylor. He's a, you know, he's the CEO of MicroStrategy. And the way in what, the way he describes Bitcoin is it says Bitcoin cannot be a bubble. It's like saying that, electricity is a bubble, [00:46:00] right?
Siara Barnes:
Jennifer Plummer: It's a commodity.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: It just is right. It's a new technology, you know, when, when they invent electricity, they'll, you know, it's not a bubble because it's a new technology that improves your life. It's the same thing as Bitcoin is there's no bubble, it's a network it's technology and people are going to adopt it just because it's better today.
The application that it has is, Hey, I can store my value here and it's better than gold. For thousands of years, if you want it to store your value, you want to buy gold. You don't want to save your money in, in, in dollars or whatever currency you're in, because it's going to get devalued over time.
And, but if you started in gold, you mentioned your purchasing power. That's what Bitcoin is today. That's the base level of Bitcoin is, Hey, I want to store my, I want to store my, my, my savings in Bitcoin. And that's, I'm going to throw my value continues and [00:47:00] people. That's, this is a better form because it's digital and digital is just better because again, digital is always better.
Right. You know, everything that we've had once it goes digital, it's better. And we use it more.
Jennifer Plummer: So what do you recommend people learn more about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Um, again, I'll reference Michael Saylor. Um, I think, uh, Michael Saylor says Bitcoin is hope and he actually owns the, the hope domain. So hope.com.
If you go to hope.com. Um, he has a lot of, um, he has a lot of, uh, kind of material videos and things on there and maybe I'll, you know, I'll plug myself, you know, I, you know, I kind of did some essay writing, um, on just kind of invest in, uh, in, in general and you know, one thing, obviously I'm going to try to go down and understand Bitcoin more and hopefully educate, you know, my friends and family.
So I I'm, I'm now writing a blog on medium. So, and it's ifeanyiezeh.medium.com [00:48:00] and I have, I think so far I have like two articles on, you know, one on crypto in general and another one on Bitcoin specifically.
Jennifer Plummer: We�ll put that in the show notes too, I think you gave us the link. So we'll link that in the show notes.
Siara Barnes: This is so interesting.
Not, not, I mean, I've of course heard of Bitcoin, but I'm like, I don't, I don't need to read into that, but it looks like it's going to change my life in the future. So I need to start educating myself.
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. I think it does need a story of how it impacts the everyday person. I think that's kind of what people need to do to latch on, to kind of get an understanding of what it is.
Cause it kind of was like this ambiguous thing. Like you said, if I like people are mining for it and that's what they like to do in their free time, it's kinda like, well, I don't really want to do that, you know? (Siara: Exactly). But yeah. Kind of relating that story back to how's that going to affect me, you know, I use Facebook or, you know, I, you know, I have, you know, I would like to build equity [00:49:00] or how what's the best way for me to invest for the future.
So that, those, I think that's what I need to know to be able to kind of, relate to what Bitcoin is.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: And, and to that, right. What I would say is how to, you know, people, you know, a lot of times, right in techno technology, you know, a lot of times people in technology can't quite explain things to people, right.
Or like you're talking about now, just how do I relate it to you? Right. (Jenni: Yeah). And again, I kind of go back again to, you know, to Michael Saylor or Anthony Pompliano because they tried to really explain those things. And the one, the one way that, that, uh, that Michael Saylor explains Bitcoin, is he say, Bitcoin is a bank, is a bank account, right?
Where you save, you know, you, you work hard, you want to save your money. Right. And, and, and really you're saving your money for, for future. Right. And what you don't, you know? So, so the first thing [00:50:00] to start is to say, Hey, I can, you know, how does it relate to everyday people don't spend all your, first of all, you know, you make a dollar, don't spend the whole dollar.
Definitely don't go spend a $1.10, right. Um, you know, they're ha you have to have some sort of, you know, you have to actually save something. And this actually one article, you know, so, you know, I'm going to talk about it. Actually. This is an article I want to write that kind of talks about the savings is if you actually, if you save 10% right, of your money, pre tax, And this is, you know, and this is where percentages are a nice, because it doesn't matter how much you make, but for every dollar that you make, you save 10% of it for 30 years and just kind of put in the market. You know? So the market over my last 30 years has kind of done around 12% of the end binder.
Had you just, you know, so 30 years ago you save 10% of everything that you made 30 years later, you would actually [00:51:00] have about 94% of all the money that you made. You made you have about 94% of it by just by saving 10%, if you then said, okay, after, you know, obviously we all got to pay taxes, right? And so, you know, we earned one thing, we got to pay a tax, we got to pay the tax man.
So, so, so you want to invest first of all, Hey, invest some pre-tax that's 10% when you get your after tax, when you get, when you know, when you can get your check, take 5% of that. And again, put it again, the same investment, just put it there 12% you would end up with about 120%. Of all the ones that you worked for those past 30 years.
Siara Barnes: And you didn't tell me this.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: I just, you know, it's one of those things I just learned, you know, I think I, I heard someone talking about and the, we actually came up, you know, look at this was, I heard, I heard someone talk about, Hey, you know, if you make, if you make $10,000 a month for 50 years, you will have $6 million. And I was like, wow, that doesn't [00:52:00] seem like a lot.
You know, in my head I was like 10,000 a month, 6 million. Isn't like a lot. And I did the math. I was like, oh, that's it. That's when I then said, let me just do the math. And I'm like, wow, this is gonna blew my mind. So the first thing is to say, I have to save money. Right. So, so that's number one. And once, you know, I cannot spend my whole dollar.
I have to, I have to save money. The question then becomes, where do I save it? Right. So, and this is where now it comes into just the regular person. You can, you know, Bitcoin again, the Bitcoin network is a bank where you put, where you put your, you put your savings. Bitcoin, the assets is property, and actually it's actually defined by as property, but IRS.
Um, so, so, so now real estate is property. There's all kinds of property, but Bitcoin is the only property that is easily accessible by anyone. The other [00:53:00] thing that Bitcoin does is Bitcoin is, is the only property that you can hold yourself and nobody can take it from you. So think of your, you know, think of your cash.
If I give you $1, now you own it. You can, if you go hide it, I can find it right the same. Now, again, like you said, someone can break in your house and take your cash, but the bad part about the cash or the gold is that, you know, well in the cash, he's going to lose value over time, right? That's that's just how the system works.
If, you know, if you go look at, you know, what a dog will buy you, you know, you know, back in the seventies, you could have bought a Mercedes-Benz for like $5,000, right? Today you spend a hundred thousand, you know, the value of your money is going this way. If you had invested in the S and P 500, you see that the chart goes that way.
So he's going up. So all you go are, you want to go buy gold? Now what Bitcoin does is that Bitcoin, anybody can buy a Bitcoin. I can now decide, I want to custody of myself where I'm holding it [00:54:00] myself. If I wanted to buy stocks, I have to hold it in the brokerage, right? Or some way, some centralized place.
And with Bitcoin, you can buy as little as 50 cents a Bitcoin. So there's an app called strike that allows you to buy 50 cents of Bitcoin. And a lot of these apps will allow you to buy $10 of Bitcoin. So it's, it really is accessible to anybody. So, this is a way for you to actually get property, with your money. And if you, if you don't, you can leave it in a centralized place.
But if you say, Hey, you know, I don't want anyone to have access to this. I want to keep this to myself. You can hold it, you can custody it yourself, and nobody can take it from you. You know? And when you consider yourself, you kind of have this, you know, that's where the technical, the technical part comes, that they, the seed phrase that you kind of have to remember.
As long as you remember that seed phrase, you have that Bitcoin, I can, I can get up today, go to London, you know, and I thought, I remember I've seed phrase, I can have access to my money. Like if I had a bunch of gold, [00:55:00] (can write that with you) you can't take it with you. You know, you get to the airport, someone can take it from you, right.
But if you have that seed phrase your head, nobody can take it from you just need an internet access to get it. And that's in a, you hold this property and this property over the past 10 years has grown at approximately 200% a year. Obviously, it's probably not going to do it going forward, but it's still growing.
But even if it grows at again, I give you example of 12%. That's the stock market. And just today, Bitcoin, the adoption of Bitcoin is like the fastest growing technology ever. So the internet in the 1990s was growing at 65%. Today, Bitcoin is growing at 113%. That's almost doubling it.
Jennifer Plummer: Can you say that again? Sorry. I missed the first time
Ifeanyi Ezeh: around 1995, the internet was growing at 65% annually. [00:56:00] That's a growth rate. And I don't remember now. I don't remember exactly how many users it had that. So today the Bitcoin or crypto market is growing at 112%. So, and we have 150, we had, there's 150 million people. So you're looking at that growth rate.
The adoption is going to be 2 billion people around by 20 24, 20 25. And even if the growth rate drops to half you looking at two, 3 billion people by 2030. So, so if, if that, again, I thought that that adoption continues. If you hold this property, just like had you bought, you know, again, we kind of relate it back to boots on the stand, you know, had you bought Amazon and kind of held it as Amazon grew, all that value got accrued to the people that own Amazon stock.
Siara Barnes: I wouldn't even be talking to you right now, working at pros. If I [00:57:00] would have bought some stock and Amazon and be like, what you want me to work? No.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So, so that's it right? Is, Hey, make a bet on, on this network, on the adoption and own a piece of the technology, of the network. And you can save at anybody. Anything, again, anybody can say it doesn't matter.
You know, if you, you know, your minimum wage, you make a million dollars, just get a percent because you can buy 50 cents. So that's the way for you to actually get some property that nobody can take from you. So, so that's what I was thinking. I would relate it to, you know, just to everyday regular people and to look at it and, and, and also to kind of look at it from a, if you think about it, you know, this is supposed to be a cultural show and just talking about, you know, black
Siara Barnes: you're probably about the jump, right. What I was going to say.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: So there's a guy named Isaiah Jackson. I think he wrote a book called Bitcoin for black people. And, [00:58:00] you know, again, if you, if you've got to go back and think just historically, where we haven't had access to a lot of things, and this is another thing that, that Bitcoin offers is anybody can buy Bitcoin. Right? At any amount. Globally.
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. And that's what I was gonna say is kind of like, this is a new thing and new things are kind of hard to understand. It's got a technology component, which also gives people apprehension. But at the rate it's growing, you know, based on what you're saying, it definitely behooves everyone to really, um, study it, learn it because this sounds like a new opportunity.
Uh, so yeah, I know I'm going to do some more.
Siara Barnes: I mean, it's so you talk about access and how [00:59:00] one, well, let's talk about access first because you have in the black culture. There hasn't been much generational wealth passed down, right? So we're always starting from scratch, you know, from scratch or even behind most of the time, you know,
And it's, uh, it is scary talking about technology and it always seems like, unfortunately we are the last to [01:00:00] know, you know, we, we don't get on the train until it's almost run off the track and then we're still, again, trying to catch up. Right. And so I think we need more black people talking about this.
I'm very interested in that book because I want to buy it for myself and all of my friends and family. It's having access to the information, taking the time to study and really learn
Jennifer Plummer: So while we're on this topic, let's, let's kind of segway into, um, You know, what should companies, I think people talk a lot about biases and that, [01:01:00] you know, we're getting a lot of acknowledgement now that, you know, everybody doesn't have the same advantage.
People have privilege, which is a great conversation, but, you know, let's take it into kind of what are the actions, you know, what are, Ifeanyi, what are some of the things you think companies should be doing to, um, bring more black people into technology, and kind of have some equity into, you know, who's working for them.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. So again, I think at the end of the day, right, it comes down to opportunity, right? There is, you know, intelligence is everywhere, right. You know, I was, I grew up in Nigeria and never touched a computer. And I am here today. Just blessed right. And fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply for an internship that was specifically for, you know, for, for, [01:02:00] for HBCU�s, that's how I got to NASA.
And that was kind of the start of, you know, of the journey that led me to where I am today. So it comes, it says it's opportunity, right? And when we talk about changes and what technology does, our world, technology changes our world, it's and when it changes the world there's wealth that gets created.
Right? So think of electricity, think of cars, think of oil, all those things, but who had, you know, who actually had that capital. Right. You know, we think of the history of this country, you know, we couldn't, you know, we start off as slaves we could have in it, then, you know, we got our freedoms. You know, there was reconstruction and then you know, that, you know, they didn't like that.
So, you know, Jim Crow laws came in right, and along the way we just never had that access. And what the internet did right. Was the internet was [01:03:00] a new paradigm that, that allowed again for people to, to, we generate a lot of value, a lot of wealth and who got that wealth. Right. It was really, again, we talked about how we got accrued to equity owners, and I think technology did a great job because a lot of people got stock options.
Right? If you worked at Amazon, you worked at Google, you got stock options and people got rich, but not as many of us. And that was the problem, right? Is that there was an opportunity. But the but the barriers to entry, right? We're a little high, right? You have to know computer science, you have to know programming, you know, you have to have money to buy a computer.
Right. You know, cost has come down a lot. But when he started, we didn't have all this, you know, who knew these things. Right. So, so it comes to access. So what can companies do? Companies just have to, you know, make sure that you, you have, you provide access to people, um, [01:04:00] or really have that outreach, you know, to people.
And it's not just, you know, let's not just talk about it, let's be about it. And how are you going to be about it is very simple. Uh, Charlie Munger has a saying that says, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. So, you know, you know, last year, a lot of people talking about, oh, you know, we need to reach out.
We didn't know, you know, there's all these, you know, everybody now has, you know, these programs right, but for it to be effective, we have to tie it to compensation. We have to tie it to executives. So if you, so that's why, because, because if we want people to, again, participate, we, if I, if I'm not in the room, I can't participate.
Right. You know, you can't be like, Hey, I'm gonna close the door and lock it. You're outside. And you go, well, you know, you missed right. All, always your fault. So the way to get us in is to say our executives, if you, you know, [01:05:00] set goals, you know, I want to have 10%, you know, I want to have 10% of my engineers should be black.
Well, who's engineering manager, who's a hiring manager all the way up tied incentives to say, Hey, this is the goal. You agree to it. Yeah. All right, go do what you have to do to get to that goal. And if you don't make it, you're going to lose money. Right. Because without that people can�t talk. And then when you talk, what did they say?
It's like, well, you know, it doesn't have the pipeline. I just can't find it right. That you're going to have all sorts of excuses, but once you tie it to that, and once you actually put those things and make sure that people, that there's an incentive for them to do it, you know, everybody wants to make more money.
Right. And nobody wants to lose money. So, so that's what I would say. And you can kind of see this today with, um, you know, again, some companies are doing that, you know, I'm not a big investment bank fan, but, uh, but last year, Goldman Sachs actually did this. Goldman Sachs said, Hey, if [01:06:00] you're going to, you know, if I'm going to be someone that's going to lead your IPO, you must have at least one female on your board.
Jennifer Plummer: Oh, that's right. Yeah. I remember that.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. And I think in August or July, they opted to, two. Now I'm sure Goldman Sachs, you know, the other banks. Right. So Goldman Sachs paid up, you know, you know, Goldman Sachs actually paid a price. I'm sure they paid a price for taking that stand and saying, I'm going to give up business unless you have this.
And of course, again, not all of them follow, but actually just last month, the NASDAQ actually got a rule passed and actually got it passed by the SEC to say, Hey, if you're going to list on the NASDAQ, you have to have at least one, one minority or a woman right on the board. So that's, that's all we need. We just need more companies to take stance and say
Siara Barnes:, and get in the game
Ifeanyi Ezeh, [01:07:00] this is what we want.
And if we don't, you know, let's set the goals. And if they do, if we don't make the goals, you're going to feel it in your pocket. Yes. Because without that, we can talk, we can have programs, but if it gets hard,
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just way easier for them to be like, well, it just kind of didn't happen.
So we'll try again next year, you know, sort of thing.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: And that's human nature, right. So it's not right. It's human nature. Right. It's, it's, we're comfortable with, with what we know we're comfortable with people that we know. Right. You know, if you think about it, you know, this program you're starting, you know, you kind of reached out to me because you knew me.
Right. So, you know, we, you know, and that's how, you know, companies that people right. Company is made of people. And if a lot of people that are active boards are white and [01:08:00] male, and that's kind of who to run around, that's, what's comfortable for them. Right. And then it's given nature. So it's just, we, you know, you kind of have to have those incentives that forces them to get out of that, to expand that network.
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. Yeah. Cause yeah. Cause, and that's what I, we had like a, a leadership development program. Like it was a while ago. It was before I was a manager and there was a group of us that kind of put on, um, an internal event for people. And I don't know what to use the word click, but that became my group.
Right. So outside of the people that I usually work with, if I had a question or if I wanted to bounce ideas off someone, or if I wanted to start something new, like those would be the go-to people. And so I could see how that naturally goes. You know, when she gets to executive level, it's like, well, I'm still talking to these people that I kind of came up with, but we, I think you do need to be intentional and just kind of say, [01:09:00] you know, I need fresh, I need fresh ideas. I need fresh people. You know, let's, let's mix it up because. Ultimately, I think you'll end up with a better product or results if you do that. You know, have people, you know, but also meet new people. So, um, which, you know, has always, I think is, is, is a good mix and that diversity, right of thought or whatever, not just people will end up with better results.
Siara Barnes: It's so funny. We were listening. We just recently had to go through, some compliance training here at pros. It was unconscious bias. I believe there was one for diversity and inclusion and then sexual harassment. And I remember in one of the diversity and inclusion courses, the instructor was saying that diversity is easy.
It's the inclusion part that is the most difficult, because you can have all of these diverse people, but who are you bringing to the table with you? Who, you know, who are you [01:10:00] listening to? Who are you giving the chance to actually give their opinion and to be able to speak up and create those spaces, um, for them.
So, I took that one and I'm like, I have to, like you said, you have your click of people and it's not intentional. You know, it's not that you're trying to exclude anyone, but now you have to be more conscious of saying, I need to include more people. I need more people in the room and people who may not be speaking up often, everyone has a perspective.
It's just creating that space to allow them to be able to do their thing.
Jennifer Plummer: All right. I think, this has been fan�, I've learned so much. I wish we could talk longer, but, uh, we're going to put your recommendations in our show notes so that, um, people can continue the conversation and continue to learn about the things we talked today. But we like to wrap up with a heat check.
You've already given us lots of references. Is there anything else [01:11:00] specifically you want to call out in a heat check is something you're excited about or something you want people to read or watch or
Ifeanyi Ezeh: yeah, I mean, I think again, I think that, you know, really that I think what I'm excited about, uh, you know, again today, you know, you could probably tell is really, is really, I'm excited about Bitcoin.
I'm excited about just crypto in general and the possibilities. Right. Um, and I think, you know, my heat check would be, everybody needs to learn about Bitcoin. Um, I think that it's like, like I said, it's, this is, this is the internet of money, right.
In 1992, someone told you, Hey, get on the internet. Right. And you said, no, you know, in, you know, today you don't have a choice. Right. Um, so I think it's the same thing is, [01:12:00] you know, you have to get on board the Bitcoin train because it's the, it's the internet of value. Um, and that's sort of the, in the crypto world, you know, you know, you have what you call the Bitcoin maximalists and then you have the crypto guys, you know, the Bitcoin maximalists, you know, they don't like anybody else.
Everything's about Bitcoin. Um, so, but yeah, And I, you know, I guess I'm not, I'm not, I'm not super maximalist. Um, at least from, from what, you know, again, as I'm, I'm still learning, but what I believe is that Bitcoin is, is going to be, you know, if you ask me today, what crypto is going to be around 10, 20 years from now, all I can say is Bitcoin. I cannot, I can't speak for anything else because I don't know.
And the reason is just that to me, Bitcoin is digital [01:13:00] gold, is money. Um, and Bitcoin doesn't, you know, people go, oh, Bitcoin is slow. Bitcoin is this, they coin is that, but Bitcoin doesn't, you know, money doesn't need to change. Money is, right. I don't, and, and I don't want it to, right. I don't want my goal is, you know, if I had gold, I don't have tomorrow is platinum and tomorrow, right?
So at the end of the day, Bitcoin is code, code has bugs. So I want to be careful, you don't want to make sure that changes. So that'd be my, heat check is if you want to learn about it, then do learn about it, but think of it as, Hey, I'm buying property and I'm gonna come back to do Michael Saylor again, because he, you know, he is very insightful, you know, he goes, you know, so there's, uh, so, so Bitcoin, there's always, there's only going to be ever 21 million Bitcoin ever.
Um, [01:14:00] that's in the code, um, and it's not going to change. So he says, this is like certain, it's almost like, you know, gravity, right. Bitcoin is going to be only 21 million ever. Um, and he goes, this is like Manhattan. In the 1800�s, you have cyber Manhattan and you have a chance to buy a block, a piece of property.
And he said, had you bought Manhattan in 1800, you bought a block, when would have been the best time to sell it? Never just tell them. Right. You know, Siara, you talk about generational wealth. That's how generational wealth is built. Yeah, because you buy property, you buy assets and you hold them. And the one thing that I, you know, again, you know, when, uh, we, you know, as black people that we don't do is really building that wealth.
And how do you build the wealth? You build wealth by buying assets, not [01:15:00] selling them and burn against them when you need money. Right. That's right. You don't sell it. So it's going to go, you know, Bitcoin is crazy. It can go to a hundred thousand.
It can go down to 10,000. Don't worry about it that is really the, that's the good, that's the next frontier in technology, you know, for us.
Right. You know, we talked about the arc, you know, from the, the, the server as a data centers today, software as a service, the next evolution is really going to be that we're going to [01:16:00] the world�s going to digitize and is going to be decentralized, or we hope what we're going to get. But if that works out where we have a decentralized world, I think is better for everybody.
And I think that where we are today, there's opportunity for everybody. So again, just try and learn about it. And if you want to do something again, you know, just like the internet, there's many ways to have gotten into the internet. Right? You could, you could have been a programmer, could have been in marketing.
Right. You know, there's so many ways, so it was the same thing for Bitcoin. Right. You know, you know, you can, you want to be a developer on, you know, on that platform, you know, do you want to just, you know, make content about it? You know, all those kinds of things is really, you know, get yourself educated.
But, but the key thing, you know, for, you know, relevant to us, black people is to just get up, you know, go get it, you know, this is, this is cyber Manhattan, [01:17:00] pier block, hold on. I don't know. We can get a block at this price
grabbed, you know, go grab that piece. And definitely what I want to shout out maybe is, you know, like I told you, you can buy Bitcoin at, you know, you can buy 50 cents worth of Bitcoin and the place you can do that is, is a company called Strike, I think it's an awesome company. Um, it's been run by a young guy, you know, I think he's like 28 years old.
Um, but you know, I don't know if you heard about Bitcoin is now a legal tender in, in El Salvador and it was, and Strike actually was, you know, that, uh, Jack Mallers is the founder is a founder CEO strike. You know, I think he helped educate, you know, the president of, of, um, of El Salvador on really some of the benefits.
And actually today, El Salvador has a wallet, has a big one while they call it Shiva [01:18:00] and 3 million, you know, so 3 million of their citizens actually now using it, which is more than all the people that have bank accounts in El Salvador in, in less than in about, it's been less than two months that they released this wallet.
Oh, wow. They have more people that have all of a sudden have access to banks. Then all the banks combined, wow. Today you can send money to El Salvador. If you use strike over Bitcoin for less than a penny versus it used Western union, how much? So, so I, so I really admire Jack Mallers. I like what he's doing.
He really wants, you know, he's really trying to, again, to really use, and this is an example of an application that's getting built on top of Bitcoin to be able to transfer money, and really lower the barriers for people to actually give it, to save money and to be able to actually now, when someone sends them money [01:19:00] to keep most of it, versus when you send someone money, Western union they take a cut the bank takes a cut and all those things happen, you know?
So, so that's, you know, that's definitely, um, Strike is, is one company that's doing great things. Even, you know, like two weeks ago also Twitter released the tipping function. On Twitter, if you have an iPhone. Yeah. So if you're on Twitter, if you have an iPhone, you can actually get tips. You can actually get, you know, people can actually give you money over Twitter.
And again, that's been enabled by Strike. Oh yeah. So you can send someone a dollar on Twitter. If the, again, I have an Android phone, so that's what is coming from us at this time into Android. So, so that's my, uh, that's my hot date.
Jennifer Plummer: That's awesome. I'm going to go next because mine is kind of lame today. Cause I didn't, I didn't find anything I connected with since our last episode
Siara Barnes: You always say yours is lame.
Jennifer Plummer: I just want to say how much I [01:20:00] love my apple pencil.
I'm definitely a note taker. And like when I was in school, I had like color coded notes and highlighters and you know, reasons for everything. And. You just, can't go into a meeting with like four pins in a professional world with me. Why don't you do this? The way I take my notes. Um, also like I was having notebooks and notebooks and stuff and just kind of organizing.
And so I got this apple pencil maybe two, three months ago and I was like, it's a hundred dollars. Let's see how it goes. And yeah, I do not regret it. I don't want to go back to notebooks and paper. I just, I just love it. I'm still trying to see, like I've been using, um, I've been using a one note because that way I can sync it directly to work and I don't have to worry about sending it cause I'm, I'm taking the notes on my [01:21:00] iPad, which really isn't on the network, but that way I can sync it.
So. That's what I'm doing now. I don't know if that's what I'm going to end up, but, um, just being able to write down things, it helps, you know, as you get older, it gets harder to lock things in the brain. So if I don't take notes in meetings, then like 30 minutes later, I'm like, I don't remember. So I have to take notes.
Um, so this is just helping me get there and be more efficient. So that's when
Siara Barnes: Maybe I need to invest in an apple pencil.
Jennifer Plummer: I love it. And then my, my daughter got one and of course her generation, she had to get like, you can get all kinds of tastings and colors and like end-points and nubs. And she was on like searching the internet for hours on how to like customize her apple pencil. Um, but, um, I'm, I'm too old for that. I just liked the pencil.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. It's that's, you know, that's one thing that I I've [01:22:00] tried. I just, haven't been able to do take notes.
Siara Barnes: So you have a good memory,
Ifeanyi Ezeh: you know, it's not as good as it used to be. And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's difficult. It's definitely one of the challenges I have is just trying to keep track of, you know, what's going on, especially in like in my role now where there's so many things going on and just trying to keep track of that, you know, I've tried, you know, to try to take notes, try and write things down.
But I is just something that I haven't been able to do. So, but definitely I had a boss that he took those meticulously and, you know, he would always take notes and it could always refer back to them. Yeah. I'm always
Jennifer Plummer: I�m always impressed by people where we'll have kind of like a, not a high stakes meeting, but basically a meeting where a bunch of people from different departments will be in.
So you definitely want to send out the notes to make sure everything was captured. And like within [01:23:00] 15 minutes they send out the notes. How did you take her? Like, Ooh, that was a good point. Or like illegible stuff that later it takes me a lot of, kind of like
Siara Barnes: What was I trying to tell myself here?
Jennifer Plummer: Yeah. So I'm always impressed with people that they can take really good notes.
My notes are good for me, but they're definitely not in a state that I could just hand on to someone and be like, here, this is, this is what happened in the meeting. I have to massage them for other people.
Siara Barnes: All right. Well, I'm going to move into my heat check. Yeah. What you got going on this time? Another book this week.
So, um, this is a book called Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones. She's a fellow Nigerian also. Um, I've
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Go Nigeria.
Siara Barnes: I first heard about Luvvie maybe a year and a half ago. Um, she came up again as I was scrolling social [01:24:00] media. And as I started looking at more of her things, you know, she had done a Ted talk.
She always has like really good advice and things like that. And so actually I won this book that she recently released, I think earlier this year, and I was thinking about my, he checked today and I was like, okay, what can I, what can I do? I scoured the internet. I couldn't find anything. And I was like, let me talk about professional troublemaker.
And I think it's called the fear fighter manual. And she talks about, you know, basically how she overcame her fears. She wrote her Ted talk speech, like literally on the plane ride on the way to the things she tried to the decline it three times and they kept coming back at her, um, with all these different ways to get her, to do her Ted talk.
And so I kind of think of us launching this podcast and the conversations that we're having. We are being professional troublemakers by having hard conversations, challenging leaders, on how to be more intentional about [01:25:00] diversity and inclusion. So I wanted to include this in my heat check today, and it also reminds me of a quote from.
John Lewis, who was a US house representative and an activist and his famous quote of never be afraid to make some noise and getting good trouble necessary trouble. So that's why he checked for today. That's all.
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Yeah. Yeah. Good. You know, good trouble is good. I think, you know, I, I definitely make trouble. I'm not sure if it's good trouble, but, um, so, but I don't think that they haven't fired me yet. So I guess, uh, I guess I haven't raised it to a professional.
Jennifer Plummer: It was kinda like, I, you know, I like to raise my voice or step on a soap box every now and then, and I think people appreciate it and understand that, you know, it's from a place of continuous improvement. So I think that's good. Well, Ifeanyi, thank you [01:26:00] so much. Uh, really enjoyed having you today. Um, you know, our, you started following year, um, on Twitter and stuff. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the stuff you're posting on medium and growing that, and to our listeners. Thank you for joining us.
Uh, go out there and learn about Bitcoin. Go out there, get yourself an AWS account, play around, see what you can do. Start a business, gets some property, get some digital gold,
Siara Barnes: and we hope that you continue this conversation. Educate yourself on the cryptocurrency on Bitcoin. Um, yeah, just continue this conversation because it was a great one. I know I'm definitely going to do some homework,
Ifeanyi Ezeh: Good seeing you again, Jenny, thanks for having me on and nice to meet you Siara. Really appreciate it, had a lot of fun.
Siara Barnes: Until next time.[01:27:00]