Digital Money Demystified: Exploring Blockchain's Impact for Student Athletes with Professor Tonya Evans

In this episode of the African Americans in Sport Podclass, we welcome legal scholar, IP expert, and blockchain educator Professor Tonya M. Evans—a Penn State Dickinson Law professor and author of Digital Money Demystified: Go from Cash to Crypto Safely, Legally, and Confidently.

From her roots as a tennis-playing undergrad at Northwestern to serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Howard Law Journal, Professor Evans walks us through her journey as a student-athlete and HBCU alum turned crypto legal powerhouse. We explore:

💡 The myths and facts about crypto 📱 How Black folks are already using blockchain—often unknowingly 🏛️ The legal implications of digital assets 🧠 Why professionals and student-athletes must be crypto-literate 🚀 The future of finance, FedNow, and the global currency shift

This episode is not just a conversation—it's a course in how to be financially fearless and digitally prepared. Whether you’re crypto-curious or crypto-skeptical, this is the one episode you don’t want to miss.

Note this episode is not intended to provide financial advice or guidance. 

Transcript

What's good, everyone? Welcome to the African Americans in Sport podcast, a unique podcasting format where each episode is a lesson and each season is a semester where we detail the diverse experiences of African Americans in sport. Without further ado, I want to introduce you all to Professor Tanya Evans, who is a dynamic legal scholar and educator Talking about giving people their flowers and their kudos, Professor Evans is the IP expert on blockchain technology and an intellectual property. And so you all may not realize this or recognize this, but it is a real treat to have her come here today and share her time. And so she's a full professor. of law at the penn state dickinson law school and we are here to discuss her new book digital money demystify go from cash to crypto safely legally and confidently And so I'm going to have her begin just telling a little bit of her hero's journey, her autobiography. And in another show, you mentioned that you recently celebrate your 25th anniversary from the law school at Howard University. And I was wondering if you could start off by just telling us a little bit about your experience as someone who graduated from a historically black college and what role that plays in your work today. Well, Dr. Clark, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I'm really, really grateful. Grateful for your support and Continue to lift me and my work up and it takes a village to raise an academic. And so we do not do this in isolation or alone, or at least we shouldn't. So I love that, that we have connected and we continue to connect. First of all, my parents both went to Howard undergrad, so I was a bison baby. I was technically born in DC and when my parents graduated, my father Attended Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. My mom, Temple Law School in Philadelphia. So I was born in the district, raised in Philadelphia, and the You know, it was our always just just baked in the experience at an HBCU is unmatched and cannot be replaced. And so even though I went to a PWI undergrad, I went to Northwestern undergrad. When I had the opportunity to go to Howard's, Howard University School of Law and serve as the editor-in-chief of the Law Journal, that Experience is transformative. I'm still connected not only to my classmates and mentioned our twenty-five year, our 25th year reunion that I just celebrated last fall in the district. We all it's like time stood still in some sense. And the nurturing that I received having my professors now be my colleagues and my friends and And continue to be my mentors and they continue to ask me to call them by their first name and I refuse because, you know. They're Professor Worthy, Professor now Dean Crooms, and the fact that I can call them by name, I honestly can't remember the name of one single professor at Northwestern. I had a great education, I had a great time, but I can remember virtually every professor because I continue to have just an unmatched connection. To Howard Law School and they required us to exceed in every way. Acquired excellence is probably the toughest, even tougher than some of my My coaches, when I was playing on the tennis tour and playing on scholarship at Northwestern, they're tough. And that's because it was the love that ensured that I was going to be successful. So I can't say enough good things about HBCUs. Definitely HBCU may. It was interesting. When I was getting my doctorate, I hit up my mentor. Because you know, when you go to black college, you can call your mentor years after you graduated. It's nothing, right? So I hit up Dr. Webb. I was like, Dr. Webb, when I get my PhD, can I call you by your first name? And so he was like, Mr. Clark, because ever since I was a freshman, I hadn't got my degree. It was always Mr. and Mrs. Every student in class, Mr. Clark, even after you get your doctorate, you may still call me Dr. Webb. So my, well, you may still, well, I'm going to say it that way. I love that. He said it exactly that way. But what was interesting was it was the same display of respect that you got even though your professors want you to call them by their first name. Because he called me Mr. Clark. And now anytime we're talking to folks, it's Dr. Clark. He don't call me Langston. The weird way that he is elevating the way that they want you to call them by their first name, we're peers now, is elevating you to their status. But he just does it in the opposite way. As the Lutton experience that happens at Black colleges, I think that people don't always, always get that in other places. And, you know, you mentioned Northwestern and being on the tennis team. And so, Are there any ways that you see your time as an athlete influencing the work that you do now as the preeminent crypto legal scholar? Well, that's a fascinating way to phrase it and in thinking about it, the competitive edge of having an advantage. In fact, my, my company is named Advantage Evans. It is a nod certainly to tennis, but the idea of having an advantage and Seeing things before other people see them. Doing the work that puts you in a position so that you have options. Making informed choices. The practice and the repetition that is required for excellence. Certainly that plays itself out in the academic realm, I should say. And when, you know, when I speak from my experience, Entering into uncharted territory where we are writing the laws. It's like building the plane while we're flying it. So the idea of wanting to stay at the head of the curve. The idea of the discipline that's required to put in those 10,000 plus hours to become a quote unquote expert. And particularly in an area that changes so rapidly. So I teach blockchain, cryptocurrency, and law at my law school. You mentioned Penn State Dickinson Law. But I also at my previous law school, when I was an associate dean, created an online certificate program to give people a competitive edge, a competitive advantage in their respective profession. And so many times people talk about crypto from the perspective of investment, and I am an investor, I don't invest for other people, and we can get into that later, but the idea of Leading into excellence to give yourself options and choices is something that I learned as an elite athlete that certainly Carry over carried over into my academic acumen and certainly in just the bravery that's required. To be out on the front lines of something that most people don't understand and are kind of stuck in their misperception based on misinformation or just not having the exposure. So that requires a certain level of not only Commitment, but also the flexibility to meet people where they are. All of those things kind of pivot on a dime and all of that plays itself into kind of building an expertise in uncharted territory. I don't want to cause any LinkedIn beef or anything like that, okay? So I had another guest on my show, Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, and she wrote this book called Fool Me Once About Fraud. And Dr. Pope and I had this little debate on the episode about cryptocurrency. She's, she's crypto skeptic. Right. Right. And so when you talk about people not having a full understanding of I'm like, this conversation we're having today is important for a number of reasons because there are crypto scams out there, right? But it's not. Those are the things that oftentimes are at the peak of the narrative of what's happening with cryptocurrency. I remember I saw that movie, Dote, and that's the first time I heard of Bitcoin. So my mind thought of Bitcoin as being connected to drug trade. Right. And so I'm doing this episode for Dr. Pope. Okay. Cause I'm trying to open up her eyes to some opportunities. And so some more added context is, is that this conversation is important because Bitcoin is having, it's having event and. A lot of people don't know what that is. They've never heard of it. And they don't know how Bitcoin is a store of value or why those things are important. And then we have FedNow happening, right? And people don't know what that is. And what that means and what implications that has for our money as American citizens. And then I also think about, you know, the, what is, I may have to turn one, but the globe, is it a global exchange currency or? The global reserve. The global reserve currency. Thank you. And so, you know, you have China, Russia, South Africa, and I think it was Brazil and some other countries are like developing a new reserve currency that they're going to be using. And all of these things matter in terms of what's happening with China. What I think is the entire concept or way we think about money in some ways is changing and so that's why this conversation is important. Mm hmm. It's it's really important because and I think particularly for people of color in general, black people in particular, there are these inflection points Where there are opportunities to begin to address the widening wealth gap because and I'm a Gen Xer when I think of and my parents got blessed and did the best they could. They're extraordinary and I'm extraordinary. So we can't take anything away from that experience, but I've learned more in the last seven or eight years as I've been studying and educating folks in this space about Money, about value, about investment, about the way that the differences and distinctions between a high income earner versus a wealthy individual. The nature of capital assets, the nature of investing my time and my talent and my treasure in assets that are not going to return to my house void. They're going to be out in the world working harder than I am. And when I think of traditional assets of buildings and land, stocks and bonds, mutual funds, businesses, right? And then not even just a solo business, but when you're hiring people Who exchange their time for money so I don't have to. When I think about intellectual property and also crypto assets, which are taxed as capital assets, one, the fact that they're taxed means they are recognized as A legitimate asset in the United States. So we could just stop with the, it's illegal, it's drug money, blah, blah, blah. And in fact, that's the biggest myth that it's only, um, Criminal related scam, related myths about only a fad or only a scam. And when people say crypto is a scam, They're literally talking about an entire economy of over 40,000, 50,000 different types of coins and tokens. Without any appreciation or ability to distinguish between Bitcoin or ETH or Doge or a stable coin or a central bank digital currency or a digital dollar, and you mentioned FedNow, the United States is on track to have its own version. Of a digital dollar. It's expensive and dirty to continue to create coins and, and, and paper. In order to represent value based on the full faith and credit of the government. Yeah. Because, you know, people ask me what's Bitcoin or crypto backed by. And it's like you have willing buyers and willing sellers. You have people who are buying into this idea of trust and community in the same way that we think about the dollar. The dollar has not been on the gold Um, standard since 1971. Our dollar is, is backed by the full faith and credit of our government. And we've witnessed two credit downgrades. Within a very short period of time, the last one was last year. We've seen regional bank failures and continuing, we continue to hear of nothing to see here. We're going to print more money. Everything's going to be fine. Just keep going. Keep consuming. Keep being distracted. And don't worry your pretty little head about what it means to move with power and freedom when you have an alternative. I'm not throwing any dollars away. It is currently the Global Reserve, but as you mentioned, there are countries around the world who no longer trust us. Because of the fact that we keep coming up against a debt crisis. We just kicked the can down the road to March recently. We're going to keep doing this in an election cycle. Where countries around the world are losing faith in our whole faith and credit. Because we can't do the basics correctly. So when you think of also final point is just living already in what is more of a digital. Money veneer over kind of an age old system of this double entry recording system or double entry ledger system where, you know, back in the day of checks, I could write a check for a thousand dollars, but only have a thousand dollars I'll send one to you. I'll send one to Beverly. And the first one to cash it wins, right? That is problematic. That is not sound for monetary policy. And for the first time, you can have a digital asset. Based upon the same technology of the internet with which you're already familiar, peer-to-peer technology that used to be used to exchange media files. Mm. Right. It's packages of entertainment, MP3s, blah, blah, blah. Now we actually use the same technology, not just to exchange messages or entertainment, but value. And a value that isn't beholden to a particular government, but that doesn't make it illegal. And so, but you know, the headlines are salacious. I think reporters in mainstream media are largely lazy. And it has left both professionals and the average person, whether they're a traditional investor or not, it's been too easy to discount. Right, because it's really, it can be challenging. I'm working to demystify it. I'm a non-technologist. I didn't start in finance. Right. If I can do it, if my seventy-six year old parents can do it, if my friends who also are tech adjacent can figure out at least make The decision about whether to invest or to pivot your business based on correct information. And then if you choose not to, I'm not here to convince you. But you cannot make an informed decision based on fear, either fear of getting in or fear of missing out. That is not a sound investment policy. So that's what you and I are talking about tonight to help people push past the myths. So they can begin empowering themselves with knowledge and education. I think it was interesting as I was reading the book that you were talking about all of these naysayers to cryptocurrency. But these same organizations or individuals are buying into it, right? And so I think it's important for us as Black folk To one, understand that, that we can have a knowledge base in cryptocurrency. And one way to get that knowledge base is to get your book. But also it was, it was interesting. I first encountered you. I don't think I might have gone up and talked to y'all, but I might've been scared. It was at South by Southwest EDU. It was 2018, or 2019, I can't remember. It was three black women on a panel. All talking about crypto. No, it was blockchain technology and what that means for education. Right. The room was packed. I go to South by Southwest EU every year. They gave y'all a big room. And the room was packed and everybody was in there. It was Asian, there was white men in there, white women, black men, black women, everybody was in there. So it wasn't just a thing where it was just... It was one of the Black sessions at South by Southwest EDU. This was a session that happened to have three Black women who were all experts in the area and everybody had an open ear to it. And I would argue that this was before the big year where everybody was like, Really, really talking about Bitcoin and blockchain technology. So you all, you all were really, really ahead of the curve. But early in the book, I remember you, you mentioned in this guy named Randolph Robinson II. Mm-hmm. Who presented a law review about blockchain technology. And so can you talk a little bit about. The community of black folks who are building this expertise in blockchain technology and what are the different ways that you see us in this space? I was so grateful for uh, Professor Robinson, Randolph Robinson's or Randy Robinson's work because That he was working on that article in 2016 and 2017 I became aware of it in 2017 and he was presenting a work in progress at the time. It was around the same time that I had a friend who was in a working group. It's like a new media working group that was exploring the intersection of Blockchain technology and new media. And actually, oftentimes for academics, that is the entry point to begin to learn about the The ecosystem, how decentralized blockchains, how decentralized applications, how they are interacting, potentially disrupting and creating opportunities at the intersection of Fill in the blank of your area of expertise and blockchain. So that was my entry point. My entry point was intellectual property. I wasn't sure about magic internet money. I literally thought every single myth that's in this book I have cycled through it myself. So it's kind of this book is kind of a love letter to folks to say, this is where I began. I am a licensed attorney for over twenty-five years at this point. I am licensed to practice law in four states. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and DC. I have no intention of ruining my license or my reputation for some foolery. And so I didn't clearly understand virtual currencies at the time. I came to my awareness later. But the underlying technology that organizes data, secures data, the transparency and the access of data on the blockchain side was quite fascinating to me because all of this is software. And software is capable of both copyright and patent protection. And then if you have a company or some type of word, phrase, or other device used to sell goods or services, that implicates trademarks. And so I wanted to figure out what the next wave of lawyers needed to know and professors in order to be conversant with the folks who are innovating in the future. Version of the internet. We're talking web, you know, we weren't even talking about it as web three at the time, but I felt a responsibility as an educator to educate myself so that my students would be better off when they went out into the world to represent the folks who were innovating and building in And so the idea of going on your favorite search engine and putting in blockchain and whatever your area of expertise, it will start to open up. This plethora of opportunities and interesting use cases. You can see the promise. You can see the pitfalls, things that started and failed, not because it was a scam, but because most. Most businesses fail in the first three years. Just fail, not a scam, just fail. And then you have the scammers who will come and follow any potential opportunity. But what people don't understand or there's this misperception that this is some anonymous dark money, dark web money, where this is the most traceable transaction that ever transacted. Because you have a public facing digital record that cannot be changed that connects every transaction to the next. Public facing. I don't, I can't, I don't have public facing window into my Schwab account, into my USAA account, you name it. And there's so much, you know, the, the, the capital markets tend to be opaque, which is the reason that That we have the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in order to require registration when someone is engaging in capital markets so that they don't have an unfair advantage of information. Asymmetry of information is very, very hardwired into our legacy financial system. Blockchain and crypto is the complete opposite. So it's a terrible place for criminals. But oftentimes, final point, when we see those headlines like Sam Bateman Freed and FTX and all of those things, they were using old legacy models, centralized exchanges to Encourage people to keep their money on a platform and then unbeknownst to those folks taking the money out, putting it in a sister company that was Alameda Research and making these crazy bets. A lot like Lehman Brothers, a lot like Bernie Madoff and the fact that the dollar is the number one preferred currency of criminal activity. I a land. So we have to right size the conversation so that we can really push past this idea that it's only criminality. I could use my car to create a, to, you know, involve myself in a criminal act. That didn't make the car criminal. Yeah. But I used it in a way that was illicit. That captivity is already illegal and we see the ramifications of that. Yeah. So another, another interesting part in the book was that you've done your research, right? And so you talked about putting the 10,000 hours in to learn more about cryptocurrency and investments and things like that. And I want to take a moment, I want to talk about how, now I don't think I put 10,000 hours in, but I was reflecting on this in crypto where the underlying technology, blockchain technology is Fairly well integrated into my life. And so I have here the box from the Hive Mapper dash cam. Okay. And so I don't know if you're familiar with Helium. But helium is decentralizing wireless and so hive mappers on their network. I'm mining helium from my rooftop. From my front window, I have two different types of helium miners, three different types of helium miners in my house. The mobile miner, the internet of things miner, and then my cell phone. Is mining the helium token mobile because it's operating as, um, a wireless modem or whatever, right? Amazing. And then, so I got this dash cam in my car and as I'm driving, They have a decentralized mapping business, and so they're trying to compete with Google, right? And so the more I map, the more I drive, or me just going to work, whatever, there's all this construction. So the more and more the landscape changes, I get their token. And so I think that there's, I bring this up to say that there's, oh, one last thing. I have the crypto.com crypto debit card. So when I make purchases, I get cash back in their token crow. So I think people, I think a lot of people think that I'm going to go on some crypto exchange. I'm going to take my dollar and I'm going to invest and I'm going to buy something like I'm buying a stock. And that's how I'm gonna get my crypto bank piggy bank full. I bring it up to say that that's not the only way that you can get Some crypto, right? Right. My cell phone bill is $5 because I switched to the helium service and my phone conceivably could pay for itself. Because I earn more in the token than it costs me to pay my phone bill. And so I bring this up to say, you've done your 10,000 hours, right? You become a legal expert and this is part of your, your life's work professionally. But what are the other ways that you may have integrated the technology into your life? It's interesting. When I think about my own integration, um, above and beyond some of the things that you've said, because I love the idea of committing your devices to mine certain things. Tokens in order for the benefit that is literally impacting your life in a tangible way and you are contributing to the community The decentralized community in that space to improve the products, to improve the information, to go from a hyper centralized data server System where we have the centralization of power in Facebook and Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Netflix, et cetera, right? The fangs of the world. And now it's the Reorganization that is not centralized power so that it was no one person, no one company, no one country. That we have to, um, you know, plead for data or they're, they're mining data from us. If we're not paying for something, every time we sign up for something and it's free, we are the product. Yeah. And our data is like the new oil. So the ability to change that. I've seen really interesting use cases in the environmental context. I some of the projects that I like a lot. BioCoin is not legal or financial advice. When, when I buy anything other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, it has to really matter. Um, you've, um, identified a project that is literally, um, Changing lives. This is not some hypothetical, normative, would, could, should thing. This is actually happening. You're using a car that gives you quote unquote cash back that we would call, you know, sats back if it's if it's Bitcoin or some other form. Right. And we're going to see that happening more and more. There are companies like Lolly. For example, where if you're already online, there are hundreds of mainstream companies, everything from Macy's to, you know, Outback Steakhouse. Anything that you're already doing, you can earn back. You don't have to buy A single Satoshi and still get the rewards because Visa has partnered, I should say, with various companies to use their Infrastructure in order to have access and Visa's been in the game for a minute. They have some really interesting projects. MasterCard, certainly we saw PayPal reluctantly. Come into view. It used to be that you could buy Bitcoin and maybe others. I want to say they were focused just on Bitcoin, but you couldn't take it off the platform and people You know, complained until now you can actually buy something and it's not just an IOU in a centralized environment, but you can actually self custody and pull it off. You could all use, could buy Bitcoin if you have Cash App, Venmo, you literally can buy it right now. How can it be illegal and every major legitimate financial player is giving you exposure? Because they understand that this is a customer service issue, that the more that we learn that we have options and we could self custody and don't have to rely on a company, the more we're more inclined to not, especially as black people. Yeah. Ariel Schwab, Ariel Investments owned by Melody Hobson, partners every year or every so often, because I don't know if they put this out every year, but partners with Schwab to do a Black investor report. And for the first time in 2022. they did the black crypto investor report. And it was this incredibly insightful analysis and some of the data points. I talk on my podcast about, I have a whole podcast specifically about this where we pull out the data points, but I definitely commend to you. And your followers, your viewers, to pull the Ariel Schwab Black Investor Report from 2022. It shows that on average per capita, Blacks are far more likely than whites to invest in crypto. We might do it quietly. We might not, we might do it without all the information, which was some of the, which was a lot of the concern of the investor report. And in probably in full transparency, they want you to invest in stocks. I want you to do all of the traditional things, but realize that all of that is not enough in an increasingly digital age where the economy is shifting in ways. In a short period of time, then we can't, like in the next two to ten years, the world will change more than the last 100, literally. And it starts on the rails of a decentralized web. That requires currency that is not beholden to a particular country. What are we going to do when we're really in outer space? There's we haven't divvied up space quite yet as well. I'm sure they're working on it. Yeah. Like, you're not gonna want dollars, you're gonna want a global currency that is recognized everywhere and not behold into a particular Country or border. And that is what is being built right now. And so the idea that Black Americans are turning here, Blacks throughout the diaspora, This is a foregone conclusion in continent, countries on the continent. It's a foregone conclusion in emerging economies where the, um, Political structure and the financial structure is a shambles. Bitcoin is actually recognized as legal tender in El Salvador. I mean, you know, South America, Malaysia, Switzerland, Canada. We're kind of tardy to this party, but this thing moves on. And as Black Americans focusing on digital currency's potential, in addition to everything, you have to Reduce your debt. You have to own real estate. One of my favorite things. Get your portfolio in order. Get your retirement account. But this is the type of asset that doesn't require permission. It doesn't fall victim to redlining. It doesn't fall victim to, oh, you're black, like, get back, right? You can participate meaningfully in the same way that you've described without permission, but the thing that is the impediment right now Is fear because we fear what we don't understand. So let's, let's talk about the book because I think the book is designed to really alleviate the Some of those fears and we talked about your story into crypto and the first time we had you on the podcast, we talked about your history as an HBCU grad and as an athlete in this episode. Tell us the origin story of the book. I just was getting, you know, I do these presentations so often and then of course teaching my course at the law school and After I founded my company, Advantage Evans Academy, to really empower folks with education, because I wanted to reach beyond the law school environment to make sure that my people were good. And that anybody who was intellectually curious and wanted to truly get ahead and wanted to understand the reality that because income is taxed at a much higher rate than capital gains, This is why wealthy people don't want an income. But as a Gen Xer, I was raised, get that good government job or whatever the equivalent is, get your six figures, be an academic, get a tenure track, et cetera, get some life insurance, buy a home, get a burial plot, I assume, and you made it. You have not made it. That means that you're decidedly middle class and you probably just have a sufficient amount of credit to be in debt to crush you. Wealthy people don't want an income. Pay me one dollar. But give me ten million dollars in stock options while I'm in the south of France, right? And in addition to that, now we have the opportunity to Own and experience the capital gains or capital losses. You know, you're going to win in good times and bad. Wealthy people win in good times and bad. They, you know, hold a stock long, but they're going to short it. If that means if the stock price falls, they're still going to win because they bet that it was going to that it was going to decline. They win in good times and bad. Wealth is found in risk. Everything's a risk. You have to understand your risk tolerance and you have to manage it and mitigate it so that you are diversified across your portfolio and within an asset class. Um, experts say that folks could, should hold one to five percent and no more in crypto. We can't just say crypto generally without being more specific. That's what my horses are for. That's the book is for so that you can start to vet and select to do what makes sense for you. But the myths that Crypto isn't a legitimate form of currency, inaccurate, and we've already talked about the reasons why. In fact, On January 11th, for the first time in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved eleven exchange-traded funds for Bitcoin. We have BlackRock, who's one of the most conservative money managers in the world, who has its own spot, Bitcoin, exchange-traded funds. You can get it at BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK Investments. There are eleven of them. I actually just on my episode of Tech Intersected this Friday, I am joined by Joanne Holmes, who's another dynamic Black intellectual property and metaverse lawyer. And we just unpack what exchange traded funds are. The fact that you can buy an ETF for gold or silver. This Bitcoin ETF is second in its popularity Second only to gold. It's doing better than silver. Meanwhile, people are like, oh, it's a bad, it's a scam. Don't listen to what they say. Move the way they do. Mm-hmm. Even JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon is notorious for being a Bitcoin hater. But guess who or which company is one of the authorized participants for these exchange traded funds? It's JP Morgan. Yeah. He was just in front of Congress three weeks ago saying how bad Bitcoin is. Meanwhile, his company is an authorized participant to provide liquidity in for exchange traded funds in Bitcoin. We will miss out on another opportunity to start to close the wealth gap and be left behind. I can't even tell you how far. So these are some of the things to push past, you know, crypto is only for criminals, too risky or volatile. Every nascent asset class goes through a period of volatility. There is no asset that is performed like Bitcoin in particular. And you can look back to the history from January of 2009. I think that's another thing people don't realize. Of course, it's been around for since 2009. Yeah. Came out of the time of, you know, that first transaction that, and we have the memo that references the first transaction of Bitcoin That references the economic crisis of the time. It literally quotes the headline of a UK paper to kind of let people know this happened on this date, which is really, really cool. And so kind of Bitcoin in particular was built for times like this, built as a hedge against inflation. It's operating less as a peer to peer cash, at least in the United States, and more of a store of value. And the people who started at Advantage Evans Academy in 2020, when the price was about $9,000, $10,000, $11,000, even with the pullback, there's still three and four X. Yeah. So I could go on, but you know, hopefully that, you know, as we start to push past these myths of being a fad or a bubble, only being for a certain segment of the population, you know, I spent a lot of time with that. And shout out to the money coach, Lynette Calfani Cox. Uh, and also Arlen Hamilton from Backstage Capital. They wrote the forwards for the book. And Lynette really pressed me to get super clear about That crypto isn't just for the quote-unquote crypto bro that we might think of as this tech and finance guy with skinny jeans and a t-shirt and a Lamborghini. Right, that this is for all of us. This is the 99% money that isn't beholden to some gatekeeper who decided that we shouldn't participate meaningfully in the United States and around the world. And you know, that was one of the myths that I wanted to discuss today about the crypto bros because I went to, I went to an event, a crypto event, was it two years ago? And um, it's like yo, everybody was there on stage talking but us. I know. It was one black noodle on stage talking about this new technology and he was African but everybody else Man, it was Asian dudes up there, it was Russian dudes up there, it was white, white American men up there, it was a white woman up there, other Asian guys up there, Southeast Asian, East Asian, the whole, the whole world was there. Right. On stage talking about it as the expert but us. And so it was really interesting to see the difference between my first introduction to experts And crypto was you and the other sisters on a panel in 2018, 2019, South by Southwest EDU. But in this other context, We, we weren't on stage and so I think that to me is one of the most important lists to dispel that this is something that black folks do. Right. Absolutely. And we should kind of, it is always frustrating because we think of, you know, Cryptocurrency, particularly its origins with the cypherpunk movement, a very libertarian movement, mostly white men and certainly male dominated. Just, you know, we think of the tech culture. Silicon Valley, it is what it is, right? The finance area and technology, they come together, have a baby. We have cryptocurrency, so it's a microcosm of a microcosm where we are significantly underrepresented. That being said, there are hundreds. I am exceptional, but I'm not the exception. I say it that way. There are hundreds. Of folks, it could be thousands at this point when you go outside of the United States to throughout the diaspora because Um, Bitcoin in particular, but a lot of the coins and tokens that you have the ability to mine and have all sorts of rewards are quite popular. Um, for day-to-day transactions. We just don't see it here in the state. You know, when I think of, I was just on the Hill having some meetings within Treasury, a lawyer in the Treasury Department, the counsel actually to Janet Yellen. And I was there with three other Black women who are exceptional. Carmel Cadet, actually, she owns EmTech, which is a company that helps legacy finance bridge into the future of decentralized finance. And so she's working with The, um, central banks of at least five countries on the continent. I mean, I think of Nigeria and Ghana that are really leaning into this idea of their own version of the central bank digital currency. Carmela's bad. Yeah. Right. I think of Cleve Mesidor who runs the Blockchain Foundation and also this contingent of black and brown Women in particular who are experts in the space who was also quite frustrated with the fact we exist, but it's kind of an echo chamber of the same people. On, you know, either it's an infomercial for a project, right? When you go to, I stopped going to a lot of conferences because I'm not going to pay to go to an infomercial and I should be on that stage. So let me find my other opportunities for you. We're not doing the infomercials. I'm not interested. I'm not, it's not advancing me or my people. I'm not interested. Yeah. But, you know, I'll take the opportunities or create opportunities to make sure that we're seen and also just continue to do the work. I'm happy to. Quietly make sure that people have the right information with the book, with my services, with my podcast, with the work that I do with the law school. And I mean, recently I was appointed to my second paid board. In the crypto space to be a member of the digital currency group board, right? So first woman, first black person and DCG owns, I mean, it just sold CoinDesk. It owns Grayscale. And so we've witnessed the transition from Grayscale's Bitcoin trust into its own version of an ETF. Luno founder and then twenty You know, over 200 different portfolio companies in the space. And a lot of people don't know that, but that happened. Right. So starting to move the needle to be in the places and spaces to, um, have a voice, have a, uh, at the table of companies and projects that are making, they're really creating the future. And so. That's the other part, and I'm glad that you raised it. It isn't always about investment, and I mentioned that at the top, but What can you do in your business right now? Yeah. What can you do as a professional? What can you do as an educator to make sure one you're not left behind? Right? That you are Netflix and not Blockbuster. And that you start to advance the ball, connect the dots, and remain relevant in the future of work and wealth and business and innovation. In the head in the sand, you know, casting things off and not paying attention or doing the work is not an option. I don't blame people, but we have to shout it from the rooftops that they have. You have much better resources than I did when I started. I learned at YouTube University. And trial and error. Much better sources and resources and information. It's just an embarrassment of riches. Now, separating the You know, fact from fiction and carnival barkers that say all crypto all the time or the naysayers from government or from legacy finance. Let's start questioning the people who are raising the issues. If JP Morgan is saying don't do it, but they're doing it, we have to question why. When Deutsche Bank quietly offered to their Their best wealth clients, certain exposure, but not for the rest of us. We have to ask why and start making decisive decisions. Start making the next best choice and decision for how you learn so that you can stay on the leading edge of this transformation. Um, if not, it's, you know, the left behind. We haven't even begun to see it, but it's going to happen so quick, especially final point in this, you know, 2024, this election year, things go. Wrong. What are you going to do less than a year from now? When you, you know, worst case scenario, do you have options today? Do you have a passport? Is it up to date? Do you have alternative forms of money? Are you nimble? Are you ready to turn on a dime? Or Satoshi? These are the questions we very, we gotta get very serious very quickly. And so this is the clarion call to at least get this book Start there. You've paid worse for $25. And tomorrow, I will say, one day there's a flash sale. Now I usually, uh, promote independent booksellers. I love Harriet's bookstore in Philadelphia. You can go online and do that. But tomorrow I want everybody to order from Amazon and the Kindle version will be $1 and ninety-nine cents. $1.99. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to gift that to somebody. Please. That's what I'm going to do. You know, I'm going to think about it, but I'm going to think about who I want to gift it to. And I'll do that. That's good. And anybody who buys tomorrow, well, not anybody, the first twenty people to do it and submit their, their receipt, you can go to advantageevans.com. And do that. All the information is there. AdvantageEvance.com. Verse twenty people. In fact, buy any version on Amazon just tomorrow. The Kindle version is $1.99, regular version. I don't think they're going to have that on sale, but I don't know everything that goes on the back. You come back to You go through the two-step process and I will give you access to my free short course. It's not free for everybody, but it's free for the first twenty It usually would be a hundred dollars. You go, I will give you access to my short course and my tool kit. You can get up and just get clear. You're not going to buy a thing other than this book. And then I will leave that to you to read the tea leaves, figure it out, join the community and let's get clear. Yeah. Let's go into this, okay? I'm going to, because we're getting close to the end. I'm going to ask you three final questions, okay? The first one is, as a former student athlete, in the era of NIL, Do you see as the implications of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and I'm going to throw it and I'm going to say probably NFTs. Absolutely. The other question is, What are the implications for the training, training and continuing education of lawyers? And the final question is because we, we are a book club, we have origins in the book club. If you were going to write an extra chapter of the book, what would it be? And let me know if you need me to repeat, so. All right, so I'll do the NIL first. I wish I had that back in the day. I'm sorry. So that stands for name, image, and likeness. And there are so many Fantastic avenues for monetization where digital assets often carry with them some type of intellectual property. It's not always right, but there's so many others and you mentioned non-flungible tokens as well. The token itself is an asset, but it's often connected to either some type of digital or IRL experience in real life. I remember Ticketmaster. Dramatically cutting down on scalping because they were using NFT technology, right? So that's really interesting. And it makes me think of Spencer Dinwiddie. He was not a collegiate athlete, but Professional basketball player who he was the first to monetize his income as a token, which was really, really fascinating. He ended up, the NBA, long story short, kind of did some pushback. But look up Spencer Dinwiddie and what he did with his token, which was really, really interesting. The NIL stuff is really interesting. Really powerful because it means that there is a life and monetization beyond just playing. And when you can control your own life, that's, and you control your own rights, that's when you really control your destiny. But when I think about what professionals need to do to get themselves together, it's actually quite a bit. But if I can do it, you can do it as well. It's to figure out, and we talked a bit about it earlier, what the intersection is between your area of expertise and what's going on with blockchain and crypto. It's easy to talk about the first use case, which is... You know, the disruption of of the financial and capital markets. And I think of, you know, it's kind of like crypto is to blockchain has electronic mail was to the Internet. The email was the first. A commercial exploit of the internet. Now we barely open our email, but it was revolutionary at first. Yeah. Right. And also in some research for the book, I went back to the time when Credit cards were being used at fast food chains and people were like, oh, that's ridiculous. I will never do that. Or when the ATM came out, my grandma was like, oh, absolutely not. A little, where's the money? Where's it from? I'm going into the bank. We come to these, you know, inflection points with technology where we have to move and professionals really have to do that. So who are we talking about? I really think any business leader. Regardless of your area of business, you need to figure out a potential disruptive impact and also the opportunities and as a leader to. Lead from the ground up to give enough space for innovation, iteration, continuing learning, continual learning because most people stop learning after their last day in school. Yeah. And then whatever else they know for the rest of their lives, they learn at some desk. Except if you're a professional, we, uh, lawyers, we have continuing legal education, um, financial professionals, CPAs have got to figure this out. Your clients, your assigning partners, your colleagues will start asking questions. They're asking questions about exchange-traded funds. They're asking questions about what this means for their business, how to pivot, what this means for their retirement. You better have some answers. Or they're going to go to other places and spaces. So professionals have to get on board. And I have an upcoming seminar for legal and financial professionals and business leaders as well. And it's the, uh, February 1st, but go to advantageevins.com and you can get that information as well. And then your final point, if I had one more chapter in what I would write, It would be but so in the the final chapter is the from go from cash to crypto. But I would make that an even Either a longer chapter or break that up so that people can have the specific steps. It's challenging to do that because the technology and the state of art of technology changes so frequently. That's right. So it was important. The myths are not going to change, but the technology changes as well. And so that would be critically important. When I think about What's going on now? Because you mentioned FedNow and I actually mentioned FedNow, but I didn't go into great detail because it had just happened literally when I was turning in my final edit. So I was able to get that in, but I would expand about central bank digital currencies because the idea that unbanked or underbanked folks in the United States would have access to A central bank account. There are some positives to that, to be sure. My concern around it is also on what I would explore in a future chapter would be or an extra chapter would be the financial privacy aspects. China, for example, mainland China has a central bank digital currency and Bitcoin and crypto is illegal there, even though there's a lot of use that we can see while it's moving in that geographical area. But they're the government's ability to see every transaction to confiscate funds without due process. There's no due process there. But, you know, those are big issues. I want to have the same level of privacy. With a digital representation of fiat or government issued currency that I do if I had a thousand dollars and I handed it to you. So I want people to really understand what's going on in the central bank realm, understand the positives, but also the pitfalls and the privacy concerns. Professor Tanya M. Evans Esquire, thank you for joining us here today. I appreciate you taking the time to chop it up with us and I wish you much continued success. Thank you, Dr. Clark. I appreciate you as always. Thank you for joining today's class. If you learned from the language you heard, please leave a review, give the class five stars, or donate to our Patreon. A link can be found in the show notes.