How Blockchain Know-how Empowers Black Resistance | CoinStats Weblog

February marks Black Historical past Month – a time to commemorate and be taught concerning the Black group, heritage, and tradition. This yr, the theme for Black Historical past Month is Black Resistance, honoring and recognizing the resistance to Black Individuals’ historic and ongoing oppression and acknowledging such actions as Black Lives Matter to handle systemic racism.

In honor of Black Historical past Month and consistent with this yr’s theme, CoinStats is protecting the Black Resistance to Black financial disempowerment and the synergy between black economics and blockchain know-how.   

Gerald Ford  was the primary president to formally acknowledge Black Historical past Month in 1976, calling upon the general public to “seize the chance to honor the too-often uncared for accomplishments of Black Individuals in each space of endeavor all through our historical past.”

Since then, we’ve been utilizing this chance to rejoice iconic Black figures who obtain excellence, create change, and educate us concerning the significance of coming collectively to struggle racism. From civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X to authors like Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou to artists akin to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and lots of extra Black individuals made excellent contributions to our society, advancing civil rights, tradition, science, sports activities, and so forth. 

As we commemorate one other Black Historical past Month, it’s a superb time to find out how Black Resistance advantages from blockchain know-how and cryptocurrencies and skim up on Black historical past trailblazing icons who’ve helped drive cryptocurrency mainstream adoption to make the world a extra inclusive, accessible, and progressive place.

Overview of Black Individuals’s Involvement within the Cryptocurrency Business

The outcomes from the survey, carried out by Grayscale in partnership with The Harris Ballot, present that Black Individuals (31%) usually tend to personal crypto than white Individuals (16%). Cryptocurrency boasts monetary inclusion and is touted as a instrument for equality, transparency, and equity. So can it assist Black individuals resist structural racism and clear up the wealth gaps which have traditionally held them again? 

The core purpose for the synergy between black economics and blockchain know-how is that the majority Black individuals view cryptocurrencies backed not by an incumbent authority however by blockchain know-how as a strategy to earn cash whereas resisting centuries-long patterns of oppression such because the wealth-crippling results of redlining and zoning practices driving public funds away from their communities. 

They view crypto inclusion as their sole entry to generational wealth with out counting on a government’s permission. Investing in crypto is black individuals’s method of selecting a globally accessible, open, and permissionless various that locations monetary autonomy within the arms of sovereign people’ arms as an alternative of any sole middleman. 

Furthermore, they select to put money into digital cash that may’t be altered, debased, or entrenched resulting from their conventional mistrust of the standard banking system.

What’s extra, buyers can get began with as little as $10! 

Isaiah Jackson, the writer of “Bitcoin and Black America,” characterizes conventional banking as a racist banking system and describes the idea of redlining, the place banks would prior to now actually draw purple traces round communities that they needed to keep away from making loans.

Black Historical past Crypto Heroes

Listed below are some Black individuals who have contributed to the innovation and/or adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency.

• Isaiah Jackson is the writer of “Bitcoin and Black America.” He believes to have discovered an answer with the brand new digital foreign money that originated in 2009 to the age-old downside of cash, energy, and racism in the US of America.
• Fairness Coin is a Black-owned cryptocurrency undertaking that buys inexpensive housing items everywhere in the nation. On the identical time, token holders get the rights to property money flows.
• Russell Okung, a Professional Bowl deal with for the Carolina Panthers and a proponent of cryptocurrency, was the primary Nationwide Soccer League participant to gather a portion of his verify in cryptocurrency. Okung obtained 50% of his $13 million wage in Bitcoin utilizing Zap’s Strike product. His Twitter bio is “life, liberty, and #bitcoin.”
• Najah Roberts is a crypto entrepreneur and educator targeted on closing wealth gaps within the Black group. She operates a brick-and-mortar crypto trade that’s making crypto extra accessible to the unbanked.
• Olayinka Odeniran is the founding father of the Black Girls Blockchain Council (BWBC), which supplies Black ladies worldwide with academic sources to know blockchain and construct wealth. BWBC has partnered with Ethereum software program firm ConsenSys to launch a web based program to prepare half one million Black ladies globally to develop into blockchain builders by 2030. 
• Meta has launched the “Metaverse Tradition Collection” to make the metaverse an area for Black tradition and creativity to thrive. Gabe Gault, the primary Artist and VR Creator in Residence, has constructed “I Am A Man,” an immersive expertise that pays homage to outstanding  Black figures like  Dr. King, Rosa Parks, the Tuskegee Airmen, and so forth., to carry Black historical past alive.
• One / OFF and Tremendous Uncommon showcase and promote NFT artwork for hundreds of {dollars} in digital show rooms.

The Promise and Peril of Crypto for Black Traders 

Blockchain know-how and cryptocurrencies empower Black buyers to handle inequality by serving to take away many conventional limitations to buying, storing, and transferring wealth.

Nonetheless, whereas cryptocurrencies have the potential to fulfill Black customers’ expectations, additionally they pose dangers to privateness and monetary safety. Let’s look into the challenges and limitations Black buyers have been encountering over these years.

• Whereas we’ve been constructing in the direction of a extra equitable way forward for know-how with a rise within the variety of Black entrepreneurs over the previous years, nonetheless solely 2.3% of US companies are Black-owned, in line with the Census, and with spectacularly excessive failure charges.  
• In response to the Nationwide Enterprise Capital Affiliation, solely about 3% of all enterprise capitalists are Black. Furthermore, Black entrepreneurs solely obtained $1.8 billion (1.2%) of the file $147 billion invested in U.S. Startups through the first half of 2021.
• Black individuals who invested in crypto have been hit disproportionately arduous through the latest crypto winter. 

Regardless of these challenges, many Black founders and buyers stay optimistic concerning the crypto sector’s potential for the group. In response to a Kansas Metropolis Federal Reserve report revealed in 2022, most Black buyers imagine the wealth hole may very well be closed by means of investing in cryptocurrency. Crunchbase information exhibits that funding for Black web3 founders has solely elevated, and the crypto winter proved essentially the most fruitful yr. 

Lastly, in line with information from TechCrunch, it seems that buyers are additionally in some methods bullish on Black founders, a change of tune in how Black startups have been funded.

Tell us your favourite Black Historical past Crypto Hero or a Black-owned crypto enterprise you like within the feedback beneath!

Like this put up? Don’t neglect to share it!