The initial iteration of Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin Academy ended with a surprise gift.
The residents of the public housing complex where Jay grew up were the first to benefit from the 12-week program.
A representative for the Academy said that at the program's conclusion on Wednesday night, adult residents who opted into the program and consented to receive a grant were airdropped around $1,000 in bitcoin through Cash App, Muun wallet, or other self-custodial wallets. The program and its conclusion were funded by Jay and Dorsey.
I spoke on the phone with an instructor in the program and a Marcy resident who participated as a student to get a better sense of the Academy's offerings.
Following the receipt of a closing statement from Ms. Gloria Carter, I've structured the article to remind you of a late-career classic.
Mariela Regalado had seen Jay-Z act altruistically.
He and his team would come and give us toys when I was a kid. She and her friends would call ithood philanthropy. This is sort of an evolution of that for me.
She received a postcard in the mail about the academy. She signed up after visiting the building across the street from where the program was held. She said the main selling point was that the program allowed her to be a single mother and that she was able to take advantage of free child care.
Dinner was served at each of the academy's nightly courses. More than 100 MiFi devices were given to students and residents through a partnership with T- Mobile.
The courses were taught in person, recorded, and available online only to residents of the city.
Lamar Wilson, an instructor in the Academy and founder of Black Bitcoin Billionaire, said that he had connected with Jack Dorsey and developed a proposal for the program after seeing him "lurk" in the audience of an educational club.
Wilson and Regalado stressed that students in the program weren't pressured to buy or sell cryptocurrencies.
The program was framed as "purely this fun, educational journey that I got to do with my neighbors," and described the classes themselves by saying, "It always felt like we're at a family dinner."
Wilson has been working on financial education and inclusion to disadvantaged communities for the past three years.
Information doesn't always reach our community. People aren't being intentional about getting the information in order to be discriminated against. The person has to pick up the mantle. "Because I understand the information and I can break it down into a vernacular that others can understand, I feel like it's almost my obligation to make sure I get the information to them." Let me give you the information so you can make your own decisions.
Wilson said that an anecdote from an introductory class on Bitcoins stood out to him.
I'm going to be real. I taught a class on mining and have had startup companies in this space. He said that he had to teach the engineers how to use the technology even though they were already developers. This class was on mining. It slipped into technical when I started to teach it from a high level. Even though they weren't software developers, some of the people in there understood the concepts of what I was talking about in a technical way. I promise you, that was the most exciting part for me, that a lot of times we look at somebody's stature in life or what they've done with their life as far as their job or occupation, and we think, "Oh, well, this will be kinda interesting
You're like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing, but the whole time they've been able to pick it up." He said that they never had access to the information. If you just give people access to information, equal access, you don't have to do anything else, but allow them to have the same access as everyone else. A lot of people can excel in this type of information. I asked the woman what she did for a living. She stated that she cleans up houses. She was getting the concepts of mining quicker than men who have been programming for a long time.
She said that she initially felt discouraged by the media backlash that met the Academy at its announcement.
I remember when people were reporting on the initiative after I had signed up for it. The comment section is something that I like. She said with a laugh. A lot of the comments were like, "Oh, you're going to show these poor people how to do it, and they're just gonna rack up more debt and be even more in poverty than they were before." Someone said that you're going to teach people how to do that.
It's one of those things where I think we should encourage people to get out of poverty. Shouldn't we encourage them to look for different ways to get there? Shouldn't we encourage people to learn about other things that can help them reach a different level of financial freedom? Why is that not ok? Everyone in the comments was focused on the scarcity. Thank you, hey,TrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia We know what we don't have. We know what it's like to be poor. It doesn't mean that we have to stay in it, and it doesn't mean that we aren't deserving of the messages that have led to other people and other races getting ahead or getting wealthy.
She said she appreciated the community aspect of the program.
I feel like the people that I have passed by in the staircase or outside of the project are part of its own universe. She said that they are like their own universe. I can't think of anything else that would connect so many voices, so many intergenerational voices to sit and learn. I can't think of any places that we can do that in. The most beneficial part of it all was the fact that it was only for people from a specific community to gain access to something.
At the end of my conversations with Wilson and Regalado, we focused on the "Generational wealth" bar from Jay's track "Legacy."
Wilson placed Bitcoin in a historical context as an answer to the many inequalities faced by Black Americans.
He said that "almost every single asset, especially for Black folks and people who are disadvantaged, has been taken away from them in some form or fashion." People who were slaves were able to build amazing amounts of wealth from having nothing. You had the Red Summer of 1919 and the Tulsa riots of 1921 after they got there. That was taken, that's what it was. You can see that a lot of African Americans had land in Manhattan Beach. There are millions of acres of land in the south that have been taken over by the USDA. Even though the deposits were insured, they have not been paid back. Even though everyone knows that the city got burned down, they never have been paid out on the insurance claims.
It has been difficult to hold onto wealth from generation to generation. We get locked out of other wealth-building things, like home ownership, through redlining, things that were actually in laws in a lot of the states. The effects of compound interest are unaffected by the changing laws. You can actually own Bitcoins, that's what they're called. If you understand how to use the wallet and private key, you will be able to hold it, which will allow you to pass it down to your children. It's something that you can keep and pass down over time. That is a huge change from what we've seen before. It's accessible to someone who only has $5.
She talked about how to build wealth for her daughter through investment.
Every decision I've made since she was born has been to make sure she's set up, because I know she's going to have wealth. She doesn't want to grow up in the projects like her aunts and uncle did. She said that the goal was that. My plan is to get her out of here and make sure that we don't have to come back here. There is a large part of that. I need financial literacy and access to things that will make us financially independent in order to get that. My child already has a wallet. I probably wouldn't have been able to say that back in June before the Academy, but now I know what that means.
Jay-Z and The Shawn Carter Foundation have been involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors that aim to promote financial inclusion and education for underprivileged groups.
The Shawn Carter Foundation and BeyGood gave $2 million to five HBCUs as part of an "About Love" campaign. The Josh Dubin fellowship is a social justice program where $10,000 are awarded to five students annually. Financial literacy and wealth-building workshops for disadvantaged college students are provided by Bridges to Wealth.
The program said that the academy is looking to expand to other neighborhoods.
Insider received a statement from Gloria Carter, Jay's mother and the president and co- founder of The Shawn Carter Foundation, as a closing note for the first iteration of The Bitcoins Academy.
People showed up. The over 350 people who attended the classes let us know that the education they received mattered to them. Providing the necessary resources such as dinner, childcare, devices, internet access, dedicated staff and instructors will allow as many people as possible to participate in person and online. I am so thankful to the community that came together to make this happen, and to all the class participants who are now more confident in their financial decisions. Power is derived from knowledge. Everyone who participated is responsible for empowering and preparing the next generation.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
