Values Investing in Crypto

Values are rarely talked about in the crypto conversation - climate, diversity, community currency, and many other initiatives are changing that.

Meet Rebecca Mqamelo, Head of Growth at Zerion. Her passion lies in redesigning money for the 21st century – which means leveraging alternative currencies to facilitate more inclusive, resilient and sustainable economies. Concurrent to Zerion, she’s worked on blockchain-based currency development programs in Kenya, most notably collaborating with Grassroots Economics to conduct the world’s first randomized control trial on community currencies.?

Rebecca grew up in Mthatha, South Africa and studied Economics and Data Science at Minerva, which offers a unique global rotation program. She’s lived and worked all over the world, including the USA, Japan, South Korea, India, Kenya, Germany, Ghana, Argentina and the UK. She is particularly committed to cultivating talent on her own continent and wants to see more African communities leverage the power of collaborative economics. When she isn’t researching currency models or dabbling in the world of DeFi, she’s writing on politics and culture for popular South African publications, mentoring African startups, or sharing her experiences.

We dive into opportunities in starting out in crypto,? the importance of investing in values, and connecting within Web3 communities.

Eve #WealthWednesday Highlight #28: Rebecca Mqamolo, Head of Growth - Zerion

What was your first investment?

I actually think my first investment was probably Bitcoin. And just because I don't think I was ever in a position to invest before that. So I learned about crypto when I was a freshman in college and all my friends were talking about Coinbase and I was earning minimum wage. We were earning on the work studies. Like I didn't have employment to do anything, but I was like, this is at school. And so that was my first investment.

I mean, being a freshman in San Francisco in 2017, it was kind of difficult not to hear about it. And so we were going to hackathons and we mostly went for the free food. To be honest with you, it's a legit strategy. Like a lot of hackathons will have things like free pizza up to the event. And so as these kids living in downtown SF, we'd be like, “Hey guys, there's something at 6:00 PM in the financial district. Like, let's go.” That's how I got involved and heard about everything. So that's the beginning of the story. And I think I was just also in an environment where it's something my friends were talking about. People were doing all of these events and I was also in a position where I didn't have a lot of risk and I was curious. And so, yeah, that's the beginning.?

How/why did you get into your space?

I want to say it's a combination of things. The obvious one is just like right time, right place. I can't downplay just being in SF and going to those hackathons. Oh, when I was in my sophomore year, I did an internship with an exchange in Japan. So at the time they were called Coin, now they're called Liquid. So that was kind of like my first formal experience working in a crypto based organization. But I also think that, looking at 2018 and everything that happened in the market at the time that it was also a time of a lot of disillusionment. It's like, what am I really doing? Everyone's talking about democratizing finance and changing the world and blah, blah, blah. And all the marketing buzzwords that really got to me because I'm someone that the work that I do really does need to feel meaningful. Otherwise I feel completely dissociated from it.

And to be very honest, I was in that space for a long time, until I found out about this organization called Grassroots Economics in Kenya. And it was totally random how I found out about them. I think someone just sent me an article like, “Hey, you should check this out.” And it was so refreshing to find a project that was operating at the time in rural and urban Kenya. Basically enabling people to create their own currency on a blockchain and having them trade that on a day to day basis. So if you think of the spectrum of for-profit private enterprises and the space for nonprofits, super community driven. That to me, it was just eye opening to see that that range was actually there. And that these kinds of opportunities were available for me. So I completely pivoted, I went from doing like BizDev at one of the largest crypto exchanges in Southeast Asia to going and living in Kenya for a while in a village and interviewing women on how this community currency has helped them, the improvements that they want to make on monetary design, doing a lot of the on the ground work where it would, if you wanted to onboard a new community, you couldn't just do an airdrop. You had to go to the elders and explain to them what you were doing and get their permission and get their buy-in. And that was just such a different process of how we work, but still using the same technology principles. And I say that that's the reason why I stayed. I think it was really important that I got to see that there are other ways of doing this and that's something that has stuck with me. So since then, I've done a lot of research with Grassroots Economics. I've tried to keep that alongside whatever other work I'm doing. And that's something that I'm trying to continue now as well.?

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What role do you play in the wealth space and why is it important?

I think I'll start by saying that I do think that DeFi, Web3, crypto, whatever you want to call it, is at this inflection point where people realize what it's actually capable of. Three years ago, a lot of the things we were talking about felt very theoretical, abstract or just prototypes. Whereas now when you talk about things like even digital identity or proof of ownership, the stuff is happening on a massive scale and the people who are buying into it and using these tools and services are not just the crypto bro crowd. It's everyone. It's celebrities. You have my grandmothers asking me about NFTs. Like there, the signs are there. But something that's really been on my mind a lot - so bearing in mind that right now I work for an investing app and a lot of my day-to-day work is thinking about the way that people interface with these tokens. We've entered a stage where anyone can create any kind of money, right? Even the concept of money, anything can be tokenized. Anything can have a quantifiable relational value to other things. People talk about the DeFi matrix, where it's like, everything has a token price on it. In a world where everything is tokenized - and I'm not going to make any judgment on what that is like - it becomes increasingly important that we're able to find meaning in that.

And I think just starting off with the financial use case. Really big gap in crypto right now is the sense of meaning and what we invest in. If you are a new time investor and you want to be savvy with your money, you want to diversify your portfolio, but you also care about certain non-negotiables, it is really difficult to find those kinds of investments. People talk about the climate impact of Bitcoin. People talk about the lack of diversity in the space. For example, now, when you translate that to actually making a financial decision, that's a big deal. You're putting your money into something and saying, “I have faith that this project is going to do well”, or “This is a stamp of my approval”. Unfortunately, the narratives that we've sold and accepted is like, just invest in whatever's pumping. Like there are thousands of these investing opportunities or indexes or yield farming strategies with very little consideration of the intention that is behind that. And I think that's also largely because we've been serving a very specific audience up until now. Now that that audience has opened up a little bit. You see more women coming into the space, right? You see more artists and creatives coming in from the NFT crowd saying, “I want to be a part of this, but like where on earth do I start? This makes no sense to me. And the things that are available for me to invest in don't necessarily align with my social values”. That is something that I think we've been able to look past for a really long time. But I think you see the same trends in traditional finance on ESG-style products. I think that crypto has yet to see that done at scale and done in a way that can be standardized and made almost like a standard for how tokens also present themselves. So it's not just about the financial apps. We also care about what it is that you're building the fundamentals behind that and things like how representative of the people that work for you or that are building this product. So all of this is to say that I'm really interested in sort of the narrative shifting that we do by using financial products as the tool for that.?

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What do you believe is the most exciting thing you’ve learned and want others to know?

So I think it's two things. And the first one I'm still exploring. I'm still navigating the way that we work in the space and the way that that's changing. Something has happened over the last two years where people have suddenly realized, “I can get compensated for the things I'm really passionate about. I can connect with people.” I mean, like I've never even met you in person. And yet we're working together and we're interested in the same things. There is this environment of collaboration, intense collaboration. And I think it comes from having the tools where we can actually implement things and see them change at, at scale. It's like you see people onboarding into crypto, you see people investing in NFTs or launching projects that perhaps three years ago, four years ago just would have been inconceivable. And that is an incredibly empowering space to be in. And I say that I'm still navigating it because I'm still learning. What are the boundaries that I put on that at the same time? I don't want to completely romanticize my time as if I can just be doing a million things at once. I'm still a human being and I don't exist in the metaverse. I also want to make sure that what I'm doing is equally balanced by taking care of myself, living in a physical community as well. So that really excites me. And then I think the second, which honestly is really tied to that, is just the finding meaning part. And I think this is tied to my own personal journey with money. Like I got a financial coach for the first time last year, and I was really surprised to experience the same thing where it was like the first questions that we were going through are not how much money do you want to make? Or like, what should you be investing in those first questions were, "What do you value? Who are you? What do you want in life?" And so trying to take that lens and translate that somehow into the investor experience in crypto, like I think that's something that as a community of builders and thinkers and designers, we're also still figuring out, right. Because it's like, it's not just the coin that you invest in. It's where you're putting your energy. And so that excites me because. Everyone who's involved in the space right now is having to ask themselves those questions. Which organizations do I look for? Which DAO do I join? Why? And I just love that. And I like that I get to have these kinds of conversations from that.

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Who is a person or company that inspires you in the space and why?

There's one that just came to mind. And I think it's because I've been chatting to them a lot during the last few weeks, but a VC that I follow and I'm a really, really big fan of is Harlem Capital. And so they primarily invest in Black and diverse founders and I have seldom come across a company that really practices what it, what it preaches in the sense of their attention to relationship building in the ecosystem. They might be a VC, but they are everywhere. They are speaking to people. They are making the extra effort to connect with diverse founders who are building things in this space. I'm also just ready, excited about the portfolio that they're putting together. And so if anyone listening to this has like never heard of them before I would definitely go and check them out and go and. Kind of look at their ethos and their approach to where they put their money. And, and you know, it just echoes so much of the things I've been thinking myself. So that's the first one that came to mind.?

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What advice would you give to someone getting started?

When we talk about getting into crypto, we mean two things these days: there's like investing in crypto, just financial use case. And then there was like getting involved in terms of, I am joining projects, I'm part of communities. And I want to speak specifically to the latter group. So, you know, if you do have the time, there are so many communities, projects going on where you can use that as the springboard or as the learning experience to just get familiar with this space. Because one thing that has really been brought to my attention is how I was talking about the way we work. Like I sometimes will get how different work is, you know, compared to other industries. The idea that you can just get together with a bunch of people on Telegram or Discord and like do something with them. Getting really familiar and comfortable with that style of connecting and collaborating. I'd say, find a community that you feel really resonates with you. Like it could be an NFT project. It could be honestly anything. I mean, they might not even have a crypto component, but they're adjacent in any way to web3. Focus on one thing. And whether it's like community work that you're doing, or you're just connecting with people in that space through Discord, Telegram, Crypto, Twitter, Reddit. Whatever the thing is just be comfortable with. Make the social aspect also a part of your life. Because I think that, you know, for my friends who are trying to get into crypto, there's a sense of like, is there a textbook somewhere? Like, do I have to get a certificate? People genuinely have these questions and they're valid questions because I think that up until now, and still even now the space has felt kind of exclusive, but it's like, that's opening up because you have more of these touchpoints where people can get involved. So I'd really just say, like find one thing that you want to focus on and go really, really deep into that, because you'll probably find that that becomes an experiential learning process, as opposed to telling yourself, “Okay. I'm going to put a thousand dollars into crypto and figure this whole thing out”, but it usually doesn't work that way

Anything else we should know?

My Twitter handle is @Rebecca_Mqamelo. You can find me there. You can also find me on my website, but. I am generally available with my DMS open and I always want to meet people who either resonate with the things that I'm interested in. I think that there's just so much value in being open to new people and new ideas. So if anyone listening to this has them, like by all means, reach out to me. And I'd love to hear from you.?

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#fintech #womenswealth #futureoffinance #investing #investment

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Have thoughts on this week’s topic or questions for me or Rebecca Mqamelo? Post your thoughts in the comment section. Until next week. ??

You can connect with Rebecca on LINKEDIN

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