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[00:00:00] Kriti: Hey guys, welcome to WhyFI Matter$! I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgivings, this upcoming Thursday, and can eat some delectable scrumptious food and spend time with people you love and your families and your friends. And speaking of things that we love, I am super excited to learn more about entrepreneurship, which I love, and cryptocurrency, which is something that I'm now very interested in. I think that some of the previous guests we've had on the show have definitely sparked my interest and curiosity in crypto, but I really wanted a better understanding of what it was. So I am super happy to learn from our guest today, Joel Clelland. Joel is the CEO at Centric, which is a digital currency company making strides in the crypto industry. And what's really great about Joel is because of his very diverse career experience over 20 years of extremely different jobs, such as teaching and some in the financial services industry and his experience as an investor, he is able to find creative ways to innovate and develop his company. And I'm super excited to learn more about his entrepreneurial journey, and also improve my understanding of how digital and decentralized currencies work and, in what ways this will impact the GenZ future. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Hi, Joel. Thank you so much for coming on WhyFI Matter$ today, I'm super excited to have you on the show and I'm really interested in learning more about cryptocurrency. I feel like it's a word that just tossed around a lot and it gets used and almost it becomes diluted and we forget the meaning and we don't even know what exactly it is. So I'm super excited to learn more about crypto, especially as a teen, because I think it's going to become a big part of our future specifically the GenZ future. So, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
[00:02:20] Joel: Of course, Kriti.
[00:02:22] Kriti: So I want to start off talking about your life as a teen and kind of, how did you get into the entrepreneurial space?
[00:02:32] Joel: Great question. When I was a teen, I was really into sales. I would sell anything when I was a freshman in high school, my marching band went to Hawaii for a special event. Yes. And I raised all the money I needed. For my trip. So my parents didn't actually have to pay just by fundraising, going door to door, knocking on doors, and selling pretty much anything I could to go on that trip. And I actually had enough left over where I was able to help another student with their trip. That's amazing, but I've always had a knack for not just sales, but just for mixing in the community. And I think to be an entrepreneur, you can't be afraid to talk to people. Or if you are, you should lean into that because the only way we get over fear is by doing things over and over again.
[00:03:23] Kriti: And you talked about mixing with the community. And I think like being an entrepreneur, even though it seems like a very self-centered sort of thing to do, it's actually all about helping other people because yeah, it, it should be, cause you're well, as an entrepreneur, you're solving things that are going to help other people hopefully. So you kind of always had a little bit of, you know, entrepreneurial spirit within you?
[00:03:52] Joel: I would say so when, and when I was a young adult, I started a mobile disc jockey business and. Pay to basically play music for people and put on parties. And that scale, that scaled over about a 10 year period, which one do I play? Well, when I was a mobile disc jockey, I was just playing other people's music and digital downloads and pop back disks. I don't know if you remember CDs, but that's a while back.
[00:04:21] Kriti: I know what a CD is.
[00:04:23] Joel: There you go. Okay. So, but I know most everything is MP3s now or, or WAV files or what have you, but yeah, no, I w I was playing other people's music, digitally for parties and I would get paid for it, but it's interesting. You bring up instruments because I also played in a couple of rock, cover bands and played guitar, piano, trumpet I sang. And that was another income.
[00:04:49] Kriti: Oh, that's really cool. So you're like you're hustling basically. Yeah, I play classical guitar and I've been playing that since I was like seven and I got an electric guitar like I think two birthdays ago. And I still have. I still have to work on my electric guitar, but I love music. That's great.
[00:05:10] Joel: That's wonderful. So a lot of times people think music and entrepreneur can they mix. And I think it's, I think it's a great marriage of sorts because the music or any artistic medium kind of works that side of a person, but then being able to give back whether you're putting on a party or putting on a show, entertaining people, people will pay for that.
[00:05:32] Kriti: Yeah, like I think a lot of people in the music industry Taylor swift she's on my mind because of her new album re-recording and I would say she's an entrepreneur because she created this. She created Taylor swift. Like she created this person and. It's crazy. Just how it's hard. It's bad to say, but she is a business. Like of course she has a business, but
[00:05:57] Joel: she's a brand.
[00:05:59] Kriti: Yeah. And she is this entrepreneur. So, she obviously has certain aspects of her that make her creativity different than someone else's. And a lot of people like what she does and she's there for a reason. And, but then there's also the sales from her concert. And I just read that, , she just make so much money off of her, her album, she just rerecorded. So yeah, I think I like how you said that music and entrepreneurship, they can mix and they
[00:06:28] Joel: should mix. And it's interesting to me too, is I've seen. So many entertainers that are also entrepreneurs and sometimes their businesses, their brand, and then other times they have other businesses outside theirs.
Quote unquote, brand. And I think that's the thing too, is, is I think part of the entrepreneurial mindset is just kind of freeing your mind in a sense and saying, Hey, I don't have to just do this for my whole life. I don't have to just do this. I can do this. And some other things or I can do this and then maybe bring on people to help me with these other things.
[00:07:06] Kriti: And even in industries or fields, Seem that is very like one dimensional. Like you stay on this path especially for doctors. It's really interesting because you're now seeing this shift where doctors are figuring out different sources of income besides, clinical practice. And it's interesting cause my mom she's a doctor and she listens to a different podcast called 'physicians on fire' and it talks about the whole fire movement and how doctors are doing different side hustles. And they are sometimes related to medicine, sometimes they aren't. And it's really cool to see how people are really tapping into this like different sources of income.
I don't just have to do my day job.
[00:07:51] Joel: I totally agree. I totally agree. I don't think anybody is truly one-dimensional. I think a lot of times we settle into being one-dimensional.
[00:08:02] Kriti: I think everyone has so many different interests, like for sure.
[00:08:06] Joel: Yeah, yeah. But I liked that example as well because doctors who maybe, as you said, have a clinical practice or they work for a large hospital. They could be doing concierge medicine, as long as that's not an issue, but you know, again, they could have, they could have a mobile disc jockey service or really having a family can take photos. You know, they have a photography business.
[00:08:27] Kriti: So I want to talk a little bit more about how you got into investing and also how you got into specifically crypto investing in crypto.
[00:08:39] Joel: Excellent. I've been investing in various things for probably 25 years, maybe a little bit longer than that. Mostly the stock market pre crypto, and I've invested in businesses, things of that nature.
I've invested in insurance products and I very rarely keep money in cash. I'd rather move. I call it that Lazy Money yeah, because cash doesn't tend to grow very much. Just sits there. Correct. And so I, I, I tend to move whenever I have lots of cash. I tend to move it into some other asset class and whether like it, whether it's the stock market or insurance products, or even precious metals, You know, gold and silver things of that nature.
But cryptocurrency is something that is here to stay. I was looking at coin market cap the other day, and they have over 14,000 digital currencies listed on coin market cap. And just three weeks ago, they were like 12000. So
[00:09:45] Kriti: two
[00:09:47] Joel: more just in just a short weeks, but that's globally. I mean, globally, there's over 14,000 digital projects or cryptocurrency projects.
And if you think about that, this we're still at the beginning of this space, it's still very early in this sector and I've heard people say, oh, I feel like I've missed it. It's I I'm too late for crypto. What are you talking about? It hasn't even started yet. I mean, the space has been around for, you know, about 10 years or so, but it's only really been taking off the last four or five years, maybe a little longer than that, but I, I got in and as an investor a few years ago, and when I, when I found the company I worked for centric, I, I knew I'd found something special.
[00:10:35] Kriti: I see. So I. I want to talk a bit about your path to becoming the CEO of centric, but I feel like now's a good time to just really dive deep into like crypto. And we can talk more about that later on, but so could you just, could you just do you have any analogies for teams that might help us understand?
Like I personally. I like, kind of know what it is, but I kind of don't know, but I want like a concrete understanding.
[00:11:03] Joel: Sure. Well, what I would do Kriti is I would back us up to when we were talking about cash money. Okay. That's something you're familiar with, and for money coins, Fiat, do you know having, do you know that term Fiat, Fiat is, is money that's given to us by the.
And it's maybe it's, it's like a federal reserve or a reserve currency, something like that. It's backed by the credit worthiness of a government. And we've, we've had Fiat currency in a variety of different forms for probably 900 to a thousand years. And the Chinese, the Chinese were the first culture.
And first, first country to really come out with this. Concept of Fiat where it's it's not backed by anything. It's just backed by the credit worthiness of the governing body. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's putting, putting out and regulate regulating this monetary system, if you will. And even in the us, we were on the gold standard for a lot of years where our money was not Fiat.
It was money that was backed by. And of course, we went off the gold standard of had Fiat in the us. And I'm not sure where you're located. Are you in the U S as well? Oh, cool. The windy city. Awesome. But at any rate, what I always like to do is I like to start at the beginning, like what is money? And before when we had Fiat, we had commodity money and commodity money is like money backed by gold or maybe gold it's.
Or maybe grain or oil or something like that, that's backing the money supply. And that goes back thousands of years when people were transacting in, in bones and yak dung and shells. And, and then of course, gold and silver. I mean, you're, you're laughing a little bit about it, but people found value in a lot of different things and they said, this is worth something we're going to, we're going to transact in this.
I want you to. Clothing and you want my goat or my beef or my whatever. And people would find things to transact in. There was a gentleman I was listening to a few weeks ago and he said, even, even on school in schools, kids develop their own money. Like normally they're, they're transacting, you know, Pokemon cards, candy sweets, or whatever.
And they're using that back and forth. You know, this is valuable to me, but what you have is pretty valuable too. If I can I get that. And that's really all money is money is just a transfer of value. That's all, that's all it is. And so for, for my perspective is it's okay, well, what are we transferring?
We're transferring goods and services. You know, you, you, one of your parents is a doctor. They have, they have that. That's a professional service, lawyers, same thing. It's a professional service. And so we give them. Air quotes money to get those services. Does that make sense? Yeah. You go to the grocery store or the shoe store.
You're going to give them something that they see as money, for those goods, food clothing, or what have you. At the end of the day, it's really just ones and zeros at the end of the day. And it's okay, well, this credit card is connected to my bank, or it's connected to this line of credit, this money.
And I'm getting what I want using this instrument, whatever that instrument is, whether it's paper or coins or credit or crypto and cryptocurrency is really just another way of getting what we want. It's just another kind of money. That's all it is. And whether we're talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum or Cardano or Doge or Shiba Inu, or Centric, or any of the other thousands of projects that are out there, if you can spend it, it's considered money.
And our company happens to be in line with about maybe 500 of the 14,000 projects globally that you can actually use that.
[00:14:58] Kriti: Okay. So basically it's just, it's another form of currency, but it's digital, which is the biggest different, and also it's not. By a
[00:15:13] Joel: government, correct. That's the big thing that came out with the you've heard of Bitcoin.
I'm sure it's number one in this space. And when the Bitcoin white paper came out in 2008. So I mean that's 13 years ago, right? When the first white paper came out, it came out in the big part of the white paper. The big description of it, the vision of Bitcoin was that it was peer to peer. It was peer to peer money versus money that had to be.
Pass through a trusted third party. So it's
[00:15:45] Kriti: yeah. So it would be like the, it would be like me and my friend swapping a toy for a piece of candy. Whereas having to ask the teacher to go through
[00:15:57] Joel: your percent, that's an excellent way to explain it. That's perfect way. Cause we're the, in that, in your analogy, the teacher is the third party or the government it's okay, I got to go through Mrs.
Bernstein to get that toy. And then for my friend to get the candy, we can remove Mrs. Bernstein, whoever that is, and then we can just work together. So it's really in a sense, it's like getting back to the original way that money was done, way back. Whereas before governments and banks were in the
[00:16:30] Kriti: mix and who had this idea in the first place that it seems like if it was such a it's a, it's a thing we did like thousands of years ago.
Like I would get away from that. Yeah. Like how and how do we come back?
[00:16:42] Joel: So I I'd encourage your, your, your viewers maybe to kind of do a little bit of research on that, because we can probably spend several hours talking about what happened along the way. But there were like, if we go back to like ancient Rome about 2000 years ago, and then we start coming toward the, toward the present, there were these very wealthy families that basically were kind of a go-between like from, from the era where we were just bartering and transacting period.
Yeah. To governments getting in the mix and providing power. There were these families that would basically say, I'm going to write on a piece of paper. I'm going to write on this piece of paper right here, that, you know, I'm going to give you hundred of X and you can take this paper to this other person.
And they're going to value the paper that our family is backing the. So let's say for instance, the paper I put on, let's say it's like a hundred pieces of gold or something like that. So the family holds the a hundred pieces of gold and the paper is worth that. That's why these other parties are basically passing the papers because they, they put value on this piece of paper because it's backed by something else, established family.
And these, these really wealthy families. Became banks and then became heads of state
[00:18:07] Kriti: Medici's of Italy.
[00:18:09] Joel: There you go. You'll see, you already know your history. Very good. Yeah. The metadata is exactly right. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. But understand that these, these concepts go way, way back. And a lot of times, once people have.
And money in a lot of senses can provide power to groups and people and institutions. Once, once there's something out there that is providing the same value and is maybe redirecting some of that power. At that can become a concern, right? For certain, certain bodies or governing institutions. And then we, you know, I mean, fast forward to where we are today and we actually have the country of El Salvador allowing the citizens to transact in Bitcoin as well as the local national currency.
Wow.
[00:19:06] Kriti: What's happening in El Salvador is if I went to the store and ended up paying with my card, there'd be a button for me to pay
[00:19:13] Joel: with. Or some, some type of mechanism or process in place for letting you do that. And from what I read that, you know, the citizens can actually pay their taxes in Bitcoin.
[00:19:23] Kriti: Oh yeah. I read a few days ago. Something about the New York city mayor wants like to be paid in Bitcoin or
[00:19:31] Joel: something like that. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah. Yeah. This space is really a ball. And obviously there are a lot of different opinions out there about digital currency, you know, Bitcoin, what have you, at the end of the day, I just, I recommend that people do their research.
Like you, I mean, you already know, oh, the metadata I'm like, yep, exactly. But, but that evolved into what we know today of you know, the regulatory bodies and banking and things like that. But what. What is happening and being introduced with peer to peer money, you know, from the Bitcoin white paper forward to, to where we are today, as it's just another way for people to do money.
And for people who prefer to just do business without a third-party intermediary, which pay you have to pay fees, right? Maybe the paid fees to go through a bank. Whether, whether we're paying credit card fees or bank fees, when we do point of sale at the store or something like that, we can maybe eliminate those entirely.
In some cases we can pay like zero fees. A lot of people like that. If they're paying less for. That's an option for people who are maybe a little tech savvy or can at least figure it out. And the thing is, is the space is getting easier and easier and easier. The barrier to entry is getting lower and lower.
[00:20:49] Kriti: I have a few questions. So, a like how do the third parties, how does a U S government and how do banks feel about this? And then also, how, how do I like even.get a portion of Bitcoin that I'm able to then use, like I've heard of people in mining or any crypto mining get can you explain more about those?
[00:21:13] Joel: Okay. So the cash app allows, allows users to use their bank money, but you can also actually buy Bitcoin on the cash app. And there are a variety of other places where you can buy a Bitcoin and Venmo is another.
And Venmo allows you to buy point. Okay, there you go. You can buy Bitcoin and Ethereum and like point. And I think one other one, I can't remember off the top of my head. The problem with Venmo is, I don't know if they've changed it, but the problem with Venmo is you can't move your digital currency off of them, or it has to stay.
And then you have to sell it in the cash app. If you buy Bitcoin in the cash app, you can move that Bitcoin anywhere you want.
[00:21:53] Kriti: I see. And so you, but you have to buy it with the USDA.
[00:21:56] Joel: In most cases, however, however, for people who are already in digital currency, they can convert one digital currency to Bitcoin and vice versa, a lot of cases. So there's a lot of autonomy there and a lot of flexibility, like I move in and out of digital currencies all the time. If I find a digital currency that I, that I like I'm gonna move in. You know, or all, or I'll trade from XYZ currency into, into another one. And at the end of the day, do you have to use your local currency? No. I mean, I mean, it depends. I mean, there are some independent currencies, one that came out of like Stanford. I want to say. And, and all you have to do is download their app and you can start earning they're earning their digital currency just by participating in their little online community. But at the end of the day, anything new is going to be scary for certain people.
And people who kind of are in charge, air quotes of the money supply, or a banking or a compliance regulation, things like that. They're going to have some concerns around money. And obviously they're going to start with, Hey, this is about consumer awareness or consumer protections. That kind of a thing, you know, the users need to be protected.
I agree with that a hundred years. However, sometimes depending on the country or the legislative body or the regulatory body, they will be more or less open to innovation. And I, I'm always on the side of being open to innovation, I think it's great to be learning. I mean, we're musicians, so we're naturally creative, right.
But at the end of the day innovation either speeds up or it slows down depending on who's in charge now, understand that you and I are in the U S but there are lots of countries throughout the world, right? Several hundred countries and different countries have different beliefs and approaches to digital currency or cryptocurrency.
And what is cryptocurrency? It's really just the currency of the blockchain. And what's the. Do you know what that is yet? I know I've heard of so you know what the internet is obviously. So the, so blockchains are basically additional layers of data transport built on top of the internet. And by definition, it's a digital ledger.
So it's a ledger. So it says it's for sending. Okay. And it's distributed, which means it's not just in one central hub. And this is the, this is the other thing too, that we always want to talk about in this particular conversation is there's a difference between centralized. And decent centralized, centralized would be like the current money system.
It's all centralized around the central banks. And then the digital money space or the peer-to-peer money, these centralized. And it's not just one, one central hub. It could be millions of competitors or nodes. Phones all over the world, sharing the same network and agreeing they come to consensus. The first blockchain was launched by the Bitcoin team, whoever they are, they're anonymous. Some people have said that they're there Satoshi Nakamoto. There's a number of people that claim that, but we, we don't really know, really know who but we do know that the the Bitcoin blockchain is very robust and resilient. I mean it's, it's stood up to a lot. Attempts to be hacked and destroyed and things like that. And it just kind of keeps rolling along, but that's just one of numerous blockchains and Centric's, on the Binance Smart Chain. And part of our roadmap like where eccentric is going is we're going to have our own native blockchain, blockchain at some point. But we don't, we don't think we need to do that right now. But that's it. It's just another layer on top of the internet. And what blockchain really is, is it's a distributed ledger or DLT distributed ledger technology. So cause it's it's tech and it connects, connects people all over the world. And so why wouldn't they want to send their value along with their data the it within the networks that they trust. See, that's the trust. It's a trust within a network versus I'm going to go through this entity called a bank to be trusted in order to do business. I can do business within my network. I see. I see. And so nobody wants to be taken out when they're in power. They don't want to be taken out of it.
[00:26:37] Kriti: So you said that so obviously cryptocurrency is a form, a. FinTech. It is a financial technology and sense. And I know that I know a lot about FinTech and how it's helping under banked populations in the world. So I was wondering, how does Bitcoin, how does cryptocurrency affect these under-banked populations?
[00:27:01] Joel: Yet? It has the potential to be a boon and be a very big positive for them because unbanked populations. Obviously they don't have access to a bank, but they still have the needs. You and I have needs for food and, and clothing and shelter and medical care and all of these things cost money. And maybe they don't have access to the same types of investment services or advisory that we have in the first world. And if they have one of these, a phone, they can do that. And in the third world people have smartphones. And it's just, it's just another way for people to stay connected and there's programs all over the world where people are getting free smartphones.
Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, there's like about 2 billion. So like a third of the global population is unbanked. Did you realize it was at the highest? Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, if, if a new technology can help that many people or a large percentage of that population, I think it's a good thing. This technology is gonna allow people to be able to get to financial freedom and prosperity and independence, autonomy, and independence with without, without having to be.
[00:28:14] Kriti: So let's talk a little bit about Centric. I think that we can shift the conversation more about like the future of cryptocurrency, because I think as you, as you said Centric is. It's part of this , future of cryptocurrency. So, how did you become the CEO of Centric?
[00:28:36] Joel: I actually knew the the former CEO Logan Schauer. He and I knew each other. This is probably a little over three years ago when he and I met and he, shared Centric protocol with me. I thought it was amazing. I'm like, this is great. And then. I'm sure you've lost track of people. Like you had some vibes with them and then you guys just kind of like, you know, part of it. Yeah. It wasn't like negative. You just kind of stopped seeing each other. And there was something like that that happened with us where we just weren't, we weren't mixing in the same circles for a period of time. And then I found out that he had a horrible accident and he had to step down from his position with centric.
And during that time I'd actually become an investor with. Okay. And so that's, that's my background before coming to centric was that I was an investor. I was a teacher for a lot of years. Obviously an entrepreneur and, and I was also in the traditional financial services, space, insurance and investments and things like that.
So that was that's my background, but I also do a lot in the charitable space, so philanthropic space. And so for probably.
Little over a year ago, I started having some conversations with members of the centric team and in that kind of centered around charity work, actually didn't, it didn't have to do with money per se. And I thought that when I was talking with centric that I was maybe going to be like an outside consultant to kind of like help them with, with their charity work, kind of help them develop some you know, some systems.
You know, to beat, to make, to make a bigger impact for, for good. And after a number of conversations, things kind of change to the business is. And the team basically said, Joel, we're w we're actually looking for, for somebody to fill Logan's shoes. And I said, okay, I guess we can have that conversation. We, we decided that I was going to come on board as CEO and the team really liked the fact that I had such a diverse background.
No, I'm so passionate about giving back. So passionate about money and educating people about how it works. Then I was already an investor in Centric,
[00:30:54] Kriti: you were interested
[00:30:57] Joel: in that, not just the success of Centric, but just the, my passion for the space. And, and so, it, it felt like the.
Marriage of sorts. And, you know, March of this year, I came aboard as CEO and we we've just, we've, we've grown so much. We, we grew to over 50,000 wallets since I came aboard globally. We brought on a number of teams. We've actually doubled the size of our team since I came here. Yeah, that's exciting.
I mean, there's just a lot of really neat things that are happening in our company, but the sector itself is still such a baby space, right? Crypto. Yeah, it really is because, because you look at it, I mean, integration is under 5% globally. I don't know if it's that low. I mean, I mean, people are, I mean, some people are transacting in it.
It's
[00:31:46] Kriti: just, I think it's just very new. It's scary. Yeah.
[00:31:53] Joel: Like I said, there's two types of scary, right? There's the one type of scary where it's the fear of the unknown. I don't know what that is. So I'm afraid of it. Other side is the traditional financial industry, the powers that be they're concerned because they're like, Hey, we can't, how can we control this?
[00:32:10] Kriti: So, how, how would, how does centric differentiate itself from. And the other project,
[00:32:16] Joel: the other 14. Yeah. A lot of times when people who are a little bit sophisticated come to centric and start reviewing our protocol, they think, oh, you guys are building a stable coin. Aren't you? And.
[00:32:31] Kriti: That one that doesn't go up and
[00:32:33] Joel: down, it doesn't go up and down. It just holds its value and does what it's supposed to do, which makes it great for transactional purposes.
[00:32:39] Kriti: Not really, but not
[00:32:41] Joel: the investor investment side. The thing that we always respond with is not in the traditional sense. A traditional stable point is backed by dollars or other cryptocurrencies or something that's like equivalent to a dollar like electronic dollars. But like you said, doesn't really have an investment component. What we're developing at centric is a truly synthetic stable currency. With two tokens.
So one, one that's traded on the exchanges and has that volatility. But then if you bring that liquidity into the centric network, you take advantage of the other token, that's in
[00:33:17] Kriti: the stable
[00:33:19] Joel: together together. They, they create this synergy or it's okay, it's not attached to any of the other projects.
It's not backed by dollars or gold or other cryptos it's instead capitalized by it. And as people around the world start valuing the network, they're going to bring more and more value to the network. And what's going to happen is over time, the mechanisms in place are going to stabilize Centric's currency.
And because we have one token that's traded in one, that's not the one that's not as not speculate. So it can't be manipulated like the, like the tokens that are traded on the exchanges. So,
[00:33:59] Kriti: so the one that is not traded is the one that people invest on, but unlike the one, the other companies who the other companies that just have one for investing those ones, you said people can speculate.
Like it's
[00:34:15] Joel: Yeah, all, all cryptocurrencies are high risk and spread. And yeah, centric swap CNS is that way as well. Yeah. I mean, it's designed to stabilize it a dollar at some point in the future, but Centric rice CNR is the in network token and that one. Treated and the team calculates what the price of it is going to be every single month.
So we already know what the price of this time next year. And it's, it's reverse, engineered into immutable price blocks. So every single hour centric rise goes up. Every single hour. And what does it go up in? Does it go up in us dollars? No, it goes up in centric value. And what is central value centric value traded token is the traded token.
That's really cool. Yeah. The in network token grows by the traded token every hour. That's really
[00:35:13] Kriti: interesting.
[00:35:14] Joel: Yeah. But it's interesting too. I think what's really interesting is that. Both are technically an investment. And sometimes people will get into centric and they just hold the traded token.
But when, when people start to understand the protocol, they all want to move their liquidity into centric, rise, even traders, even traders, because traders, why do traders like stable coins?
[00:35:40] Kriti: Because it, it's not like you don't have to pay anyone back. Well, they don't
[00:35:45] Joel: lose their value in between trades in between trades.
so they, so they'll take, you know, their new trading XYZ token, it goes up, they sell it the same. They move it into a stable coin while they wait to place their other trade. They, they would like centric rise because centric rise, they can move their liquidity into centric rise and it keeps going up every hour.
So instead of it just being stable, it also has that potential for upswing.
[00:36:10] Kriti: That's really interesting. And I'll have to, I'll probably have to re listen to this part to fully wrap my head around it.
[00:36:17] Joel: Obviously in this, we call this phase, the adoption phase, because this is where people are learning about crypto learning about Centric. And, when our traded token stabilizes at at a dollar that's when we're going to move into the sustainable phase or the stability phase, and that's where a lot of cool things are going to happen in our network. That's when we'll be building that native blockchain, that's one, we'll have more integration. We actually are integrated with three crypto payment gateways, so people can pay in centric today. Like I said earlier projects, there's probably three to 500 projects globally that you can actually pay with today.
On that list.
[00:36:56] Kriti: That's cool. So how can how can we, as teens get into crypto?
[00:37:01] Joel: Obviously I'm a, I'm a Papa of five kids. So I, I always want to re redirect young people back to the parents by obviously for, for permission and that kind of thing. But, you know, as long as your parents are fine with you using different apps and things like that, you can start learning and
[00:37:22] Kriti: like good ones though that like teens, like it's safe for
[00:37:27] Joel: Sure. I would, I would say probably using the resource. The first versus the pages and the resources are more for learning. The exchanges are to actually access crypto, whether you're buying it or trading it and for resources, CoinDesk is good. Like I said, coin market cap. I mentioned earlier, obviously it tracks and measures the crypto market.
But the cool thing is every single crypto that's listed on coin market cap. There's like little sections where you can read about the project and see what it's doing in real time. Which is kind of neat. You can vote for the ones you like. It's kind of fun, thumbs up, thumbs down kind of a thing. But but yeah, coin market caps could CoinDesk be perfectly honest.
Anything that says coin in it is probably a good resource point. Telegraph is another one. We had a, an article in coin Telegraph.
[00:38:17] Kriti: I'll probably put those ones you listed
[00:38:20] Joel: and the description. Yeah, those would be good. And then, like I said, you know, for, for, for teens that want to maybe start trading or start buying, you know, take some of their money and put it in gripped out.
Cause I mean, my, my 16 year old and he's, he's not an adult yet. He's already put some money in crypto with. Yeah, of course, no, but what you could do is you can, you can connect with your parents and look at some of the exchanges or little apps or accounts that are available in the U S Coinbase is the biggest one Coinbase, and then crypto.com is decent, voyager and probably Coin Metro and any of those would be helpful just for people to kind of get their feet wet.
[00:39:03] Kriti: Awesome. So what would be your advice to your 17 year old self? And it can be in terms of any. Related to
[00:39:11] Joel: anything. Sure. Number one, don't be afraid. Number, number two, learn as much as you can and life isn't just about what you know, it's about who you are.
Oh, that's fair. Surround, surround yourself with the right people. . And I, you know what, I always say Kriti, as I, I don't want to be in the room where I'm the smartest person. I don't want to being in the room and being the richest person, but I don't want to be the smartest person. Cause if I'm in the room where I'm the smartest person, I want to leave that room as soon as possible.
[00:39:43] Kriti: Because you're not going to come out with anything. You're not going to improve yourself in any way. Yeah. I liked that analogy that's great advice. Thank you so much, Joel, for coming on the podcast today. Yeah I learnt a lot about cryptocurrency and thank you for simplifying it. Cause even if I look at like Investopedia or any of these other sources, it's just sometimes hard for me to understand.
So, it was great because now I can like, I can go tell my parents what cryptocurrency is now, which is important, you know? And I'm sure my audience is feeling the same way. So thank you so much for coming on the show and I'll have all of your links and everything in the episode description.
Awesome. So that's the end of the interview and it was awesome. Getting to know Joel. I really, really liked how he, the way he broke down, even what currency is and. He emphasized his key word of value, how much we think something is worth and how this whole psychological concept eventually morphed its way into becoming what we now know as paper money, or we now know as a dollar or the Euro. And I really think that was super cool because. He brought us back to this whole notion of bartering and how even as little children, we would do this same thing and how even a thousand years ago humans would do that. And I think we just, it just goes to show how we sometimes. Have forget how extremely difficult concepts can be based on rather simple ideas. So that was pretty enlightening. And for more information on Joel and Centric, I have Centric's website and Joel's socials in the episode description. Also in the episode description, I have listed some good resources ,so we can further our understandings of crypto and maybe even over this break, start to get into it.
So make sure you take a look at that. Thanks for listening. And I can't wait to talk to you next time.
Links
Joel's Socials:
Instagram: joel_clelland
Centric: https://www.centric.com/
CoinBase: https://www.coinbase.com/
Coin Metro: https://coinmetro.com/
Coin Telegraph: https://cointelegraph.com/
Coin Desk: https://www.coindesk.com/
Coin Market Cap: https://coinmarketcap.com/
Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/
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