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00:00:18:25 – 00:00:46:12

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon  on Today. I’ve got a very special one for you. So today we’re going to be talking about another amazing speaker that we have at the upcoming AG Me conference that’s going to be on Friday, October 28th. I had the pleasure of being introduced to Alexis Cortez, who is the head of community at Dot Earth, a really cool project that I’m excited to speak a little bit more about today with you. So, Alexis, how are you doing?

00:00:47:14 – 00:00:55:04

Alexi Cortez: I’m doing good. The weather’s finally cooling down in Austin. The merges in two days. So overall, I can’t complain.

00:00:55:26 – 00:01:04:15

Richard Carthon: Yeah. A lot to be excited about, especially the weather. It’s been a historic hot one this summer, but enjoying it, cooling off a little bit. But

00:01:06:04 – 00:01:14:00

Richard Carthon: you’ve been in the space for a while now. Kind of want to just learn a little bit more about you and your background. Can you just give us a little bit on on your background?

00:01:14:21 – 00:01:54:18

Alexi Cortez: Yeah, sure. So I’ll start present day and then I’ll go backwards. But I have been officially working in Web three 9 to 5 job since December of last year at Dot Earth, where a smaller startup. So the head of community head of community title’s a bit deceiving. I’m like, like classic startup where you have to wear multiple hats. I’m like technically a product manager also doing a ton on the community side. But anyway, I joined in December of last year and prior to joining Dot Earth, I was at Facebook on the gaming team, so I had interned with Facebook there in college and I was placed on the gaming team.

00:01:54:20 – 00:02:25:29

Alexi Cortez: I’m like not a gamer. I was actually pretty upset. I was on the gaming team. I like wanted to be on like travel or like e-commerce or something that I thought was more cool. And then I ended up loving gaming and stayed in gaming and I went back to work for Facebook after I graduated mostly doing ad sales with gaming clients, and then towards the end of my time at Facebook was focusing really heavily on Facebook’s instant gaming platform, which is like their app store.

00:02:26:01 – 00:02:31:15

Alexi Cortez: So like you don’t need to download games, you can just go to Facebook, gaming and play whatever games are on there. And

00:02:33:00 – 00:03:07:03

Alexi Cortez: yeah, and I started looking into Web three, probably September like this time last year. Like I had one friend that had just left Facebook and she minted some NFT and like sold it for like 40,000 and then did it again the next day for like 20,000. And I was like, Oh my God, I need to stop what I’m doing and start looking into Web3. And so that’s kind of what started my Web3 career. And then I ended up going to NFT, NYC and meeting my current boss like casually and like very randomly at a happy hour.

00:03:07:05 – 00:03:14:15

Alexi Cortez: And so we ended up connecting and like hitting it off and like now I work a daughter so that so awesome.

00:03:15:00 – 00:03:46:26

Richard Carthon: Yeah. There’s two, there’s two things I wanted, three things I want to take away. One, you go from the traditional web 2.0 space being at a place like Facebook and then seeing how looking at that, just not just the focus around gaming, but how it’s now going, even looking at the metaverse and how all of that’s kind of evolving. So you saw, you know, kind of that transition starting to happen there, but then getting introduced to the NFT space, seeing how money was being made and the opportunities that were there, going to a conference in New York and now meeting your new employer.

00:03:46:29 – 00:04:14:03

Richard Carthon: So the two things I would take away from that was there’s so great opportunity in the NFT space and realm, but then also the importance of being able to go to in-person events, to be able to meet and network people because you never know just by being in the same room with someone, there might be a synergistic way to find a way to collaborate and work together. So I think that’s just a really cool tidbit on just you never know, being in the right place at the right time could lead to a next step in the journey.

00:04:14:21 – 00:04:48:04

Alexi Cortez: Yeah, and like a crazy thing happened earlier this week. So I like manage the daughter on Twitter and we had someone that’s like pretty big in the community follow us. And I, I sent her just like about the message, like, thanks for following. And then I was like, Wait, I know her. And I realize I went to one of her talks at NFT NYC last year where I met my current employee employer and was like, Wait, did you do a talk on Etsy last year? Like, I went to go talk to you after and she was like, Holy shit. Like, you’re so right, we met. And so it’s just crazy how small the world can get.

00:04:50:00 – 00:04:57:01

Alexi Cortez: And yeah, I’m like, still mind blown that that happened. But yeah, definitely small world it’s incredible.

00:04:57:03 – 00:05:28:18

Richard Carthon: And it goes back to the power of in-person events. And another reason why I want to put on Agni a way for people to be able to come together, explore all the different amazing people locally around Austin, the greater Austin, Texas region for people to come listen to insights from each other and be able to network and hear some really cool insights. And and I know you’re working now at a dot earth and you’re actually going to be moderating a panel on Dallas. Before we dive into that, tell us a little bit about that earth. So what is it? And yeah.

00:05:29:21 – 00:06:01:21

Alexi Cortez: Yeah. So. But Earth is a virtual world built on what we’re calling gamified soil. It’s being done by a team like pretty incredible Web two gaming industry vets. So we have people from like early days and Zynga. I obviously came from Facebook gaming. We have people that have worked on Farmville Words with Friends took the gathering. So our team has a really, really strong track record and we’re really wanting to bring a lot more fun and gamification into web3.

00:06:02:06 – 00:06:33:02

Alexi Cortez: And so that’s what we’re trying to build out with. And so for context, gamified soil is basically how we’re thinking of making it really easy for people to gamify experiences. Create games are just like most fun and entertaining things. In a virtual world, we’re still like half in and half out of stealth mode, so I’m not revealing all that much, but we’ll be sharing a lot more over the coming probably month. By the time I recon comes around. I’m sure we’ll have a lot more out, but we’re showing everything on Twitter.

00:06:33:04 – 00:06:45:19

Alexi Cortez: So quick thought. Our Twitter blog, if you’re not following and are interested and follow along. But yeah, I’m really excited about what we’re building and excited about the team we have and super excited to share more soon.

00:06:46:23 – 00:07:18:27

Richard Carthon: Oh, that’s very exciting. I’m looking forward to checking out as well. I’m a gamer myself and always looking for new, interesting projects to go and check out. And I think it’s even more exciting that you have some pretty good things that are going to be revealed closer to Comic-Con. So now with that, you know, when we were first speaking, you know, on some of the various topics that we were going to be discussing at the conference, one that came up was the concept around dolls, and you actually had a pretty on your personal Twitter thread. You have a very interesting take on dolls.

00:07:18:29 – 00:07:23:27

Richard Carthon: So just kind of go into that just for a brief second. You kind of talk about that.

00:07:24:24 – 00:07:33:28

Alexi Cortez: Yeah, I have my Twitter that I’ve pulled up. The hot take is that I think those are stupid I’m not totally bought into.

00:07:35:14 – 00:08:07:27

Alexi Cortez: The value that does bring and I am not totally bought into that. They’re any different from what we like, from what currently exists. So like. The way Web3 describes Daos makes it sound like it’s this amazing tool that’s going to solve all of the world’s problems. But if you break it down a little, it’s just like things that already exist on my mind, like Soho House or like any sort of clubs are already basically like a Dao. Like you buy in and you’re this community and you can vote on what events you want to have.

00:08:07:29 – 00:08:44:00

Alexi Cortez: And. And I think like daos are also similar in form of like. Equity with voting rights. And, you know, that’s kind of a flawed system, like democracy could be counted as a Dow. And like we all know, that doesn’t work all that well. So I. I think if they worked as they were promised or like the aspirational vision of Dallas is really nice. But. What I’ve seen now, I’m not convinced that. That there anything worth being excited about or anything that will like radically innovate in the.

00:08:45:07 – 00:09:10:01

Richard Carthon: I’m sure several people listening to you feel either strongly against what you just said or can definitely feel how you feel about it. And I think what’s going to be really good to unpack this at on on your panel is to truly listen to both sides, be able to get more information on it and just see how deals are even being used here in Austin as well as some some greater areas in this space. So I know I’m excited to go listen to that panel and I’m excited to

00:09:11:16 – 00:09:22:00

Richard Carthon: learn more about the other people who are in various styles in the city. But, you know, as we get closer to the Acme Con, what are some things that you’re looking forward to at the event?

00:09:23:09 – 00:09:32:13

Alexi Cortez: I’m just looking forward to connecting with more people in Austin. There’s an NFT meetup every Wednesday in Austin that I go to pretty religiously, but

00:09:34:04 – 00:10:00:04

Alexi Cortez: I feel like there’s like all of these random pockets of like web three people in Austin that don’t mix and it’s not intentional. I think it’s just like, we don’t know that this other pocket exists. So I am super excited to get a better sense of everyone that works in Web3 that lives in Austin. And yeah, just have a time to get to know everyone and hang out and see what everyone’s working on. So I think that’s. Definitely what I’m most looking forward to.

00:10:01:09 – 00:10:34:23

Richard Carthon: Definitely. I know I am as well. And and hopefully we can bring a lot of these communities together and also even some out-of-towners that are going to be coming. I think it’s going to be cool to to meet a couple of people who are just in this basin and trying to be more involved with the Web3 community that’s building here in Austin. But I always like to wrap up with a couple of fun questions, and one that I’ll pose to you is with all the information that you’ve now learned, being working into the Web3 space, if you give yourself one or two pieces of wisdom when you first got started day one back in December, what dot earth, what would you tell yourself?

00:10:35:28 – 00:10:37:13

Alexi Cortez: When I first got started with daughters.

00:10:39:19 – 00:10:49:08

Alexi Cortez: Um. That’s a good one. I think there’s going to be, like, one more, like, on the personal side, and then let me think of more work ones. But on the personal side.

00:10:51:04 – 00:11:10:05

Alexi Cortez: Don’t wholeheartedly listen to influencers on the, on the like on the NAFTA Schilling side. Like when I was due to the space, I bought the so many that were just being pumped and like I didn’t know any better. And then the price change and I was like, damn it, like, so now lesson learned.

00:11:13:00 – 00:11:17:12

Alexi Cortez: I think the second piece of advice is web3.

00:11:19:00 – 00:11:26:11

Alexi Cortez: Has its own language and its own jargon, and it’s really easy to overcomplicate things or to, like, get really confused.

00:11:28:10 – 00:11:59:15

Alexi Cortez: But realistically, a lot of this has parallels and web, too. So if you’re new to the space, like like again, like Dallas to me or like already exists. What was the other one like? Staking rewards exist. Kind of like dividends. Like see where you can make parallels and web two. That way you can better grasp and like catch up to web3 faster. But Web3 just has a way of like changing something that already exists and giving it a new name or like rebranding it. So it makes it it makes the learning curve a lot steeper, even though it really shouldn’t be. So I think that’s the second.

00:12:00:28 – 00:12:37:14

Richard Carthon: Those are two good ones. You first come in, you know, influencers who shill. Unfortunately, you don’t necessarily know. All of them are coming out. Schilling But you learn through through the process. And then, yeah, finding the correlations. How do you how do you start bridging that gap? How do you become, you know, from 2.0 to 2.5 to eventually to 3.0 and yeah, learning lessons to keep bridging those gaps. I think that’s another really good takeaway. So definitely appreciate that. Alexi, what are ways that people can connect with you, learn more about what you got going on and can just see what’s going on with daughter.

00:12:38:05 – 00:13:06:03

Alexi Cortez: Yeah. So I daughter’s twitter is just dot e r t h it’s earth without the a, so go follow Twitter. As for me personally, I’m Alexa underscore Ethe on Twitter and absolutely everywhere else. I’m Alexi Cortez. So if you want to connect or have any questions, I think my doors are open everywhere and I’m an open book, so feel free to reach out. But Twitter’s probably the best,

00:13:07:18 – 00:13:11:16

Alexi Cortez: the best platform for both daughters and my web3 self.

00:13:12:27 – 00:13:30:29

Richard Carthon: Got it. Well, perfect. Well, everyone listening. Make sure you go check on Alexa in that earth, hoping that you are able to join us down at Acme so you can listen to her, meet her, and listen to the amazing panel she’s going to be hosting. But as always, appreciate your time. Alexis, thank you for joining us. And for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency.

00:13:32:16 – 00:13:56:02

Richard Carthon: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform is bridging the gap between the curious newcomers for just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future. All opinions expressed by Richard Carthon , the crypto current team, and their guests on this show, are exclusively their own opinions on this show, and any other crypto content production is exclusively for informational purposes.