John Hargrave on writing Blockchain For Everyone

0:00I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have John Hargrave the author of blockchain for everyone John thank you so much for being on the show it is a pleasure to see you again and to have you here Ashton thanks for having me you're very welcome I'm very excited to learn about

0:19blockchain for everyone today I do have a copy of the book but I haven't read it yet and I'm excited to hear your take on it so if you would kick it off I'd love to hear a little bit about you know why did you write the book and what's the story behind it yeah I started out as a comedy writer I've been writing kind of at the intersection of comedy and technology for about 20

0:41years and what I do is make technology accessible in a really user friendly fun way I'm like a professional simplifier and so when I got involved in blockchain when I asked when I bought Bitcoin back in 2013 I got so interested in this but I found that most blockchain books were really difficult to understand they were hard to get through and I wanted to make

1:09a book that people would read cover to cover a book that was funny that was interesting and it was just a great read and that's how my book blockchain for everyone came about it's the story of my forays into this crazy world of blockchain first as an investor in Bitcoin and then building a whole company in this space all the crazy characters that I've met and all the

1:36adventures that I've had but along the way you learn about the technology in a really fun and funny way and people tell me now this is the greatest compliment they say I started reading it and I couldn't put it down I read it cover to cover and I said my job here is done drop the mic ha ha that's amazing John it's great to hear that you've had such great feedback and in that it's more

2:03than just you know the technicals and it can get pretty complex and dry depending on what your interests are just reading about the technical part about blockchain but I know that yours is ink much more encompassing than that and you do have a part about you know why people need to reinvent themselves and sort of your story of lifelong learning if you

2:20could touch on that part of the book that'd be great yeah so I was approaching the age of 50 and I had this successful company but it wasn't growing as fast as I wanted it to and I said I got to reinvent myself this was about the time that I bought Bitcoin and I saw the price of this Bitcoin going through the roof this was in the great crypto boom of 2017 and I said I'm gonna

2:48completely reinvent myself reinvent this company go all-in on blockchain and what I believe is that the world moves so fast today technology moves so fast that we are called to constantly reinvent ourselves we have to be what I call lifelong learners and think of yourself as having like a skill stack a very specific unique collection of skills and you're gonna constantly be adding new

3:16skills onto your skills stack so as I did that with blockchain as I really immerse myself in this new technology and started to learn about it started to build a business around it what I found was that I was personally reinventing myself so this reinvention it's really a story about personal reinvention this micro story is kind of a snapshot of the

3:43larger story of reinvention of how blockchain is reinventing our global financial and economic system so our little picture here our little story that you read about in the book is really a microcosm of the macrocosm of reinvention that's going on in blockchain and that's really exciting it's very exciting and it seems like the book is doing very well right now and

4:05Congrats to all the success it is thank you it has a perfect five star rating on Amazon it's an audible bestseller and I'm just so proud thank you that's awesome and but things weren't always good and I think you touched on that in the book as well you know there's been some dark hours along this journey and maybe he could reflect back on those times when things were darkest

4:26yeah so I said we went all in on blockchain in 2017 which as you know was the great crypto boom and then in 2018 everything started to tank and it turned into what we now call the great crypto winter and they were dark days Ashton it was very very difficult because suddenly we went from this boom time when everybody was making money to this very bust kind of

4:56market cycle where it was tough to make money and what we learned in that space and what I personally learned was the fortitude the resilience the courage all the personal qualities that were called on to draw upon in these times of great difficulty and in the book I talk about not only how we made it through from a business perspective and from a crypto

5:22investing perspective but how we made a fear from a human perspective how we how we kind of steeled ourselves for that very difficult downturn in market cycle now what I believe is those of us who survive those of us who've made it all the way through the boom and the bust of this crypto market we are the survivors and we are leading we have earned the

5:48right to lead we've earned the right to lead a new ashin you've been here through it all and you also you're a real leader in this space because you have stuck with it despite the market cycles the up and downs you believe in it long term he's put your money where your mouth is and you've built this amazing show around it and that's the kind of perseverance that

6:15this book teaches you how to do feels good to be a survivor doesn't it Ashton you just got to keep working hard every day John and I know that we're both working on that path so thanks for that acknowledgement as well you know I did skim through the book and saw a little part about how you're you're at the Fed you know undoing the Fed and I saw a little bit of humor in that if you could

6:36explain that story to the audience that be great yeah it's a funny story where we're doing deal in the Fed so I had been invited to a conference at the Federal Reserve so the Federal Reserve is of course our central bank but it's also a building it's actually twelve buildings that the central banks and there's one a branch here in Boston where we're located and

7:02it's this huge imposing monolith of a building and to get in you have to go through all these security gates and be frisked and I go into this conference and then after the conference I go to take a conference call for my business and we're doing a deal in the basement of the Federal Reserve I'm in the lunch room of the Fed I'm literally in the belly of the beast action I'm in the

7:28commissary at the Federal Reserve surrounded by like millions of dollars of of cash and we're doing a deal with this entrepreneur who's building one of the first stable coins and as you know a stable coin is a crypto asset that holds its value against the US dollar and it strikes me as I'm talking to this guy that I'm doing a deal in the basement of

7:53the Federal Reserve that will undo the Federal Reserve I'm literally taking apart the system that I am currently sitting inside of and I thought that is just an irony sandwich that is like irony layered in between several stacks of irony and it was especially hilarious because the stable coin he was proposing

8:21was actually backed by gold reserves so here you have a stable coin that people are saying is worth nothing that's actually backed by gold while I'm in the middle of the Federal Reserve which has all of this paper that is no longer backed by anything at all and I thought that's an irony burrito yep that's definitely ironic and it's interesting how times are changing and old parties

8:49will need to adapt and stable coins will continue to adapt as well so that we we can keep moving forward and use the money for the people and the the money that people want to use so she seems like quite the journey and the ironic journey and the funny journey and the spiritual journey I saw in the tagline it's called you almost call the book a spiritual quest you know what

9:10what did you mean by that it is like a Vision Quest to enter into this space and to really stick with it long term whether you're an entrepreneur whether you're a blockchain pioneer whether you're an investor whatever you're doing in this space to really stick with it you have to believe in this space with every fiber of your being and as I went through this it was

9:37enlarging in a spiritual sense it was uh an an exercise for me a daily exercise and motivating myself to keep going one foot at a time one foot in front of the other so I used all these tools or kind of hacks throughout this difficult period of 2018 like music for example I actually created a Spotify playlist called blockchain for everyone it's a free playlist with all the music that

10:06was just positive and motivating and upbeat kind of helped me make it through I had a whole series of mantras I write write them in the book I call them mine hacks that I wrote down in a little moleskin notebook every day to myself kind of affirmations to get me through it I did a ton of blogging kind of explaining this new space that we were building and my vision for it so all of

10:30these very specific kind of actionable things that I did techniques to make it through those are the techniques I want to share with the world because there will be more difficult times ahead and also we all face difficult times whether it's in building a business in the crypto space or some other personal challenge and that's what I really wanted to share with your viewers here

10:54with the readers and share with the world yeah well congratulations on that because it seems like it's been doing really well and when we saw each other at the world crypto con you had your booth with all the boot books there and they sold out you know there wasn't even a bloke's left when I got there so yeah that was great and you know how have you found the time to travel to

11:12these different conferences while still trying to market the book and then you know continue on what's coming after the book here have you managed you don't get a lot of sleep Addison working in this space you know you know you don't get a lot of sleep but yeah it's very exciting to sell out at world crypto con and then I went to blockchain Expo and everywhere that we've gone to

11:35sell the book face to face we've just gotten great feedback from readers and what people love about it is there's a special deal with the book for your listeners which is you can get twenty five dollars in crypto when you buy the book and the book is about twenty five dollars so you essentially get the book for free so there's a little bookmark inside the book when you buy it that has

12:00a QR code you scan the QR code and it opens the coinbase wallet app and it has $25 of die loaded into it die of course is stable coins so it's gonna hold its value and then you can use that die within the coin base ecosystem and so because of that like it's been selling like crazy and you can only get that deal if you go to blockchain for everyone calm so you can buy it on

12:26Amazon you can buy it on audible but the special twenty five dollar deal is only available for your readers or listeners through blockchain for everyone calm that's awesome John and how did you manage to partner up with guy I know you know it's ironic cuz they are stable coin that's you know what you were talking about in the story and it's actually one of the most popular and

12:49well you stable coins so I'm interested how you how you manage that yeah it's a funny story when I pitched the book to Simon & Schuster my publisher I said wouldn't be cool if when people bought the book they could get $25 worth of Bitcoin and my editor who is this brilliant guy named jeremy ruby strauss he's had all these New York Times bestsellers he says you know John this

13:16is how he talks he goes you know John the last time I heard an original idea in the book publishing industry was never and that is an original idea and I was like that'd be brilliant $25 in Bitcoin and imagine the price of Bitcoin goes up well the price of Bitcoin could be worth more than the book so you literally would not be able to keep the book on the shelves you'd

13:40have to hire a security guard to stand guard over the books so I love this idea well it turns out packaging Bitcoin with physical books is actually much harder than it sounds it's all kinds of logistical challenges so we approached a maker that is the creator of the dice table coin and coin base that makes the coin base wallet and they were kind enough to say basically we will

14:06contribute a large amount of dye for this promotion and for them what they're getting as new users of the coin base wallet and eye cryptocurrency the dice table coin and what we're getting is just a great value for our readers and at the end of the day like that is the mission of the book is getting people to actually own this stuff so blockchain for everyone is the name of the book and

14:30that's really our our goal getting everyone on blockchain awesome well thank you so much for the time John I'll leave those links in the description box below and it's all the time that we have for the interview unfortunately but it's been a pleasure hearing about your story hearing about the book and I'm looking forward to seeing you around at the next

14:48conference and let's follow up in the near future to hear about this you know the future success of a blockchain for everyone so thank you ask and keep up the great work you