The group attending the Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference (courtesy Bruce Fenton via Twitter)

If you’ve become familiar with Bitcoin, Ethereum, cryptocurrency or blockchain through mainstream news articles or Twitter, I’m going to state that you’ve been subject to speculative misconceptions about the crypto community.

And I feel justified in stating that because before September I was among those of you whose only exposure to these topics came through mainstream media. But since I’ve joined Esprezzo to contribute to the democratization of application development on blockchain, I’ve been given the opportunity to experience what the crypto community is truly all about.

The culture, motivations and overall essence of the crypto community became apparent to me while attending last week’s Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference hosted by Chainstone Labs.

Sitting in the same room as well-respected crypto advocates and innovators such as Bruce Fenton, Jonathan Johnson, Shawn Owen, and David Johnston left me with one resounding thought — “We all should learn something from the crypto community.”

What exactly should we learn from them?

We should learn what genuinely fosters a system of collaboration.

From the beginning, the crypto community has been built on collaboration. The greatest thing about its culture of collaboration is it is genuine. And it’s genuine because each individual benefits from working with others.

Doug Scribner, the founder and CEO of Vault Logic, pointed out that crypto IS a system of collaboration because it’s built on the principals of self-control, mutual benefit, working together, and helping others to help yourself.

Salt Lending Holdings CEO Shawn Owen built off Scribner’s statement by stating the crypto community is building a market where every contributor is working towards receiving the greatest value from the market. He continued by stating the crypto market will only improve organically because every member is working towards improving it. The motivation to improve the market is inherent because each individual member directly benefits.

We should learn how to re-embrace entrepreneurial creativity.

In my opinion, the crypto community and its rising prominence is relative to the early boom of startups hitting the map.

What I appreciate most about that period is that it disrupted the job market and provided opportunities that otherwise might not be there for unconventional, creative professionals.

Today, established and emerging startups provide unique opportunities to college graduates and young professionals. But there’s less room for non-traditional candidates whose strengths lie in their passion and ability to think big, because those individuals already hold manager- or executive-level positions at now-public or high-growth startups.

Learning of the backgrounds of people working at companies such as Chainstone Labs, Factom, Polymath, and LBRY, it’s apparent crypto companies are now the ones providing opportunities to entrepreneurial thinkers with unique-yet-unconventional experience and big ideas.

These individuals may or may not have a stacked resume or an MBA from MIT Sloan, but what they all do have in common is an inherent entrepreneurial nature and unrivaled motivation to succeed.

If you look at the overall disruption crypto is causing in various industries, I think it’s easy to encourage established startups and enterprises to get back to hiring with entrepreneurial creativity placed as a higher priority.

We should learn how crypto adoption can benefit our existing business.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.

In 2014, Overstock became the first billion-dollar company to accept Bitcoin as payment.

So far this year, Overstock’s revenue from Bitcoin payments is up to roughly $140,000 per week.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say it would be wise to follow step with Jonathan Johnson, the former president and current board member of one of the most successful online retailers

Well, there’s a lot we can learn. And the greatest part about the lessons the crypto community can teach us, is that we can apply them to our professional lives and aspirations, as well as our general human nature.

Lastly, we should all learn how to put social impact at the forefront of our business.

Now, I’m not naive to the fact that you need to drive revenue and create a profit in order to have a successful business. And I’m proud to live in a time where the majority of businesses emphasize social impact — whether that’s within the internal company culture or through external initiatives.

What’s striking about crypto companies is that global impact is the foundation of many companies’ missions. Take for example Vault Logic, Bitt and Factom:

Vault Logic — The goal of this company is to leverage new and traditional financial technology to onboard the undeserved, underbanked and unbanked to crypto and blockchain communities. Providing access to multiuser ATM-like vaults, Vault Logic allows low-income families and those living paycheck-to-paycheck to avoid being financially hindered by bank fees.

Bitt — Its mission is to financially empower and provide infrastructure that supports a digital financial ecosystem throughout the Caribbean. Bitt is working towards stimulating economic growth and financial access in a community facing economic struggles.

Factom — Here’s a quote from CEO Peter Kirby: “We started Factom to build a more honest and transparent world. We take a pretty simple approach: create software that makes it impossible to change the past and point that software at places where it solves valuable business problems.” Factom envisions a world free of fraud, corruption, and forgery.

Again, I’ll admit I’m new to the crytpo community, but I’m already blown away by the early impression it has left on me. From this point on, my hope is that we at Esprezzo can contribute to the global change this community is working towards.

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