English Translation of an Article Appearing in El Nuevo Día, Saturday, 11 December 2021
From Uber drivers to people from the creative and entrepreneurship fields, all are the new faces of an up-and-coming community of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finances’ enthusiasts in Puerto Rico.
Connected through the events organized by the Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association (PRBTA), they called themselves “crypto-curious” and deeply contract the wave of crypto-magnates such as Brock Pierce that moved to the Island after Hurricane Maria to take advantage of tax exemptions over capital gains.
Although most of them are still living in Puerto Rico, as it is with Pierce, who was recently spotted alongside Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, during an event celebrating the beginning of Hannukkah, their presence is not as notable as when they first arrived in the island.
“Amongst our members we have a diverse group of locals, people benefiting from Law 60 (Incentive Code previously known as Law 20) and the whole field between those two groups”, Keiko Yoshino, who co-founded the PRBTA alongside Puerto Rican lawyer Giovanni Mendez this past June, expressed. “We love our group, the community we are building and how the narrative is changing”, she continued.
Yoshino is living proof of this diversity. She confessed that she began looking into the topic of blockchain while vacationing in Puerto Rico in the early part of 2021. It was then and there that she decided she wanted to permanently move here and, after returning to Washington D.C. to sort out her affairs, she completed her move to the island back in March.
With a career as a legislative advisor, why found a blockchain organization? “To be honest, I saw an opportunity”, she said. And with her professional experience in networking, it took the PRBTA only six months to organize a full-capacity conference that caught the eye of some 400 people, with important stakeholders from the industry such as Bloq, XBTO, Althea, Bloom, CasperLabs, and DARMA.
“It is important to spread the news that this association is here to connect the rest of Puerto Rico with those members who already have a business”, IT entrepreneur and PRBTA spokesperson, Juan Carlos Pedreira, stated.
Pedreira recognized the “bad taste” left by that first group lead by Pierce, whose only agenda of creating here a “crypto utopia” was highlighted by an articled published by The New York Times on February 2nd, 2008, during a time in which there were still communities without electrical power after Hurricane Maria and a huge number still lacked a safe roof over them.
“Part of our role is to promote other members (of the PRBTA), which have moved here following the incentives under Laws 20 and 22, who are interested in connecting locally to allow people to take advantage of their knowledge and to expand this field”, Pedreira noted.
This bet towards creating a community is shared by James Haft, president of blockchain company DLTx, based in Norway, and a PRBTA founding member.
To support this goal, Haft helped in creating an educational curriculum that was taught, free of charge, for eight weeks called CryptoCurious.
For example, Giomar Alvira expressed that these meetings have been crucial for him to “take charge over my finances, learn how these digital assets work and how to create an additional source of income.”
Curiously, Alvira learned about PRBTA’s offer when, as an Uber driver, he took Yoshino to one of the events and decided to stay to learn more.
“Now I see people that come with doubts and are hesitant of asking a question on stage. I like to help closing those gaps between seminars and sharing the information”, he added.
“I’ve been taking part of the activities because I like the fact that CryptoCurious is in Spanish, intended for the locals, and it also gives me the opportunity to help people and validate that this is a legitimate space, in which Puerto Ricans know what they are talking about and that they are putting their money where their mouth is,” IT creative expert, Shirley McPhaul, expressed.
“In my case, I lost everything because of the hurricane: my house and my business”, Irelsa Golderos recalled. After a few jobs that helped get back to her feet, she was recruited by PRBTA as a Community and Events Director. “It was then that I began to learn more about this topic and to buy (cryptocurrency), while getting to know the dynamics. Now, I’m telling all my clients and suppliers to accept crypto.”
Education is crucial
In a telephone call, Haft underlined the importance of creating self-education spaces for crypto and blockchain because he feels that “the financial landscape is changing now”, and these technologies are a critical element of that.
After all, there are 15,498 digital currencies in existence, with an estimate global value of $2.3 billion (trillions in English), plus endless opportunities for IT companies and the technological uses of the blockchain technology in fields such as education, video games, financial services, logistics, and cybersecurity.
“Businesses are a central aspect and the concept of how people are being hired is changing”, the Co-founder of the collaborative meetings CyberMondays, which are organized in multiple cities, added. [Haft]
He also pointed out that there are “new ways of creating wealth”, which include these individuals creating their own value tools.
This is the case of the growing market of Non-fungible tokens (NFT), which have opened a new mean of financial prospects for artists, all type of creators, and even brands that are selling or bidding them already in the digital world.
And what do they produce or sell? As per Investopedia, an NFT is “a cryptographic asset tie to a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata, which differentiate one from the others”.
This means that such digital asset is non-repetitive as collectible piece that contains its own proof of authenticity.
Although an NFT can be the digital version of an object that exists in the physical world, the same as an art piece or some sneakers, it is not necessarily like that. It can also be a video game’s code, an audio file, a set of pixels that together form an art that has never been printed, or an object or character within a video game.
The most expensive and impressive example of this tendency took place last March, when a digital composition of “Everydays: The First 500 Days” from artist known as Beeple (Mike Winklemann), was sold for $69 million. The transaction was facilitated by well-renowned auction house Christie’s and the bidder did not receive a physical copy of the work, but a digital file instead.
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, this past Tuesday, renowned tattoo artist Juan Salgado confirmed the sale of his NFT “The Lotus Diamond” for the equivalent in Ethereum currency of $32,000. This set a local sales record of a single new piece of digital art.
For McPhaul, who was interviewed before this sale took place, the publication of Salgado’s first NFT set a milestone that “blew her mind”.
“The NFT validate digital property, that digital art is also considered as legitimate art”, she expressed.
As per a recent estimate by JP Morgan, the NFT market is currently valued over $7,000 million.
Digital currency, real risk
On the other hand, and without taking into consideration the value fluctuations to which a person investing in tangible or digital assets is exposed, crypto space has its own risks, as expressed by Jorge Andujar, who has 12 years of experience in the financial services industry and who is a certified Enterprise Blockchain Professional.
“First, you have the digital wallets and exchange platforms (platforms for selling/buying cryptocurrencies), because anyone can invent one”, Andujar stated.
Therefore, Andujar recommended that the first step is to research each platform’s reputation and internal policies, which must include prevention against money laundering as per the federal government.
Some of them, including the most popular Coinbase, are themselves, or are part of, publicly traded companies, which implies compliance requirements and periodic publication of financial reports that facilitate the inquiry process. Others, such as the Exodus wallet, have raised private capital and trade in blockchain trading firms that are registered under regulators such as the SEC, and the Industry Regulatory Authority [Finra in Spanish].
All this is added to the risk of cyberattacks to which all internet platforms, and the devices and users connected to them, are exposed. Two of the most recent cases saw $600 million disappear from the blockchain platform Poly Network, as well as $200 million from Bitmart.
The flamboyant ads from people or entities promising huge and quick earnings with a minimal investment in cryptocurrency are also in the rise. “I’ve seen people that do not understand much of this technology go into this multilevel-type groups, which are just a pyramidal scheme camouflaged under an educational framework”, Andujar expressed.
“This is common in South America, but there are some companies that have made it to Puerto Rico already, such as Forex, but with crypto”, he warned.
A red flag is highlighting the fact that people can joined these groups by invitation, either through social media or messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram. “They say, “come to the courses, give us your money and we’ll invest it, and you will earn for the number of people that you invite to the group”, he elaborated about the most common practices. Regarding the growing number of businesses, or assets or services providers, which are accepting cryptocurrencies as method of payment, Andujar mentioned that “they assume the risk of having the client paying with a crypto [coin] that can be linked to the black market, and the authorities knocking at their door soon after”.
“The more accepted crypto is, the more people will use it for positive things; the criminals will continue using it anyway”, he finished.
