If you’ve ever tried to follow crypto Twitter, you may feel like you’ve entered a chat room full of Wall Street bros. There’s a lot of terminology, numbers, and symbols that make the feed look like a spreadsheet. And for many people, that’s an isolating experience.
But Tavonia Evans wants cryptocurrency to work for everyone, and she believes it can be a powerful mechanism for growing the Black economy. So she started GUAP Coin to help increase financial freedom in the Black community with a cryptocurrency focused on their success.
Tracking Value and Growth Power
As a data scientist, Evans understands the power of numbers. For example, when she was looking for investors in 2015 for her company Safe2Meet, a peer-to-peer identity verification platform, she learned than less than 1 percent of venture funding goes to Black female founders.
After processing this realization, she started GUAP Coin in 2017 to help her community grow and maintain wealth. And it’s not just about personal gains for crypto owners - she wants to encourage participation in the Black economy.
According to the Empowerment Experiment, less than 3 percent of Black spending power goes to Black enterprises. “Money goes out, but it doesn’t come back in,” Evans says.
But there isn’t much data available on the subject. With GUAP Coin, however, she can provide hard numbers on these insights. She can use the data to demonstrate the potential growth factor not just to coin holders, but to future enterprises and investors in Black businesses.
Making Crypto for the Black Community
Right now, the dominant forces in crypto are people who have a strong foundation in finance and markets - or, in other words, white men. But Evans isn’t trying to talk like Wall Street bankers or reach institutional investors. That’s not GUAP Coin’s audience or purpose.
Instead, she connects with hip-hop artists who have substantial fanbases. And she educates her following as an influential astrologist. And once she reaches people with information about GUAP Coin, it goes viral. “The whole concept of viral definitely started in the Black and brown community,” she says.
And that’s really the key to her success: reaching people through trusted channels. It may also explain why GUAP Coin has a large percentage of female holders. Women often rely on their personal connections for information to make big decisions.
Similarly, the GUAP Coin Facebook group is more than a forum of enthusiasts talking about markets, percentages, and dividends. Evans has fostered a true community around the cryptocurrency.
New coin holders ask about how to access their wallets, while other members offer terminology definitions and advice. Plus, she has a whole section of her website dedicated to education about cryptocurrency.
GUAP Coin Is for Everyone
Over the past five years, GUAP Coin holders have seen the value in their purchasing power and have been empowered to share the message. By using GUAP Coin, holders not only benefit themselves, but also the greater African Diaspora community.
And GUAP Coin isn’t just for Black and brown users – everyone can join the community and use the cryptocurrency. Without more participation, we can’t achieve greatness for everyone. It’s not just up to women, people of color, or the queer communities to lift themselves up. We all have to help each other rise.
If you want to learn more about GUAP Coin and crypto, sign up for the WomenTech Global Conference 2020 in June!
Sterling Schuyler is an American living in Rotterdam. Since 2010 she has restarted her career three times, but has finally found her passion working as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. When she’s not working, she enjoys board games, watching and reading science fiction, video games, cooking, grabbing a drink, and tending to her house plants.
