Get an NFT education with Ariana Pierce

With much talk of building inclusivity and equity into web3, and differing opinions on exactly how to do it, there is one thing most of the women pioneers in the field agree on: creating equality in any industry cannot happen without education .

This is where Ariana Pierce comes in. Through her classes, training courses and crypto trading clubs, she is on a mission to ensure that people of all genders, races and socio-economic backgrounds can have the opportunity to learn what the web3 world can offer.

Pierce has been passionate about educating underserved communities about wealth since she started out as a day trader. I spoke with Pierce about her journey from day trading, how it evolved into crypto education, and why she is so driven to share her expertise and experience with others.

Amy Shoenthal: Tell me about your career journey and how you ended up in the world of crypto education.

Ariana Pierce: My journey started with blogging. From there I started my own travel business. Traveling was my passion, but it was a hustle. People encouraged me to start investing. That’s how I was introduced to day trading, which led to crypto trading, which eventually expanded to include NFTs.

I have a virtual club where we do crypto trading together. It is 90% women, but men can also join. It was something I started doing to show people how to make money outside of work. We have around 500 people in the crypto trading club, from young women to more experienced ladies. My mother also joined. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays we gather over Zoom, we look at currency trends, we look at crypto trends and talk about what we should buy and sell.

During the pandemic, it really gave us something to do. We were stuck at home, not really traveling, and many people’s jobs were at risk. If their industry wasn’t crucial, they didn’t know what was next. That’s when we became a family.

Shoenthal: You’ve obviously always been passionate about helping people achieve wealth. Right now you are super focused on NFTs. Tell me how NFTs fit into the overall mission.

Pierce: When I started posting about some of the NFTs I first bought, I got a lot of questions from people in my audience, especially women. They’d say, ‘I’m still stuck in the crypto part, but now you’re throwing NFTs at me? Come on.’

Since I got all these questions I thought I should create a course on NFTs to simply introduce the basics. So much of what stops people from coming to this room is intimidation. They don’t know how to get a wallet, how to navigate Opensea, and then there’s all this new language that’s over their heads. What does WAGMI mean? You can’t throw all these terms at them. You must speak their language.

I would bring it down to a third grade level. There will always be people who join these info sessions who have not acquired basic knowledge yet. That’s why we don’t talk over your head. We make NFTs very simple and very easy. I’m just trying to let people know that this is a place you can come and feel safe.

Now hundreds of people take the course.

Shoenthal: What is your long-term vision for helping overlooked communities like women and people of color create NFT empires?

Pierce: Throughout history, women, and especially women of color, have been left out of industries that create wealth, from oil and gas to electricity to the Internet. Now we have the opportunity to get involved and set the rules.

When you don’t see others like you represented in a place, you may feel like it might not be the place for you. I want to be the person who lets others know that this is totally for us too. My mission is to educate women and people of color to show them that they belong here. We need to make this a welcoming place.

For example, the Latino community feels left out because everything is always in English. My fiance’s family is from the Dominican Republic, so we’ve hosted some of our onboarding sessions in Spanish.

Another thing I want to break down is the assumption that this space is only for people with money. But if you look at the history of these ultra-successful projects, you have to ask, what was originally airdropped? Which NFTs were given away for free, or bought for just a few hundred dollars when minted, and now sell for $1 million?

This is about being early. That’s why I try to get as many people on board as possible. Spend less up front and seize the opportunity to build your wealth along the way. If you say you’re waiting to learn about NFTs until they go super mainstream, you could be missing out. Especially for the youth, maybe instead of buying a pair of trainers, spend the same amount and build your wealth in smarter ways. That is my motivation.

There was a young lady in the Boss Beauties community who bought one of their NFTs when it was under $300. A few months later it sold for over $24,000. She was a woman of color who couldn’t get a bank loan, so she used that income to finance her business. We don’t hear much about this, but it happens. I remember starting my travel business and not being able to get a bank loan. If only NFTs existed then. This is the good that can come out of being early.

Shoenthal: It was a big push to get in early, but then there was a dip. Can you talk about the dip? When you talk about building generational wealth, how do you account for a bear market or Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam’s statement that 90% of NFTs won’t be valuable in a few years?

Pierce: I tell every single person who comes into our trading club this: Never invest more than you are willing to lose. Easier said than done, but it is very important, because the market has ups and downs. But if we spread that chart all the way to the beginning, we’ll see that the market is actually still up overall.

I ask people to invest in things they are passionate about, not just what is popular. You need something that has value to you beyond that ethereum price. What is happening now is nothing we haven’t seen before. I won’t tell people what to do, but it might be a good time to get in and buy while the market is discounting. It’s like shopping. Buy your favorite bag on sale and use it as if it were full price.

Shoenthal: As one of the leading women pioneers in this space, as one of the Queens of Crypto, how can we really build accessibility and diversity into web3 in all the ways we failed to in web2?

First and foremost, education. Speak the language of those you speak to. Organize a free workshop. Provide underserved communities with ways to learn about place.

Second, hold brands and web3 innovators accountable. When they say they’re inclusive, are they? Are they really helping women or people of color the way they say they are? In web2 we heard a lot of it, but we didn’t really see it, and nobody was held accountable.

At blogging events, I always felt like the honorary melanie person or the black person. It was good to be involved, but it always felt like an afterthought.

We have the option to change that in web3. And we are. I have witnessed all different types of women posting amazing events and coming together. It’s great to see the relationships that have formed in this space.

Shoenthal: Speaking of the relationships that form in this space, you met your fiancé through crypto and you’re incorporating some crypto elements into your wedding, which is so fascinating. Can you talk about it?

Pierce: My husband and I met through a crypto event in New York. His team hosted an event for traders and we all went to dinner after the event where I was the only woman. Honestly, I was single at the time so I wasn’t disappointed. My fiancé came up to me, introduced himself and we never stopped talking.

We have a traditional wedding registry as well as an NFT domain. You can create NFT domains for your events, your business, anything you work on. So we created an NFT domain for our wedding. That way, if people want to give us crypto or NFTs, they can.

I just gave away a POAP (Protocol of Attendance Protocol) at my bridal shower to help onboard and educate more women in web3. It’s like a digital memory that will live in their wallet as proof that they attended my event. They were able to claim the token (NFT) if they had given us their ETH address before the event with their RSVP.

You can also earn money by selling your domains. Because you actually own it, you don’t need to go to sites like GoDaddy. If you think about it, you were technically just borrowing these sites since you had to buy it back every year or two.

Shoenthal: There was a recent Atlantic article that criticized the “women in crypto” movement for being the next #girlboss aka using feminism as a marketing ploy. Do you have any reaction to that?

Pierce: I think anything that moves forward and has the potential to change lives will always be criticized. When you do something good in life, or try to change your life, you always have critics. But they are just a distraction. Women really feel that they have freedom in this space. This is not a marketing ploy for feminism. We throw that criticism out the door and keep riding.

The dip right now is actually weeding out those who came in just to take advantage of the space. Those who will stay and flourish are those of us who lift up communities. We make the rules now. We’re going to run this thing.