Nathaniel Luz stumbled on digital currencies in 2016 and Dash in 2017, and since then, he has been a frequent speaker and proponent of crypto adoption across Africa. He is now regarded as one of Africa’s foremost blockchain and digital currency experts.
In his chat with Technext, Luz tells of his experience in the cryptoverse after discovering the benefit of crypto trading over traditional money systems.
Nathaniel Luz
Luz is a Product Manager at prominent web3 companies, and the author of Digital Is The Cash book, an easy guide to understanding the past, present and future of money.
He says his journey began with “the wonders of cross border remittances.”
The ability for someone far away in the US to scan a barcode on my phone through Skype to receive payment was an exciting development for me, having seen the amount of time and high transaction fees traditional money remittances systems cost.
Nathaniel Luz
He was spurred to write Digital Is The Cash because he discovered there was a huge knowledge gap in the crypto space.
“You can barely name a handful of books, videos, academies and such where one can learn about digital currencies without it being about trading and how to make money. My desire to fill this knowledge gap led me to embark on an educational drive to make digital cash understandable in the barest non-technical terms possible. That was the start of what is now the “Digital is the Cash” book.”
Read also: How Munachi Ogueke brought the most diversified crypto wallet, Yellow Card, to Africa
Why product management, Luz?
One of Nathaniel Luz’s sterling qualities is his commitment to building easy-to-navigate and specific crypto products for users.
He argues that he has focused on product management “so I can help companies build products that are easy for the average user to understand and use.”
He adds that “we need to move away from marketing the technical aspect of the product to marketing the use cases. We need to build simpler products. People need to use crypto without knowing that they’re using crypto. People need to be able to understand, enjoy and derive benefit from the usage of crypto and blockchain products.”
Luz says you can own value with Web3
Speaking from his experience building web3 products, he believes the concept is beyond just contributing to the internet.
“You can own value, you can transmit the value that is your own. This is going to mean a whole lot of change and we are already seeing it – NFT, metaverse, CBDC, and CBDC are trying to be a copy of actual crypto. But, the most important thing web3 does is let people know that value is subjective, what you call value depends on if you choose to value it. That’s why somebody can take a selfie, upload on Opensea and sell for a whole lot of money.”
30 years for full crypto adoption?
African governments still shy away from crypto adoption, citing issues like easy channels for corruption, but Luz says change is not comfortable to come to terms with, especially at the initial stages. His standpoint is that blockchain is still a nascent technology that should be given more years to stabilise.
Technology is still early, I strongly believe that we are expecting too much from a young and nascent technology. Let’s give crypto the next thirty years. The attempt to build crypto was on for at least three decades before bitcoin was finally born. So, maybe we should give bitcoin its first three decades before we can decide if people are adopting it as they should.
Nathaniel Luz
He adds that governments do not really understand what the economy is, “but time will tell, history has taught us never to fight new innovations, especially not innovations backed by the internet and the young people.”
Nathaniel Luz sees Africa playing a pivotal role in the crypto space in the near future and believes the continent can do better in terms of creation.
“…at the moment, Africa does not play any role in terms of creation, just consumption. Africa is one of the largest consumer bases of crypto in the world. When we are talking about creators, we are talking about the West. They are the creators while we are the consumers. Unfortunately, that’s the reality.”
Luz’s future is literary
Nathaniel Luz has three books lined up, cutting across crypto and Product Management, that would be released later in the year. Wait for it!
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