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Past Eevent

Global Connection Year: 2021

The 4th Annual Summit brought together global and local communities in a hybrid format to explore blockchain solutions for economic justice in Black communities.
Location
Howard University D.C.
Date
Sep, 2021
Organizers
BillMari, BitHub Africa

Black Blockchain Summit 2021 (4th Annual)

The fourth summit marked a return as a hybrid event, spanning three days with activities both on Howard University’s campus and online​. Co-hosted by pan-African freelance platform AfriBlocks, the 2021 summit was devoted to developing blockchain-based solutions for challenges facing Black communities​. Under the continued theme of “Reparations and Revolutions,” it served as a vital meeting place for Black entrepreneurs, technologists, and thought leaders to collaborate on real-world blockchain applications​. Keynotes and panels addressed topics such as building market-ready blockchain products, expanding financial access with crypto, and strategies for leveraging blockchain to foster economic justice. This hybrid format broadened the summit’s reach, connecting in-person attendees with a global virtual audience in a unified conversation on empowerment through technology.

Relevant Event
Wired
It’s the sixth annual Black Blockchain Summit, and organizers are quietly removing a couple rows of chairs from the room. The Howard University auditorium we’re in looks a third empty. There are at most 100 people in the crowd today—a far cry from the 1,500 who attended the summit over three days last year, when Sam Bankman-Fried was still hailed as crypto’s boy wonder. Now, in late September, he’s weeks away from being convicted for an $8 billion fraud scheme.
The Washington Post
It is a space for discussing the relationship between money and man, the powers that be and what they have done with power. Online and in person, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., an estimated 1,500 mostly Black people have gathered to talk about crypto—decentralized digital money backed not by governments but by blockchain technology, a secure means of recording transactions—as a way to make money while disrupting centuries-long patterns of oppression.
Time
Inside the World of Black Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency started out as mostly a hobby for tech-savvy, financial wizards who had money to play with — cultivating an image of its users as young, White “Bitcoin bros.” But today, a growing number of Americans of color are participating in the $2 trillion global industry as a way to build wealth outside the traditional banking system, which many say has historically excluded and discriminated against their communities.
Wired
It’s the sixth annual Black Blockchain Summit, and organizers are quietly removing a couple rows of chairs from the room. The Howard University auditorium we’re in looks a third empty. There are at most 100 people in the crowd today—a far cry from the 1,500 who attended the summit over three days last year, when Sam Bankman-Fried was still hailed as crypto’s boy wonder. Now, in late September, he’s weeks away from being convicted for an $8 billion fraud scheme.
The Washington Post
It is a space for discussing the relationship between money and man, the powers that be and what they have done with power. Online and in person, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., an estimated 1,500 mostly Black people have gathered to talk about crypto—decentralized digital money backed not by governments but by blockchain technology, a secure means of recording transactions—as a way to make money while disrupting centuries-long patterns of oppression.
Time
Inside the World of Black Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency started out as mostly a hobby for tech-savvy, financial wizards who had money to play with — cultivating an image of its users as young, White “Bitcoin bros.” But today, a growing number of Americans of color are participating in the $2 trillion global industry as a way to build wealth outside the traditional banking system, which many say has historically excluded and discriminated against their communities.
Wired
It’s the sixth annual Black Blockchain Summit, and organizers are quietly removing a couple rows of chairs from the room. The Howard University auditorium we’re in looks a third empty. There are at most 100 people in the crowd today—a far cry from the 1,500 who attended the summit over three days last year, when Sam Bankman-Fried was still hailed as crypto’s boy wonder. Now, in late September, he’s weeks away from being convicted for an $8 billion fraud scheme.
The Washington Post
It is a space for discussing the relationship between money and man, the powers that be and what they have done with power. Online and in person, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., an estimated 1,500 mostly Black people have gathered to talk about crypto—decentralized digital money backed not by governments but by blockchain technology, a secure means of recording transactions—as a way to make money while disrupting centuries-long patterns of oppression.
Time
Inside the World of Black Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency started out as mostly a hobby for tech-savvy, financial wizards who had money to play with — cultivating an image of its users as young, White “Bitcoin bros.” But today, a growing number of Americans of color are participating in the $2 trillion global industry as a way to build wealth outside the traditional banking system, which many say has historically excluded and discriminated against their communities.