Last week, I spoke with Phyllicia Menyweather, CEO of WellerStudios, an incubator for black wealth creation and crypto-economy that serves marginalized communities around the world. He explained to me how his project can help people and how much time is needed to close the current funding gap. We also discussed VLR tokens and some other projects of Phylicia, helping women and supporting wildlife. Let’s dive!
U.Today: Phylicia, you are the CEO of ValerStudios. Before starting this position can you tell us about your background and what led to your interest in crypto?
Phylicia several seasons: I started at Oklahoma State University, and I majored in economics (pre-law). From there, I entered law school, where I yearned to save the world and all its problems and all the major inadequacies.
That was just something that was in my heart. So after I finished law school, I entered the real world and quickly realized that was not my community. I wanted to find the meaning, why the sense of purpose. So, I looked for other communities and found blockchain community
U.Today: ValerStudios is an incubator for black wealth creation and a crypto-economy, as well as serving marginalized communities around the world. Tell us about your project. how old is it? How many users do you already have?
Phylicia several seasons: Our mission is to leverage blockchain to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. We have a large and growing community that believes in our mission and is designed to grow with the launch of each project through our incubator. March will mark a year from the idea stage to launch.
U.Today: How many people have you helped start their businesses on the blockchain? Can you give us more details on how this idea actually works?
Phylicia several seasons: In our first group, we are launching two blockchain projects to tackle global issues. The founders and team apply through our site, vote on projects to move forward through our Weller community incubator and together we build the white paper, legal framework and tokenization ahead of their launch.
U.Today: Tell us about your token, VLR. how does it work?
Phylicia several seasons: VLR was built on Binance Smart Chain. This is a governance token, and those who stake VLR will be able to vote on new projects. VLR owns a percentage of the tokens for the services. This is how we continuously increase the value.
U.Today: Your website states that “VLR’s vision is to close the wealth gap and catalyze the creation of generational black wealth for the next 100 years through VLR tokens.” This is an inspiring mission! How are you going to close that gap? And why have you set the deadline of 100 years? Is this number based on any analysis?
Phylicia several seasons: Well, there is a study by Citigroup that says that in the last 20 years racial injustice has caused a loss of $16 trillion to US GDP. I’m from Oklahoma, and the Tulsa massacre happened over a hundred years ago and it’s still affecting the community greatly. If we get this right in the next 20 years, it will be felt positively a hundred years from now.
U.Today: What are your plans for 2022?
Phylicia several seasons: The world should know that with blockchain technology, we are really starting to solve the world’s most important issues for good. Our plans for 2022 include building community and expanding the companies we are launching in cycles one and two of the incubator.
U.Today: Tell us about your first two projects, My Purse and Wildlife. what are they about?
Phylicia several seasons: My Purse is the first decentralized women-empowered marketplace. Women are able to trade, buy and barter goods for services. The more activity there is, the higher the value of the EVA tokens created to support my wallet.
Wildlife is an expedition company designed for wildlife encounters. It is backed by blockchain technology. The mission is to make excursions affordable, and then it creates empathy and recognition for endangered wildlife.
U.Today: Phylicia, which companies or leaders in the industry do you respect the most?
Phylicia several seasons: I have to say Satoshi Nakamoto because he started blockchain, and then my next person will be Elon Musk because he is such a forward thinker.
U.Today: Do you have a crypto portfolio?
Phylicia several seasons: I will
U.Today: What cryptocurrency do you have there?
Phylicia several seasons: I am very bullish on XRP. Of course, I have bitcoin, and I have a little polkadot, so that’s my fun stuff right now.
U.Today: What do you think will be the price of bitcoin a year from now?
Phylicia several seasons: This is a difficult question. You know, I talk to my friends about this all the time, and over the years I’ve been wrong about it. But I’ll stick to my guns and say bitcoin will be at 100K by the end of this year, and I’m just going to stay there.