Frequently Asked Questions
There is no stupid question, only stupid answers. Don’t hesitate to edit this document and add new questions. We will go periodically through them to answer them and collaboratively build up this FAQ.
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About DAO Brussels
What is DAO Brussels?
It’s the community of crypto citizens of Brussels. We organize events to learn together about this new world of crypto and how we can use it to build a regenerative future for Brussels.
What events are you organizing?
We organize every first Wednesday of the month “Crypto Wednesday”. It’s our regular gathering to bring the community together, welcome new citizens, learn together about crypto (all levels welcome) and start new projects. More info: https://meetup.com/daobrussels
We also organize drinks and other events (follow the #events channel on our discord or subscribe to our Google Calendar)
What events have you organized so far?
On top of our regular events, we also organize special events.
Regens Unite, May 19-20 2022
We brought together “Regens”, people working for not only a sustainable but a regenerative future and coming from different backgrounds (climate activists, citizens, NGOs, web3, …)
More info: https://regensunite.earth
NFT Solarpunk Contest, March 2022
We invited artists to help us reimagine Brussels in a sustainable future (aka solarpunk).
More info: dao.brussels/solarpunk-nft-contest…
How can I support DAO.brussels?
The best way to support is to join the community on Discord, organize or help organize crypto related events in Brussels and give visibility to our activities.
You can also support us by donating to our multisig: daobrussels.eth or on our Gitcoin page.
About crypto
DAO, DeFI, ReFI, NFT, Mint, … What do all those crypto terms mean?
The world of crypto is a new world with its own language. That’s why we are collectively building this glossary to help you out.
Isn’t crypto used for money laundering and other illicit activities?
TLDR: Not nearly as much as the current financial system
Blockchains are open source and open data. They are very transparent and because of that, it’s generally a bad idea to use them to hide money (unlike opening bank accounts in financial heavens or trading art pieces stored in freeports). The amount of money reported in the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers (€9.7 trillion in hidden wealth) is higher than the total amount of money in crypto (€1 trillion in June 2022).
That’s not to say that there are no illicit activities. It’s true that there are plenty of scams, phishing and hacks happening. The Internet was also this scary place at the beginning full of hackers and viruses. It takes time for people to learn how to use such a new platform and the people who tend to be more motivated to learn quickly are the ones that have been excluded from existing platforms.
Isn’t crypto just for gambling?
There are definitely people in crypto just for trading and making a quick buck, but that’s far from being representative of all the use cases of crypto (see next question).
What can crypto be used for?
Bitcoin can be used as a way to avoid remittance fees when sending money abroad (especially to Africa and other places where Western Unions are taking insane fees).
Ethereum can be used to create a Universal Basic Income (see Proof of Humanity).
Polygon can be used to track carbon certificates on-chain, bring transparency to the whole process and avoid double counting (using the Toucan Protocol).
Ethereum / Polygon can be used to create certificates of authenticity of digital art pieces (NFTs, Non Fungible Tokens) and fund a new artistic renaissance (what we did with the imagine.brussels NFT contest)
Fuse can be used to create a local alternative to Uber Eats / Deliveroo where all participants (restaurants, deliverers, consumers) are shareholders and where the 20-30% cut stays in the local economy (see Peepl Eat).
What’s the best way to invest in crypto?
The best investment you can make is investing your time. Get yourself familiar with this new space. Read. Watch videos. Learn and then join various DAOs and see how you can contribute.
If you have money to invest, read on:
First proper disclosure, this is not financial advice. DYOR (Do Your Own Research, and question everything, including the certainties of your financial advisor with 10 year experience in the legacy fossil fuel backed financial market).
You have to know that it’s impossible to time the market. The market will go up and down. It’s still a highly speculative asset. So only invest money that you can lose (money that you don’t need in the short term) and don’t put everything at once. The recommended method is to do Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA). It means, buying crypto in trenches. You can set up an automatic recurring payment (every week, every month) and automatically buy at the market price. In the long run, you will effectively get the average price. This is a great way to stop worrying about the price. Doing that during bear markets is great (like the one we are in now since June 2022). And start getting out in trenches as well once the market is getting to new ATH (new highest point). Or not, and stay in as a true believer (be ready in that case to take a ticket for another round of rollercoaster).
I bought some crypto and now it’s down 50%, what to do?
It happened before and it will happen again (though eventually it will become less volatile as more people join the network). Every single time though, people who bought Bitcoin or Ethereum at the top and who lost on paper more than 50%, got the opportunity to sell at a higher value years later (the same cannot be said for the numerous coins that anyone can create and who most of them aren’t worth anything).
And that’s exactly why it’s important that you don’t invest money that you may need in the short term. Until you sell, it’s only a number on a screen. Breathe. You may as well consider it as a bug and when you will check again in 2 years, the bug will be fixed, like it didn’t happen. Sure it’s annoying that you didn’t invest at the bottom of the market, but again, nobody can time the market. Sure it’s annoying that you have to postpone your dream investment. It’s life. We can’t control everything, especially not others (and the market is the sum of others).
I want to work for a web3/crypto company, where should I start?
You can look at cryptojobslist for open positions. There are many options for you even if you are not a developer. Most web3 companies / DAO are open source and you can just start contributing without permission. Read their documentation, join their Discord, identify areas where you can make a useful contribution. Eventually they will probably pick you up and offer you bounties or a paid position to keep contributing.
About Ethereum
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a blockchain with its own token (ether, ETH). The main difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is that Ethereum allows you to run all kinds of applications on top of it (using smart contracts developed with the Solidity programming language).
What is an ETH address?
It's an "account number" on the ethereum blockchain. Think as if it were an IBAN bank account for now.
As an example, this is one of my ethereum addresses: 0x76F536F370f89667804D1b02807e76d668ED4415 (I keep the others secret for better privacy 🤫)
If you have an ethereum address, people can send you the crypto currency ether. They can also send you some of the thousands of tokens that run on top of ethereum. (Ethereum is basically one big computer, shared by millions of people everyday. It also runs the code that makes up most "NFTs" (non-fungible tokens), and many many applications called dApps, but let's not dive too deep right now 🙂)
What's different compared to a bank account, is that I'm the only person in the whole wide world that can spend crypto currencies from 0x76F536F370f89667804D1b02807e76d668ED4415 (my ethereum address), because I'm the only person in the whole wide world that knows about the 12 or 24 words that act as a "password" to that specific address. That also means that if I ever lose those 12 or 24 words (also known as "seed phrase", "recovery phrase"...), nobody can help me to recover those funds, not even a bank, the police, or the government. With great power comes great responsibility 💪😉
but wait, there's more! let's not worry about losing our seed phrase right now, or speculate on crypto currencies... We can use our ethereum address to login into websites 😯 (such as https://app.coordinape.com/) It's completely free, much more secure than a password, and... it's one less password to remember... It's the way most sites work in crypto 🙃
I hope this somewhat answers your question, and doesn't look too daunting. It'll become more clear over time.
If you understand everything I just wrote, you can pat yourself on the back 👏🥳 because it took me more than a few months to understand all this. If you have any follow up questions, please shoot them 🙂 If you want to set up an ethereum address for yourself, join us on https://discord.dao.brussels and we will be happy to help you.
Contributors
Contribute! Feel free to edit this Google Doc and add your questions (first as an edit suggestion, once approved we will give you proper edit rights). Thank you for keeping it tidy.