My guest today is Nea Simone, Founder & CEO of Melanated Studios, the first black, woman-owned, and operated blockchain technology services company in the NFT and Metaverse space focused on empowering creators from the Global Diaspora of Afro-Descendants. Melanated Studios was born out of a shared passion for the global culture of Afro-Descendants and an understanding of the benefit of NFTs to creators through the smart contract to control their art and build generational wealth through a royalty system based upon the NFTs' highest sale value in perpetuity. Their team is composed of professionals with more than 50 years combined experience in PR & marketing, filmmaking, and technology with an emphasis on early blockchain developments and cryptocurrency. Melanated curates and places for auction or sale, art from the most pivotal talent that the world has known and all who hail from the global African diaspora. Nea is also an Entertainment Marketing Executive, Entrepreneur, and NYT best-selling author. As the first woman and black-owned blockchain digital agency, Nea is committed to providing complete creative and tech services to international NFT collectors and legacy clients, specializing in multi-media collections of cultural history. Founder and CEO Nea Simone is a visionary and futurist with two decades of expertise as a creator and entrepreneur with early involvement in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. She has spoken at Cannes and Suriname on NFTs and the future of art in 2021. She was the only Black woman to speak at the Crypto Funding Summit in Los Angeles in 2016 and was interviewed by Finance Magnets on Women in Blockchain Technology and again in an article about the future of crypto and the impact of women. Nea has been featured in Variety and a number of Crypto Publications including NFT Plazas, BitcoinEthereumNews, Yahoo Entertainment, CoinTelegraph, and many more. We discussed a variety of different topics during our conversation including, Melanated Studios, the publishing industry, NFT and Web3, the Creator Economy, finding your tribe, and much more. We begin our discussion by delving into the book publishing industry. Nea shares her experience of trying to get her first book published and the various hurdles she faced. She goes on to discuss how this informed her thinking on the possible applications and use cases for blockchain and web3 technology. Our conversation transitions to discussing the applications of NFTs. Nea discusses how NFTs can bring the creator/fan relationship closer together. We discuss future applications of NFTs and Web3. Our next topic of conversation centered around the film industry. We discuss the application and use cases for the film industry. Our final major topic of discussion is the creator economy. Nea discusses the importance of finding your tribe and how artists can use NFTs to engage with an audience. Please enjoy my conversation with Nea Anna Simone. -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co