It marks a little over a year since I’ve been touring with CryptoMondays. Now at the end of 2022, I have experienced the highest ups and downs in the markets, hype vs. reality about NFTs and the Metaverse, and the game-changing burst of creativity and entrepreneurship happening in the “crypto” space worldwide.
CryptoMondays Global is Born in New York City
I went back to the states to visit friends in Miami and New York and speak at NFT.NYC and it ended up in a yearlong journey into crypto. Crypto King of Wall Street @cryptooracle and @cryptomondays Co-Founder @LouKerner seemed to be everywhere I went, and he invited me to moderate a cryptomondays meetup in Manhattan while I was in town.
I attended the “CryptoMondays DAO” formation meeting and not only made some lifelong friends, but also felt that we were on the cusp of some real innovation in combining community with emergent technology, with people like @abby @john goldschmidt @imani @elvedin (also in 2022 to become CryptoMondays Zurich lead with @william) @mike @josh @nathan @nik @tj @mike @christina having an expanded vision for CryptoMondays.
So we made the event happen with me as guest moderator. We had an amazing event, organized with @ImaniJones with three highlights besides cocktails: a giveaway from @DeCentral of Brooklyn based @Bored Ape Yacht Club artist Seneca showcasing some of the first NFT tickets in history offered up by @chelsea, and had one of the earliest discussions of zkSnark tech with AlanScott of @Railgun and surprise “two minute pitch” where @MikeFraietta came out as “Multichain Mike” to talk about @EmpireDAO and got his first investments. I also met with the @BronxCrypto cats and heard how they’re bringing in people to Web3 door to door.
Key Takeaway 1: Crypto communities start from the ground up, not only in the boroughs of New York but everywhere because crypto is for the people.
CryptoMondays Receives Honors in France
That was fun. And being a global citizen that (sometimes) mixes party with professional passion, I volunteered to coordinate a few “Global” meetups, starting in “oui oui Paris France. As a runup we had founders @MichaelAmar and @EmmanuelFenet on our opening video-cast to talk about how this huge event emerged from the CryptoMondays that Amar and Kerner used to hold in Station F’s iconic cinema during the last bear market.
Key takeaway 2: To “buildl” or keep persisting with your vision and goals. Take the chance, and use your networks to realize your vision. Even if the people don’t understand or the market is weak, stay in for the long fight and you will succeed.
After meeting @Sadhguru during his motorcycle trip through Paris, to promote NFTs and Paris Blockchain Week at his event, we staged the coolest CryptoMondays opening event for Paris Blockchain Week and Paris NFT Day thanks to @ArnaudDamien @AliZitouni. Why was CryptoMondays Global Paris Edition the coolest pre-conference event? The same reason CryptoMondays is the coolest meetup everywhere: The options were limited, it was a Monday, and some cool Featured Guests would be on stage for a short but insightful conversation about killer stuff. And, it’s Monday.
On stage at the @DigitalVillage in central Paris we had @PierreNoizat – oftentimes called the “#SatoshiNakamoto of France” because he made the first Bitcoin exchange in Europe and has strongly advocated its use through @paymium and by staying constant and leading blockchain innovation on the continent. We had amazing folks in the audience including people like @KaitlinArgeaux and @SarahEndline who would later be featured guests, and since we had a real “OG” of Crypto I had all the young founders and traders come to the front to get specific advice from Monsieur Noizat eye to eye.
Key Takeaway 3: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make sense. They are inevitable. As Noizat says, “if you can see so clearly into the future, and do not step into it, then you will see the future pass you by and never experience or benefit from it.
Cryptomondays Creeps Into the Private Bedroom of Louis XIV Thanks to CZ
True to Noizat’s words, two days later I was stepping into the future because @CZ from Binance was in Paris and I ended up getting the inside scoop: that Binance not only pumped $500 million into France, but also $2 million into the restoration of the private bedroom of Louis the XIV at Versailles mansion. Based on my CryptoMondays affiliation, I got in for a private tour, where Pinkie Pie joined for a menage trois. Thanks CZ!
CryptoMondays Takes Over Payments for Over a Billion People in India
Meanwhile, CryptoMondays events were popping up everywhere and our fledgling DAO was still in the formation stage, and I took the next CryptoMondays Global to India, where @LaxmanSingh and team had built the first crypto payments system in India, called Bitbatua.com. Known as one of India’s top 20 blockchain developers and serial founder, he had insights into crypto far and wide. The sharp contrasts in the regulatory area in India had been a limiting factor to this country’s onboarding, but there is a major opportunity with over 1 billion people and some of the best engineers for the best prices in the world. With the powerful emergence of Polygon, we’re just beginning to see what will take shape in India and blockchain in the very near future. Laxman’s newest venture, https://scrutify.io/ provides free and extremely low cost audits.
Key Takeaway 4: after so many large hacks and failures, look for security to be a major theme in the coming years, and make sure your technology is as user friendly as possible and fulfills a core need.
Next up, back to Paris for ETH CC to highlight the most promising directions for NFTs, especially in the European block. This time, Lou Kerner was in town to interview an all-star panel of experts and leaders in the space, looking at a combined theme Art.Human.NFT with the UN’s first digital ambassador “Elyx” from Yacine Ait Kaci – French Artist, Creator of the first UN digital @elyxyak, Sarah Endline – Entrepreneur and Harvard Innovation Lab Fellow @sarahendline, Irina Karagyaur – Head of Business Growth, Unique Network, the NFT ecosystem for Polkadot
@Unique_NFTchain and Karen Levy – 40 under 40 Art & Tech Patron and Entrepreneur @aika.connection
CryptoMondays Blows Up the US Presidency and Student Debt at NFT.NYC
And then back to New York to be on the main stage at NFT.NYC, not as CryptoMondays host but to talk about a topic I’m really passionate about, using NFTs and cryptocurrencies to pay for education. This time, not only was I a speaker but also was backstage with @AndrewYang at the absolute coolest of over 1,000 side events – rooftop pool party and CryptoMondays – created by @JulieLamb for NFT.VIP. There, right before he went up to chat with Lou about party politics and DAOs, I took the opportunity to tell Yang that he was the first presidential candidate I ever supported.
Also it was CryptoMondays New York that put me on stage with TJ to introduce my own project: a new nonprofit organization “Digital Financial Aid Corporation” aimed at using tokenomics and NFTs to erase student debt and provide education financing through https://get-smart.net and the Free Application for Crypto Student Aid https://fafcsa.org Again, followed by a rooftop party this time at EmpireDAO, overlooking the whole city and amazed at the speed of the crypto industry to reach new heights.
Also in the audience were some visitors from Austria, with a big vision that turned into one of the year’s most unique CryptoMondays in Vienna I’ll discuss later, some very cool young guys from Budapest aiming to start a CryptoMondays, and then – while hacking my student debt project overnight at ETH Global with @Sianoi in New York and hanging with (who I call the crypto Justin Bieber) @LukeETH – I met @Piotr and @Maja from Poland and we started to plan a Cryptomondays Warsaw at four in the morning on a New York City street. Also was amazing to see what MultiChain Mike did with turning EmpireDAO into a reality while hanging out with a truly international group of web3 characters like the Web3 VIP event superstar @NirKouris and @LucaArrigo the “Metaverse Architect” both who would participate this year in CryptoMondays Israel and Malta respectively.
Key Takeaway 5: People are willing to sleep overnight at Web3 events to hack everything from DAOs in politics (Yang) to reinventing education (GetSmart) and a million other uses with blockchain technologies beyond cryptocurrency.
CryptoMondays and Satoshi Nakamoto Crash a Party in Budapest
After New York, I headed to Budapest to meet the degens we met poolside at NFT.VIP rooftop and have a CryptoMondays Global meetup at the famous Satoshi Nakamoto statue. We were able to crash a corporate party and turn it into a Web3 party, and keep bringing people together, experimenting with new communities and meeting up at the coolest venues. Satoshi lives.
CryptoMondays Ride with a Mega Party and Crypto Bikes into Poland
Speaking of cool people and venues, the next stop was ETH Warsaw for a huge surprise: the largest CryptoMondays Global event I’ve hosted, with over 300 guests and a blast into the thriving blockchain community in Poland. They take partying and working seriously in Poland, and we encountered how key the connections between NFTs and motorbikes with the ingenious art of 24-year old Agatha (in the brown jacket), who literally builds custom crypto bikes in combination with a NFT project built by @RottenRatCity. We made history with the first ETH motorcycle show at an ETH event. Also met CryptoMondays brothers and sisters. Rocknroll.
They brought these loud, bold cruisers to try out in front of our venue at the largest building in Europe, but there was even more alpha inside: our “Are We Safe?” panel ended up with five of the top crypto security experts working on and another awesome rooftop party with @MakerDAO’s DJ. Tomasz Kowalczyk: https://twitter.com/tomkowalczyk Paweł Łaskarzewski: https://twitter.com/PawelSynapse Yuchen Lin: https://twitter.com/yuchenlintt Yura: https://twitter.com/yuradmt Jakub Heba: https://twitter.com/JakubHeba
Key Takeaway 6: No, we’re not safe. Security audits, self-custody wallets, privacy, and avoidance of scams should be on everyone’s watchlist, especially if you’re building or investing in something potentially great.
CryptoMondays and Horizen Labs Take Over Fashion Week in Milan
Only a hot minute later Lou and @BenedettoBiondi @MaxSmoritskiy had Milan in focus, where I co-hosted for the first time with Lou for CryptoMondays Milan Fashion Week meetup and some amazing featured guests from @Horizen Labs, the makers of ApeCoin, ZenCash and next level infrastructure solutions co-founders @LiatAaronson @RobViglione and yes, another amazing rooftop party.
CryptoMondays Helps Turn Priceless Art Into 10,000 NFTs while Dr. Josh Pulls Mozart’s Rug in Vienna
Unluckily our plans for Berlin for @NextBlockExpo and Amsterdam were thwarted due to COVID, but Vienna was still able to host an amazing kickoff event for CryptoMondays, in the Belvedere21 with one of the world’s most famous pieces of art – Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” – fractionalized. @Wolfgang Bergmann CFO of Belvedere and @JuergenPoelzl from ArteQ discussed the coming wave of traditional art and innovation. We had a second panel, with Austria’s leading blockchain, NFT and metaverse tax, finance, IT/IP and criminal lawyers @NiklasSchmidt @StefanPaulmayer and @AngelikaZotter and “yes” Austrian law is NFT friendly.
Again CryptoMondays made European history this year as the first event where an audience member received a piece of a priceless art as an NFT. We used the “wheel of names” to spin up a random winner of this $1800 NFT then party in the museum’s fantastic @Belvedere21 cocktail bar. Special thanks to all the VIP ticket holders that participated with proper pseudonyms from Cleopatra to Earnest Hemingway to of course, Falco, Satoshi and Mozart.
Besides paintings like The Kiss, Vienna is the home of Mozart and classical music. By November everybody was talking about “rug pulls” so in the run up to the event I pulled off Mozart’s wig (rug) riding by on a skateboard on video. The full “rug pull” and also streamed events can be seen on CryptoMondays Global new Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@cryptomondaysglobal6314
Key Takeaways 7 & 8: First, NFTs are literally using art to connect generations and industries in inspiring and creative ways impossible before while providing innovative ways to experience culture. Second, everyone can get rug pulled, even a genius like Mozart, consider it a learning experience and move on.
At about the same time, we were kicking it in London with NFT.London and CryptoMondays as an official community partner. This was a historic event for the NFT.NYC folks who we love, as they expanded internationally with great success. Got to hang with @JamesHaft, the CryptoMondays co-founder amongst all the other crazy cool peeps in the NFT world like organizers @JodeeRich and @IanUtile and so many more.
CryptoMondays Throws a Crypto Winter Party in Sunny Malta
If that wasn’t enough CryptoMondays awesomeness, yet another meetup was cooking for the Sigma AIBC conference in Malta, where @KaitlinArgeaux from CryptoMondays London and I rocked the Mediterranean with a packed event, DJ, cocktails and great speakers including @SabineRoiss an organizer for Crypto Hub Malta, @SandiBitenc and @PawelSynapse. Sigma AIBC and MedTech was great due to @Max and @StellaFraisse @eman where we promoted CryptoMondays with @Pedro and heard from @ScottStornetta co-inventor of the blockchain. Combining our forces with the local crypto communities created the space for further building together and why not? It’s Monday after all.
Key Takeaway 9: Community is everything in Web3, and whatever name we call ourselves, there really is only one global Web3 community. And sunny Malta will survive the crypto winter with or without lambos!
CryptoMondays Composes a NFT Masterpiece with a 17-Year Old Musical Genius
Did you read this far? Congratulations, because my all time favorite CryptoMondays was right in Vienna to finish off the year with champagne, amazing featured guests, live performance, and another NFT giveaway – this time instead of a rooftop we had the meetup in one of Europe’s most famous palaces, the Kursalon Vienna.
Hosted by @Vienna Digital Lab and Featuring the music of @almaDeutscher, one of the world’s leading music prodigies, to introduce her second full length opera with over 100 layered instruments individually crafted into NFTs that also exhibit unique digital artwork of @EkaterinaLestienne, this CryptoMondays Global was unforgettable and literally resulted in a standing ovation to send off 2022 with what CryptoMondays is all about: a great atmosphere filled with great people talking about great projects that literally are changing the world.
Key Takeaway 10: Look for NFT projects with long-term cultural significance, such as collaborations between aspiring artists and songwriters, preferably backed with money, and those that provide a unique experience to prospective owners.
This year was full of fun, learning, and engaging with people around the world in face to face meetups of likeminded individuals sharing an enthusiasm for Web3 and crypto. The promise of blockchain technologies is immense both in the human intelligence and human community spheres. In 2023 we aim to tokenize membership across CryptoMondays and further our diversity and inclusion goals, while pumping up local chapters and furthering the climate change and blockchain discussion. The range of artists, leaders, investors, developers, critics, academics, CEOs, marketers, innovators and creators in this space is amazing. But the challenges the community faces are immense – so many rug pulls, wash trading, security breaches and other scams. Despite the setbacks in 2022, blockchain creates transparency to reveal informational inconsistencies and fix them, and remove the middleman in a transaction. As is often repeated, the technology is neutral. Likewise, CryptoMondays represents the open, trustworthy, and long-term network of people dedicated to advancing human progress through decentralized peer-to-peer networks.
If you’re interested in starting a new CryptoMondays chapter, or getting involved locally, then reach out at https://cryptomondays.io/partner-with-us/
If you’d like Dr. Josh to appear at your Web3 event or collaborate with CryptoMondays Global, email cryptomondaysglobal@gmail.com
