Unchained - Unconfirmed: Song a Day NFTs With Jonathan Mann + Your 2022 Crypto Predictions! - Ep.304

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

Jonathan Mann has published a song a day for 13 years. On Unchained, he talks about his writing process, how he came up with the idea of publishing his songs as NFTs, his plans for a DAO he created called SongADAO, and more. Show topics: the significance and process of making a song a day for 13 years straight how Jonathan monetized his content in the early days (2009) of the internet what crypto event sent Jonathan down the rabbit hole and how Vitalik Buterin was involved why CryptoPunks piqued Jonathan’s interest in monetizing his content on-chain how being in the crypto world has changed Jonathan’s creative process where his song data is being uploaded in the context of web2 and web3  how SongADAO will work and how it could change the paradigm of the music industry the characteristics of his 12/31/2021 NFT drop, which will see over 3,000 songs minted  Jonathan plays “Mongoose Coin” for the Unchained audience, a song he made about Senator Brad Sherman’s comments about cryptocurrency in a recent hearing.  Thank you to our sponsors! Avado: ava.do Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021  Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ    Episode Links:   Jonathan Mann Twitter: https://twitter.com/songadaymann  Website: https://www.jonathanmann.net/  Instagram: ​​https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmann/   Song A Day: YouTube: https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmann/ Minting website: https://songaday.world/  OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/song-a-day    Tweet Thread on Song A Day + SongADAO (must read if you are interested in Jonathan’s work)  ​https://twitter.com/songadaymann/status/1475210923124178951    Jonathan at Devcon https://www.jonathanmann.net/devcon    Mongoose Coin https://decrypt.co/87904/congressional-hearing-spawns-mob-mongoose-based-meme-coins  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey all, before we begin, my book publishes in less than two months. I've been sending it to a few early readers to get blurbs, and also for ideas for NFTs, and I just wanted to share with you one early reader's reaction. This person, quote, absolutely devoured the book in two days, which is pretty crazy because it's a fat book. They also said they were enthralled, their word, and that they felt the book really brought to life the various players included in the book. This is someone who has been involved in the space in the past, but wasn't right in the middle of the action, and they could not put the book down. So if you're looking for a good read that's all about crypto, pre-order the Cryptopians. Idealism, greed, lies, and the making of the first big

cryptocurrency craze today at Bitley slash Cryptopians. That's Bitley, B-I-T-L-Y-S-C-R-Y-T-O-P-I-A-N-S. The book comes out on 2222, and so you'll have it just in time for that spring break that I'm sure all of us will be Jonzing for by then. Again, pre-order the Cryptopians at Bitley slash Cryptopians. And now on to the show. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how the marquee names in crypto are reacting to the week's top headlines

and can see the inside scoop on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the December 31st episode of Unconfirmed. Wish you could earn crypto but don't want to spend thousands on hardware? Just download the Notalcash app on your smartphone. Visit nodal.io-unconfirmed.

That's N-O-D-L-E-O-S-unconfirmed to start earning Nodalcash today. With the crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Tired of your exchange taking 25% of your staking profits? The Avato blockchain computer allows you to stake Ethereum and other crypto at home and keep 100% of the rewards. Go to aVA.do.

Today's guest is songwriter Jonathan Mann, aka Song a Day Man. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you. Hello. You've been writing a song a day for 12 years. Why did you start doing that? And then how did you get into NFTs? Wow, that's a long story.

So strap in. Well, 12 years, it'll be 13 years. As we're recording this, we're about 12 days or so, 11 days from January 1st. And on January 1st, it'll be 13 years. of Songa Day complete. So that's like a, every January 1st is this big moment for me, the turning over from another year of Songaday.

It started in 2009 at the height of the financial crash. Actually, funny enough, three days before Bitcoin's Genesis Block, Bitcoin's Genesis Block was I think January 3rd of 2009. And the story of Songa Day basically is that I was unemployed. It was the height of the financial crash. sort of just out of school, living in Berkeley, California. I had been making videos on the internet and doing various things, working odd jobs here and there, doing a little bit of songwriting work for different companies and things.

It was a tough time, as I'm sure you can remember. And I got a flyer from a friend for a thing called Fun Today, which still happens. It's just an invitation to make one piece of art every day in January. So I decided that since I had nothing really else going on, that I would start making a song a day. And shortly after I started making a video day as well, so it was like posting them all to YouTube. YouTube was very new at that point. It was only like three or four years old. And I set out to do 31 days.

And the end of January came and went. And I decided for a year, I would aim for all of 2009. And then I got to this crossroads at the end of 2009. where I just sort of like had to decide whether I was going to keep going or stop. And I just decided to keep going. And so now here I am nearly 13 years later. That's that's the story of song a day in a nutshell. And then so out of curiosity, because obviously I'm sure you're aware,

Biple or Mike Winkleman has a similar story with his digital art. During this time, how are you monetizing that, if at all, similar to people and I met people actually at a conference we both went to in Toronto in 2015 and we were scheduled both to speak I spoke one day and he spoke the next day and we both basically like said all the same stuff like we're all we're like talking about making things every day and since we both do that we all had exactly the same things to say it was very funny it's sort of a mishmash you know I'm a typical millennial, I guess, in that way, like, just like anywhere I could get it.

In those early days, in 2009, 2010, there was a website called, I think it still exists, called online videocontest.com, and I would go to that website, and I would find different video contests where the prize was cash. And I would enter, over the course of 12 days doing Sanga Day, I would enter 12 contests. And I would win like one or two of them. And that literally would feed me and be my rent for the month. And so I did stuff like that, and then I would get random odd jobs making songs for different things. Eventually, I sort of stumbled into this career of what I called the conference troubadour, where I would go to different conferences.

I actually did this at DevCon in 2018. I would watch all the talks and then recap all the talks at the end of the day with a song that I wrote. And there's a whole long story about how that came about. But, you know, it's just a sort of very like mishmash of things. Patreon, YouTube ads, Spotify revenue, all that kind of stuff, just like hustling to sort of make it work. And so when you were doing things like attending DevCon and recapping the day's material in a song, what was your reception by the crypto community? Really great. I mean, one of the things is that, you know, to go to your, the second.

part of your first question of like how did I get into NFTs? You know, it was sort of in 2017 that I fell into this world. And it was, it was sort of shocking and really wonderful to me to find that there was this like very artistic and open-minded and sort of fun-loving group at the heart of Ethereum that I found. You know, there was, there's a lot of people who just like to make stuff and build stuff and create essentially. And that's the sort of the early NFT crowd that I fell in with in late 2017. You know, there was, there was a time back then when, like, you could know everybody who was in, who was into anything having to do with NFTs before they were called NFTs. So I was making a lot of songs. I wrote the, like, I wrote the very first song any of, anyone ever wrote about

Cryptopunks in like in September of 2017. And I made a song for my Crypto Kitty back then. And like I was just making songs. This is what I've been. This is just sort of what I do is anything that I'm interested in, anything that I get sucked into ends up being fodder for song a day, essentially. And so, you know, that's sort of how I'm sort of make my way into communities. And that's how I ended up.

I met I Amia Gucci from Ethereum Foundation at another conference in San Francisco. go and she saw me perform, and she invited me to perform at DevCon that year, which was super thrilling and really fun. I was able to get Vitalik to come up on stage and sing. It was sing a whole thing. It's very funny. You can see it. It's on the internet. Awesome. We will have to point people to that. And so you were doing this, but at that time, in terms of monetization again, was it, you know, in crypto? Or like, yeah, just why don't you? talk a little bit about your transition to NFTs. Yeah. Yeah. So it was when I, when a friend of mine pointed me to, I got interested in

crypto for the first time at this conference in Toronto, actually, different conference. And I put out a tweet just saying like, hey, is anyone know anything about Ethereum? Like, I'm really interested in maybe putting my songs on the blockchain, like not even really knowing what that meant or what that would be. NFTs didn't exist, right? It was it was crypto punks that got me interested. My friend had showed me cryptopunks, and immediately I was like, oh, this is what you can do with the blockchain. Like, that's cool. That's something I'm interested in.

And so, starting from that moment, when I realized, you know, for the first time that we could have these digitally scarce objects that just set my mind on fire. and it's the idea of putting my entire song-a-day project onto the blockchain as NFTs is something that I started back in 2017 and I've been working towards pretty much ever since. And, you know, the first song I ever sold as an NFT was the song that I did with Vitalik at DevCon. that was like October 31st of 2018 was that very first thing that I sold. It sold for 2.5 Eiff, which at that time was like 500 bucks, right? And that was thrilling. That was super fun.

And then, you know, and then I didn't sell anymore for a long time because we had this crypto winter and I was still building. I was still doing my podcast about NFTs. But like, you know, the interest in it was very love. both from people inside of crypto, not to speak of anyone outside of crypto, like, forget it. But then over the last year,

you know, with the explosion and everything, I've been selling, I sold out, I tokenized the first year of Songa Day, I tokenized the second year of Songa Day, and I sold those. And, yeah, I mean, like so many other artists and musicians and people,

it's been completely life-changing, money-wise. And for me, the goal has always been, just to sort of make enough where song a day itself, like the time that I sit down every day to write the song, is the only thing that I really have to worry about. I don't have to worry about hustling or taking gigs

or working for someone else. I can essentially just work for myself, make the songs I want to make, and make them into NFTs, which gives them this sort of weird, different kind of value. Yeah. So that's always been the dream from the very first time I saw Cryptopunks basically.

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Go to Avato. That's ava.da. Back to my conversation with Jonathan. So now that you are in this NFT world, do you find that you're tempted to make more songs about crypto-related things rather than just any old topic? That's a good question. and I would say, you know, I'm very stubborn in this way where I won't, I sort of almost like I can't make a song about something that I'm not really interested in, which is sort of funny because, you know, for a long time my job was to go to a conference about like lumber or something and like sing a song about lumber, right? But the way that I got through that or the way that I would do that is that I got interested, like I would sit there and, like, I would sit there and, listen to all these talks about lumber. And by the end of the day, I'm, like, interested in lumber

because I've, like, learned about lumber all day. You know what I mean? And so anything that I'm, like, anything that I'm actually interested in is the thing that I end up writing about. So I never, I never will like, very often people will be like, hey, you should write about this project, or you should write about this or you should write about that. It's like, that almost will never get me to write a song about it. But because I'm so enmeshed in this world now, and, And, you know, having been here for so long and seeing some of the stuff come to fruition that we could only sort of dream of back in four years ago, it's so exciting. And so, you know, just for instance, like throughout this year, especially earlier in this year, you know, building on the song about the Cryptopunks that I made way back in 2017, I started writing songs like when Cryptopunks were selling early this year for like these. new all-time highs, it was very exciting and weird, and I would write songs about that. Or like,

for instance, when Visa bought a crypto punk, like I wrote a song about that. Or like, you know, there's just all these different things that happen that I'm interested in that I do write about. And I wouldn't say that I'm like necessarily, it's obviously an external force that's having me write these songs, but that's not any different than like, than how I approach it all the time, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I get you in the sense that it is also difficult for me to write about something if I'm not interested in it. But I do feel like if I were in your position, then the fact that I would likely be able to make a lot more money from a song if I were to make it crypto related than if it were about, like for instance, listeners in my show will know that I'm really into meditation. So if I made about meditation, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't earn as much.

And so you're kind of nodding as if you feel like that does influence things a bit. Well, and totally. But also the wonderful thing about song a day is that it's every day, right? So I can make songs about meditation and crypto and video games and, you know, what I had for breakfast this morning and everything. And the fact is that there's just. just so many songs that I have to write that it's like not like I'm ever, you know, at a loss for something to write or that I have to worry about it, you know, like, and if, and, and I will tell

you too, it's, it's sort of strange is that what I found over the years of song today is that the songs that I, the way, the way that I keep song a day going is by, is by giving myself room to phone it in whenever I need to. Like I wouldn't be able to keep song a day going if every single song had to be perfect and had to be a banger, you know? I give myself room for some songs to suck and for some songs to just be whatever. And then what happens is that invariably, and this usually happens on YouTube, but when I share them on Twitter, it happens as well often.

Like the song that I'll share that is phoning it in, for me, someone else responds to it totally differently. And there's this kind of like, there's this disc. between what I feel like I'm putting out and what other people feel like they're getting. And so that, just having that play out over and over and over again has given me confidence to be like, well, I may as well just like whatever comes out today, like that's what I'm going to do. It doesn't really matter what it's about. And yeah, probably if I wrote about how apes are more expensive now than Cryptopunks, like maybe clearly that would be a more valuable

song in the eyes of many crypto holders. And so, you know, and that to me is, and it just so happens, like that does intersect with my interests, right? I am interested in that phenomenon, you know, or if eth were ever to flip Bitcoin, like these things, these things are interesting to me. So I'm, I have no problem. Or, you know, I wrote about EIP 1559 or about the, um, upgrading the beacon chain. Like these things are inherently interesting to me. So it's easy, for me to write about them, even though they're also clearly, you know, going to be more popular in a certain crowd. And out of curiosity, from a technical perspective, where are you uploading the data for the song itself? Yeah, so that's a great question. So, you know, song a day traditionally

has lived on YouTube, and I upload every single song to Spotify as well. It's not under my name, it's under Song A Day. So if you ever want to find a Song of Day song on Spotify, it's under song a day moniker. But of course, I'm sure you're aware I was asking for if you make it to an NFT. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. No, totally.

So I'm just giving you the sort of the prehistory there. So for the NFTs, it's interesting because I've over the last two weeks been struggling with this to figure out the best way to do this because obviously the most popular answer is IPFS, right? IPFS and Filecoin are where all of the songs are going to live. and it's taken quite a bit of doing to try to figure out what the easiest way to upload 100 gigs of videos is.

37,300 videos over 100 gigs need to be uploaded. But we figured it out. Me and the team that I'm working with. So I'm actually, I just finished all of the videos, all of the images, and all of the metadata lives on IPFS and Filecoin. And we're using a great site called NFT, storage, which is free, made by the people made by protocol labs who makes IPFS. And it's a free

alternative to hosting stuff on IPFS is really wonderful. And they've been really great. So you've also created something called Song a Dow. Tell us about that. Yes. So Song of Dow is a, was inspired by two other Dow projects very directly. And I took these two other Dow projects and I smushed them together because I got so inspired. The first one is a project that has launched but hasn't gone into their second phase yet called the song that owns itself. And the idea, their sort of innovation was we're going to form a Dow that is a legal entity, in their case, an LLC based in Wyoming and that legal entity is going to own the copyright to a song so if you become a member of the Dow then you become a part owner of the song that blew my mind that like excited me to no end

because from the very beginning I'm talking all the way back to 2017 even just normal people non-crypto people if you got through the processes of explaining to them what the blockchain is explain to them what an NFT is, even though that word didn't exist yet, digital scarcity. The first question they would have about selling a song as a digitally scarce object would be, does it come with the royalties? Does it come with the rights? What do I get? And this idea of an organization owning the royalties and everyone who is part of that organization sort of being co-owner is a really great and amazing side step of the issues that will arise that will naturally arise from the complications and the Byzantine stuff that exists

in the music royalty world. Like that stuff is so complicated. You don't want to touch it. You don't want to have anything to do with it because it's too much. So that's one side of the thing. And then the other side is a wonderful project called Nouns, Dow where they make these cool little eight-but-looking characters and they're all on chain and one of them mince every single day forever and they're all unique and they go up for auction and and then what

happens is as soon as you buy one, you become part of the Dow. And as part of Downs Dow, you get to direct their funds. You get to decide how they deploy the funds in their treasury. which is cool. And then once you look at their treasury after, you know, after like 130 days of making nouns, they literally have like $60 million. So now you can be a nouns owner and deploy $60 million worth of, it's very inspiring and very interesting.

So I took those two ideas and said, okay, here's Songa Dow. Song of Dow is a legal entity that exists in Colorado. it's a co-op, not an LLC, which brings with it all sorts of really interesting legal things, which we could get into. But the basic idea is the Dow owns and controls the copyright to all of Song a Day, just like the song that owns itself.

And any song-a-day NFT that you own makes you eligible to be in the Dow. And just as you can control the Treasury of Downs by owning a noun in the same way you can do that by owning a Song-a-Day NFT. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's like the basic, that's the basic idea. All right. So today is the day of your Song-a-day drop. Why don't you tell us what you're doing there? Yes, I'm so excited. It's been four very long years of like, of this moment. I can show you documents from four years ago where I lay out exactly what I'm about to launch today. which is just like mind-blowing to me.

It's very exciting to me. So I've dropped years one and two of Song-a-day already. So those are claimed. That leaves roughly 3,748 songs to go. So I'm dropping all of those songs today. It represents years three through 13. And what the drop consists of is obviously the song in the video, which are just sort of the basic building blocks of Song-a-day.

Every single day, I sit down, I write a song. I make a video, I upload it. That's going to be every single song that I've made from 2011 to today, actually, the 31st. Every single song is going to be in there with the exception of songs that I've already sold or the songs that were in the first two drops. There's also this really fun element of the illustration. I hired 13 different illustrators who then created 13 different variations of layers. of layers that created these illustrations of each song.

And whereas, you know, this is like a very tired idea now, basically, because you have, you know, you have Cryptopunks and you have the bored apes and you have the kitties and you have the alligators and the rhinoceruses and the whatever. But this from the very beginning has been my idea. We're all inspired by Cryptopunks. The layers in my project are not random. The layers are the traits of a given song. So if a song was written in New York City and I was feeling sad and the topic was Apple computers, those are the traits that you will see in the image.

And also another one of the traits is my beard, the status of my beard. Is it a beard? Is it a shadow of a beard? Is it a mustache? A goate? That's another trait. And then so there's like extensive tagging that goes along with this. and then each year looks completely different

because I have these different illustrators do it. It's really fun and interesting. And then, of course, each song also makes you eligible to become part of the Dow. So I'm really excited. I have no idea how it's going to go. We've been working so hard on it. It's 0.2Eth for a song,

and that gets you eligible to the Dow, gets you into the Discord where you can start talking. And, you know, I think about it this way. Like, you know, Beeple had his big sale, right? He had this moment where he got to 5,000 every days, and he went through Christie's, and he sold it for $69 million to Medicoven, right? You know, my 5,000 song is coming up on September 22nd of 2022,

you know, which is not far away at all. The way time moves will be there before long. And what I'm so excited about is like, can the, can the, will the Dow, can the Tao coalesce enough that we can create something together around this 5,000 song? And, and rather than the money going directly to me, that whatever money comes from these daily songs that I make, starting on tomorrow, January 1st, all of that money goes back to the Dow. It doesn't go directly to me. So my 5,000 song in, you know, just over what, nine months or something is whatever comes of that, the money goes to the Dow,

and then we all decide together, like, what are we going to do with this money? How are we going to use it? Which is super exciting to me. The idea, this is a wider idea that I have of what if you can build entire ecosystems around artists, like put the artists at the center, put them creating their work in the middle. And then rather than having a label or rather than having a publicist or anything, you put fans and people with skills around them and give them, you know, give them real agency. That's the other thing about Songa Dow is that the way that the voting works, everybody has

one vote. Everybody who becomes a full member of the Dow of the co-op, including me, has one vote. So I don't have any more or less power. Now, obviously, as the, as the artist, I have a lot of soft power to sort of try to steer things. But my whole goal is to give as much power as possible to the people who are interested in building this project, you know, so that everybody can sort of build together and hopefully, you know, benefit not just creatively, but even financially in the end, you know. That's the power that you can have with a co-op is there's a sort of legal framework there that sort of sidesteps any um this sort of I think leads in well to the song that we're gonna that we're going to showcase here but it's

sidesteps a lot of the um legal implications of securities and things going the co-op route it's completely legal for anyone who's a member of the co-op in fact that's how co-op's work is as a member of the co-op you're entitled to the to any of the surplus that's left over in the treasury at the end of the year, it legally has to be dispersed back to the members of the co-op. So that's part of what's so exciting to me. All right. Well, I agree with you that this is kind of a perfect segue

to the closing of the interview, which is that we're going to play a song that you created out of the little speech that House Representative Brad Sherman made during the House Financial Services Committee Hearing on crypto recently. Can you remind me of the name of that song? Yeah, I think it's just called, I don't know, I forget, what is it called? Yeah, well, maybe it says it in the words. It's called Mungoose Coin, Mongus Coin.

It's called Mongous Coin. Because, yeah, I didn't know Brad Sherman before this. Apparently, he's quite a character. but when I saw that footage, I knew it had to be, I knew it had to be turned into a song. It's quite what, yeah, he did quite a good job rapping in this song, I would say.

Yeah, and I also think it's a perfect way to close out this interview because crypto regulation was one of the top stories of the year of 2021. So we will now play that for people. But before we go, Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on Unconfirmed. Thank you. you. I really appreciate it. And for those of you who are going to listen to the song, I just want to let you know that don't forget to stick around afterwards because we will have your 2022 crypto predictions after the song.

Crypto is culture. Crypto is a vibe. This is new and hip with all the money on one side. Crypto is culture. Crypto is a vibe. This is new and hip with all the money on one side. It coin could be displaced by ether. Ether could be displaced by Dodds. And then there is cobra coin. And what could Mongo's coin do they gover coin? Crypto is culture.

Crypto is alive. This is new. Crypto is culture. Crypto is alive. This is new and hip. With all the money on one side. Join over 10 million people using crypto.com, the easiest place to buy, earn, and spend over 150 cryptocurrencies.

Spend your crypto anywhere using the crypto.com visa card. Get up to 8% cash back instantly. Plus, 100% rebates for your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 with the code, Laura. link in the description. Hi, all. This week, instead of a weekly news recap, we've got your 2022 predictions. I will start us off with a few of my own.

My first prediction is that a spot Bitcoin ETF will be approved in the United States. It was kind of an easy one, unless it turns out to be wrong. My second is that crypto will become much more of a political force in the U.S. in the midterm elections and that politicians will wake up to the money that is to be had in this constituency. And third, I also predict that Dow's will become the overarching trend for both defy and NFTs and basically for the year. All right, now onto yours. The first one comes from Matt Cutler at Block Native. Looking back, I think in many ways, 2021 proved to be the year of real time in Web 3.

Real time is where gas prices get set, and we all know that that was a major trend and major issue this year. It's also EIP 1559 hit this year, which fundamentally changed the way gas prices are calculated. MEV hit in a big way, and that all happens in the Mempool and in the real-time layer. And there were big strides in usability this year as well. But as we look out at 2022, I think that real time is going to continue to be a major trend, in that folks increasingly understand that that's where crypto usability challenges are rooted. People need to know what's going on with their transactions before, during, and after their life cycle. And that's all rooted in the pre-consensus layers of the mempool.

We're also seeing the rise of multi-chain, both protocols and trading and experiences. And it turns out that different chains make different assumptions about what's going on to their transactions in real time. So visibility there will continue to come to the four. We at Block Native are super excited about some of what we know is being built right now and will be released in the first half of 2022. We think there are some really exciting new developments that are coming as it relates to the real-time layer. And it's implications for understanding fees, improving usability, predicting what's going to happen next and acting and reacting and reacting with confidence. So thanks so much for having me and best wishes in the new year. This next submission comes from Gene Washington.

And though her prediction starts off with the final days of 2021, she ended up basically getting it right. So we will see how her 2022 predictions do. Okay. So my end of year prediction for the crypto market and specifically for Bitcoin is, I think it's going to be kind of. of boring. I think we're going to kind of, especially with Bitcoin go between high 40s, maybe at 50, go down to low 40s and just kind of be a little boring like that until the end of the year.

I think a lot of the institutional investors are trying to keep their balance sheet looking good for the end of the year. And so there's not going to be a lot of activity. And so that's kind of how it's probably going to go until the end of the year. And then I think in 2022, first quarter, second quarter, things are going to look great for crypto. And I have a couple of reasons for that. One is I think the SEC may approve a spot ETF for Bitcoin, which would be fabulous. And I think it's really going to help Bitcoin to increase and get a lot more participants, people who maybe just wouldn't invest directly through the platforms out there, but might do it

through their investors through a spot ETF. I also think another reason why crypto is going to go up, specifically XRP, is I think the lawsuit between the SEC and XRP is going to get settled or maybe finalized in XRP's favor. So, of course, that's going to help XRP tremendously as it gets on all the other platforms. But it's also going to help the whole crypto market. And then finally, I think Congress is starting to. to see the crypto market is real and it's going to stick around. And also hopefully at SEC will see that we need some clear regulation around crypto and

some regulation that's going to be favorable for the US to be able to compete globally in the crypto market. So those are my three reasons why I think cryptos are going to do great in 2022. I think Bitcoin is going to go up to maybe 120, maybe 120, maybe 120. and then it's going to have a corruption, maybe not as much of a correction as in the past. It'll be less volatile, but then all the alt coins will follow and also have their time to really go up. So I think it will be volatile, but we're going to see a lot of good things, the first and second

quarter of 2022. And Laura, I love your podcast, and I love it that you're a woman taking part in this space because there's a lot of young guys doing this stuff, but not a lot of women. And so I love your podcast. So that's my prediction from this cryptogramma. Have a great 2022. And Merry Christmas to everyone. And now we have several audio submissions.

Hi, Laura. This is Fahim from New York. I'm a big fan with a podcast. My prediction is focused on gaming and was inspired by your interview with Gabby Dizan from YG. We have to remember that Ethereum was the result of Vitalik's warlock in World of Warcraft getting nerfed and him crying himself to sleep while cursing at Blizzard. So I think we'll come full circle and Play to Earn will become one of the biggest defy categories in 2022. People usually need to experience utility to understand a concept. And gaming is the one area right now that is probably bringing the most utility to NFTs.

I think once people experience NFTs in games, their perspectives will definitely change, but they need to be offered that experience in an easy to understand way. So I think we may start to see competing L1s and L2s fund and support gaming projects even more to attract users to their platforms and ultimately more TVL. We may even start to see partnerships between crypto payment products and play-to-earned games, for in-game NFT rewards or in-game currencies. So games will expand to offer players' multi-chain gaming experiences with new opportunities for staking,

NFT interoperability, and gameplay on each chain. Increasingly complex in-game mechanics will definitely push the transaction limits on these networks. I think engineers will start to come up with novel solutions to offer the best user experience. And some of these solutions may even help the wider crypto ecosystem find more efficiency. And since almost every action in these games can be seen as a transaction, I think we will have to come up with better accounting tools for tracking and reporting

these complex multi-layered in-game activities. And finally, within the Play to Earn category, I think Defy Kingdoms may overtake AXE as the number one play-to-earned game in 2022. Thanks, Laura. Love your work. Really excited for Cryptopians. Happy holidays and see you in the new year. Hey, Laura, this is Cryptolala. I love your show. I learned so much. It's interesting. It's fun. Never a dull moment. My crypto prediction for 2022 is that Ethereum will never go below with 2000. Bitcoin will never go below 35,000. It's a different landscape now.

The whales are in, the institutional investors. Hello. My name is Alexander Pollard, and I'm from London in the UK. And I'm kind of new to the crypto space. I've been involved since August this year. But I'm really enjoying it. And my prediction for 2022 is social tokens, in particular Chile. and Rally and Hive.

I'm really excited about the kind of opportunities that those coins and ideas have for the future of crypto. And finally, here are the written submissions, which I will read. The first comes from Noemu 95. And let me just tell you, I do believe this is very likely to come true,

especially the out-of-body experience part. Laura, in 2022, you will have an out-of-body experience during which the exact date and time that Bitcoin hits 147K will be revealed to you. And afterwards, you'll finally cave in and buy Bitcoin. You guys, I need to dispel this notion that I don't want to buy Bitcoin. Of course I want to buy Bitcoin. All right. This next one comes from Steve, head of solution engineering at Immutable X.

He says, my crypto prediction is that side chain users are fair weather friends. Ooh, okay. Who will swing back to main net Ethereum as zero knowledge roll-ups and eventually ETH 2.0 start to solve the gas problem. Obviously, I'm biased but still confident of the premise that high gas is a vote of confidence, not a technical failure. All right, well, we will see. I have a feeling, yeah, that is probably directionally correct. All right, Raymond Hamilton of Alaska sends us these predictions, and they're really bold. He says, my 2022 predictions, there will be some U.S. legislation giving better clarity,

but it will be too late and favor the big incumbents. The U.S. government does not know how to act any other way. Okay, that's a slightly depressing statement on the state of our country and our government, but we'll see if he's right. His second prediction is, a DAO will do something to provoke the ire of authorities and government will try to censor slash sue them. It won't work.

and the failure of the legal system and regulations to deal with this new type of corporation will become very apparent. That's a, you know, good take, actually, I think. The next, two more nations will successfully adopt Bitcoin as currency. Several will try and fail with their own. And here he used a term that we are all familiar with that I can't really say. So I will use a euphemism, which is the word, Alt coins.

Moving on, his last predictions. At least one major economy will launch a CBDC. It will flop. Interesting. Then he says the Bitcoin price will increase. Dominus will continue to fall. Maxis will stay angry. Okay.

Well, those all seem, well, the first two seem directionly correct. We'll see about the last. And then his last is that he gives three price predictions. Oh, and actually the list. He's predicting what the top five coins will be as of December 31st next year. He says they will be Bitcoin at $150,000. Ethereum at $6,800. Very specific.

Saul or Solana at $425. AVAX or Avalanche at $250. And finally, Matic, at $6.50. Okay. And our last prediction is from Ben, who says, I'll focus my 2022 predictions on health care and pharma since those are the worlds I know best. It's first, NFTs will rise out of the current bear market by expanding beyond the art market into smart NFTs. where NFTs extend functionalities using underlying assets such as data access rights,

loans, and other digitizable asset ownership. Then he says crypto will extend beyond finance into other opaque markets in health care by being a better health insurance. Smart contracts could build on earlier works like Claros, decentralized arbitration protocol, to collect records of agreements, transactions, and then linking together using insurance approval using smart contracts.

These communities could grow out of existing models similar to mutual aid. Okay, that's it for your predictions. It's been super fun hearing what you all think will happen next year. Happy New Year, everyone. May you all have a magical 2022. To learn more about Jonathan and Songa Day, be sure to check the links in the show notes. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yoon, Mark Murdoch, and Dan. Thank you'llness. Thanks for listening.