RestartWeek Puerto Rico: Exclusive Cube Video Report on Crypto and Blockchain 2018
hello everyone I'm Jean Faria we are reporting on the ground near Puerto Rico for blockchain unbound exclusive conversations at coinage end of covering all the action restart week of ten of events cryptocurrency blockchain all the people are here with the local ecosystem the cube is here it's great to have you on thanks for joining blockchain innovation is today global this is a revolution way bigger than the Internet itself programmable money programmable contracts that wipes out finance it wipes out legal it wipes out governance in many ways there's no central authority you have access to open source software it's fully connected so now is the time to make it translate we've all heard about the steam digital transformation its businesses that if they don't evolve and adopt blockchain AI all these other things they have a threat of being put out of business it is extremely competitive a new set of stakeholders investors global players governments are it's happening now you have a chance to be a part of an economy without a permission of a centralized organization have to pay 200 people in 40 countries and it's an unholy mess with withholding taxes and concerns around money transfer costs a hassle it's a nightmare like all currency control so you're only allowed to move a certain amount of capital out the country legally so what happens in all your backups our currency and you can effectively invest in assets around the world this is making it much easier to contribute to help people to get healthy and you don't have to go to school there's a very big influx of young and talented minds at that right and this is really changing the revolution landscape you've got the radical Burning Man hippie guy all the way to a three-piece suit yeah and that diversity is very very rich a lot of people are scared I like whoa hold on slow down we're not gonna prove it the other half saying no this is the future so you have two competing forces colliding for some reason crypto really pokes at people's biases you know why does it have any value and I go well why does the United States dollar have any value I mean you've got Full Faith and Credit of the government that's in debt by 20 trillion dollars you know is that a good idea most people that come here sorry with the what the how and people are scared but the young people are like yo this is happening this is not a moment this is a movement is definitely oh say 1996-97 of the internet bubble it's just starting people know there's something really magical they don't quite know what you know America really grew because you're abused to have all the controls and so the capital by sea left Europe and away in America and now it's happening 300 years later as America has all the controls and the capital starting to go away so a new Liberation's happening incredible resources are now being poured in problems that were ignored for many many and what is beautiful is that block Candy's doing it open-source is accelerating the tech these ideas are being freely shared whereas before there's bottlenecks in the collaboration aspect if we're able to write a contract in a thousand people be able to verify that contract and we're able to transfer money from one person to another without the two parties being involved we've got a perfect scenario security and speed and fairness all at the same time you can create these chains of trust and that can happen anywhere in the world you're on a level playing field if you have 4G connectivity now you can compete globally and be a part of the global economy so if you're someone who's in the emerging developing world and you want to begin to build wealth and you'd like to own a piece of first world real estate and today the minimum is about a thousand dollars but by implementing the Plott chain further they won't eventually get down to one dollar you can buy a piece of real estate and enjoy the returns on that I want to solve the wealth gap and I truly believe we can do it when we can allow anyone anywhere to invest in good quality assets a conduit with the current system there's too many friction costs the killer app right is money it's paying people that is the killer app of the block type right now let's say that money is software and it is software so if you buy something with a credit card what do you think's happening it's all software and what has happened is open-source software has always eventually won with respect to close source software so proprietary money is probably back on its heels because open-source money's coming in something like that will give liquidity to a lot of small business owners America is a country of small business owners across the globe it supports small business owners it's an interesting model yeah you don't have to give up any equity you don't have to give up any poor seats yeah right it's much leaner my super if you're an investor you gotta get a pound of flesh somewhere is it's just getting it on the discounted tokens is there a little liquidity going on when you think about you know private sale presale is 99% a token deal right although equities coming in because a lot of more venture capital is coming in and they're demanding a piece of the action from a company and equity perspective its equity might be future revenue sometimes as dividends or the opportunity get dividends so it's a combination of you have a preference you care you know at the other day equity is I was always preferable there is a provision in the 1934 Securities Act called section 12 G it allows us Spacely to go public by telling the SEC we're doing it without having to delay it to wait for their permission after 60 days it's a derivative so we'll continue to clear comments but but the thing is with tokens who knows how long that'll take I mean is the SEC gonna Shepherd something through with crypto 1 or do they gonna make it take 5 years I don't know [Music] all over the island this is the new Oliver field the world is moving too fast today for a big country to keep up it's all gonna happen now in this next century at the city level and so we work a lot with four smaller countries or small countries because I know estonia armenia baja rains got you know dubai envy so i mean every country wants to be the crypto country multiple small countries are going to come into the space which they know now they can get the capital flowing into that company and they're gonna allow their rules to be lacs they're gonna let capital flow through and then us will have to change or maybe UK will have to change orders against us will have to change in the first world a lot of what we're talking about is a nice-to-have it's it's sort of a bit of a game and if i can participate but where I come from an emerging war that's a necessity they are no other solutions so if you live in South Africa or China or India and you want to get your money into a first world country like England Australia America it's very very difficult and virtually no one can do it but it's a major problem because you want wealth preservation you want but Plan B you want your children to be able to go to a first world university etc etc etc Puerto Rico being a free associated States of the United States of America is like the best place to actually test this possibly some push for that for infrastructure for you know internet for all sorts of different things in terms of building the best infrastructure the new newest best-in-class for your business it's four percent corporate taxes and individual it's zero percent now that's what you got to move here you gotta move here okay but you don't have to give you deliver your US citizenship no taxes are great at the same time they fall in love with the islands so it's amazing because to me Puerto Rico is a combination of LA's whether San Francisco's open-mindedness and Barcelona's you know deep European history it's just a really beautiful place and it's US territory so it's a short hop and a jump to the States if you need to most people in America mainland sort of think they're going to a foreign country because it's treated that way by our government how do I come to Puerto Rico do it right not offend the culture in abil them together what's your experience with the play ball stay good friends lost their relocation services for their business and themselves so they write a big check to you guys for the service but it's you guide them through the entire process and there's real energy here because there's a social movement underneath the entire cryptocurrency movement and that's to basically help your fellow man or women all these activity is really going to give a a shot in the arm to the Puerto Rican economy and we're bringing our funds and we're bringing our advisory the radar Thank You exponent there the hurricane was a horrible atrocity that happened and now we have this blank canvas to create a vision for Puerto Rico so what we're doing is we're connecting every single University on the island to work on open source projects to like make solutions for the private sector they know that if they can buy power on a cellphone like they're already doing for other goods and services now we've got a game-changer this is restart week and one of the other things that we've done is help all of the conference's come together collaborate rather than compete so go into the same week and put all of these satellite groups around it and then we blanket it a week around it so that we had one place for people to go and look for all of the events and then also for some for them to understand a movement about the education piece it's very difficult for people that kind of get caught up to speed because there's some technical things that need to understand to really apply this technology into the business world the other day we had an event where we talked 50 people how to create a smart contract from scratch those are 50 people who are not the same anymore ecosystems developing yet entrepreneurs you got projects you got funding coming in but as it's gonna be a fight for the ecosystem because you can't have zillion ecosystems there are definitely some you know the galaxies and you know regulatory aspects that you know put some concerns and a lot of you know people's mind since its inception you've seen people and media and mainstream media in particular target Bitcoin and they're just adopting the government narrative saying oh everyone in this industry is corrupt Oh everyone in this industry is an ICS camera Oh everyone in this industry is a a drug runner and they have all selling drugs on the dark web and and it's like you know what like you can do some research and don't get better than that traditional media they want to take down everybody that they don't consider you know like a birds of the same feather there actually are a lot of scammers and a lot of like dark forces inside of the cryptocurrency movement so that's why I think we welcome kind of more regulatory influence because you know none of us want to see bad actors in the space we've seen folks go out raise you know really big about to capital with no product roadmap no business talking roadmap no real way to get from zero to X what are they trying to shoehorn a regular business onto the blockchain and just assume that by adding crypto at the end of you know toilet paper they're gonna get something I had another founder tell me that you know Mike tokens are worth 100 million humming yep you don't have a user you just have a product you're tokens I've hiked if you ask me it's it's what little I can tell my house is 100 million dollars it's only worth as much as the top buyer how much we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and in the for the world I think 2018 is going to be the year of clarity on regulation and I think that's where Puerto Rico comes in and plays a major role just to see the thousands of people who have come here to support these several conferences has been amazing my most surprising thing though is the amount of people that have told me that they bought a one-way ticket and have no intention of going home so to make Puerto Rico your home I think is a really amazing first step when I go to the supermarket and where I go it's full of American and people from outside and when you ask them where you're from and they will tell you from Puerto Rico this is gonna become the epicenter of this multi-billion dollar market we need to have people prepared for this you have to create the transparency the beauty of the transparency is there's actually privacy baked in and that's what I love about blockchain is it has all of the good things all communities need to evolve in my opinion between technology communities open networks of governance where we have peer-to-peer distribution of finance and of resources in a way that allows people to aggregate around the marketplaces that are actually benefitting the way that they believe the world should work we're going to be tools that far surpassed what's currently available in terms of the messages the websites all these things for 20 years the Internet has been free it's a really beautiful thing for consumption and open-source is the absolute right methodology for software when it comes to your own content a reward it makes sense everybody is going to get to play together across every device the developers are going to get rewarded for creating content people are going to be rewarded for creating things inside the games and the players are going to get rewarded for getting to the top levels of all the games and we're going to reward them through our cryptocurrency if we begin to own ourself sovereign identity then when we're owning our data that's the foundation for universal basic income communications completely frictionless payment completely frictionless and governance completely frictionless and we have to put this all together who wins here the average citizen entrepreneur that is leveraged citizen player that wants to start something whether it's a banking a service provider of some sort an entrepreneur or a new financial instrument or firm you all have greenfield opportunity here the first thing I would tell found us is to reach out ok this community is very very supportive like you can reach out to me you can reach out to other guys LinkedIn Facebook or come to these events and say your idea and you need help because you will need help you cannot run this alone ok you are running a company you're running your team have a good team that's the first thing you got to be vigilant and you keeping your money in a hard wallet not keeping your private keys on your computer if you're using a centralized system those centralized systems are really easily exploitable strategic partnerships Advisors founding team and then show the idea to the people explain yourself frankly and honestly and I think the community will reward you to go and find it ring whether you're a fortune 500 company or a startup it's all about building the community and I believe that whether it's utility Target or security or combination of the two it provides an incredible vehicle to ultimately be the catalyst to your community and if you the to community adding value then you're going to build a company event it's always gonna be led by the business model because you need something to act as the power pull to pull the thing along right and you can continuously pump capital into something but if the model is wrong it's just going to drain and it's going to go to inefficient systems and in the end maybe do some help but but a very small percentage of the capacity of what it could do then the advice would be to entrepreneurs don't fret about the infrastructure just nail your business models right and because the switching cost might not be as high as you think that's right we're in the old days when we grew up yeah you made a bad technology decision you're out of business yeah but the first advice that I give my clients is to stomp this is this business that's too much formal in it yeah right if you're missing out so no just because everybody's out there Nico you should be doing an SEO right yeah 46% of I SEOs have already failed already failed start with the business gather this in the counties down right so free cash flow unique value proposition Prada market fit what sits under business think about the token model right the token model has to go in handy now with your business model and revenue model and once you figure out that business and took the models now it's time to think about compliance I'm gonna raise money in the US and abroad I've decided to go to security choking hypothetical instance absolute what do I do is there for you an incentive mechanism or is a fundraising mechanism or both who's gonna be my user who's gonna use this token right there aren't gonna be moms dads hospitals they was my target and then how they're gonna use it and are they gonna hold it I'm gonna sell it are they gonna trade it so all these different things define that oh c'mon once you get your token actually authenticated realized everything's transparent and it gets on that secondary market it's better to use that to invest in anything you need investment get everybody incentivized around your token all your employees all your vendors everybody incentivize around that token it's a thousand percent more powerful than a dollar so the dollar doesn't go up in value in your token your token can go up and down and as soon as you find just one spark it blows up everybody boats rise equal it's pasta Sara Lee the time to crack open the champagne you still have to demonstrate product market fit you have to help build a market in our particular case so there's a lot of hard work launch it's a start line it's just like it's only a step along the whole process you know what made people get it you showed them the money yeah you showed them the money sometimes people don't you can explain these concepts that are world-changing super high level or whatever people were not actually gonna get it until it's useful to them average business people and senior business people who have typically been shut off to the idea of blockchain are now seeing this as very real and here to stay momentum is just beginning it's gonna be amazing what these guys come up with that's one of the things I love about doing this thing right I'm an old guy and I get to hang around these smart young people makes me feel young again yeah but the other thing that we have and I think you should share it as well as we have to offer to these young guys experience thing we just invented a new category in the ico category an advisor token and a you have to have the stomach for it and I think you just have to be as educated and as you can what government entity can resist for the long term something that's actually trying to provide a better and better and better financial infrastructure you should be able to participate in many different nations who have many different economies that are all really cooperating interdependently to create the best possible life for all human good one dollar will not change your life but if you change your habits you'll change your financial destiny and so my philosophy is get it to a dollar so that every single person can participate and once you start to learn good habits around money and wealth the rest it's a formula like it's a flywheel instead the world will become a better place we'll have better companies positive impact is not counter to profit they go hand in hand the Puerto Rico movement it's a movement while Czech entrepreneurs capital investors the pioneers in the blockchain decentralized Internet are all here this is like the Silicon Valley of the crypto right I think they're calling it crypto island yes TV show we should be honest like it's not lost its crypto island exclusive coverage for Puerto Rico's - Cuba I'm John Ferrari getting the signal here out of all the noise in the market this is what we do this is the cube mission great strip we start week Point agenda open content community thanks for watching [Music]
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Joe Mohen, Chimes | Blockchain Unbound 2018
>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (Caribbean music) >> Welcome back, everyone. We're here for exclusive CUBE coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, a great conference where entrepreneurs and leaders are all here, coming together at a global level. You've got investors, you've got entrepreneurs, you've got the ecosystem developing. We've got it covered for you, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Next guest, Joe Mohen, CEO of Chimes, industry executive, a lot of experience doing an ICO, doing some great work, Joe welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. >> So, tell us first what Chimes is doing. You've got an interesting approach with music. What are you guys doing? Is there an ICO in the future? Have you done an ICO? Give the quick update. >> Okay, sure. Chimes is a digital media company, and we are consolidating music-related search results on Google in a similar way to what Amazon did with IMDB, consolidating film and television results many years ago. Amazon built an audience of about quarter of a billion to half a billion monthly users, and we expect we can create an audience on that order of magnitude over time. Just like IMDB is the third largest entertainment website in the world, it is our objective to create the fourth largest one. >> What's the value proposition there? Acquire audience, use that audience to tokenize? How does the token economics fit into all this? >> Well, first, like any media company, the first thing you have to get is an audience, right? I remember I interviewed for a job at CBS when I was out of college, and in the interview they said, "Do you know what we make here?" And I said, "You make TV shows." They go, "No, we make audiences." So we have to make an audience with a good product. The audience will be driven primarily by search, okay? But we also do have a double ICO in our future. First, we monetize the big audience. You can monetize with advertising, but that's not enough to make big money anymore, right, we all know that. So we have a layer of crypto products over and above that that we're going to be launching, including, for example, inter-country commerce, hiring producers in another country, hiring songwriters, et cetera, but automating that so we can do it on scale with smart contract. So we are creating a micro-currency that we can use on the website. We're doing an ICO for that but that's not for the purpose of raising capital. >> That's more part of the business model. >> That's part of the business model. >> That's not the financial aspect of it. >> Correct, and that's done so we can scale international commerce with automation. We're doing an actual ICO for the equity, for securities tokens as well. I've done a full IPO myself. My first company, I had Microsoft and Novell as my shareholders and it was a full S1, full registration. >> Interviewer: You went through the whole process. >> Yeah, but I also did a Form 10 once, ten years ago, for another reason. So what we're doing is possibly the first, certainly one of the first, but I think the first registration with the SEC of a company actually doing an ICO. And we're doing that using, I don't want to call it a loophole in securities laws, but there is a provision in the 1934 Securities Act called Section 12G. And what this does is it allows us basically to go public by telling the SEC we're doing it without having to delay it to wait for their permission. A Form 10 looks just like an S1, but when you file it, it's automatically effective 60 days after you file it, period. And so what we're doing is-- >> Period, full stop, no issues, no questions. >> Joe: No issue, right. >> So do you have to fill out all the same paperwork, the S1, >> Correct. >> the normal format, do the business plan, the normal paperwork? >> Joe: No, right, in 1930-- >> But there's no comments coming back? You just chip it to them? >> Comments come back and you have to clear them, just like with a prospectus, just like with an S1, however that doesn't delay it becoming effective. It's effective 60 days later. >> So they can be commenting during the 60 day time clock going on, but after 60 days, you're in. >> It's effective. So we'll continue to clear comments, but the thing is, with tokens, who knows how long that'll take? Is the SEC going to shepherd something through with crypto, or are they going to make it take five years? I don't know! Who knows? So, the thing is, we are complying with all of the laws for registration, but 60 days after we file it, it's effective. What we're doing is, in the pre-sale for the tokens, we're not issuing the tokens themselves to the buyers of the pre-sale for six months. The reason for that is they will have met the statutory holding period. So once the Form 10 is effective, those buyers can sell freely on token exchanges-- >> And what's the statutory holding period, six months? >> Generally six months. There's a few exceptions for affiliates, like an insider like me. >> I'm confused, a holding period kicks in before or after six months? >> After six months, the statutory holding period is satisfied. >> So you're going to wait to delay them anyway six months. >> Joe: Yes. >> So that covers the holding period. >> Correct, and then we file the Form 10, and 60 days later, they can trade and anybody can buy them. >> So do you file a Form 10 before the six month holding period? >> It'll be at about the same time. The reason being is because we have to get all the ducks in a row to be a public company. >> Cutting edge advice here, this is fantastic. So you're basically going to be the first ICO that actually files with the SEC. >> Correct. >> I mean, who does that, nobody. You! >> Watch us! >> John: That's awesome. >> Basically, we're using a provision, it's like we went back in time to 1934, got them to put something in the 1934 Securities Act for the purposes of ICO's, and then we came back to 2018 with the time machine-- >> Are you from the future? Back to the future! You went back and jerry rigged it. Hey, we should put this Form 10 in there! >> Joe: There you go! That's right. >> It could come in handy some day during the crypto bubble. >> Joe: That's right. >> So let's back to the cryptocurrency thing. I think you're onto something that I think is a tell sign that I haven't seen yet. I've been seeing some formation of it. You are using two types of tokens. Your business model is do security token for funding, trade that puppy through the Form 10. Utility token, a separate ICO for the product, and that's going to have one token, two tokens? >> There's one utility token, so to speak, one currency token, and that has its own regulations that you have to manage to also. But that's designed to appreciate, but not to go up 17 times. >> Okay, I want to dig into that for a second, because you mentioned scale. You're going to scale your business model with the utility token. That's the purpose of the utility token. So let's get into how you're going to do these smart contracts. Let's just say that a producer in Europe somewhere, in Italy, says, "Hey, I'm going to do something "with Joe in the UK." And they form a collaboration. >> Joe: That's right. >> Do they use that utility token or a new token gets created? >> No, that utility token. It's called a Chime, the Chime token. And what happens with that token is you can build in the contract administration through the token. Right now, you can do international deals. People do them every day. The difficulty is if you've got an audience of a half a billion people a month, for example, to do that on scale and automate it... Right now, if you do a deal with somebody in Japan, you, the American, has to have an American lawyer and a Japanese lawyer. And if there's a dispute, good luck suing. I, one time, a customer in Hong Kong, owed me a million and a half bucks and he's like, "Sue me." I'm in New York, he's in Hong Kong, and good luck. >> Did you do the New York thing? I'm flying over there and going to break your legs! >> We bitched and complained, threatened them, and ultimately we settled on 30 cents on the dollar, so we did, that's exactly what happened. With a situation like this, with smart contracts, neither side has to hire two sets of lawyers in the other country-- >> So Chime takes care of that. You want Chime to take care of that administrative inefficiency? >> Correct. The company might still get involved in administering exceptions but not everyone single one. What the smart contract does is it allows you to scale international business. The key is international business, and that's a new efficiency into the market, and that's a great-- >> And in the business model, what does that scale mean to you for operationalizing it? More people, do you have to hire them? >> More cash. No, less people and more cash because there's more automation, right? It means more software development-- >> Where's the cash coming from? >> We have a lot of revenue products. Like the obvious, like every other website, we have subscription revenue and advertising revenue. Subscription revenue comes from like... You know how IMDB is the LinkedIn of the TV and film business? So we'll have that too. >> It's not really large, though. It can be. >> Amazon could make it larger if they wanted to. They have their reasons for doing it the way they do it. But, in our case, I'll give you an example of some revenue products. Let's say you want to crowdfund a project. So let's say you want a bunch of Taylor Swift fans to crowdfund a project for her to do a duet with Kanye West. Sounds preposterous, but it's goofy enough. You'd be amazed, Stormy Daniels is crowdfunding a project for her legal bills with Donald Trump, and I betcha it's going to get funded, right? >> John: I would agree. >> So there's a lot of nutty stuff that gets crowdfunded. >> The wisdom of the crowd is actually efficient. >> Yes, that's right, and the whims of the crowd. But also, I'll give you another example. Let's say people want, if they go to a webpage about an artist, the band All American Rejects, for example, and Wheeler, one of the band members... Ten years ago, you could have given your niece a gift of a CD of All American Rejects. Well, good luck now. They wouldn't even know what a CD is in many cases, right? But what you could do is say, "Hey, you know what? "I'll give you a gift of a Google Hangouts chat with him, "And I'll pay $200 for that, or $500 for it." >> It's probably a bot, but anyway, how do you make this happen? This is really important. You're creating value by allowing people to collaborate in a way that's different, so that scales. Is that going to be done in the Chime contract or it's all going to be part of one currency? >> One currency, that's right. We're very careful. We brought in as an advisor, Rod Garrett, who gave one of the keynotes here yesterday. Rod Garrett is the money supply economist from UCSB, but he was also former VP of the New York Fed, he was the leader at the New York Fed for cryptocurrency. Rod is one of the smartest people I've ever met. >> You know him? >> Very well now, and you know what, Rod can explain the most complex things in simple words, which means he actually understands them. So we've actually used Fisher's equation to help model the utility token value over time. And, again, it's designed to appreciate, but we don't want nutty appreciation because then it'll be useless as a currency, right? We have fixed supply, the Bitcoin principle, the fixed supply and stable market so we can keep it reasonably stable. >> You're using the utility token to create value on your network so the creators can capture that value. >> Correct. >> That's what you're doing with the utility. The security is the money making side. How are you backing the security token, with equity or cash flow? >> Equity, and very important, really important, if you did a percentage of revenue or royalties, it wouldn't work, and I'll tell you why. It wouldn't scale, because we're looking five years out, 10 years out, for this to be a good investment. We want investors to buy it. And if you, let's say you need to do a secondary, because an acquisition becomes available, because you're low on money or whatever. Then how do you do a secondary if you've already given away 20% of your revenue to token holders. What if you have to do a secondary or tertiary capital round? How many rounds were necessary for Spotify, I happen to know Spotify, it was six, right? Facebook, Google, how many founds of financing did they do? A lot, and by the way, they still might do more. >> So basically the revenue share is hair on the deal. It really puts a lot of hair on the deal. >> Destroys it, in my opinion, destroys it. It's a dressing thing, but look, if you're really going to grow to a major company and have, be it five or 10 year success, it kills it. This is my opinion. >> What percentage of equity, say they're going to do a 50 million dollar raise, hard cap, soft cap, say 25, that's what seems to be the norm right now, what would be a percentage of equity converting to tokens that you'd see? >> In Chimes' case, we have a Common A class of stock. We're creating a preferred class of stock called a Series T which, if fully sold, would be about 43% of the equity of the company. They had to do it preferred stock, because there's too many, in Delaware Corporate Law, which all the tech companies are all Delaware, common stock would be very difficult to make a token. You can do whatever you want with preferred. So the preferred is more flexible, so it's actual equity, actual shares, it's not a derivative, it's not a rev share, it's not a royalty, it's actual equity. >> It's paper that converts nicely and it scales on the business side. >> So you say, "What's the evaluation?" >> We're selling 100 million dollars worth of the equity, or we're offering 100 million dollars of the equity, the pre-sale evaluation is a little over 200 million. In Chimes' cases, that's because we're not a startup, we're an early stage company. >> How old is the company? >> Pardon me? >> How old is the company? >> Three and a half years. >> So you weren't born yesterday. >> We acquired music databases that were built at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in Europe, funded by the richest guy in Europe, who built it out and then got tired of it, tired of funding it, and then we were able to pick it up basically for equity deals. We picked it up and we're buying a second music database also that's a very big one. So it's not like we're a startup with an idea and a business plan. >> No, you've got assets, and you've got momentum, good management, you obviously know what you're doing. It's awesome. You've got a great scalability mindset. You've got a nicely packaged, clear target. >> That's right, so we're probably a little bit different than a lot of crypto startups, in that, a lot of brilliant entrepreneurs that you see here, but we've been around the block with having to do IPO's, having to do exits, having to do... And you know, I'm a contrarian, right? I was getting a lot of advice yesterday from a lot of really smart people saying, "Hey, raise the money overseas through a foundation." >> "Everyone's doing it!" >> Look, I'm going to take a contrarian approach. >> I'm just going to comply with the law, by doing the registration. And they say, "What if your utility token has to comply "with money transfer laws?" Then we'll comply with them! It's like look, the contrarian approach is, whatever the law is, follow it! It gives us the flex-- >> The thing is you're actually doing what they want you to do, notifying them of what you're doing, and you have a utility! >> By separating out the token into two, one that has the attributes of currency, one that has the attributes of an equity, neither one is screwing up the other. >> I agree, that's really smart, and very novel. A lot of smart people are going down that road because it's actually known things people can understand. Security token is paperwork that you can do. >> Yes, but I'll tell you the other thing that feels very important, a pretty important point to make. By doing registration, the resale can go to anybody. My personal opinion, is you know these second market type of approaches that you can only resale them to accredited investors or to foreign investors or whatever, I think that's mistake. I think what happens is people who take that approach are going to find that the resale value of the token, or the token that has securities is going to be about 10% of what it would have been otherwise. >> If they only do accredited? >> Well yeah, because here's the thing. First, it's not only that they got to be accredited-- >> How do you get around the security token? >> Because it's registered. The waitress working the bar here can buy a publicly traded equity if it's registered, right? She can buy a publicly traded token-- >> That's the Form 10 that you were talking about. >> Right, Form 10 registers the company. The initial batch of trading will be done under 144 because the token holds will evolve over six months, so they can sell them at their leisure, right? There are exceptions, by the way, like an affiliate might have to do some form filing. I would have to file a Form 3, you know, the usual stuff. But, a regular token investor, he can do whatever he wants. And I can call them investors. I can do business in the United States. I don't have to pretend I'm domiciled in a country you've never heard of, right? So it's like look, I'm an American, my staff is mostly American, we do business in America, let's follow American law instead of-- >> Joe, this is a great conversation. We're getting down and dirty under the hood, capital structure, business models, Chimes' really interesting approach. Joe, thanks for sharing that great data here on theCUBE. Section 12G of the 1934 Securities Act. Form 10 is the secret weapon that was built by aliens before us to allow us to get this special clause in there for crypto. I'd love to continue this conversation another time. I think there's four or five things we just identified, great great topics, thanks for sharing. It's theCUBE's coverage here in Puerto Rico, I'm John Furrier, we'll be back with more after this short break. (digital jingle)
SUMMARY :
Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. a lot of experience doing an Give the quick update. in the world, it is for the purpose of raising capital. We're doing an actual ICO for the equity, Interviewer: You went in the 1934 Securities Act Period, full stop, you have to clear them, during the 60 day time clock Is the SEC going to shepherd There's a few exceptions for affiliates, After six months, the statutory So you're going to wait to the Form 10, and 60 days later, the ducks in a row to be a public company. going to be the first ICO I mean, who does that, nobody. Back to the future! Joe: There you go! some day during the crypto bubble. ICO for the product, that you have to manage to also. "with Joe in the UK." in the contract administration in the other country-- of that administrative inefficiency? What the smart contract does is it allows because there's more automation, right? of the TV and film business? It's not really large, though. doing it the way they do it. stuff that gets crowdfunded. The wisdom of the crowd and Wheeler, one of the band members... in the Chime contract VP of the New York Fed, Rod can explain the most can capture that value. The security is the money making side. A lot, and by the way, So basically the revenue to a major company and have, of the equity of the company. and it scales on the business side. dollars of the equity, funded by the richest guy in Europe, good management, you obviously "Hey, raise the money overseas Look, I'm going to take It's like look, the one that has the attributes of currency, paperwork that you can do. or the token that has they got to be accredited-- if it's registered, right? That's the Form 10 that I can do business in the United States. Section 12G of the 1934 Securities Act.
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