>> Announcer: From Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE Covering Pure Storage Accelerate 2019. Brought to you by Pure Storage. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin live on the Pure Accelerate floor in Austin, Texas. Dave Vellante is joining me and we're pleased to welcome a couple of guests from Core Scientific for the first time to theCUBE. We have Jim Benedetto, Chief Data Officer and John Curran, the SVP of Business Development. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. >> Both: Thank you. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So John, we're going to start with you. Give our audience an overview of who Core Scientific is, what you guys do, what you deliver. >> Sure, well, we're a two year old start up. Headquartered out of Bellevue, Washington and we really focus on two primary businesses. We have a blockchain business and we have an AI business. In blockchain, we are one of the largest blockchain cryptocurrency hosting companies in North America. We've got facilities, four facilities in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky. And really the business there is helping companies to be able to take advantage of blockchain and then position them for the future, you know. And then on the AI side of our business, really we operate that in two ways. One is we can also co-locate and host people, just like we do on the blockchain side. But primarily, we're focused on creating a public cloud focused on GPU centric computing and artificial intelligence and we're there to help really usher in the new age of AI. >> So you guys you founded, you said two years ago. >> Yes. >> From what I can tell you haven't raised a ton of dough. Is that true or are you guys quiet about that? >> John: We're very well capitalized. >> Okay, so it hasn't hit crunch base yet. >> Yeah, no. So we're a very well capitalized company. We've got, you know, to give you-- >> 'Cause what you do is not cheap. >> No, no, we've got about 675 megawatts of power under contract so each one of our facilities is about 50 megawatts plus in size. So no, it's not cheap. They're large installations and large build outs. >> And to even give you a comparison, a standard data center is about five to 10 megawatts. We won't even look at a facility or a plot of land unless we can supply at least 50 megawatts of power. >> So I was going to ask you kind of describe what's different between sort of blockchain hosting at conventional data bases or data centers. You kind of just did, but are there other sort of technical factors that you guys consider? >> Absolutely. We custom build our own data centers from the ground up. We've got patent pending technology, and if you look at virtually every data center in the world today, it's built with one thing at it's core and that's the CPU. The CPU is fundamentally different than the GPU and if you try to retrofit CPU based data centers for GPUs you're not going to fully maximize the performance and the capabilities of the GPU. So we build from the ground up data centers focused with the GPU at the center and not the CPU at the center. >> And is center in quotes because I mean, you have all this alternative processing, GPUs in particular that are popping up all over the place. As opposed to traditional CPU, which is, okay, just jam as much as I can on the real estate as possible, is that a factor? >> Well there's also a lot, the GPU at the center but there's also a lot of supporting infrastructure. So you got to look at first off the power density is very, very different. GPU, they require significantly a lot more power than CPUs do and then also just from a fluid dynamic prospective, it's very, the heating and cooling of them is again fundamentally different. You're not looking at standard hot, cold aisles and raised floors. But the overall goal also is to be able to provide a supporting infrastructure, which is from an AI ready design, is the interconnected networking and also the incredibly fast storage behind it. Because the name of the game with GPUs is different than with CPUs. With GPUs, the one thing you want to do is you want to get as much data into the GPU as fast as possible. Because compute will very rarely be your limiting factor with the GPU so the supporting infrastructure is significantly more important than it is when you're dealing with CPUs. >> So the standard narrative is, well, I don't know about cryptocurrency but the underlying technology of blockchain has a lot of potential. I personally think they're very much related and I wonder if you guys can comment on that. You started during the real, sort of the latest, most recent sort of big uptick, I know it's bounced back in cryptocurrency and so must you must've had a lot of activity in really, in your early days. And then maybe the crypto winter affected you, maybe it didn't. Some of those companies were so well capitalized, it was kind of their time to innovate, right? And yeah, there were some bad actors but that's really not the core of it. So I wonder what you guys have seen in the blockchain market. We'll get to AI and Pure and all that other stuff but this is a great topic, so I wonder if you could comment. >> So you know, yes, there's certainly classicality in the blockchain market, right? I think one of the key things is being well capitalized allows you to invest through the down turns to position to come out stronger as the market came out and you know, we've certainly seen that. Our growth in blockchain continues to really be substantial. And you know, we're making all the right strategic investments, right? Whether it's blockchain or AI, because you have such significant power requirements you know, you got to be very strategic about where you put the facilities. You're looking for facilities that have large sustained power capabilities, green. You know we've seen carbon taxes come in, that'll adversely affect folks. We want to make sure we're positioned for long term in terms of the capabilities. And then some geo political uncertainty is certainly affected, you know. The blockchain side of the business and it's driven more business to North America which has been fantastic for us. >> To me you're hosting innovation, you're talking blockchain and AI and like you're saying include crypto in there, you have some cryptocurrency guys, right? >> We do blockchain or cryptocurrency mining for ourselves as well. >> For yourselves, okay. But so my take on it is a whole new internet is being built and the crypto craze actually has funded a lot of that innovation. New protocol, when's the last time, the protocols of the internet, SMTP, HTDP, they're all government funded or education funded, academic institutions and the big internet companies sort of co-opted them. So you had a dirt of innovation, that's now come back. And you guys are hosting that innovation, that's kind of how I look at it. And I feel like we've seated the base and there's going to be this massive explosion of innovation, both in blockchain, crypto, AI automation and you're in the heart of it. >> Yeah I agree, I think cryptocurrencies or digital currencies are really just the first successful experiment of the blockchain and I agree with you, I think that is is as revolutionary and is going to change as many industries as the internet did and we're still very in a nascent stage of the technology but at Core, we're working to position ourselves to really be the underlying platform, almost like the alchemy of the early days of the internet. The underlying platform and the plumbing for both blockchain and AI applications. >> Right, whether it's smart contracts, like I say, new innovation, AI, it's all powering next generation of distributed apps. Really okay, so, sorry, I love this topic. >> I know you do. (laughs) >> Okay so where do these guys fit in? >> John: So do we. >> I mean, it's just so exciting. I think it's misunderstood. I mean the people who are into it are believers. I mean like myself, I really believe in a value store, I believe in smart contracts, immutability, you know, and I believe in responsibility too and that other good stuff but so. >> Innovation in private blockchain is just starting. If you look at it, I think there's going to be multiple waves in the blockchain side and we want to be there to make sure that we're helping power and position folks from both an infrastructure as well as a software perspective. >> Every financial institution, you got VMware doing stuff, Libra, I love Libra even though it's getting a lot of criticism, it just shined a light on the whole topic but bring us back to sort of commercial mainstream, what are you guys doing here, what's going on with Pure? >> So we have built, we're the first AI ready certified data center and we've actually partnered very closely with Pure and INVIDIA. As we went through the selection process of what type of storage we're going to be using to back our GPUs, we went through a variety of different evaluation criteria and Pure came out ahead and we've decided that we're going with Pure and we, again, for me it boils down to one thing as a Chief Data Officer is how much data can I get into those GPUs as fast as possible? And what you see is if you look at a existing, current Cloud providers, you'll see that their retro fitting CPU based centers for GPUs and you see a lot of problems with that where the storage that they provide is not fast enough to drive quote unquote warm or cold data into the GPUs so people end up adding more and more GPUs, it's actually just increased GPU memory when they're usually running around a couple percents, like one or two percent, five percent compute but you have to add more just for the memory because the storage is so slow. >> So you, how Jim you were saying before when we were chatting earlier, that you have had 20 years of experience looking at different storage vendors, working with them, what were some of the criteria, you talked about the speed and the performance, but in terms of, you also mentioned John that green was, is an important component of the way that you build data centers, where was Pure's vision on sustainability, ever green, where was that a factor in the decision to go with Pure? >> If you look at Pure's power density requirements and things like that, I think it's important. One thing that also, and this does apply from the sustainability perspective, where a lot of other storage vendors say that they're horizontally scalable forever but they're actually running different heads and in a variety of different ways. Pure is the only storage vendor that I've ever come across that is truly horizontally scalable. And when you start to try to build stuff like that you get into all the different things of super computing where you got, you know, split brain scenarios and fencing and it's very complex but their ability to scale horizontally with just, not even disc, but just the storage is something that was really important to us. >> I think the other thing that's certainly interesting for our customers is you're looking at important workloads that they're driving out and so the ability to do in place upgrades, business continuity, right, to make sure that we're able to deliver them technology that doesn't disrupt their business when their business needs the results, it's critically important so Pure is a great choice for us from that perspective and the innovations they're driving on that side of the business has really been helpful. >> I read a stat on the Pure website where users of Core Scientific infrastructure are seeing performance improvements of up to 800%. Are you delighting the heck out of data scientists now? >> Yeah, I mean. >> Are those the primary users? >> That is, it again references what we see with people using GPUs in the public Cloud. Again, going back to the thing that I keep hammering on, driving data into that GPU. We had one customer that had somewhere 14 or 15 GPUs running an analytics application in the public Cloud and we told them keep all your CPU compute in one of the largest Cloud providers but move just your GPU compute to us and they went from 14 or 15 GPUs down to two. GV-100 and a DGX-1 and backed by Pure Storage with Arista and from 14 GPUs to two GPUs, they saw an 800% in performance. >> Wow. >> And there's a really important additional part to that, let's say if I'm running a dashboard or running a query and a .5 second query gets an 800% increase in performance, how much do I really care? Now if I'm the guy running a 100 queries every single day, I probably do but it's not just that, it's the fact that it allows, it doesn't just speed up things, it allows you to look at data you were never able to look at before. So it's not just that they have an 800% performance increase, it's that instead of having tables with 100s of millions of rows, they now can have tables with billions of rows. So data that was previously not looked at before, data that was previously not turned into the actionable information to help drive their business, is now, they're now getting visibility into data they didn't have access to before. >> So you're a CDO that, it sounds like you have technical chops. >> Yeah, I'm a tech nerd at heart. >> It's kind rare actually for a CDO, I've interviewed a lot of CDOs and most of them are kind of come from a data quality background or a governance and compliance world, they don't dress like you (laughs) They dress like I do. (laughs) Even quite a bit better. But the reason I ask that, it sounds like you're a different type of CDO, like even a business like yours, I almost think you're a data scientist. So describe your role. >> I've actually held, I was with the company from the beginning so I've held quite a few roles actually. I think this might be my third title at this point. >> Okay. >> But in general, I'm a very technical person. I'm hands on, I love technology. I've held CTO titles in the past as well. >> Dave: Right. >> But I kind of, I've always been very interested in data and interested in storage because that's where data lives and it's a great fit for me. >> So I've always been interested in this because you know the narrative is that CDOs shouldn't be technical, they should be business and I get all that but the flip side of that is when you talk to CDOs about AI projects, which is you know, not digital transformation but specifically AI projects, they're not, most CDOs in healthcare, financial services, even government, they're not intimately involved, they're kind of like yeah, Chief Data Officer, we'll let you know when we have a data quality problem and I don't think that's right. I mean the CDO should be intimately involved. >> I agree. >> In those AI projects. >> I think a lot of times if you ask them, you ask, a lot of people, they'll say are you interested in deploying AI in your organization? And the answer is 100% yes and then the next follow up question is what would you like to do with it? And most of the time the answer is we don't know. I don't know. So what I have found is I go into organizations, I don't ask if people want to use AI, I ask what are your problems and I think what problems are you facing, what KPIs are you trying to optimize for and there are some of those problems, there are some problems on that list that might not be able to be helped by AI but usually there are problems on that list that can be helped by AI with the right data and the right place. >> So my translation of what you're asking is how can you make more money? (laughs) >> That what it comes down to. >> That's what you're asking, how can you cut costs or raise revenue, that's really ultimately what you're getting to. >> Data. >> Find new customers. I think the other interesting thing about our partnership with Pure and especially with regards to AIRE, AIRE's is an exciting technology but for a lot of companies is they're looking to get started in AI, there's almost this moment of pause, of how do I get started and then if I look at some of the greatest technology out there, it's like, okay, well now I have to retrofit my data center to get it in there, right. There's a bunch of technical barriers that slow down the progression and what we've been able to do with AIRE and the Cloud is really to be able to help people jumpstart, to get started right away. So rather than you know, let me think for six months or 12 months or 18 months on what would I analyze, start analyzing, get started and you can do it on a very cost effective outback's model as opposed to a capital intensive CAMP-X model. >> Alright, so I got to ask you. >> Yeah. >> And Pure will be pissed off I'm asking this question because you're talking about AIRE as a, it's real and I want some color on that but I felt like when the first announcement came out with Invida, it was rushed so that Pure could have another first. (laughs) Ink was drying, like we beat the competition but the way you're talking is AIRE is real, you're using it, it's a tangible solution. It's a value to your business. >> It's a core solution in our facility. >> Dave: It's a year ago. >> It's a core thing that we go to market with and it's something that you know, we're seeing customer demand to go out and really start to drive some business value. So you know, absolutely. >> A core component of helping them jumpstart that AI. Well you guys just, I think an hour or so ago, announced your new partnership level with Pure. John, take us away as we wrap here with the news please. >> Yeah, so well we're really excited. We're one of a handful of elite level MSP partners for Pure. I think there's only a few of us in the world so that's something and we're really the one who is focused on bringing ARIE to the Cloud and so it's a unique partnership. It's a deep partnership and it allows us to really coordinate our technical teams, our sales teams, you know, and be able to bring this technology across the industry and so we're excited, it's just the start but it's a great start and we're looking forward to nothing but upside from here. >> Fantastic, you'll have to come back guys and talk to us about a customer's who's done a jumpstart with ARIE and just taking the world by storm. So we thank you both for stopping by theCUBE. >> Absolutely, we'll love to do that. >> Lisa: Alright John, Jim, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> John: Really appreciate it. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE from Pure Accelerate 2019. (upbeat techno music)

(Caribbean music) >> Narrator: Live, from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. >> Hello, welcome back everyone. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. Exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, it's a global conference where a lot of the leaders are coming together. It's our second day of wall-to-wall coverage. Talking to all the top people: government officials, entrepreneurs, investors, and tons of great action here. Our next guest is Marcus Levin who's the co-founder of XYO Network, xyo.network is the URL. Interesting opportunity really built from the ground up. No outside funding, although it does some interesting things with their community. Great IoT example, great use of the cloud, great example of how real entrepreneurs are working with crypto and blockchain to actually grow. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John. >> So, tell me a little bit about what you guys do. Take a minute to explain to the audience what XYO Network is, how did you get here, what is it all about? >> Yeah, sure. So, XYO Network is the world's first decentralized location oracle. "Oracle" means data input into smart contracts. Now you have the problem that a lot of data sources are centralized and hackable or spoofable. So, if you make a bet, for example, you need to look at the results of the bet at a website, the website could be hacked, it could collude with someone to provide wrong data. The same problem exists with GPS. GPS is easily spoofable and hackable, like during the Pokemon Go craze, for example, all the kids just downloaded GPS spoofing apps, they get all the rare Pokemons. Or, allegedly the Iranians took down an American drone a few years back sending up a wrong GPS signal. The drone just landed. So, because of that, you can't do transactions based on location data. Today, most applications for location, GPS location, are navigational but not transactional. We solve this by providing a decentralized location data or network. We do this though IoT devices, mobile phone apps, and other types of partnerships. We are around since 2012. Started as an IoT company which provided location beacons, we call it XY Findit. We have about a million of them out there, and they can recognize each other's location. It's like us two taking a selfie together, we print out two copies, put our signatures on there. When we leave each other, we can prove that were here together. And it's the same thing with those devices. Our own devices but also with partnerships we build this mobile app distributors and IoT companies. What can you do with this? You could, for example, do payment up and delivery for e-commerce. So, you could put a chip, a small chip like an RFID chip into Amazon packaging tape. Once the package arrives at your doorstep, or even in your house, the payment gets triggered. It works by the doorbell, your Tesla in the driveway, your neighbor's cell phone, any type of connected device recognizing that the package is there. The payment automatically gets triggered. One third of Americans experienced porch theft in 2016. You don't know if it was a UPS driver, for example, scanning the package but taking it, or your neighbor took the package, or someone random came by. This way, you can prevent porch theft, or you can discover it. Or you could make sure your kids arrived safely at school, they arrived there with their friends and they took the path you wanted them to take. Or hotel review sites, for example, have the problem that they lose their users because they don't believe that the reviews are real anymore. But if you could prove someone flew from San Diego, that's where we're based, to Puerto Rico, has stayed at this hotel for tonight, and then flew back and wrote the review about it, suddenly you have a location-verified review. So, that's all today, but in the world, in five to ten years, full of AI, robots, self-driving cars, drones, smart cities, you need transactional location data and nobody's providing that today and we want to be the center of the future. >> Awesome. So, that's super-exciting, I got to ask you about the IoT piece because, do you need physical devices out there? Are you going to be deploying sensors? Are you leveraging pre-existing infrastructure? I love that selfie example. I can imagine we do a selfie, share it, it's a location-based opportunity. The phone's got location base. How do you guys interface with this? How does it work? >> Right now the network builds on top of our own devices. We are around since 2012, as I said, so we have a large network already. We are an existing company, it's a little rare in the blockchain space. >> Yeah. >> And we build partnerships now with IoT companies like certain light bulb division company, or fridges, all connected devices, mobile app distributors. >> So, you're providing your customers the IoT device folks who are proliferating out there. >> Yeah, we put our code basically out there. We can-- >> Open source? >> Open source, yeah. >> Okay. >> And you can plug it as an SDK into, let's say, your mobile app. Or you can use it as a monetization tool as well, because you earn tokens as you verify location, and this data is part an answer, and so you could earn XYO tokens, as you become-- We call them "sentinels", location verification device in our network. >> So, how do you guys tie this together on the token side? So, you reward, what behavior do you reward with a token? >> There are four components in our network. There's the sentinel, as I spoke about, which are the IoT devices or mobile phones which verify the location. Then you have bridges which relay the data. They relay it into something we call the archivist, which is a distributed computer system, if you are familiar with storage here in this space, for example, or the old system, like Sentient home from Berkeley, it works like that. So, the data's on people's personal computers. And then we have something we call the diviner algorithm, which provides the answers. It works like mining. So, you might want to ask, "Where's my package right now?" And the question gets sent to the network, a bunch of diviners, which works like mining, Ethereum, transactional things. A bunch of diviners will take the data from the archivist, the distributed computer system, and try to find the best answer and try to find as close as possible the consensus as they can. >> What about spoofing? I mean, people might want to spoof the location. >> Yes. >> How do you prevent spoofing? >> Yeah, that's a good question. So, we two could collude pretty easily. But if this entire room of people is who you usually don't know, it's very difficult to collude. So, one of them is scale. Then we build reputation over time. So, as your answers are probable, you build reputation. For example, if all us say we are here at this hotel right now, but you say, "No, we are in Shanghai," your answer is improbable and your reputation goes down. In addition to that, we disincentivize lying-- >> You're very data-driven. >> Extremely. >> This is big time analytics. >> Extremely data-driven. >> So, what are you guys doing for analytics and what chain are you using? 'Cause performance becomes an issue. >> Yep. >> How's the plumbing work? What's the analytics look like? Take a minute to explain that. >> Yeah, it's very beautiful. We have our own chain: the XYO main chain. So, we are an oracle which plugs into any type of smart contract. You know, you have Ethereum and about 19 other coins which have smart contracts. So, we build on our chain to lower the transaction costs, transaction times, and build a more reliable network for ourselves and then it plugs into all other smart contracts. >> So, you have your own chain to manage this? >> Yes. >> So, that's one of the reasons why you, from an operational standpoint, you want to lock that down. >> Yes. >> So you can control performance. >> Exactly. >> Latency, timestamps, security, whatnot. >> Exactly, that's right. >> The openness is for the smart contracts. Is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. >> I can do any smart contract I want. >> This is basically for old site developers it's like an API, you can plug into it-- >> Got it. >> We connect the real world with the blockchain. So, right now you have very limited applications for blockchain in a lot of cases because you can't take offline things and connect them to the chain. What we allow to do is, we call it the API to the real world, where you take location data, put it into the chain and make it transactional. >> So, I got to ask you a question. This is interesting, I love this, I want to get into more of the token sale and what you guys are doing raising money. In the IoT world, certainly with cloud computing, the big debate is, do you move compute to the edge where the data is, or do you move the data back to the centralized cloud? Here, since you're decentralized with the IoT device, is the data coming back to your central network, or-- >> No, it's not. >> Where is the processing at? At the edge? What's the edge equation? Explain that. >> So, everything is decentralized. We believe that our company doesn't need to necessarily exist in a few years and the network will live on and grow as we grow the community, so the community is very important to us. The devices are decentralized, you own your cell phone. The data storage is decentralized. So, you can define, like, 3% of my personal computing power goes to this, for example, you earn XYO tokens. The mining is decentralized like any mining is decentralized today, so us as a company, once people start to build on the platform, we don't need to exist, which makes it beautiful, right? This is what blockchain is all about. Decentralizing and building this platform layer where people can build on top of. >> So, there's a ton of Bluetooth and GPS out there. >> Yep. >> Talk about where you guys have got your traction. I want you to take a minute to explain. We kind of went off on a tangent on some IoT rant, there, I was interested in. But I want to take it back to mainstream. >> Okay. >> There's GPS out there, you've got Bluetooth, everyone's got Bluetooth devices. So, it's not like this is massive new, it's a requirement. >> Yeah. >> You guys did some interesting things how you funded your first token sale. >> Right. >> You have customers. You've been around for how long? >> 2012. >> 2012. You've been successful. No outside capital. >> Yeah. >> So, you bootstrapped. You made things happen. Had some revenue come in. How'd you do it? Take us through that progression. >> Yeah, so we co-founders worked in various ventures together previously and one of our co-founders, the main founder I would say, Arie Trouw, he started this company in 2012, and we bootstrapped it with seven million dollars of our own cash and one and a half million in venture debt. We really believe in what we do. >> You guys put up a lot of capital. >> Yes. >> Congratulations. >> We believe in what we do. We believe in our capabilities to attract the right teams, we have an amazing team. >> That's skin in the game. >> It's skin in the game and it's actually a low-risk investment for me because I know what we are capable of. >> You are underwriting your own competence. >> Exactly, exactly. >> Okay, so, you had seven million of your own cash. Did you pass the hat around, you all kind of contributed money in, or? >> It was mostly from Arie, actually. (laughs) But we all have skin in the game there. >> So, you have a community, then you launch your idea, what happened next? >> Exactly. So, then the VCs started to come. We did some outreach, VCs started to come, they're interested in our idea, you know, they love what we do. Platform is right, quite sexy right now. In blockchain we are a platform and you can build a lot on top of it. We pushed off the VCs and we said we want to take community money first. The reason is, we believe in building this strong community of evangelists, people who believe in us, who want to code with us. We went to all the developer conferences, not to, like, investor conferences, or something like that. And, so, we marketed to about 2,300 people, our token sale and a little under 500 people put some Ethereum into our token sale and 95% were under 5 ETH. That was a very global community. >> Was that a utility token sale? >> Yes. >> Outside the US, 'cause there's credited investors involved, or what was the-- >> It's clearly a utility token, because you can build on top of it. Last weekend, the city of San Diego and 120 hackers, a IoT company, were in our office to build on top of our chain, traffic flow and parking solutions for the city of San Diego. So, it's clearly a utility token but because of the uncertain regulatory environment we are actually running it like it's a security, so, we have a Reg A, Reg D, Reg S, whatever, we have 115 different jurisdictions we look at, I spoke during the whole process, I'm not lying, it's-- >> That's a lot of work. >> Yeah. 23 lawyers I spoke with. It's a lot of hours with lawyers on the phone. The most aggressive on of them, she suggested to me a structure with no taxes but 20% prison potential, I think. (laughs) On the other side-- >> It's a good cause. You're doing it right. So you spent a lot of money to make sure that your community was involved. >> Yes. And they weren't throwing a lot of money, like they're millionaires, they're like, let's throw a thousand dollars? >> Yep. >> That kind of numbers. >> Yes, exactly. >> So, it's not like you're breaking the bank but they feel ownership. >> Absolutely. If you look at our telegram channel-- >> And you've raised, what, a million, two million, three million, from that? >> One point seven. >> From the community? >> Only community, those 400 people. We had it open for five to six days. We closed it down. We didn't take any money anymore. And since yesterday, I started talking with institutionals again and now we are a sexy story so now they come again, right? (laughs) >> Platforms are sexy. >> Exactly. >> We know, we have one, too. >> (laughs) That's awesome. Love your project. >> Well, the thing about platforms is that, as you know, we talked about last night, is that the platform wars and the platform entrepreneurial thinking has radically changed. In the old days, it was, I've got a platform and I'm going to monetize my platform for my application. Look at Facebook. >> Right. >> They monetize their platform data for advertisers, not users. I am a Google search engine, I need to make the best search result so I can get better advertising. And search results, thats a part. But the new order is the platform value goes to the users or customers. >> Right, right. That's right. >> So not... >> We are not rent-seeking. >> This is an open model with platforming. >> 100% open. There is a lot of the platforms are rent-seeking, where a certain percent of each transaction goes to the company or to some founders or something. We don't have that at all. So, what we do, for every token we sell, we allocate one to the company and after the token sale there is not going to be ever more XYO tokens ever again. And we use our portion to build this network but we don't take any fees or anything there. >> How do you make money? >> Building partnerships with companies, helping them to build on top of the chain, building the community. >> At some point you need to take a small cut of something, right? >> Yeah, if we own half the tokens, hopefully there is some value. >> They could be-- okay, so you'll get the token opportunity? >> Yes. >> So, on the security token, do the investors, the community and now token holders, is that an equity security token, so they own the company through the tokens, right? Non-dilutive, non-voting equity, is that what you're thinking? >> Yeah, it's not an equity token. It's still in our mind a utility token but we do something very interesting. During the token sale event, we are going to launch an equity sale at the same time. So, you can decide if you are comfortable in the blockchain space, you know, all you want to be an equity investor. The disadvantage is you have less liquidity there but you have all the protections an equity gives you. We are a California-based company. It was audited financial since 2012. SEC-qualified and regulated, so equity in our case is a kind of sexy kind of thing. >> Yeah, and they have the long game. They're betting on acquisition or something else. >> Basically. >> Oh, well, they've got to get some revenue going. Well, what's next? What are you guys doing? Token sale done, is it working? What, is it going on now, let me just check it out. You've completed it? >> No, it's going to start on March 20th. It's going to run for two months until May 20th and so now it's a lot of travel, speaking with people, engaging. >> (laughs) >> Yeah, that's next. >> Well, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> So glad that Carrie on Facebook notified me of you guys. Super-impressed with what you're doing and we had a great conversation last night at the monetize roof party. Great to know you guys. I think IoT really needs this kind of model because there's a lot of real critical challenges around the role of data, the role of immutability. There's all kind of sensor devices out there, cameras, you can't go anywhere, digital cities are coming, smart cities. >> Right. >> Self-driving cars. It's going to be wired up, big time, so I think you guys got a good opportunity. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. This is John Furrier here in Puerto Rico for exclusive coverage of Blockchain Unbound. More after this short break. (electronic beats)