(energetic electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE! Covering POLYCON18, brought to you by Polymath. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. This is exclusive live CUBE coverage here in the Bahamas for POLYCON18, it's a crypto event. Just talking economics. It's all the players in the space really discussing the future. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest, Bill Tai, friend, Facebook friend, industry legend, venture capitalist, kite surfer. His Twitter handle is @kitevc. Follow him. He's also involved in Bitfury and a lot of Bitcoin-related activities. Been a mentor to others. Great to have you, Bill. >> Thank you, John. I really appreciate you having me on the show. >> You tweeted in 2010, "This Bitcoin thing is interesting. "Check out this white paper." Can? >> Yeah, that was a >> Seminal moment. >> You know, back then I didn't know it would be, maybe a seminal moment. I was just lonely. (laughing) So, and the back story there, a very good friend of mine is Philip Rosedale, and he had approached me when he was starting a site called Second Life, where you basically create a digital avatar, maybe of yourself, maybe not, and you have this kind of, you know, world where you have people in an unstructured environment. And in the very early days of Second Life, when people were kind of just milling about, I said to Philip, I said, "Hey, Philip. "You know, maybe we should create a currency." I said, you know like, "If you think about it. "Think about what is Las Vegas? "Las Vegas is this pile of sand "but there is this metropolis on it. "How did that happen?" I said, "You know, if you took ten people, "sat them in a circle, and you put one poker chip "in the system, and said 'Pass it to the right,' "and everybody did that a million times a year. "Everybody would have a million dollars of income. "And then you could take chunks off "and build a casino, and build a resort, "and you'd have Las Vegas." So I said, "Let's do that." And so the Linden dollar was born. And so, soon, there was this thriving economy in Second Life that just, it was quite amazing to see. And so, when Bitcoin came out in 2009, as soon as I heard about it, I wanted to see what it was. So I went to the site and I read the paper, and it just seemed really cool. And so I started to play with it a little bit, and by 2010, I just thought it was really cool, but no one else had seen it. >> Yeah. >> So I took to Twitter to say, (laughing) "Is anyone out there "using this P to P digital currency?" You know, and >> It's funny. Our first web, You know, I started SiliconANGLE in 2009. David and I partnered in 2010. Our first website, the developer didn't want PayPal. He wanted Bitcoin. It was 22 cents, I think, at the time and we used the site for about half a year, and then we changed it and went back paid fiat. But if you think about where these come from, you brought up Second Life. Okay, online virtual world, really ahead of its time, but really set the stage for what we're seeing now. Gaming people who know virtual currencies, thrive on crypto. >> Yeah. Yes. >> So I'd like to get your perspective. Because, I know you've done a lot of investing in mobile and gaming, and what not. Where does that cross over? Because there's been a lot of virtual currencies going on in games. >> Yes. >> For a long, long time. >> Yes. >> How is that influencing and impacting this industry? >> Well, you know it's, I guess you have to ask, when you ask, you know, where does the real and where does the digital, like do they cross? And what are they? What is currency? Is the U.S. dollar real, right? And actually, let me pause for a second and reach down to my phone, because did you see a tweet today from Sheila Bair? I have to read this. Okay, so I just saw a tweet from @zerohedge earlier today. Sheila Bair, on Bitcoin, Quote, "I don't think we should ban it. "The green bills in your pocket don't have "an intrinsic value either." >> Well, look, the government wants to get rid of paper money. The people want to get rid of paper money. Why not? >> What is it really? Right? I mean so >> Backed by the U.S. military maybe, I don't know, I mean what >> What is it? >> What is it? Right. >> That's a good question. >> So I don't really see a difference. You know, they're kind of the same thing. You know, it's just something that people believe in, as the embodiment of value exchange. Whatever it is. So if it's a green piece of paper, or it's not. If it's shell, if it's a pebble. There is a fascinating book that you can read called The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. He's at Stanford now at the Hoover Institute, but he got widely known after the great financial crisis unfolded. He basically wrote a book called The Ascent of Money which tracks the history of value exchange across civilized communities, for thousands of years, from pebbles to shells, to feathers, to credit, to default swaps. And coined the term "Cimerica," which is sort of the interdependence of the cash flow. And what became apparent to me when I read that, was that the world of ICOs is actually no different than anything we've experienced in civilized humanity. You know, if you think about, even in the United States, in the 1800s, at one time there were over 200 currencies circulating at the same time. If you think about the formation of the United States as colonies, a bunch of guys get off the boats. They draw lines around the forest. Here's Connecticut, here's Vermont, here's New York, here's Virginia. Let's do an ICO. They all did an ICO. If you think about it, they created their own unit of currency per their community and geography, no different than what's happening today. >> When Lincoln was shot, there was a five dollar confederate bill in his wallet, right? I mean, the confederates had their own money. >> Yeah, and also you brought a point up in the conference you were in in Dubai, which I thought was really intriguing, and provocative, but also kind of real. The Oil Dollar Association post-World War II, >> Yeah >> Essentially wasn't actually securitizing oil That was an ICO. >> It was the tokenization of oil, right. Yeah, so, you know, the modern currency system that we have today, that is commonly known as the Petrodollar, so it's actually a relatively recent phenomenon. So if you think about, of course, the quote "U.S. dollar" was around a little bit longer than 1944, but it was really at Brett Woods that the dollar had its sort of birth to become the world's standard currency. And, you know, this is maybe a little bit of an over-simplification, but think about the picture after World War II. So, you basically have every major productive economy have war, destroy themselves. The U.S. enters late, finishes it all off completely, and you basically have 100 million people milling about. A little bit like Second Life, right? So, what do you do? Got to make them productive. Create a currency, set of currencies. So for every community of interest, like every token community of interest, you say, "Well, here's a lira, here's a franc, "Here's a pound, here's a mark. "Let's take gold, "reference the dollar to gold, and reference "every one of these currencies against the dollar. "Gentlemen, start your engines." Right? >> There you go. >> So how is that different than an ICO? Okay, so that was fixed to gold for a long time until people started to game it. And when the French accumulated a lot of dollars and they realized, whoa, there's more dollars than there is gold, I'm just going to go cash all this in. So they literally came over to take all the gold, and then the president took it off the gold standard. >> Dave Vellante: That's right. >> So it had to couple with something. So what it the utility token that that became? That became referenced to petroleum because the U.S. had basically forced everybody in the Middle East to accept dollars as payment and what that did was it created the dollar as a storage of energy. So you could basically take a token of oil and, as a separate nation, you could store that through your trade, if you had sort of a surplus, and you provided yourself energy security. >> Well, most currencies, right, historically have had a pretty short shelf life. Presumably the same will be true in the Blockchain world. >> Don't know. >> The crypto world. >> Yeah, it's, if you look at the history of humans over six million years, and it's arguable it's at four or six, or whatever it is, you're right. Like there have always been multiple currencies all the time. And very rarely have they ever become sort of like super-dominating currencies. That is also a very recent phenomena. I think, driven by the industrial revolution, and a combination of the Petrodollar and scale economics and manufacturing. So, so that >> Yeah, and overwhelmingly here, at this event, people feel like security tokens, as an asset class, are going to vastly overtake utility tokens. >> You know, actually, securities are a whole, I mean regular securities, (laughing) that's an interesting subject altogether. Right, okay, so there was a time, in my lifetime, when I was a securities analyst at Alex Brown in the '80s, and in that period of time, everything traded at ten times earnings, right? So you had a barometer for, a stock should be valued at this, because is should have a PE of actual real earnings. >> Dave Vellante: Independent of its growth or anything else, right? >> Yes, and if it grew, you had a PEG ratio, so you'd have a little bit higher growth, and so a little higher PE, but what's happened to securities over time, of that ilk, okay, you had to get these companies profitable to get them public in that era, and then over time the sort of like network effects have come in, and communities of interest have formed around companies. So, and the structure of securities has moved from give me something with earnings multiply it by a number to get the value, to give me a share of something that has no voting rights and no earnings. Does that sound like a token? That's Snapchat, right? (laughing) >> So you literally have, you know, Google, Facebook, all these companies now issue shares that don't have the characteristics of equity shares. They don't vote. What are they now, right? So tokenization is sort of a natural extension of that. >> Dave Vellante: Do you see that as a >> They don't have dividends either >> You see that as a fundamental shift in the value equation, the perceived value equation? Both? Is it sustainable? >> I think it's basically, so, you know, I go back and forth on this, because is it a trend line or is it a return in the past? Right? So what is a confederate dollar that was in Abraham Lincoln's pocket? It's a belief. So what is a share of Snapchat? It's a belief. It doesn't have earnings >> John Furrier: And a token is a belief. >> Right. >> But the trend is securing something, right? So the trend we're seeing is, obviously the ruling, first of all the ruling in Switzerland was interesting. You now have a trading so an asset, so security, asset, and then trading. So they kind of went a little bit deeper, which I think is helpful. >> Yeah. >> For the community. But what are they securing? So the trend, as we see, is percentage of revenue, non dilutive and equity in the classic sense, so kind of a token. And then some sort of either buyback options, people are doing things like that. Do you see patterns like that? What are you seeing for? >> Well. >> I mean a security token makes sense. It's all credited. The paperwork's known. >> Yeah, so, you know, it feels like, so some people refer to sort of Bitcoin as digital gold, you know, and in that sense, like gold is a commodity but is the root of securities, you know, whether it's gold ETF's or something, because you perceive a limited supply, and you perceive a storage of value, so that is where I think Bitcoin sits. But then I think this whole other category of utility tokens, that may be considered security tokens by definition of law, that resembles the petrodollar. And as we were talking about earlier, you know gold used to represent or a dollar used to represent a share of gold, but it didn't anymore. So what was underpinning it? It was basically, in my opinion, the ability for that token to have utility as an instrument to purchase oil for your energy security. And so, I think that's kind of where the utility tokens are today. >> You're a leader in the industry, and you're well-known. Communities need to thrive. And factions form, curriencies form, and can be very productive, and also can be counterproductive. >> Yeah. >> So what is the unwritten rules that you guys are putting forth. Are people meeting? Are you talking? And sometimes, as people make money, which a lot of people are making a lot of money right now. I mean, for some people, it's the first time. Didn't have money, make money. You know, egos kind of come in. So all of these are normal things. But again, this is a societal community dynamic, >> Yes. >> But super important. Institutional investors are coming in. >> Right. >> Big money. This isn't Burning Man. This isn't. Burning Man's cool, but you can't model this industry after Burning Man. Maybe you could. I don't know. What is your take? >> Well, you know, it's, I think that the guiding principle really needs to be looking out for the greater good, because I think that is the issue that everyone is trying to solve for. And it's not just endemic to Bitcoin and Blockchain. It's a societal issue that's been with us since the creation of civilization. And I don't know how to solve for that, but I think you need people to stand up and just make sure that people are thinking about that all the time. You know, and I think, over my career, I think I started as kind of like a geek hacker, sitting in the back of the room, working on little microchips and building stuff, and I still do that on weekends sometimes, but, you know, for whatever reason, I've been thrust into this role now where I do have a set of communities of interest that started actually around kiteboarding, but it became sort of a larger community around entrepreneurship. And we've actually, I have a 501(c)(3) that supports ocean causes and entrepreneurial things, and it's called ACTAI Global, and we have a couple value statements. We actually, we're codifying it, so we actually have a little pin, you know the ACTAI stands for Athletes, Conservationists, Technologists, Artists and Innovators, and all of us collectively, we combine our energy to work on causes. Some of the things that we support are around ocean conservation and the preservation of ecosystems, but we also work on a lot of other entrepreneurial efforts to help each other. But the thing that I've realized with our group is we've been very productive as a community, and you see a lot of companies that are born in our community, funded in our community, like, you know, whether it's Canva or Zoom, or any number of projects that turn into community-based companies because the group of people, they think and they stand for something greater than themselves. So that's kind of one principle. It's sort of like, how do you, how do you place your values as something to support the greater community, and that's something that I think, if everybody would just think about that a little bit, and stand for something greater than themselves, the world would be a better place. And on that note, the second ethos that we operate to is that we strive to leave every person or place we touch better than before we touched it. So when you see us like kiting at a beach, you'll see us picking up garbage, too. You know? We don't go someplace without trying to improve it a little bit. And I think we help each other on the companies, too. And I think the last thing that people really should try to do, everybody in this world of technology, has a little bit of a superpower, whatever that is. You know, they wouldn't be doing the things that they're doing if they weren't totally insanely focused on a piece of technology. They know something that other people don't. And if everybody would just try a little bit to use the powers the universe has granted them, to empower others, to unlock other people, the world would be a better place. So I think, you know, I think all of these factions, if we could just get people to stand for something greater than themselves, work to make people and places better off than before they touched them, and empower other people, I think we'll have some great outcomes. >> You know, empathy, empathy is a wonderful thing. And also you mentioned, know your neighbor. You know, that's a big thing. We're doing our part here in theCUBE, bringing our mission content. Bill, been great to have you on. And we'll get that clip out on the network about your mission. Great stuff. >> Thank you, thanks. >> And great to see you >> It's an awesome philosophy. >> be successful, you're a great leader. People look up to you, and certainly we're glad to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. Hey, more live coverage after this short break here on theCUBE in the Bahamas for crypto currency, token economics, POLYCON18. We'll be back with more after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello and welcome to The Cube here in IBM Think 2018, I'm John Furrier. It's The Cube, our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal in the noise. We're the number one live event coverage. We're here with The Cube with IBM Think 2018. Our next guess is Jesse Lund who's the vice president of IBM Blockchain. He's in the financial services side. Into blockchain, into crypto, into token economics, seeing the future, how money flows, Jesse great to have you on The Cube, thanks for joining me. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> We were talking before on camera about blockchain, and we love blockchain, IBM certainly put it out there as part of the innovation sandwich. Blockchain, data, AI, kind of making that innovation, but it's really what it enables, and I want to talk to you about. You are involved in payments. We've been saying on The Cube that the killer app is money in this market. >> I agree, yeah. >> You agree, and you talk about it. This is a new market, so a stack is kind of developing. You got blockchain, then you got crypto which as protocols and you got infrastructure, then you got decentralized applications which you could call ICOs up top, certainly a little bit scammy and bubbly, but that's as arbitraging and optimizing the capital markets, you could argue that. But so this is a really big dynamic. Your thoughts on this trend. >> Sure, well so I joined IBM from 18 years at Wells Fargo. I spent really the majority of my career in financial services and when blockchain came along, I sort of immediately saw the impact, the potential for, I'll call it positive disruption, disruption in the positive sense. Transformational paradigm shift kind of stuff in terms of how money moves around the world and how we classify assets and how we transfer ownership of assets, I mean that's just, it's, the possibilities are limitless. And you're right, IBM is the place where I think blockchain has started as a mainstream focus for enterprises around building private networks, but that's really just the beginning. What we talked about earlier was it gets really interesting when data and money are connected together and they move at high velocities together. >> Let's get into that. I mean first let's just address the IBM thing. They got to put a stake in the ground, blockchain, it's a safe harbor to say supply chain stuff because that's their business, they've been building technologies for supply chains for companies, that's what enterprises do, that's IBM. But the game is where the money is and that's where the businesses are going to be transformed. We're talking about disrupting structural industries. This is where the money power comes in. Money's flowing, I mean if you want to move money from China, go to bitcoin. If you want to move it from anywhere, this is what's happening. >> Yeah, so think about bitcoin. It's kind of what started it all. It's a little bit of a bad word in banks and in regulated financial circles, but let's face it, the only real mainstream blockchain application today is still bitcoin, but you know we're only three years in to the blockchain industry, right? I mean think about when we were three years in to the internet industry, where we were still talking about which browser is going to win and then it went on to which application server's going to win, and it wasn't til a decade later we were really focused on what are the applications, the killer apps that are enabled by an interconnected world and that's exactly what's happening now. Other industries have already been completely disrupted. Look at retail, it's just, it's banking's turn. It's financial services turn. >> One of the founders, the co-founders of Ethereum, Anthony Diiorio, who I interviewed a couple weeks ago at the Bahamas, he said "While it is the new browser," to your points, browser wars, if you think about the payment, wallets are now becoming part of the mechanism for money transfer. If you don't have a wallet, if you want to send me some Ripple, you want to send me some Ethereum, I need a wallet. This is a no brainer, right? I mean if you want to leverage any money, that's one thing. The second thing I want to get your thoughts on besides the wallets, the fiat conversion, right? These are two threshold conversations that are going on. Your thoughts, wallet and conversion to fiat. >> Well I mean I think wallets are really important because this whole thing is based on key management, this whole concept is based on cryptography. It only works on a public, private key notion and you got to keep that private key private, but you got to keep it, right? You got to keep it safe and you got to keep it, it's like your wallet. You've got a wallet, you've got cash in your wallet, you lose your wallet, you lose your cash. It's the same kind of analogy, so wallets are really important and you're going to want to turn to providers who have made their business in encryption, who have made their business in security, I mean-- >> And cold storage, old school is kind of coming back, people are taking their keys and they're spreading them across multiple lock boxes, multiple states. People are getting broken into their house or their PCs are getting broken into. >> Right, yeah. >> I mean security, going old school. >> And why not? I mean, it works. >> Because if someone knows you got 100 million dollars in your house, they're going to get it if you don't lock it. Okay back to the reality of the money transfer. We were talking before you came on, I've been saying on The Cube, token economics really is where the action is, at least in my opinion. I want to get your thoughts because really the business model innovation is on the table because whoever can innovate the business model has more of a chance to disrupt an existing industry. This is where tokenization becomes part of the money piece of it, so how do you convert that value into capture? Is that token? Is that where you see it? What's your thoughts? >> Yeah so well first of all, I mean if you think of tokens as another form of currency, and by the way, I think we have to be careful about what we say, cryptocurrencies, the industry talks about thousands of cryptocurrencies out there where there's really not. There's maybe dozens and they're all derivatives of just a few models, bitcoin being one prominent model and there's a lot of offshoots off of that. But the rest of what we call cryptocurrencies are really tokens that represent primarily securities, which is why the SCC's getting involved. But the really interesting thing about this is these tokens move at high velocity because they're digital and so, but these digital things represent a claim on real world value, and that's where it becomes really interesting. IBM's built and launched as kind of its first foray into the solution space of financial services where IBM is an investor in this technology, a cross-border payment solution that inherently re-engineers this whole correspondent banking, this international wire process, and where FX, foreign exchange, becomes a real time capability in a series of operations that execute as an atomic unit. That's novel today. When you want to send money from here to somewhere else in the world, you go to your bank, your bank sends an instruction to another bank, and they respond and say "Yeah you know it's okay "because the person you're sending it to is not a terrorist, "is not on a some sort of sanctions list," great, now the bank has to actually go settle and it settles through another network, so the novelty is why can't the messages and the data and the value itself, the digital asset, why can't they exist and move together at the same time? That's what we've really built. But as we've built and deployed that and are getting banks and non-bank financial institutions to sign up for it because the cost of moving money goes way, way, way down and the user experience goes way, way, way up because instead of taking two or three days and you don't know how much it's going to cost until it gets there, it takes 10 or 15 seconds and you know before you even press send how much it's going to cost to get there. It all boils down to this notion of digital assets, that's what it all comes down to, is the way to settle value with finality in real time is for one party to exchange a digital asset with another party. Today, initially, the only form of negotiable digital assets are cryptocurrencies which has banks a little scared, but as we start talking through what we've learned in the enterprise blockchain space, we realized that we can tokenize all sorts of other asset classes, commodities, securities, and even fiat currencies where central banks or commercial banks can issue a token that represents a claim on deposits held at some financial institution and that's, that's a-- >> So you see tokenization as a big deal. >> It's a huge deal. I mean it's everything, I think it's-- >> It's the economic value of the ... >> I think it's the tipping point for blockchain. The irony is it goes back to bitcoin kind of started this all. You know we said "Well we like the idea of the technology "underneath bitcoin, but we want to focus on blockchain," I mean forget for a second blockchain is actually terminology that's invented by the bitcoin primer that was published nine years ago by Satoshi, so yeah it's their, whoever they are, it's their terminology, and it's kind of coming back full circle where you're seeing the convergence of all of these cool optimization capabilities, you know, immutability and workflow optimization, supply chain management-- >> And there's a lot of work to be done on performance and whatnot, but the concept of decentralized immutability data is fine, store the data. Now there's, it's got to get fixed, but I think that what that enables and I think you agree that tokenization's critical. So for a company that wants to token their business or raise money via tokens or get involved in this new economic value creation, innovation trend, how do they do it? And by the way are there tools available? You mentioned banking, and the banking business got to where it was because you had to build the picks and shovels to make it happen, you had to do a swift and you had to have this stuff go on. Now developers don't necessarily have the tools, so there's a picks and shovel market and there's also the real innovation. >> Yeah and that's I think the value contribution that IBM brings. I mean we bring 107 years of credibility in developing and operating mission critical, transactional, and financial systems, and I could do just an ad for a second, that's what the IBM blockchain platform is all about and as the industry evolves, as our platform offering evolves, what we want to be able to bring to small business, medium sized businesses, large businesses is the ability to develop solutions using our toolkit. >> So Jesse I want you to put your financial hat on and at the same time put your payments hat on and your token economics hat on, three hats. Hey I want to tokenize my business, I really want to get in. So we have an innovative team, we're seeing new business model formulas and logic that we want to disrupt, what do I do? I got an existing, growing business that I know has assets and I'm not a startup, but I'm not trying to pivot like Kodak, so I'm not dying, throwing the hail Mary, or I'm not a startup and got to build a whole product. I'm a real business, I'm growing, and I see tokenization as a way for me to be successful. What do I do? What's your advice? >> Well I think you look at it from all potential angles. If you look at any business, they're always looking to improve the bottom line by shrinking costs, right? They're also looking to improve the bottom line by increasing the top side, increasing revenue, and I think as a mid-sized business or a growing business, you have the opportunity to use tokenization, to use blockchain and digital currencies to do both of those things. You have the ability to accelerate the adoption of whatever your good or service or product is by if it's tokenizable, and most things are whether it's a utility, access to some service you provide, or whether it's an asset, some widget that you sell, you enable primary and secondary markets by creating a digital asset that can be bought by anybody anywhere around the world. I mean that's one way to do it and so I think getting people to realize the potential there-- >> You got programs, they call up IBM or get some developers, make it happen. Okay so killer apps money, that's going to be a 30 plus year trend and certainly this highlights that, but the other thing that's happened, it's coming out of either, in the open source community as well as cloud, the notion of marketplaces and communities so marketplaces and communities become a very important role in the token economics piece. What's your thoughts and opinion on that narrative? >> Well again for me, it goes back, I always go back to digital assets. We in the U.S. and around the world, when we start talking about financial instruments, we classify assets differently, but when it comes to an ecosystem and a community that becomes inherently peer to peer and inherently democratic, it's about an asset class agnostic distributed exchange where I can sell you my security token in exchange for your fiat token, or I can sell you my commodity token or utility token for the same. I think the ecosystem gets built automatically by way of new assets coming to a common network or interoperable set of networks, and that's what's missing today by the way, same in capital markets, right? The holy grail in the capital market space today is how do I shrink the time between trade and settlement? There's this whole t plus three and we're spending billions of dollars to go to t plus two, we gain a day, so the trade day and the settlement date are two days apart. I mean you just think about kind of the absurdity of that. If you just say well if the security that you're buying is a digital asset, and the money that you're buying it with is a digital asset, and they both exist on either the same network or an interoperable network, the transfer of ownership and the transfer of value happen together as two operations or a single operation in one atomic transaction, you've solved the problem. >> Speed of light can make it happen. >> Right, delivery versus payment, that's what the capital markets industry is trying to optimize for, right? Because it improves the balance sheet of all sorts of finance-- >> You had a phrase you mentioned before we came on camera, something about money, the future of money. What was that phrase? >> Programmable money? >> Programmable money. >> Yeah, right, right. >> I want you to take a minute to explain. Love this concept, Miko Matsumura, thought leader friend of ours, has a vision called open source money which is more of an open source, this hey money's flowing, it's open, it's out there, but you have a different perspective which I like too which is programmable money. What does that mean? Describe the concept and take a minute to unpack that. >> The concept of programmable money comes out of a paper that I jointly authored with Jed McCaleb who is the founder of Stellar and was the co-founder of Ripple and is a really smart guy so I feel like I have a small brain when I'm around him but we really wrote it in the context of central banking and the ultimate issuer of an asset because central banks are the issuers of currencies. Right now the primary dealers, if you will, for currencies are commercial banks and so that whole commercial, central, fractional reserve banking model has been replicated from the western world to everywhere else in the world and you can't get access to central bank money as they say. But if the central banks were to issue digital currencies which is essentially a token of fiat currency, so you own the token, you own a claim of fiat deposits held on the balance sheet of the central bank, now you have the ability to move that around. You can actually program the movement of money because it's a digital thing, it's a digital asset that's as good as cash and if you are working with a central bank who's issuing it, not only is it electronic money, it's actually legal tender because if the central bank issues it, it becomes legal tender which means everybody who accepts it has to accept that form of payment. That's pretty profound if we can get to that point and we're working with-- >> And software's a big driver in that because you need software to manage digital assets. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. >> The software's driving it. Bill Tai is an investor, I interviewed him, and he had an interesting topic and I made a highlight of it. He said after World War II, we talked about the oil situation when the dala was pegged to OPEC, that was essentially tokenizing oil. Then okay that's good, so that was their ICO. >> Right, right, yeah, essentially. >> That's what you're saying, you can actually put fiat to the digital token and take advantage of the efficiencies of digital. >> Right, yeah, okay-- >> Taking down all the structural inefficiencies that were built prior to digital. Is that ... >> It is. You fast forward a little bit and think where that takes us. It's no secret that the U.S. dollar is the trade currency of the world, and I want to be careful what I say because, you know, I'm an American patriot here but there are other large G20 nations who wouldn't mind dethroning the U.S. dollar as the trade currency of the world and so as you see central banks starting to get involved in the issuance of digital currency, you create a situation where all of a sudden well maybe oil could be traded heresy in other currencies besides the U.S. dollar which is all it's traded in today. Goes back to your ecosystem question. >> This is a great point. We could riff on this stuff, let's riff on this. The UK just signed a deal with Coinbase, this is a major signal. >> Sign, yeah. >> You got a legitimate country saying we're going to give a license to Coinbase, now they have Brexit to deal with so they're looking at it as an opportunity. Outside of the UK coming in and doing that deal with Coinbase, it's on the web, look up Coinbase in the UK, you'll see the deal. You have other companies trying to jockey for who's going to be the Wall Street for crypto? Meaning I want to convert crypto to fiat, where do I go? Do I go to Estonia? Do I go to Dubai? Bahrain? Armenia? China? There is no place yet. Your thoughts, what's going to happen? What shoe will drop first? Is there a domino effect? >> Yeah, well there's a couple things as it relates to the UK and kind of the extension to Coinbase of access to the national payment system which is really what enables them to then convert fiat to crypto and back. That's pretty interesting. Going back to the programmable money thing, though. If you have a central bank issued token, you've essentially extended the real time gross settlement system which has been only accessible by commercial banks to anybody that holds that token, right? It's a trend, I think the UK sees it coming, I think the Federal Reserve sees it coming. It's going to happen. >> Is it winner take all or winner take most? >> I think it creates a much more purely efficient market. It's a democratic system so I don't think there is going to be a new Wall Street, I think it's going to be-- >> John: Decentralized. >> Exactly, I mean that's the beauty of it. It's scary though for establishments like Wall Street to look at this and it-- >> I mean are the banks scared? You're dealing with the banks right now. >> Yes, they're scared. I mean I've actually read a recent article that Bank of America, the headline was "Bank of America's afraid of digital currency." You've seen Jamie Dimon who came out with a kind of a hard stance against bitcoin and has since kind of backed away from that. >> Of course you probably bought in when it dropped and now it's back up again. >> Well I think part of the bank was actually facilitating their clients and trading bitcoin so that might've been it. There's a natural reaction to it, especially if you're part of the mainstream establishment. >> There's no proof of that, I'm just saying we're posting on Reddit and whatnot. >> No we're just joking around. Jamie's a, he's a good guy, right? >> Can I get your thoughts on digital nations? We've been talking about this. Just a few years ago, smart cities, IoT was kind of the narrative, oh be a smart city, control the traffic lights, and instrument the physical goods and services. Now with crypto and blockchain front and center conversation is digital nations with sovereignty around their cash. This is kind of your point earlier. How are you seeing that? What's your view? Are you seeing that trend? Are there dots connecting for you? Because again, people are jockeying for a position on the global digital backbone to be a major part of the money flow, the fiat conversion, what is the goods and services? Who's going to clear the values? All digital, it's a perfect storm. >> Well I think there's always going to be the need for trusted entities to be the issuers of these assets because it all comes down to trust at the end of the day. The thing with bitcoin is that it's purely autonomous and people are a little bit skeptical of it because they're like, "Well who's controlling "the monetary policy?" and the answer is the market, you know, the users of the network are controlling it and that's why you see such volatility, right? Because the traders love it, they can go in and trade the up trends and the down trends. As long as there's volatility, traders are making money. I think there is still going to be a place for central authorities to add value, but that's going to be the pressure, is for them to prove that they're adding value not, you know, bureaucracy masquerading as process. >> I was reading an article that Telegram, which is doing a huge ICO, just got shut down by the Russian government, they went to turn over their keys, their private keys of their users. Say goodbye to the-- >> Jesse: I didn't read that, that's crazy. >> It's really crazy, so that's going to put a damper on their ICO but regulatory and then government issues around countries becomes a big deal. In your experience as Wells Fargo, at a bank, looking forward in the new digital world, is it one of those situations where path of least resistance, the countries that go more friendly get around that in a sovereignty where you domicile, where you start your company, where you do your banking. I mean I could start a company in Gibraltar and bank in Switzerland. >> Well transparency is part of the benefit or the downside of this, right? I think there may be advantages that pop up but I think they will equalize over time. I've been around the world now for IBM talking to 20 plus central banks, and I had a really interesting conversation with one of them recently in Asia. We're in the room with deputy director level people who are responsible for things like the NA money laundering policy and the economics and monetary policy and things like that and one person said, "You know, we're really torn "between two equally unacceptable decisions. "One is to ignore cryptocurrencies altogether, "and the other end of the spectrum is "to make them illegal, to ban them." I thought it was poignant that they see those as unacceptable, they have to do something in the middle. >> Do they weigh or ban? I mean look, the banning's happening. >> But okay so you saw that Trump used the executive order to prevent Americans from using or trading in the Venezuelan crypto that was issued on Ethereum, right? I saw that Venezuelan thing as a publicity stunt more than anything, an active of global defiance. So there's precedent now for, and the Russia thing with Telegram-- >> The United States of America has to step up its game because look at it, we have a lot of, I mean I remember back in the crypto days when I was just getting into the business, late 80s, early 90s, you couldn't even do it in the U.S., you go to Canada, that's why Canada's got a lot of innovation up there. We're risking our country, and I had one guy tell me in Puerto Rico, he's from South Africa, and he shouldn't be throwing any stones either but his point was, he says, "America's becoming Europe. "There's a shrinking middle class "while other emerging markets have a growing middle class," so the global impact of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and these applications are significant and have to be factored into policy decision making for governments. The U.S. can't just think about itself anymore in a vacuum. >> Right, not anymore. >> Because there's implications otherwise the U.S. will turn into Europe, regulated, all these rules, byzantine stuff. It's a real problem. Your thoughts on that. >> It is. It's cliche, but we live and work in a global economy. The flow of information globally in real time has been around now for a while and it's about time it came to money. The internet of money is a term I've heard. It's just, it's unavoidable. >> Jesse Lund here inside The Cube. Great guest, great conversation. >> Yeah, thanks. >> How do people get ahold of you on IBM's, you mentioned you got some great stuff going on, you've written a paper, you've got a lot of content, where does someone go to discover some of the stuff that you're working on they could get involved with you guys? >> Yeah well I mean the best place to go is IBM.com/blockchain, that'll tell you a lot about what we're doing and the different industry-- >> And the programmable money paper you wrote, is that there? >> It's out there as well, there's a link to that. >> On IBM.com? >> You can get me directly on LinkedIn, I try to be pretty responsive with that because I really enjoy the dialogue. This is a revolution of the peoples, man, it's all over the world, so it's great, it's great to be a part of it. >> And people tokenizing their business, there's real opportunities to change the game to bring consensus, data driven, new kind of supply chain whatever to the markets you're in, great opp-, and you need banking. >> Yeah of course. >> You need to have money. Money, marketplaces, and communities, that's my mantra. >> I subscribe to it. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Jesse Lund. I'm John Furrier here at IBM Think 2018. Cube coverage continues after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE Covering Polycon '18. Brought to you by Polymath >> Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in the Bahamas for Polycon '18, put on by Polymath and Grit Capital. I'm here with the CEO of both of those companies, who have been gracious enough to let us come in and tap into the bandwidth, tap into the guests, and host us here at theCUBE's two days of exclusive coverage. We have great guests, Trevor Koverko, CEO of Polymath, really changing the game. Security tokens are really kind of driving great, fast, accelerated innovation. And we have Genevieve Roch-Decter who's a CEO of Grit Capital, funding it, being part of it. You guys created a great community. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Great, thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, live coverage, thank you very much. We really appreciate the collaboration with you guys, great guests. But there's something magical going on here. You've got a big even, couple hundred, 400 people. But it feels like the early days of, when I was in my 20s, the computer revolution, PC, and then the internet came. People are doing deals. This is a very intimate conference, you've got whales, billionaires, you've got entrepreneurs, you've got folks from investment banking companies coming into the sector, young guns, all dudes and gals. I mean, This is a melting pot! >> We have professional athletes, too, yeah, no we've really brought together a cluster of different zones, if you will. I come from the world of the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street, Bay Street, and so we've got institutional investors here who don't have wallets don't have coins, and are learning about it from the top Crypto minds in the world, so it's quite magical. I don't think Trevor and I have slept in 60 days. We literally came up with this idea, it's supposed to be a very intimate setting of 20 or 30 people and it's ballooned into 600, mostly because Trevor has so many friends and is partnering up with a lot of them on his projects, so yeah it's been a great time so far. >> And Trevor you, by the way, you're not sleeping 'cause everyone's staying out til two in the morning. It's been a great intimate gathering, people are mingling. But they're players, they're not pretenders here. This is a really interesting group, people who are investing their time, it's mission-driven here. We talk about societal change, but there's money-making going on, too, you're powering that, I mean you've got to be exhausted, how do you feel? >> I call it the eye of the hurricane, this was like if you weren't here this week, in crypto, you're just not relevant, this is where you wanted to be. And it's all about the attendees, the caliber of the people that came just blew me away, very humbled by the quality of people that we had here, it's no surprise, we have a beautiful venue like here in the Bahamas, and at Baha Mar, and amazing people. Good things are going to happen. >> Community is a very important formula for success in this world, we've seen this movie before, in open-source software It started out as a tier-2 citizen, now it runs softwares tier-1 class capabilities, cloud computing has been amazing growth, crypto, same model, you know, it's emerged as the money, the value store, technology-enablement. What are you guys seeing as the pattern, 'cause honestly, people recognize that certainly in the in industry. If you don't you're going to miss the boat on this one. Most people who don't get it will probably miss the boat. But a lot of people are getting in, what is the pattern that's happening, why is this moving so fast? Is it the wealth creation, is it the money-making? Is it the technology enablement, what's you guys' reaction to the why? What's the why, here? >> I think it's a convergence of a lot of mega-trends going on right now, both of the technology and on the regulatory side. If you look at, you know, the exciting sexiness of having this liquid tokens that kind of feel like stocks, but are also utilities in the sense that you can use them to do certain things with, that's a big component of it. But I think another reason is just, there's a lot of strangling going on in the capital markets, where you have a lot less companies going public, you have a lot more barriers to raise capital, in a lot of ways. And this is kind of like, light peeking through the hole. Where you have new ways re-imagined ways to raise capital. So we're seeing just a convergence of a lot of mega-trends, I think. >> And a lot of pros are coming in, and they're either young pros that are learning and growing with this trend, the young guns, I call them, and then you've got pros coming in from other industries, whether it's banking, and other sectors, this is interesting. So the question I have for you, is the security token. This has been a big deal, a lot of companies have seen the ICOs on the utility side, certainly the SEC in the US has been really sending signals pretty radically, like hey, don't pump and dump, I don't want to see any, watch that advisor stuff, and oh by the way, show me the utility, how we test et cetera, et cetera. That the startups who have to build the future are trying to rush a utility token out, now have a safe harbor in the security token, and existing companies can raise money with the security token that are tokenizing a real business, this is a pretty important point. Can you guys share some color commentary on that? Do you agree with it, and then, if you do, share some color around this whole trend. >> Yeah, I mean, right now if you look today, there's two major categories of tokens as you alluded to, you have utilities on the one hand, and securities on the other hand. And the distribution right now is extremely one-sided. Security tokens are dominated by utilities. Utilities like Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, they make up 99% of the total market cap of alt coins, so, where does that leave us? Well it depends, today it means all the action is in utilities, there's more upside, they're faster, they're simpler, I'm very bullish on utilities. But what's even more exciting to me, is the mega-trend the tsunami of real-world financial assets migrating to the blockchain. And that's what I see as the next sort of part two, second-wave of crypto, is real-world, tangible assets tokenizing and migrating to the blockchain. >> And you know what I think, you know the SEC kind of gets a bad rap in all this, but the rules are there for a certain reason: to protect investors, and I think that this industry is in the beginning it's a nascent, and you know, with Trevor's company Polymath introducing the securities token. Literally, I think you coined the word. It's growing up, it's an industry that has to, you know, it's going to have some red tape, too, right, and I think working with the regulators, and Trevor's company has done that, you know, befriend them, and be open-source about it, and communal. And, you know there's certain aspects about the regulations that are not good, and we don't want communication and the communities that have formed, Telegram's a great example of this, so there's a lot of these chat rooms that I'm in and literally people are sharing information about companies and teaching each other, and learning and that's great. But there is an assymetry of information sharing, that at some point, you know, we have to rein that in. But we don't want to lose the positive aspects. >> You could choke the innovation, if you put too much regulatory on it, the innovation won't grow, so you have to have a balance, I mean, that's what you're saying, right? You got to get through it, but redefine a new era. And the SEC in the US has not been too bad, I think they're just sending a signal, and I think they're not, And they can be hardcore. They could be harder core, I think, than they are. But thank God they're not, you want to let these startups figure out what to do. Alright so I got to talk about liquidity and funding. So, Grit Capital, you guys are involved in investments also, you're enabling partnerships at Polymath. A lot of people you're connecting into your system, we had one on earlier. The funding environment, certainly a lot of investors are here I talked to probably at least a dozen actively investing, different profile make-ups some go hardcore protocol under the hood, some are more business we're going to decentralize apps. Make-up, Persona, trends, can you share? >> Yeah! >> You know that world. Eight months ago, so, I'm from Toronto, I'm from Canada. Eight months ago, there was literally no publicly-traded blockchain company in Canada. And now there's probably, I think, 70, you know, new one every day, name change. But yeah, there's been a lot of equity raised. There's two companies about to go public actually, in Canada Hut 8 Mining, who's our sponsor here at the conference, and Galaxy Digital Michael Novogratz's company, and I think between the two of them, they've raised almost half a billion dollars in capital. Or, like market capitalization when they go public. Probably about 250 million in actual capital. But that's huge, those checks were written not by just by high net worth people, but actual institutions. And those people that are here today, they're good with writing equity checks, ICO checks and that is going to come. And I think the securities token aspect of it will give them a lot of comfort that they can write checks in those kinds of-- >> And how does Grit Capital, talk about Grit Capital. >> Yeah so very simply, we introduce companies to capital holders, investors. So I was a portfolio manager for nine years, and I like to say I was in the no game for nine years, 'cause when you're portfolio managing-- >> Now you're in the yes game! >> Yeah, your goal-tending, you're like trying not to let bad deals in, and that wasn't really conducive to my personality and now I'm in the yes game, I'm you know, I like this company, I'm going to invest in it, but I'm going to introduce them to these other capital holders. And it's a positive experience. >> How much is community involved in what you do? 'cause we're seeing obviously the pattern of kind of paying it forward, which is great culture, but also people are, you know help scratch my back, I'll scratch your back on deal flow, and also on participation, it seems to be a big part of the current rules of engagement, or implied protocol. Is that going on? >> Yeah, you know, look I think this is a very collaborative ecosystem, and It's has to be because by definition, open-source communities are powered by the people that make it up, and it's all about volunteering, about helping, about giving back, and it's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this space. >> I think you should probably talk about your fund that you just announced that you're launching. And it probably plays into, so Trevor's network is global, it's extensive he has deal-flow coming at him all the time. >> Alright, so what's in the news? >> Yeah what are going to do with that deal flow? You holding news back? >> Yeah, I've got a bit of a brain freeze, I have so many announcements out there, uh, yeah we're doing a lot of exciting initiatives right now, and part of what I'm excited about, and also slightly intimidated by, is that there's just so much opportunity, there's so many key components of this new infrastructure that need to get build, that aren't in existence yet, that is easy to get, you know, carried away. But for me it's about prioritizing and finding out the real kind of high-leverage initiatives that are going to help us achieve our goals. >> And so you're putting a fund together to invest in the ecosystem, or is this for financial investment, is it a crypto fund, or what are you, what's going on? >> One of those initiatives is a securities token focused venture fund, this will be the first one that I know of that exists, and it would be to help our ecosystem get financed, and that's a big component of this marketplace is capital, is investors, is demand. And we just want to channel all of that to the best deals. So Polymath capital-- >> Ecosystem is important to you guys, Polymath your ecosystem is strategic, right? >> Yes. >> How do you see that playing out, what's your vision? What do you hope to unfold in your ecosystem? Obviously, people connect in the variety of things that you can help people with, and vice versa. How do you see your ecosystem rolling out? >> Well, part of it is I want an arms length organization that has its own kind of mandate, its own charter. And the way I look at it is, if you look at Ethereum, which I am very familiar with being from Toronto and knowing those guys kind of since day one. They opted not to do a venture fund, but if they had, it would have been literally the most, >> John: high performance fund ever in history? >> Of all time, yeah, just mathematically-speaking, so we don't want to lose out on an opportunity like that. And in the process of building another potentially profitable entity we want to also seed the ecosystem and help projects that we're excited about. Get the first check. >> Who are you looking for in your ecosystem? Is it developers, 'cause obviously Ethereum, we're Ethereum developed we're a ERC20 token, we love it. It's easy to work with, smart contracts are easy to work with, so it's clearly a developer market on that side, are you guys looking for the same? Is it a different kind of partner, what is some of the partner makeup that you hope to attract, in case they're watching now, why should they work with you, who are they? Describe the persona of your ideal ecosystem partners, or partner. >> For better or worse we have a lot of verticals that we have to build communities within, so those are the business community, we want leaders, we want action-takers we want people that can structure deals, we want legal professionals, that's a big component of the security token landscape, is the regulation is the exemptions, and the offerings, and the memorandums, and all the legal stuff, so we need a legal community. And then finally, most importantly, we need a developer for community, we need the best technical minds just like any other decentralized project, so that's what my full-time job is, when people ask me, is building communities with our broader community. >> Well I can totally give you props, one, because I know you're super busy, and you're drinking from the fire hose at all levels, and certainly the event's been great. I think a breath of fresh air, a sigh of relief from the world when see entrepreneurs, at least from the perspective of the entrepreneurs and the markets is that security tokens, finally someone just made a decision let's just use this security token as a way to get the funding and get set up, and not foreclose the option for, say, a utility token. Why rush and force a utility, needs to be built out. And lot of these utilities have really missed out because they had to run so fast to write code funded by a utility, that has a test. So I think you guys are doing a great service, I want to give you props for that. >> Thank you, yeah I would whole-heartedly agree, I think a lot of these so-called utility coins are actually securities masquerading as utilities, and you know, >> I think that's the game everyone kind of is realizing like, okay great, now you have the platform, so what's the update on the platform, the company? Take a quick minute to explain to the folks about Polymath. >> We are inundated and overwhelmed with demand right now. And we have thousands, tens of thousands of sign-ups on both the investor and issuer side. And kind of my goal right now on a day-to-day basis is to scale our on-boarding process so we can take all these issuers and give them a secure and robust token that they can fundraise on top of. And we are in the process of unveiling our application layer that's going to make that kind of self-serve process exciting and scalable. >> Well congratulations, and Grit Capital, genevieve, thanks for connecting, great to connect with you. Shout out to Bill Tai who made it happen. If it wasn't for Bill Tai and Genevieve, theCUBE would not be here, and of course Polymath supporting us as well. It's been great, so thank you very much! >> Thank you! >> Great event, and we'll keep on following you guys and thanks for coming on, sharing success. Final question: The craziest thing that's happened here this week, one, two, three, things that might have won? Craziest thing that's happened, could be good, bad, or ugly. Did someone fall in the pool? Was someone found on the beach? Share a funny story or two. >> We found a mermaid. >> there was a mermaid, yeah. >> A real, live mermaid, we actually found a mermaid. And we put her in the pool for the cocktail event. >> And we almost put Trevor in the pool as a merman. Just to balance it out. >> Merman, We're a mermaid-neutral company we have mermen as well, oh geez, what else? We had uh, a friend of our decided to get the jacuzzi suite at the top floor and uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Scarface? But there was a lot of uh, opulence going on, which was a little more than I bargained for. And then Genevieve being the celebrity that she is. Umm, what do you think? >> Umm, I mean there's been so much, like, we've had literally 13 side-events within the conference. So drinking from a fire hose is an understatement, I would say, there's still more to do, we're going to Cabana pool party now so maybe, I think there's going to be a bull there, a stampede security bull there? >> Trevor: Oh geez, is there? >> And maybe the SEC, no! (laughs) >> Well, hey congratulations, you guys are doing a great service in the industry and I love how you brought together the inner-circle major players, really the community really admires that so appreciate your help. Okay this is theCUBE, live coverage in the Bahamas. More interviews after this short break, stay with us. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas it's The Cube covering Polycon 18 brought to you Polymath. >> Hello, welcome to The Cube for a special Cube event, our first kick off for our cryptocurrency, Blockchain, decentralized computing world that we know as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain and all the rest. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. We're here previewing the conference/\. We'll be live tomorrow and Friday but were here down getting ready for the big festivities which is tonight's opening keynotes. We had the co-founder of Ethereum, Anthony Diiorio, and then Brock Pierce coming on. He also is a chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. Luminaries as well as a bunch of other great guests, Bill Tai from California, a friend of The Cube's. This is a game changing event, Dave. You and I have talked about this on The Cube many times. The waves of innovation come, you know, this big once in a generation, maybe centuries. We're seeing one that I think is not as even big as the other ones, bigger. You combine the PC Revolution. I was just texting Michael Dell earlier today and said, "This feels like the PC Revolution." A bunch of pioneers coming together but it's got a different vibe. It's bigger. It's like the combination of the internet and PC Revolution all rolled into one with a community vibe on it. So, and we're going to have tons of coverage on this. What I want to ask you, Dave, directly is you've seen many waves and we work with and we cover some of the old guard, older companies like Dell EMC, HPE, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and they're doing really good work pivoting and trying to be ready for this new wave. It's just on Blockchain, it's just how the world works, Cloud, you know, IoT but decentralized cannot be ignored. So, some think this is a blind spot to these legacy and emerging vendors changing vendors like Oracle and IBM and HPE and Dell Technologies. Are they ready? Do you think they're ready? Do you think they even understand what's coming? And people squabble over Cloud market share and it's just funny, right? It's like there's a bigger thing coming over the top. >> Well, first thing I got to say is I got to give you props as my partner because you've been covering, you know, Blockchain, Bitcoin on SiliconANGLE since I don't know -- >> John: 2010. >> 2010, when I first met you, right. And so once again you are sort of ahead of the curve. I feel like we're at our first Hadoop World, you know, back in 2010. And so, props to you and the SiliconeANGLE team. To answer your question, no. No, they're not ready and to me it's not even about just Blockchain. I mean, Blockchain technology they can adopt. The bigger issue is digital disruption. And digital disruption is all about the data at the core of the organization and business models that are built around data. And if you think about the history of companies, it's human expertise and data's bolted on. We've seen this time and time again but if you look at the top five market cap companies, Facebook, Amazon, Google, et cetera, they're data companies. Data is at the center and they take human expertise and wrap it around there. So, the future is going to be about innovation with data, with artificial intelligence and Cloud economics and the old guard doesn't have those things. Blockchain fits in there. To me Blockchain is about building out a new distributed web and on top of the old web and rewarding those who were building it. So, it's a new form open-source where the builders get paid. >> But it's also decentralized and you have a value store, value creation capture model that has all the wrappings of what we traditionally see in a centralized database or even Cloud. You need networks, you need storage, you need databases, you need tokens, which is a form of data. So token economics, I mean, it's a new value economy, Dave. I mean, I just don't, I feel like the, I just, from my perspective, I just don't think those guys are seeing it. >> No and so it's not only those guys. It's the most of the world. I mean, you turn on CNBC and Buffet's on there saying this is going to end badly and there's negative, you know, trade press about, you know, Bitcoin and Silk Road and all that stuff. What most of the world is missing, and that makes people run away, but this is happening, it's real. It's going be the foundation for a next generation internet. It's happening, you see it all the time. Developers built the internet. Developers are going to rebuild the internet on top of this. So, I would suggest that people just try to squint through or squint passed the negative press and try to really understand what this trend is all about and how it's going to fundamentally change the internet and change the world. >> Well, there's negative press that's worthy. There's a lot of scams out there. There's security issues >> Sure >> but these are evolutionary problem spaces that can be solved. One, the scammers are going to be vetted out, the bubble bursting but the real value, creation is going to come from developers and that, to me, is what I hear you saying as your main point. >> No question about it. And I think that that, you know, there's lots of challenges. This stuff is not easy. First of all, who would've ever thought that something like Ethereum could even have been built, this kind of distributed infrastructure? I mean, it's very, very challenging. Of course we know about the scaling problems, the latency issues, all that stuff but these are problems that smart people are going to go attack and solve. And again I emphasize, it's the new form of, remember the old open systems, right? Unix and open systems. Well fast forward passed open-source, which the internet was built on open-source. Think about Linnux, everything's built on Linnux. But today developers who are building these new protocols are actually going to get paid to that. Guys like Anthony, you know, who made hundreds of millions -- >> Anthony Diiorio, co-founder of Ethereum, doing Jaxx wallet as part of Decentral. Great use case. He's paying it forward and I think the community here is a real dynamic and I think what we learned at The Cube, Dave, is the communities matter and now, more than ever they're actually having an input. Look what open-source has done to the software business over the past three decades, okay? Completely revolutionized the world we live in. So if you take the open-source apply those principals to, whether it's content media or decentralized infrastructure and applications, it's going to be a haven of innovation. >> Well and if you think about this, too, folks. Is that, you know, the centralized model has essentially co-opted all this innovation in the last 15 years, right? They've won. Closed won, Facebook won, they killed RSS. >> Well, Facebook's not winning now. They're under a lot of pressure because they screwed the election over and the data that they're using, some will argue, that, when I use Facebook, okay? Facebook's great, I get a free app, I let them have my data 'cause I want to connect with my friends but they're throwing elections off. I didn't bargain for that. The context has changed. So, to me, the shift of user data is going to move into the hands of the users. Do you agree with that statement? >> Yes, no question. And the other thing, just to finish my thought -- >> That's not good for Facebook. >> And we've talked about this, John. Protocol and development has stagnated, you know? Gmail is built on SMTP, you know, HTTP, DNS, these are all protocols that were developed by governments, and academia and the big guys just co-opted them and so, protocol development stagnated. What you need to understand about Blockchain is it bring back innovation -- >> Well, Anthony Diiorio said on my interview with him, one-on-one, that protocol developers are the most in demand role because those big guys take in co-oping those protocols, Dave, as you pointed out, is causing a revolution. It's almost like the 60s for tech. It's like there is a ground swell. I see it, I feel it. Not just a wave of innovation but the actors and the people involved look at this as a liberating opportunity to free the centralized forces that are quite frankly holding the world back. >> And I want to, this is very important and it was really epiphany when it hit me, is if you wanted to invest in TCP/IP, back in the day, how would you do that? You couldn't invest in TCP/IP. You could maybe invest in companies -- >> John: Cisco. (laughs) >> Yeah, can invest in companies. Okay, but you and I couldn't have gotten in early on Cisco, right? It was all the insiders. Today, developers who are building out these protocols, they can own the protocol. That's a form of investment and they got, essentially, equity in that token. >> Dave, we're going to be doing a lot of crypto shows and Blockchain shows because we're talking about the decentralization of the world. This is the future of our globe and work and play. What are you looking for, as we go down and knock down these shows, as The Cube goes out on this new mission? >> Well, I think Anthony kind of hinted at this. Is he's looking at infrastructure. It's like the early days of the internet with, you know, the pickaxe guys, you know, made all the money. It's the infrastructure that's getting built out. So, I want to see how that develops and how that sets the foundation, the platform for distributed applications, number one. Number two is I want to understand some of these challenges and how they're going to be addressed. The scaling issues, the latency problems, some of the, you know, nitty gritty technical challenges, who's working on those? And the third is, what's the right investment profile? How are the investors at this conference and other conferences going about deciding what to invest in? Right? How do they squint through quality and garbage? >> Well, I'm going to be heading to a special investor event. Dave, I'm going to put my ear to the ground and of course The Cube will go wherever it takes to get the story, whether it's the Bahamas. Not a bad gig here but important. We're going to get the most important stories and share that with you. And continue our mission of getting this content out in the open, shining the light on relevance and the right reputable people. Dave, always great. >> Thanks, John. >> And looking forward to a great week. (techno music)