(theCUBE theme music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. >> Hello everyone, welcome to the live coverage here in Toronto, this is theCUBE's coverage of Blockchain Futurist Event put on by Untraceable and the community here in Canada and around the world. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Dave Vellante, co founders of theCUBE, we're here with CUBE alumni, Anthony Di Iorio, who's the founder and CEO of Decentral and Jaxx, the really cool product we're going to get in to but also the co founder of Ethereum. Anthony, great to see you, thanks for coming back on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me again. >> Great keynote, in typical Anthony Di Iorio fashion no slides, you decide what you're going to talk about before you get up on stage but you really kind of brought it- >> When I get on stage. >> When you get on stage, you come on, you do it. >> Yeah. >> But it's a nice theme, you're talking about the history, you're bringing in the community value. You talk about the key milestones. You're really recognizing what the community's done. But more importantly you're giving a roadmap of where you think the future's going and combined with the fact that you're also running Decentral and you got the Jaxx wallet so really cool. I want to ask you, where is it going and what's going on in the community from your perspective, as of today? >> So where is this entire space going? I think it's going to be revolutionary. I think the infrastructure is being built out now, it's been built out for the last number of years. I think we're seeing more and more the interfaces and the ways that the masses are going to start connecting with these technologies. We're still being hindered by some problems with scalability, some other problems that are stopping these technologies, these decentralized techs from really spreading globally and being able to be utilized in a way that's going to make things faster, better, and cheaper. But those problems will be solved and it's going to lead to revolutionary changes in every sector that you could imagine, every sector that relies on third parties and intermediaries to facilitate things, technology is going to emerge that's going to be able to make things better, make things faster. >> I want to ask you something because I'm seeing a trend happen. Obviously we've seen the cycle of prices drop and crypto prices and a lot of people are focused on the mechanics of coin price and so on and so forth. Also the international growth is pretty massive, but you're starting to see two types of swim lanes. One is get this thing, get this coin out there, get it trading, get token economics going and then you've got builders, building real products and durable companies, you're starting to see a trend now where people are starting to highlight the builders. People really looking at the longer term gain, trying to bring a token economics model but trying to get it right on building and this is kind of a critical kind of inflection point in the industry where it's not just, hey, I want to make some cash, there's actually economic benefits of this revolution. >> Yeah. >> But there's now a focus on the builders, people actually building technology, building companies. This is now the focus, this is what's becoming a legit deal, legit alpha entrepreneurs, real communities are galvanizing around that. Your reaction to that dynamic happening right now? >> It's what we've always tried to to. With my company, with Decentral, we're not banking on a token. There's no raising and taking people's money or token to grow and be the main focus of what we're doing. We may add a loyalty system in what we're doing down the road, but it would never be something that we're collecting money for, to actually make that as a main business. It's all about creating value and our goal is to create the interface for all projects to be able to have that ability to manage and move value in their different platforms. Our goal has always been to not rely on a token based system in order to create value and we're seeing more and more, that, I think, companies are realizing that you can have maybe some part of a token based system but you really have to create value with it and there's way too much idea of a token being the be all and end all and that's how we're going to base things and it's just there's too many of them out there right now and I think that creating a real value and not banking just on that token being where you're going to make money is probably, that's the building step that needs to get done. >> Well it's definitely a theme we've been hearing, "Too many damn tokens" and not enough value being created by those individual tokens. What's your take on the current sentiment? I mean obviously people have seen the crypto prices. Your thoughts on what's going on? >> There's just too much going on right now and that's a good thing. And there's a lot of competition but it's also very difficult to wade through al of the noise and wade through what's actually going to create value. Most of the stuff out there is not going to be valuable, it's not going to really radically- These companies and these projects that are emerging, not all of them are going to be successful and only a very few are actually going to create value so I find it very difficult as the time is passing to identify what is going to be actually good and there's just too much out there and it becomes very difficult to actually identify those things. >> Well somebody made the comment, we were doing a show yesterday here in Toronto and they said, "You know back then "there was really only one Vitalik Buterin "and now there's like zillions of him "and they're all creating amazing ideas "but there's a huge supply of those ideas." And to your point not all are going to succeed. >> It's ideas but it's about execution, too. >> Right. >> And really, can you carry that out? That's the hardest part, is execution and it's very difficult and there's a lot of people out there that struggle with that part. They have an idea, they've got a paper, they build a team and it's like, well how do we actually get it to create value? And then they're backing on their token value and they're not really creating something of substance that's going to be that value but it's also due to limitations that the space has right now and mostly with scalability. >> A big part of your effort is try to reduce some of that friction, right? I mean is that kind of the play? >> Yeah, our goal is to, when you build wallets or a project has to build their own wallet, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort and it's really not what their focus should be on. That's what our goal is, is to be that interface that projects can use to move and manage their digital currencies and connect them with other projects and other services that their user base needs. What's missing is those interfaces now and that's what has always been my focus. >> You said this, but when we interviewed you in the Bahamas we had a one on one, and also had a CUBE interview, but on the one on one you were basically saying the wallet's the new browser, which we like by the way, thought that was very relevant and we see the wallet dynamic being central. The other thing that we heard yesterday, and this has been a recurring them in the industry, is got to be easier to use. This whole system, it's like the internet. It's hard at first but then there's a chasm that's crossed on ease of use, that really will drive more adoption so the notion of the centrality of why the wallet is critical and also the ease of use because, like you said, entrepreneurs want to optimize their behavior, time to build value, not worry about prices of their coin and their velocity and float and stock prices when the reality is, there's work to be done. >> That's right, yeah. >> This is a real problem and there's opportunity, how is that wallet evolution going to emerge? How do you see it visa-vis potentially competition? What's your view now? Will there be a browser for every webpage or wallet for every- >> Well that's what I, I mean our goal is to be the single interface for all those projects and that's our goal. We want to be able to have and expedite the way that we can bring new projects on board. It's difficult right now because you have a lot of different technologies in the background that we have to integrate and connect with. Things with Ethereum are pretty simple, Bitcoin we've got, ones like Bitcoin but then there's all these new ones that are emerging, too and they require a lot more effort and resources to do. That is our next goal is how to expedite getting all this product in, because we want to be the single thing and it doesn't make sense that I've got a store or manage 20 different crypto currencies and I can only do some of them in Jaxx, I can do some of them across it, I got to use other systems. It's really not a great user experience and that's what we're trying to perfect. >> Yeah, so you really only want, as a user one or two browsers, you don't want- >> I'd say one browser is what you really want and that's pretty much, you would say Chrome is what people are mostly using now and that's what happens over time. >> Maybe a little bit of Safari for some other stuff, whatever, but you don't want four or five browsers. Nobody uses three or four browsers. So the browser is the metaphor that you've used. Some people have said, "Well, the better metaphor is the app". I got gazillions of apps on my phone. So help me understand why it's more browser than it is app. >> I would say that you have browsers that have apps and integrations in them, so Chrome has extensions, those are apps. The browser itself is basically it's an interface where you can see what's going on and allows you to move information. The wallet is what enables you to manage and move the value, and we have integrations so I consider those the apps that we'll have inside of the wallet that'll connect you to service providers that offer different value, different services. So I see it as the way for you to manage your keys and be able to navigate but the apps will be baked into the wallet, that will enable you to connect and buy and sell and trade and pay bills and all these things will be through apps so that's why I see that interface as the wallet, yeah. >> Talk about the dynamic around developers and one of the things that I've been saying on theCUBE and I'll say it here again, I think when you have volatility in pricing, that scares the market or whether it's people speculate whether it's being manipulated or not, doesn't matter. If there's a scare factor, developers are in it for the long game, right? When they pick a platform like Ethereum to work on, they're in it for the long haul so short term fluctuations shouldn't change behavior but there's now some dynamic where it kind of is and people are questioning that. What do you talk to those developers, saying stay the course, because Ethereum has the most developers, okay? By far. >> Yeah. >> What's the message to the developers? Don't worry, settle down, long game? >> Well they got to make their own decisions on that. I think that with, the industry is very market driven right now. Businesses, that are down to a fifth of what they were worth or what they have, you know just in a few months, really does take a toll. >> Yeah. >> And it really does, when you have a lot of growth plans and things you want to do, it really can put restrictions on that, so that's the world that it is in. As for developers, if they're passionate about what they're doing, especially with developers, they're generally going to do it, regardless of the money, I usually find. Some might leave, some might come in, but it's generally what the individual person's going to do. It's whether they should keep going on it but the markets, I mean the markets do really play a factor in a lot of things. How do you plan your 12 month ahead when the markets take you down to have such massive swing where you're now at 10% what you may have had. They really do play. >> You got to pay attention, their runway gets shortened big time >> So Anthony I was struck by your keynote today and other keynotes where I've seen you. You're incredibly humble, such a successful individual. You talk about your humble beginnings, the grassroots meet ups and I was struck by when you first read Vitaliks' "White Paper" you said it was very comp- after two or three pages you're like, "Eh" your eyes are bleeding so you went to Charles and he kind of explained things. >> Yeah. >> A lot of people feel like, okay you've got to be an alpha geek to succeed in this business. Talk about your particular skillset and maybe share with the audience some of the skillsets that they can tap to succeed in this industry. >> I hire a lot of developers, I am not a developer. I need to interface with them but I don't need to know a lot of the nitty gritty and if you have good people working for you on that end they don't want to be usually the ones that are leading stuff, they want to code and they want to do it so I've always been the person that can bring the team together and build a team that's going to be able to carry that out without me necessarily being the person that's doing that. You can't do everything. I am a generalist in a lot of different things. I am not very good at math. When Vitalik would write articles back in the day for Bitcoin Magazine, I would really read them and then he gets into his formulas and stuff and I'm, it's just not something I can do. I'm a generalist that does a number of different things and I can put the teams together and I can figure out ways to monetize and I can figure out ways to gather the right people together but I'm not a developer, I'm not a coder, and that's fine. I think it's the entrepreneurs that really are the ones that lead the things. I've always found I can hire developers. I think to have developers that are running projects? That's generally not their specialties, to be able to manage the whole operations or whole team and I think that's what Ethereum has suffered from since 2014. I think there was a, you know, we had eight founders split between developers and business people. It lead to a divide that eventually was turned into more of a developer focused project and that's where it's been since. What's that enabled is people such as myself, Joseph Lugen, Charles Hoskinson to do our own things and be able to do great things. And I think that you need a mixture of people with different sets of skills. And I think at the end of the day though, it's the vision of the entrepreneur, of the person that tasks the risks and is able to bring together all facets of something, not just necessarily the technical side or the developer side of things. >> What are the conditions that have made Toronto such an epicenter for blockchain development? >> I think it's mostly community. I think very early on, from the start of the meetups that I did and them growing and continuously doing them from 2012, 2013, 2014 to having people such as Vitalik being from here. Other entrepreneurs, there's just been a culture here blockchain here, that people have recognized and you're starting to see a lot of VCs a lot of people taking their trips up here and you're getting comments like, "Somethings happening "here in Toronto" and what's caused that and I think honestly a lot of it has to do with the meetups. I think be central and creating a physical hub that allowed the community to grow and start thinking about ideas and bringing people together, I think can put a lot of impact in it, has played a lot of that factor. >> A lot of talent, too, in here, too. >> And I think the talent, yeah, there's talent, but it's not just developers though, too. It's entrepreneurs. >> Yeah. >> Developers are one part of this animal and they're an important part but it's the idea that sparks risk taking and it's about putting together many pieces of the puzzle and developers are one aspect of it. I think it's more of the entrepreneurship that has actually created that. >> Yeah, cause there's a lot of talent in a lot of places. You know? >> I mean, I've been living in Silicon Valley for 20 years now, I moved from the east coast and it's a striking difference between the classic venture capital, Silicon Valley was where the action was in venture because of the ecosystem, the money capital formation, risk taking capabilities and people have tried to replicate Silicon Valley. Silicon Beach, Silicon this, Silicon that. But with blockchain and crypto token economics, for the first time the capital formation's different. The teams are forming in a different way where you're starting to see a re imagination of entrepreneurial epicenters and it's not trying to be Silicon Valley but the results still the same but that's what blockchain's all about, is re imagining something that can be done better, more efficiently. So you're starting to see Toronto, you're starting to see outside the United States with a lot of capital formation, lot of entrepreneurial energy, blockchain and crypto certainly has community. >> Yeah. >> Again, that's the perfect storm. This is impacting the entrepreneurial- >> It's also regulatory stuff as well. I think for Toronto, Canada to be doing what's it's done, in unregulatory uncertainty, like we don't know really what's going to happen here and that, I think, has stifled things to where it really could be because you do have a lot of companies here that will set up in a Caribbean country or set in Europe, they're setting up in Switzerland because they don't know the playing field of what they have to deal with here and that's something that's hindered things. It's the countries that figure that part out along with how do they spark and bring the entrepreneurs in and I think the regulatory climate plays a massive factor in that. We've been able to do in Toronto, Canada what we've been able to do, despite having the clarity and certainty in that space. >> That's a red flag I think that people should pay attention to, don't lose the entrepreneurial energy to another domicile, location. Alright, final question, at least for me, Dave might have one. As someone looking out over the landscape, certainly you've been involved on the business end and putting teams together on Ethereum, communities as well as your own company, looking out at the landscape, we spoke in February, at Poly Con, and going forward, what's the state of the union, in decentralization of applications and token economics and blockchain, what's your view of the current situation as the market is what it is now and certainly it's going to continue to evolve, what's the state of the union from Anthony Di Iorio's perspective? >> It's just keep doing what we're doing. Keep building things, keep building out infrastructure. I've toned down a lot of investments, I've toned down a lot of things to focus on that just because, A, it's very, very difficult now to distinguish between projects, it's very hard. B, I have a lot of investments which are going to grow over the next few years and my focus is now on doing my business stuff. I think we are going to weed out a lot of the people that aren't creating value in the space and that aren't going to be along for the ride so when they see the markets go down they're going to disappear but then they come back in and things are going to thrive. We've seen this before, it's not a new thing in this space. Things are going down, then they go higher then they go down, then they do higher again and it's been on generally a pretty good incline. We're just in the down thing right now, and that's okay, let's keep plugging away and keep building out infrastructure. >> Yeah and that's a clear theme you see here and other events, meetups. Unpinning optimism, right? It's still there, the innovation is still there. People are very excited. >> Do you think there's an emphasis on builders? I mean obviously you're just basically saying the value creators are going to be the center of the action. You think that the industry globally recognizes that the legit players creating value are the ones that are going to be rewarded and recognized? Are we not there yet, close enough? >> I don't know, that's an interesting question. I think eventually that's what's going to happen. >> Yeah. >> But I think right now there's a lot of people trying to make a lot of quick money. I think those people will be weeded out and I think it will come down to those value creators, those people that are really building things up that will be the ones that last, just like we saw with the internet, same type of thing, you have the hype, you have it grow, you have it blow up and then you have the slow, steady value added producers will be the ones that actually are going to be able to represent. >> Like you said, we've seen it before, it's jut a lot faster, a lot more compressed. >> All that happens over time, yeah. >> You determine how many cycles you live in this industry, you know we've talked about that before. Dave and I have been through many waves, as have you. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on. Give a quick plug on what's happening with Jaxx. Decentral, you had an amazing New York trip, your exclusive boat party was well talked about. You had the two cars you gave away but you laid out the future, 3.0, there's Jaxx wallet, you got some other projects. What's the status of Jaxx? How's it going and when can people get their hands on it and how are you onboarding customers? Give the update on the Jaxx wallet. >> Sure, so the Jaxx 2.0, called Jaxx Liberty is out in beta right now, you can download it on different platforms. What it is is an interface that does much more than just being a wallet. It's your charts, your graphs, your news, you portfolio, apps, it's gamified with leveling up experience points. We're going to connect you with our partners, all these different services, really to be the center point for that one single interface that you're going to have for everything, for your digital life. That's the goal for that, where you can be in control of your money, your identity, your communications and Liberty is coming out in the next couple weeks, the full release and that's really going to be our flagship product and I think it's going to be the thing that's going to create a single place for people to use in our space. >> Are developers going to be able to tap into this capabilities, as we as developers, will we be able to not only use the wallet will there be APIs and interfaces into the wallet? >> Yeah, so right now when we put integrations in what'll be coming over the next many months, will be us actually integrating with our partners but eventually our goal is to have STKs where you could use our back and infrastructures, our connections to blockchains, that we can give the tools to people, create their own utilities and their own applications inside of Jaxx. >> Well we certainly want to continue the conversation. Great to have you on, of course theCUBE token that we want for our media business, we want Jaxx on the wallet. >> Anthony Di Iorio, industry leader, pioneer, also running a great business, Decentral and Jaxx, here on theCUBE giving us the straight scoop, a shortcut to the truth. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Live coverage here in Toronto, part of Untraceable's flagship event here with all the best people in the blockchain industry, the Futurist Conference, we'll be right back with more after this short break. (theCUBE theme music)