(upbeat techno music) >> From the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, It's theCUBE, covering HoshoCon 2018. Brought to you by Hosho. >> Hello everyone, welcome to this special Cube coverage. We are here, live in Las Vegas, for HoshoCon. I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE, and this is part of our continuing coverage and our initiating coverage of the blockchain crypto world, been doing it since January, covering it on our journal site siliconangle.com since 2011, covering Bitcoin and all blockchain stuff, but this is the first security conference dedicated around block chain and crypto put on by Hosho, and it's called HoshoCon. It's an industry conference, and we are here covering it. And this is an open, small kernel of smart people, really trying to have a top level conversation around security . And our next guest is Christopher Forte He's the CTO of 3BX, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, pleasure to be here. >> So, before we get into some questions about security, what do you guys do? What's the company do? You guys have a unique approach. Take a minute to explain what you guys do. >> 3BX is essentially a marketplace. It's a digital asset marketplace. We're trying to build a community around trading digital assets. We're really trying to focus on pulling away from the term 'cryptocurrency,' because we think it'll expand into much a much broader term. So we're structuring our platform on the support of any kind of digital asset, whether it be a cryptokitty or a an e-book, a concert ticket, you know, something that has a digital form that can be traded person to person. >> So, basically, you're expanding the definition, or actually, depositioning crypto, because it's kind of narrow, relative to how you guys see it. >> Yes, it's pretty narrow. >> Digital assets, I mean, look at gaming. >> Yep, absolutely. >> Gaming culture is not new. >> Yeah. >> I mean, they trade stuff all the time. >> Yeah, sure, even like in game tokens, they don't exist on a block chain yet. They're not cryptographically secured, so those are the types of things that I expect to see hitting a lot of these marketplaces soon. >> Well, that's smart, I mean, I think if you look at it, certainly we at (mumbles) blockchain, our entire media company's been moving to blockchain, and crypto, and token economics, but really the blockchain piece has been very limited. It's got very poor functionality, and all the top blockchain implementations are either private block chain, low latency, and fast, and developer friendly. >> Sure. so Ethereum's great for smart contracts, but just as a scale, relative to what most people need. >> Yeah. >> If you're running, you need a million IOPS, you've got a marketplace. >> Yeah. Some of these large scale, hyperscale networks, they're massive marketplaces. >> Yeah, they're huge. >> How do you guys fit in there? What problem are you trying to solve? Let me just start with that. >> You know, we're trying to pull away from the complexities of an exchange. We're trying to give the community a good tool to trade without a lot of knowledge of tokenomics. One of our unique assets, or unique features, is that you can trade with no market impact. You don't have to worry about price slippage, or the complexities behind order books, so we give a familiar interface to trading. Something you'd see on a traditional e-commerce platform. So we're trying to kind of introduce it to a wider range of people. We've talked to a lot of people who have a lot of difficulties, especially with the decentralized exchanges. >> Yeah. What are their problems? Just, like, reliability? >> Reliability. >> Black box- >> Liquidity, there's a lot of issues with liquidity around them, which causes problems when you try to trade any significant amount of coin. So, we're trying to give traders and the coin companies another outlet to trade without having to worry about liquidity. Or the risks of liquidity associated with it. >> So what's the status of the company? How many people do you guys got? What's the size? Do you have any deployments? Are you guys engaging certain communities? >> We are live. We released a kind of invite only beta about two months ago. So we've been out there having traders for about two months. We're a very small team, we're based out of Las Vegas. There's a development team of three people. We're just now broadening into more partnerships, more marketing- >> So you guys are hardening the platform, basically. >> Yep. >> By jamming and coding- >> Yeah, we went kind of product first, and then took a step back and are now approaching the market. So yeah, we're really excited. >> That's smart, you didn't hype it up first. >> Yeah, we didn't hype it up. >> But you could have definitely hyped it up, I mean, a lot of people who are winning right now are quality deals that had opportunities to do an ICO. >> Yeah. >> just, people are throwing money around. Just go back to February, the numbers are just off the charts. The, kind of, bubble burst in February, and certainly the SEC announced today, I'm covering the news, a major crackdown on all those ICOs, on violations right here in the United States, It just causes a distraction. I brought this up with Hartej last time I interviewed him in Toronto at The Futurist, which is exactly what you guys are doing, and this is the core trend and I want to get your thoughts on it. A lot of the alpha entrepreneurs, the ones that are building companies, don't want to get distracted from stuff that's not optimized on building a company. For instance, if I do an ICO, or you get involved in domicile issues outside the United States, you're optimizing all your energy, they're on an airplane, or market dynamics that aren't building a company. Yeah. >> This is kind of, almost a distinction at this point, you can almost look at opportunities, startups, entrepreneurs, inventures, and say, "Okay, we can almost see who's doing what." >> Yep. >> You do agree. >> Yeah, I think it's important to have something before you go and you spend a lot of energy raising money, building a pipe around the company. I think we're going to see a huge trend towards product first, having something, having a development team, a concept, a patent. Not just based on a theoretical white paper, so it'll be very interesting to see how it goes. We decided to go product first, so, no one had heard of us until we went live with our product. >> Good approach, I like it, I think it's solid. Good, we'll see how it turns out. I got to ask you, and I want to dig into the product a little later in this interview, but I want to ask you specifically, around some core trends I'm seeing, and patterns. >> Sure. >> It's pretty clear that when these emerging markets develop, total activity on the entrepreneurial side, a lot of people build and developing, attacking the market, but it's a trend, everyone's throwing out a common thing, I need to have community, and I need a two-sided marketplace. So the common thread's- and people don't have those- you can't just buy a community. >> Yeah. Communities aren't bought. >> Sure. You can't just say, "Hey, I need a community." Put a telegram channel, write some bots, >> Yeah. >> the next thing you know you got 25,000 people in telegram. >> Yep. >> That's not a community. >> That's not a community. >> That is AI bots looking like a community. >> Sure. >> And then a two-sided marketplace, you got to have a value proposition. So these are things that people are putting into their plans. >> Yep. >> That they don't have answers for. >> Sure. >> What's your thoughts on that, around community, 6and about marketplace? What are you seeing in the market, in market developing right now? >> I mean, building a strong community is very difficult. They have to align with your product, they have to align with your vision, they have to understand what you're doing, and at least have a use case for it. So, we're really trying to kind of have the community drive our development road map. So, we've done a lot of outreach, trying to get what people are interested in, what's lacking in the industry currently, what they want to see, what they're unhappy with. And we're trying to build a community around allowing people to have input and influence into the product that we're building. So, we're really early into the process, so it's difficult for me to really say that it's easy or difficult to build the community. >> So you're engaging the community to help. >> We are engaging the community. >> What are the number one things you guys are solving? Problems that you see are immediate, low hanging fruit that you're knocking out right away? What are the core things? >> I think some of the big things are simplicity, the usability of these interfaces. Kind of the knowledge around it, trying to do a knowledge transfer to our customer base. And trying to help people realize that there's a company behind these coins. I think that's a huge thing that we have to kind of push towards, is, it's not just a token. It's a token produced by a company with a cause. >> So how does your product work? >> It's like a basic marketplace that you would see in kind of a eBay or an Amazon, where someone posts an offer, posts a listing, and other people can buy from it. So, it's a buy and sell kind of- >> And you have your own native token? >> We have a native ERC-20 token that we use for fees. Because we're targeting the digital asset generally, we've externalized fees from traded goods. So, we want to make sure we can handle something that may not be divisible by, as Bitcoin is. So if you trade a book, for example, a lot of these exchanges would take a page out of it. If you use the current model of fees, they're kind of coin shaving off of your trades. So we're trying to eliminate that so we can expand into non-fungible, or non-breakable assets. We're also developing a wallet that basically encapsulates cryptocurrency into smaller assets to be traded off chain. So, we plan on kind of revolving around our internal token to handle fees of those assets. >> So it's a blend of on/off chain dynamics. >> Yep. >> So you can do a lot of stuff, and not have to do a lot of writing to the chain, if you're going to be doing a lot of re-re-writes. >> Yeah. >> All right, so the question I want to ask you that I think is important and in everyone's mind is, okay, Hosho Con is the first, inaugural- we love going to inaugural events because, you don't know, it could be the last one. >> Sure. >> Or, it's going to be big. I think this is a big trend, and one of the things we heard last night at dinner was, when we were having a conversation about it was, is no real conference, these conferences don't put security in the front. >> Yep. >> They really kind of have it as a side panel. It's always kind of an adjunct to something bigger, pitch competition, you know, big sponsor driven kind of programs. This is a security conference. What is the impact, in your opinion, of this Hosho Con, and security in the blockchain, that's going to shape the industry? What is your opinion? What is your commentary on that? >> I mean, obviously it's important to focus on security. I think a lot of people had a lot of, kind of assumptions that blockchain-specific, or blockchain-based technologies were unhackable. You know, the decentralization of something makes it secure, and I think that's a myth that they're going to have to debug, and we're seeing it with hacks. There's a lot of, I think, assumptions even around the hacks that are incorrect. So, bringing the idea to people that blockchain still needs to be managed, you still need to be careful. The smart contracts still have vulnerabilities and risks involved, it's not- >> Software is software. >> Software is software. It's unavoidable, when you start writing code, that there's going to be- >> You don't want a blue screen of death, certainly, you don't want to have to reboot, I mean, move fast and break stuff was great for webscale, but when you're talking about security and currency, you need rock solid, hundred percent reliability. >> Yeah. >> Otherwise, you lose your cash. Or your e-money. >> Yeah, it's something of value that you're going to lose. >> It's not a social media account, it's not something like that, you know, you're losing money. And it's very interesting, I think the more people know about the security around blockchain, cryptocurrency, the more they're going to realize that it's not an end all solution to everything. It takes time to evolve. Standards will probably have to be put in place. >> There's a lot of people, I remember when I was your age, and the web was coming around, everyone was afraid to put their credit card down on basic e-commerce transactions. >> Sure. >> And that was natural, because like, oh my god, it's online, it almost felt like a black box, and then they got over that pretty quickly, you saw PayPal and those kinds of companies came out. You mention eBay, these online sites are now secure. Crypto, there's almost like an unknown, a lack of education in the mainstream. And so we got to get to that point where, you know, wallets are wallets, and they actually do a good job, and you don't forget, and leave your wallet at the restaurant. There's some hygiene, and practices that are needed. Older generations, maybe, might not get it, but the younger generations, they're getting it, right? >> Yeah >> What's your opinion of this? Because, this is a generational shift. >> Yeah. >> This crypto, blockchain market, it's really generational. >> Sure. Anyone under the age of thirty pretty much loves it. >> Yeah. >> So, it's happening, right? >> Yep. >> So, what is the views around security, generally, in the mainstream? >> I mean, I don't think there are too many. Like I said, I think people kind of put a lot of assumptions in the inherent security of blockchain stuff. And I think they don't realize that we're trying to make it easier through mnemonic sequences, or passwords, so we're hosting wallets online now. It's not necessarily a pure wallet in the sense that it sits on a piece of paper. So we're going towards usability, which we're sacrificing security for. So the more usability we get with a lot of these mainstream products, the more we're going to have to realize we're getting back to a place of existing security vulnerabilities, with passwords, or stuff you would see with your bank account. So it'll be interesting to see the balance between the raw security inherent with Bitcoin, or a traditional cryptographic wallet, and then usability, whether it be cloud based stuff, or these exchanges. >> You know, Chris, one of things you're doing, that I think's interesting, and kind of points to the- if you connect the dots- the trend of, really, levels of granularity getting down to the micro level. >> Yeah. >> It's microeconomics. >> The beautiful thing about this market, is that, you could take a page out of a book, you can track it, and how you use that page like a pay for, all kind of digital rights stuff, digital assets. So you look at the world as a digital asset. This brings up the question of, okay, there's going to be software that's going to have to be written to manage this level of microtransaction, or microassets. So, how do you view, in your opinion, this whole notion of token economics? Because we've used tokens for years on all the stuff we program, on authentication. >> Yep. Tokens are used in computer science- not a new concept. >> Yep. But if you think about tokens as a currency, and as a mechanism for computer science, software, >> Sure. >> do you see a multi-token world? Why wouldn't everyone have their own token? >> Sure. And then there's going to have to be software- >> Sure. to manage the tokens. >> Yes. If you have a token and I have a token called a Cube Coin- >> Yeah. >> and you have your token, there's probably going to have to be some interaction between coins. Do you see that day happening sooner than later, or do you even see it happening? >> It's going to really depend on the use cases that they find. Whether a single platform is going to come out, and kind of take over the standardization of managing it, or, who knows, you see some of these transactional bridges, like between Dogecoin or Ethereum. So you can see that happening between tokens, or, everything being built on the same chain, or, having these bridges between chains, whether it be like an EOS to Ethereum token chain bridge. I don't know, I mean, we really have no idea. >> (mumbles) multichain, it's interesting, right? This is an interesting conversation. My vision is, I think multichain is a good trend. Why wouldn't you want to have multiple chains, if the use cases are not overlapping? I just don't feel comfortable about a monolithic approach of tokens. I'm just uncomfortable, generally, with that philosophy. >> I think it'll be important, and like you said, it'll be very important to have a good solution to manage them. People aren't going to want a hundred programs on their computer to manage their tokens. They're not going to want multiple apps on their phones. There's going to have to be some kind of standardization so that people can manage it easily. Otherwise, it's going to be impossible to keep up with. And kind of the interchangeability between tokens will be important. >> Chris, final question for you. What's this event like here? Describe for the folks who aren't here, what's the vibe, who are the people, what are some of the conversations in the hallways so far. What kind of person is here? What is this event about? What's the relevance of Hosho Con? >> Well, it seems like it's a lot of technically minded people, kind of hoping to push forward the security in the blockchain world. We've had conversations about everything from educating the masses, so kind of the average person, who doesn't understand the complexities of Bitcoin, and how do you inform them of what we're doing, all the way up to, what's the next step in security auditing. Hosho is really pushing forward, how do audit your code on the blockchain, or on a lot of these platforms, and I think it's really important to have these conversations, cause it's opening up new worlds of new thought habits for each of these companies. Everyone has their expertise, Hosho specializes in smart contract auditing, and we may not have that in depth knowledge of how to audit the contracts, so it's nice to kind of share the knowledge, and see that there's other solutions out there than everyone doing it on their own. >> What do you hope to be known for, for your company? If you could have that vision down the road, three years from now, when you look back, what do you want to be known for? >> I think it would be best if we were known as a platform to bring newcomers into the space. Informing, caring about the community, making sure that they understand what they're doing before they do it. As you know, Bitcoin is very unforgiving. A lot of these cryptos are very unforgiving. So I think it's very important for us to be known as someone who helps bridge that kind of intimidation. >> All right, Chris Forte, for 3BX, CTO, entrepreneur, building a company, doing it the right way, plans to use tokens, You guys, did you raise any money? >> No raised money. We're privately funded. >> Nice. >> So, we're going that route. >> Good. >> Bootstrapping, getting it done. Taking a different approach, which is the classic approach, of building a company the right way. TheCUBE, we are here in Las Vegas for Hosho Con. I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. (upbeat techno music)