(energetic music) >> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE, covering CoinAgenda. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE. >> Hello and welcome to our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here covering all the action at Restart, we've got a ton of events, all the thoughts leaders, influencers, decision makers, you name it, in the industry, pioneers making it happen. My next guest is Toni Lane, who's the founder of CoinGraph. She's a true influencer with a lot of impact in this market. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> We're so glad to have you on. Like the little joke at the beginning about being an influencer, you actually are an influencer. You've done such great work in the industry, well regarded in the community. You have publication and you do a lot of great content. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh, for sure, yeah, thanks for having me. >> So being the influencer, what does that mean these days? Because we were just talking before the camera on, we came on camera, influence changes. You can't be an influencer all the time. You can be super or expert at something, but your expertise could change, you move to a new topic, learn something. And there's a lot of people in the digital marketing world saying I'm an influencer. It's kind of half baked, and really, I mean, it's not about the followers, your thoughts? >> Well, I mean, most of those followers are purchased. So there's a big difference between being an influencer and having actual influence. Because if you're, you know, if you have a million followers on Twitter, that's nice. How much engagement do you have? And that's actually what you look for, it's like when you look at someone's, whether it's, you know, social media, their digital presence, it's not about followers, it's all about engagement. You know, I don't even have that many, like I don't spend a lot of time doing that, at least I haven't so far, it's something I'm getting more into. But I have people that are really engaged, and so I look at people that have 15 million followers and I'm like, you have just as many likes on your things as I do, right. Because these people aren't real people. And it's less about, having influence in general is in many ways about having authenticity. And so influence is your ability to get something done. Being an influencer is your ability to hold someone's attention for a fragment of time. But being an influencer is not the same as having influence. >> And this community here, certainly, with decentralization here, you get the decentralized applications coming up blockchain, you got ICOs booming. It's all about the network effect, if you look at network effect, that is a new concept that ad technology does not know because you can't cookie a network connection. The only way to measure someone's true network is through malware today, and that's not good, no one does that. Well, they do, they're-- >> Toni: Unfortunately, yeah. >> But you can't you do it at business price, not sustainable. So the point is, it's not about how many followers you have. It could be that one follower, maybe 200 or 2,000, that opens up more. This is the network effect. This is what this community is all about, so I want to get your thoughts on this community's vibe. A lot of mission-driven, impact-oriented, merged with tech. So you have a fusion of technology, artistry, craftsmanship and mission-driven societal change in one melting pot. This is your wheelhouse. Share your thoughts on this. >> Well, so all of the different digital currencies have different value systems and they attract a different breed. And there are different incentives for each of these based on how the technology is designed, each protocol, right? So if you look at Bitcoin, in Bitcoin, the incentives are, you know, mining is done by computers, so your only incentive is like having social influence? And this is, I think, why we've seen a lot of kind of I would call it a scarcity mentality in terms of the way, why we see even more trolls in Bitcoin is because social influence is a huge way that success is measured, because as a developer, you can't have, you can't achieve a level of status any other way as a developer or as an influencer in Bitcoin, because the Bitcoin network is so far removed from that. And that's actually a perverse incentive in and of itself, and not only that, but early days in Bitcoin, there were major organizations who would hire people to man 100 Reddit and Twitter accounts and go into the Bitcoin community and actually fragment the public opinion using a technique grassroots psychological insurgency. So buying Reddit accounts that had been active for the last 10 years and going through and, you know, essentially just stabbing at people and creating, even having conversations with themselves to empower the voice of trolls. And what happens is you start bringing out what we call, actually, what the former Assad called, after Henry Kissinger, there was a big move that happened in the Middle East, where Kissinger realized the Middle East was becoming too powerful, and he saw it as a threat to American democracy. And so Kissinger organized a deal that fragmented the Middle East. And Assad said to Kissinger that his actions would be, he played Assad, basically. And Assad said to Kissinger, "Your actions "will bring up demons hidden underneath "the surface of the Arab world." And that strategy is actually something used in the Bitcoin community to leverage the incentives that are created, which is why we have seen previously so much, even from our industry leaders, so much fragmentation and so much tension. But the network is the most secure and the least corruptible, hands down, fundamentally. It's real cryptography. >> But let's talk about that, I love this conversation, because with networks, you have the concept of self-heal, and this gets nerdy on the packets, how packets move, at that level, self-healing networks has been a paradigm that's been proven. So that's out there, that's got to go to a societal level. The other one is the incentive system, if you have an immune system, if you will, in a network, this is a cultural thing. So actions, the Reddit's obvious, right. Weaponizing content has been well-documented, it's coming now mainstream, people are getting it that this outcome was actually manufactured by bad behavior. Now, I argue that there's an exact opposite effect. You can actually weaponize for good, 'cause everything has a polar opposite. So what is your view on that, because this is something that we've been teasing out for the first time. How do you weaponize content for good, (mumbles) not the right word, but look for the opposite value? >> Right, yeah, I mean, it is in so many ways, right. So I think it's about, there's a professor at Stanford whose name is BJ Fogg, and he's a behavioral researcher and he talks about essentially, you know, he writes a lot about habits. But something that's even more interesting about his understanding of propaganda is I studied a lot of Edward Bernays, he's responsible, he created the theory of propaganda, right. And he's the nephew of Sigmund Freud, he's responsible for essentially every consumptive theory in like leading up to the last century, he's actually, I would say he's responsible for the state of advertising and the economy today, almost really single handedly. And what's fascinating about this theory is that you can use propaganda to get women to smoke by unearthing what it is unconsciously in men that makes them not want to smoke. You can also use propaganda to get people to invest in health and wellness. You can also use propaganda to get people to stop their bad habits. So it's understanding that a technique works in a cognitive capacity in a way that affects a large amount of people. And it's really about the intention behind why a person who has influence, as we were saying, is leveraging that relationship. So I would say it's more about-- >> So we have to reimagine influence. Because the signalings that are igniting the cognitive brain can be tweaked. So that's what you're getting at here, right, so that's what we have to do. >> And it's an illusion from almost every angle. It's even the idea that, in the United States, the level of influence the president has and who's running, you know, and who, yeah, and who's at the wheel, right. So it's, we live in a world that is built on manufactured consent, and manufactured consent is enabled through thinkers like Bernays and through what I call the illusion of things like our former construct of even American democracy. That these things we've imagined to be so, the foundation and the structure for the way that we live. All of those things have become so far removed from their theory that they're no longer serving the principles under which they were founded, and that disconnect is actually a huge, it's a gap, it's an inertia gap for exploitation or it's an inertia gap for growth, and usually what happens is you have the exploitation first. Someone says oh, here's a big gap of information asymmetry, so I'm going to exploit the information asymmetry. And then once people start realizing that that information asymmetry is being exploited, you experience a huge inversion of that and you have enough kind of, you have enough inertia behind that slingshot to launch it into something totally different. >> Yeah, this is a great concept, I interviewed the founder of the Halcyon HAL in Washington, DC, and she's an amazing woman. And she had a great conscious about this, and what she postulated was, bubbles that burst, exploitation's always, we've seen it in all trends. The underbelly, 'cause it's motivated, no dogma. They don't care about structural incentives, they just want to make cash. But she had an interesting theory, she was talking about you can let the air out of the bubble with community and data. So all the societal entrepreneurship activities now that are mission-driven, now getting back to mission-driven is interesting. There might be a way to actually avoid the pop. Because, depending upon what the backlash might be on the exploitation side, as we saw in the dotcom bubble, you can actually let the air out a little bit through things like data. I mean, how do you see, in your mind, just thinking out loud, how do you see that playing out, because we have community now. We have access to open data. Blockchain is all about immutability. It's all about power to the user's data. This is a mega trend. Your thoughts? >> So interdependence is huge in the blockchain community, and that's actually to touch back on the incentives in Bitcoin, I think that that's actually one of Bitcoin's, it's not that it's a wrong or a right, it just is, right, like sidechains will be launched eventually, but the idea that Ethereum created something that was adaptable and empowered people to be creative, and yet they're creating incentives for her people to launch products that are, I believe, 'causing, in some ways, could cause some serious harm to the ecosystem once the air is let out of that bubble. >> John: The data. >> The data, so data, yes yes yes. >> How do you let the air out of the bubble, because the pop will be massively implosion, it'll leave a crater. >> So data is a non-scarce resource. This is actually how I describe blockchain to people. And this is actually, I think, one of the, the challenge, if you want to look at it from the perspective of challenge, and then I'll talk about for the benefit, just between Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are obviously other blockchains, EOS is like coming out super soon, Holochain. There are tons, Steem has actually its own infrastructure, tons of other blockchains to speak about. But just to take these two main blockchains, which are not competitors. In Bitcoin, you have, it's really cryptography. Cryptography is not about, you know, like let's do some rapid prototyping, cryptography is about let's like put a lot of thought into this thing and have mathematical certainty that this is not exploitatable. And Ethereum is just kind of like, well, let's build a framework and then let people play as much as they can. And so there are challenges and benefits to both of those models, the challenge of Ethereum being that you've let all of this capital into the industry which is not actually, 46% of ICOs have already failed. Already failed. And then if you look at Bitcoin-- >> And a person with your industry (mumbles) at 1,200, so it's a 50% discount. >> Oh yeah, oh yeah. And then if you do the same thing and you're looking at the Bitcoin blockchain, we've seen that the capacity for innovation, Bitcoin could have done what, they could've been the first to market for what Ethereum is doing. And they chose a different route, and I think there are some pros and cons to both of those things, but I think there is an intentionality behind why the world played out in the way that it did. And I think it's the right strategy for both products. So the way I describe applications using blockchain technology to people and what I call the future of an infinite economy is that, if you think about why are Facebook and Google these multi billion dollars companies, it's really simple. It's because what do they own, right? The data, the data. And they're some of the last companies that are still stewarding these things in a way that is taking vast amount of aggregated ownership over an asset that people are generating every day that's extremely valuable to companies in the private sector. So the way that I describe blockchain is that, if we being to own our self-sovereign identity, then when we're owning our data, that's the foundation for universal basic income. If we take a non-scarce resource like data that's being generated every day, not just from us, right, but the data in the health of the ocean, right. The stewardship of the ocean, the health of the fish, actually saying okay, fish are thriving in this area, and so there's a healthy ecosystem, and so this coin is trading higher because we're stewarding this area of the ocean so we don't overfish. The quality of the air so that, when we're actually de-polluting the air collectively, everyone around us is creating and generating data to say we're making the air better. The air, actually, the health of our bodies, of our Earth, of our minds, of our planet, of even the health of our innovation. Right, what are the incentives behind our innovation, those are all forms of data. And that's a non-scarce resource, so if we take all of these different applications and make many different blockchains. Which I fundamentally believe that there's a powerful theory in having blockchains that are economically scarce, because I believe you're going to empower more diverse spectrums and also have a level of difficulty in creating the coin. You're going to have more innovation. And so-- >> Well, this is a key area. I mean, this is super important. Well, I mean, you step back for a second, you zoom out, you say okay, we have data, data's super valuable, if you take it to the individual's levels, which has not been, quite frankly, the individual's been exploited. Facebooks of the world, these siloed platforms, have been using the data for advertising. That's just what everyone knows, but there's other examples. The point is, when you put the data in the hands of the users, combine that with cloud computing and the Internet of Things when you can have an edge of the network high powered computer, the use cases have never been pushed before. The envelope that we're pushing now has never been in this configuration. You could never have a decentralized network, immutable, storing users' data, you've never had the ability to write the kind of software you can today, you've never had cloud computing, you've never had compute at the edge, which is where the users live, they are the edge. You have the ability where the user's role can enable a new kind of collective intelligence. This is like mind blowing. So I mean, just how would you explain that to a common person? I mean, 'cause this is the challenge, 'cause collective intelligence has been well documented in data science. User generated content is kind of the beginning of what we see in user wearables. But if you can control the data streaming into the network, with all the self-healing and all the geek stuff we're talking about, it's going to change structural things. How do you explain that to a normal person? >> You don't, you don't, right. So you show them. Because I can sit here all day and I can talk to you about, you know, I could talk to you about all of these things, but at the end of the day, with normal people, it's not something you want to explain. You want to show them, because with my, actually, my grandma gets Bitcoin. My grandma hit me up in like 2012 and she was like, "Do you know what that Bitcoin thing is?" I'm like, "Mimi," I'm like, "How do you know "what Bitcoin is, Mimi?" And she's just like, "I don't know, I read." You know, I was like, "This is, so what are you reading? "Like, are you hanging out on like libertarian forums, "like what's up?" And so-- >> What's going on in the club there, I mean, are they playing-- >> Yeah, but she is a really unique lady. So I would say that, for most people, they are not going to, when you explain things to people-- >> What would you show them, I mean, what's an example? >> The way that, so when I was, so I got into Bitcoin in 2011, and the way that I would explain Bitcoin to people is I would just send it to them. I would be like, "Here's Bitcoin, like take this Bitcoin, "here's some Bitcoin for you." And that was, people got it, because they were like, I have five dollars now in my hands that was not there. And this person just sent it to me. And for some people even still, you know, to be honest, even then, I remember how much energy it took for me to do that. Everywhere I go, I'd be like, in cabs, I'd be checking out grocery stores and I would try, I would essentially pitch Bitcoin to every person that I met. >> John: You were evangelizing a lot of it. >> It took so much energy though, and even after that, there was a period-- >> It was hard for people to receive it, they would have to do what at that time? Think about what the process was back then. >> Oh yeah. There were very few people who, even after doing that, really got it. But you know what happened. This is so much perspective for me, I remember doing that in 2013 and I remember, in 2018, actually, I think it was the end of 2017. I went to a gas station, it's the only gas station in San Francisco with a Bitcoin ATM. And I was like, I need to get some cash and I'm running on Bitcoin. >> John: You guys want a mountain view now. >> Yeah, yeah. And so I go in and these guys, I'm like frustrated, I'm like oh, the ATM is like the worst user experience ever, I'm like (groans). That's literally, I'm like, it's just, it was like eyes rolling in the back of my head, like just so frustrated because I'm a super privacy freak. And so it was just a super complex process, but the guys that, the guy's (mumbles) he looks at me and he goes, "Yo." And I was like, "What's up, man?" And he goes, "Are you trying to buy some Bitcoin?" I was like, "I'm trying to sell some Bitcoin right now." (John laughs) >> You're dispensing it, they're like yeah. >> Yeah, he's like, "Oh, word." And he's like, "How much are you trying to sell?" And I'm like, "I don't know, like 2K." And so he goes, "Aight." And he's like, "Let me hit up my friends," he literally calls three of his friends who come down and they just like, they're like, "Do you want to sell more?" They're like, all they just peer to peer. It's like we bypass the ATM and it was actually a peer to peer exchange. And I didn't have to explain anything. You know what made people get it? You showed them the money, you showed them the money. And sometimes people don't, you can explain these concepts that are world-changing, super high level or whatever. People are not actually going to get it until it's useful to them. And that's why a user interface is so important. Like, if you even look at the Internet. Who made the money on the Internet, right, it was the people who understood how to own the user interface. >> I had a conversation with Fred Kruger from WorkCoin, he's been around the block for a long time, great guy. We were riffing on the old days. But we talked about the killer app for the mini computer and the mainframe, the mini computer and then the PC, it was email, for 20 years, the killer app was email. We were like, what's the killer app for blockchain? It's money, the killer app is money. And it's going to be 50 year killer app. Now, the marketplace is certainly maybe tier two killer app, but the killer app is money. >> For sure, that's amazing. >> That's the killer app. Okay, so we're talking about money, let's talk about wallets and whatnot. There's a lot of people that I know personally that had been, wallets had been hacked. Double authentication (mumbles) news articles on this, but even early on, you got to protect yourself. It's something that you're an advocate of, I know recently, you've been sharing some stuff on Telegram. Share your thoughts on newbies coming in, be careful. Your wallet can be hacked, and you got to take care of yourself online. Is there a best practice, can you share some color commentary on when you get into the system, when you get Bitcoin or crypto, what are some of the best practices? >> It's not even, I think you need to remember a key principle of cryptography when you're dealing with digital currency, which was like don't really trust anything unless you call someone, you have like first hand verification from a person that you trust. Because these things are, I mean, I've had, literally last week, I had seven friends contact me, actually more than that once I posted about it, and they were like, "Is this you?" And I was like what, like people would literally just go online, they would scrape my Facebook photo, they'd go on Telegram and they would make, my name is @ToniLaneC, T-O-N-I-L-A-N-E-C, and so is my Twitter, and people would scrape my photos from my Twitter or my Telegram or my Facebook and they would create fake accounts. And they would start messaging people and say "Hey, like "what's up, how are you, that's cool, great, awesome. "So like, I need like 20 BTC for a loan. "Can you help me?" And all my friends were like, "I was just talking to you, is this you?" And I'm like no. And so I think that there's, the other thing you have to, it's not just security in terms of, and this is actually a problem Blockchain has to solve, right. It's not just security in terms of protecting your wallet and, you know, getting like a Ledger or a Trezor and making sure that you're keeping things like in cold storage, that you're going, there are so many, keeping your money in a hard wallet, not keeping your private keys on your computer, like keeping everything, storing your passwords in multiple places that you know are safe. Both handwritten, like in lock boxes, putting it in your safe deposit box or, you know, there are so many different ways that we can get into like the complexities of protecting yourself and security. Not using centralized cell networks is one of the big ways that I do this. Because if you are using two factor-- >> John: What's a centralized cell network? >> AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. Because you are putting yourself in a situation where, if you're using a centralized system, those centralized systems are really easily exploitable. I know because my mom, when I was a kid one time, she put a password on my account so I couldn't buy games. I was not happy about it, it was my money that I was using, it was my money I was using to buy games, she was like, "You should just spend your money on better things." And so I remember going in when I was a kid, and I was like, this is my money, I totally want to buy this upgrade on this game. And so I went in and I essentially figured out how to hack into my own phone to be able to use my own money to buy the games that I wanted to buy-- >> Highly motivated learning opportunity there (laughs). >> But I realized that, in the same way we were talking about things that can be used for good can be used for bad, in the same way that someone can do something like that, you can also say, well, I'm in a call and say that I'm this person and take their phone and then get their two factor auth. So I don't use centralized cell networks, I don't use cell networks at all. >> John: What do you use? >> So, I mean, I have different kinds of like strategies or different things that mostly-- >> You might not want to say it here, okay, all right. >> Yeah yeah yeah, they're different, I'm happy to talk about those privately. The way that I've kind of handled that situation, and then the other thing that I would say is like, we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and for the world. And not social reputation systems like what is happening in China right now, where you can have someone leave you, like let's say I get into an Uber and I'm 30 seconds late. I can end up in a situation where I'm like not able to be admitted into a hospital or I'm not able to take a public train. Because someone rates me lower on this reputation system, I think that's a huge human rights issue. >> John: Yeah, that's a huge problem. >> And so not reputation systems like this, but reputations like the one we're working on at CULTU.RE that are really based more on the idea of restoration and humanization, rather than continued social exploitation to create some kind of collective norm, I think that kind of model is, it's not only a-- >> Well, the network should reject that by-- >> Toni: Exactly, exactly. >> All right, so let's talk about digital nations, we have China, so there's some bad behavior going on there. I mean, some will argue that there's really no R&D over there, and now they're trying to export the R&D that they stole into other countries, again, that's my personal rant. But the innovation there is clear, we chat and other things are happening. They finally turned the corner where they're driving a lot of, you know, mainly because of the mobile. But there's other nations out there that are kind of left behind. The UK just signed this week with Coinbase a pretty instrumental landmark licensing deal, which is a signal, 'cause I know Estonia, Armenia, you name every country wants to, Bahrain's got, you know, Dubai envy. So I mean, every country wants to be the crypto country. Every country wants to be the smart cities digital nation. I know this is something that you liked, and you and I were talking about 'cause we both are interested in. Your reaction, your thoughts on where that's going, I see, it's a good sign. What are the thresholds there, what are some of the keys things that they need to do to be a real digital nation? >> Well, I think it's less about digital nations in terms of like a nation is a series of borders, and more about first nations that we are, this is what we work on at CULTU.RE, that we are actually a nation of people and a lot of those nations have overlap and we should be able to participate in many different nations who have many different economies that are all really cooperating interdependently to create the best possible life for all human good, rather than just saying like I care about me and mine, because that strategy, the way government works now, it's a closed network with low trust that is extremely inefficient in management of resources. And the only way you can really-- >> That's the opposite, by the way, of what this movement's about. >> Yeah, exactly. And the only way you can have influence in government is to go in government and to work through government. All right. So it's the idea that, look at how much food we waste in the United States. If we took the food we wasted in the United States and repurposed it, we could literally cure world hunger. That is how bad it has gotten, right. And there are people starving in the US. There are people on food stamps in the US. >> Well, I mean, every institution, education, healthcare, you name it, it's all, you know, FUBAR, big time. >> Yeah, but we're throwing away tons of lettuce and all of this different kinds of produce because it like looks funky. Like this peach looks a little too much like a bottom. So we're like not able to sell it. >> Or lettuce got a little brown on it, throw the whole thing away. >> Yes, exactly, exactly, and that waste is unacceptable. So what we need to move toward is a model of open networks of governance where we have peer to peer distribution of finance and of resources in a way that allows people to aggregate around the marketplaces that are actually benefiting the way that they believe the world should work. So it's about creating a collective strategy of collective non-violence and eliminating harm, so obviously, you know, having a society that has enough proper incentives so that people are well off and that people are provided for, and I think blockchain will-- >> I noticed you're wearing a United Nations pin. >> Woo-hoo, yeah. And blockchain, I think, will also create this. >> John: I have one too. >> Let's up top. (slap) Yeah, I think blockchain will also help create universal basic income, but in addition to that, it's the idea that, if I'm living next door, I'll give two examples. So one is about the legality of the way that we contribute to the society. So let's say I have a next door neighbor. And let's say that this next door neighbor and I feel literally, we totally get along on everything, there's just one issue we feel we're like, I totally disagree with this, I totally disagree. And that issue is the use of, and I hope this isn't controversial to say, but anyway. So the use of medical marijuana, right. And it shouldn't be, because we can have two different opinions and the world can still work and that's the point. >> Well, in California, it's now legal to own marijuana. >> Yeah, for sure, it's legal here as well. So it's the idea that, if I, so let's say I'm a woman who, you know, I have someone in my life who was injured by a driver who was driving under the influence of marijuana. And so that's all I know about marijuana because I don't really do drugs, I've never been around drugs. So when I hear that word, I immediately think about the person in my life who was harmed because of, yes, and so immediately triggered, and I'm like, I don't want to support anything, I don't want to support anything to do with marijuana, I think marijuana is like the Devil's lettuce. And I have no interest in supporting marijuana. She never has to support marijuana, she doesn't have to. But her next door neighbor is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, her, me, whatever, is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, okay. And the only way that this man can move is, he's literally shaking, but when he smokes medical marijuana, he's actually able to, you watch and literally 30-45 minutes, he's upright, he looks like a normal healthy man. And so he says, "I believe that every, "after I fought in this, I believe every person "should have access to medical marijuana, "because this is the only way I'm able "to even operate my life." >> The different context. >> And I'm so, yes, exactly. And so what culture is really about is about understanding each other's context, that's even how reputation works. It's contextual awareness that provides greater understanding of who we are as individuals and the way we work together to make society work. So maybe they can mutually agree that he is not going to smoke while he's driving and he can pay to support everyone to have access who needs access to medical marijuana. >> Or he could finance Uber rides for them. You know, or whatever, I mean, these are mechanisms. >> Yes, yes, but it's the, yes, exactly, exactly. It's the idea that we are all, we're coming together to share context is a way that's not aggressive and not accusatory, so two people can believe two totally different things and still develop enough mutual respect to live together peacefully in a society. >> You know, the other too I'm riffing on that is that now KYC is a concept (mumbles) kicked around here, know your customer. I've been riffing on the notion of KYC for know your neighbor. And what we're seeing in these communities, even the analog world, people don't know who their neighbors are. Like, they don't actually even like care about them. >> Toni: For sure. >> You know, maybe I grew up in, you know, a different culture where, you know, everyone played freely, the parents were on the porch having their cocktail or socializing and watching the kids from the porch play on the lawn. Now I call that Snapchat, right. So I can see my kids Snapchat, so I'm not involved, but I have peripheral view. >> Toni: For sure. >> But we took care of each other. That doesn't happen much anymore, and I think one of the things that's interesting in some of these community dynamics that's been successful is this empathy about respect. They kind of get to know people in a non-judgmental way. And I think that is something that you see in some of these fragmented communities, where it's just like, if they just did things a little bit different. Do you agree, I see you're shaking your head, your thoughts on this? This super interesting social science thing that's, now you can measure it with digital or you can measure that kind of-- >> We can incentivize it. We can incentivize it. And that's the difference, measurement is one thing. Incentive is a behavior changer. Incentive is a behavior changer. And that is what we actually have to do in the way we think about the foundation of these systems, is it's not incentivizing competitive marketplaces that are like my way of thinking about this is right and your way of thinking about this thing is wrong, and like ah, it's not about that. At the end of the day like, I think we forget or misquote so much of, so many of the great thinkers of the last generation, like if you think about Darwin. What does everyone know about Darwin, right, it's like survival of the fittest. It's not what Darwin said, okay. It's misquoted and it's used, it's like one of those things where people who want to exploit-- >> It's a meme, basically. >> Yeah, people who want to exploit someone else's knowledge for their own ends will use that to, in some way, uplift the kind of like strategy of, you know, incentives of the time. What Darwin actually said was that human beings with the highest capacity for sympathy, qualities we now identify as altruism, compassion, empathy, reciprocity, will be the most likely to survive during hardship. Fundamentally, I mean, look at the state of the world today. It doesn't look good, it's like, you look at the way people interact with each other, it's like a virus that's attacking itself in an ecosystem that is our planet Earth, and we need to be, you know what is the antibody, our own sense of consideration for our fellow man. That is the antibody to violence. And so we can incentivize this, and we're going to have to because we're going to, AI, automation, these will fundamentally transform the way we think about jobs in a way that will liberate us like we've never known before. And once given the freedom, I think that we'll see the world start to change. >> Toni, I really appreciate you spending the time in this thought leadership conversation, riffing back and forth. Feels great and it's a great productive conversation. I got to ask you, how did you get there? I mean, who are you? I mean, you're amazing. Like, how did you get here, you obviously, Coin Telegraph's one of the projects you're running, great content. You're wearing the UN pin, I'm aligning with that. Got a great perspective. What's your story? Where did you come from originally, I mean... How did you get here? >> I think, you know, I don't know. I'm really connected to Saturn, I don't know where my home planet is. >> Which spaceship did you come in on? No, I mean, seriously, what's your background? How did you weave into this? 'Cause you have a holistic view on things, it's impressive. But you also can get down and dirty on the tech, and you have a good, strong network. Did you kind of back into this by accident on purpose, or was it something that you studied? What's the evolution that you have? >> Yeah, you know. I studied performance art and I was an artist all of my life. And I had a really big existential crisis, because I realized, as I was looking around, that technology was replacing every form. I remember the first time I watched an AI generate, this was maybe in like, I don't remember how, this was a long time ago, but I was essentially watching, before like the deep dream stuff, maybe like 2009 or 10. And I remember watching computers generate art. And I just was like, I was like mic drop, I was like anything that could ever be created can and will be created by computers, because these are, you are looking at this data, you can scan every art piece in the world and create an amalgamation of this in a way that extends so far beyond team and capacity that the form that we have used to express artistic integrity, all forms will, in some way, become obsolete as a form of creative expression. And I had this huge existential crisis as a performer, realizing that the value of my work was essentially, like, how long would the value of my work live on if no one is, I am not alive to continue singing the song. You don't remember the people who played Carmen, you remember Bizet who wrote the opera, you remember Carmen the character, but the life of the performer is like that of a butterfly. It's like you emerge from the cocoon, you fly around the world beautifully for a very short amount of time. And then you just, you know, stardust again. And so I had this huge existential moment, and it was a really big awakening call. It was as though the gravity of the universe came into the entire dimension of my being and said these, what you have learned has given you a skill, but this is not your path. So I went okay, I just need some time to like process that and so, 'cause this is my entire life, it's the only thing I ever imagined I would ever do. And so I ended up spending three months in silence meditating. And people are like whoa, like how did you do that? And I don't think people, I don't know, not that people don't understand, but I'm not certain that a lot of people have the level of this kind of existential moment that I experienced. And I couldn't have done anything else, I really just needed to take that time to process that I was actually reformulating every construct at the foundation of my own reality. And that was going to take, that's not something you just do overnight, right, like some people can do it more fluidly, but this was a real shift, a conscious shift. And so I asked myself three questions in that meditation, it was what is my purpose, what is the paradigm shift and where is my love. And so I just meditated on these three questions and started to, I don't know how deeply you've studied lucid dreaming or out of body experiences, but that's another, a conversation we can get into in another time, that was my area of study during that period. And so I ended up leaving the three months in silence and I just kind of, I started following my intuition. So I would just, essentially, sometimes I'd walk into a library and I would just shut my eyes and I would just walk around and I would touch books. And I would just feel what they felt like to me, like the density of their knowledge. And I would just feel something that I felt called to, and I would just pull it out of the shelf and just read it. And I don't know how to explain it-- >> (mumbles) Energy, basically-- >> I was guided, I was guided to this. This was in 2011. And so what I started getting into was propaganda theory, the dissolution of Aristotelian politics as an idea of citizen and state when we're really all consumers in a Keynesian economy structured by Edward Bernays, the inventor of propaganda, who essentially based our entire attitude of economic health on, you know, a dissolving human well being. Like, the evolution of our economic well being and our human well being were fundamentally at odds, and not only was that system non-sustainable, but it was a complete illusion. At every touch, point and turn, that the systems we lived in were illusions. And so is all of the world, right, like this whole world is an illusion, but these illusions in particular have some serious implications in terms of people who don't have the capacity, or not the capacity, everyone has the capacity, but who have not explored that deeply, right, who haven't gone that deep with themselves. >> And one of those books was like a tech book or was like-- >> It was just multiple, no, it was multiple books. And it's not that I would even read all of the books all of the way through. Sometimes I would just pick up a book and I would just open it to a certain page and I would read like a passage or a couple pages, and I'd just feel like that's all I need to read out of that book. It's, you just tune into it. >> When was your first trade on Bitcoin, first buy, 2011? >> You want to know something nuts? People always, people are like, "When did you first buy Bitcoin?" I was not, I didn't. So after I started, once you know, all this knowledge came to me, I just started talking about it, I was like, I've been given some wisdom, I just have to share it. So I started going out into the world and finding podiums and sharing. And that was when someone put a USB full of Bitcoin into my hands. I very rarely, I don't necessarily buy, I've just been gifted a lot. >> Good gifts. >> Toni: They've been great gifts, yeah. >> And then when did you start Coin Telegraph, when did that come online? >> So that was in 2013. I joined, the property had been operable for I think like three or four months. And some guys called me and they said, "We're just really impressed with you "and we want to work with you." And I said, "Well, that's nice," I was like, "But you don't have a business, right?" And they were like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "Well, you have a blog, right?" And so I went in and I said, essentially like, here's, to scale the property, I was like, "Here's a plan for the next three years. "If we really want to get this property to where "it needs to be." I'm like, "Here are the programs that we need "to institute, here's like this entire, "countries we can be operable in "and then other acquisitions of other properties." I essentially went in and said like, "Here's the business model and the plan at scale," and they were just like, I think they were a little like, the first call that we had, I think they were just like, "We just called you to," it was a bold move, like, "We just called you to offer you something, "and you countered our offer by saying "we don't have a business?" It was one of those things, but they-- >> Well, it was the labor of love for them, right, I mean-- >> Well, for all of us, yeah, for all of us. >> When all you do is you're blogging, you're just sharing. And then you start thinking about, you know, how to grow, and you got to nurture it, you need cash. >> Yes, and so I essentially came in and then started, I was both editor in chief and CEO and co-founder of the property who helped bring in a lot of the network, build the reputation for the brand, create a scaling strategy. A lot of mergers and acquisitions, a lot of franchises and-- >> How many properties did you buy roughly, handful, six, less than six? >> So I would also say that-- >> Little blogs and kind of (mumbles) them together, bring people together, was that the thinking? >> Yeah, you know, what's interesting is media from all shapes and sizes, 15 to 20 offices in 25 different countries. I always say this when I talk about this, a very important lesson that I learned. How do you manage a team of 40 anarchists? You don't, you don't, that's the answer, you don't, you don't even like, you're like oh. I remember when I was like, "We're a team!" And someone was like, "No, we're not, "I don't believe in teams, I work for myself "and I don't need," I was like oh, wow. I was like oh-- >> John: The power of we, no. >> I was just like, all right, but it was a good learning experience, because I was like well, this is the way, these are your needs. So if that's your, I was like, well, let's embrace that, let's embrace the idea-- >> But that's the culture, you can't change it. >> And let's create the economy around that, let's actually do direct incentive for it, if you think that you're, if you want to be in this on your own, then let's say okay, we're going to make this fully free market economics and we're going to have a matter of consensus on whether or not someone who's exploiting the system, you write an article, you send it out, the number of views and shares that it gets from accounts that are, you know, proven verified, that is how much you get out of the bounty that's created from our ad sales, and if the community comes together in a consensus and says that someone wrote an article that was basically exploiting the system, like beer, guns, tits and weed plus Bitcoin and then they just shared it with everyone, then obviously, they would be weighted differently because the community would reach consensus so-- >> Change the incentive system. >> We just, I started, yeah, I started redesigning, essentially, once I had that moment, I was like okay, I was like, well, we really got to change the incentives here then because the incentives are not going to work like that. If that's the, if there's a consensus that that is the way you guys want to do things, then I got to change things around that. All right, cool, and so yeah, it was a really interesting awesome learning experience from like, you know, a team of like, maybe like 20 to 40 into, probably took it up 40, and then with all of the other, you know, companies and franchises, to about 435 people. And then just took the revenue from, yeah, just took, it was like skating revenue and then rocketing revenue. So that was really my role in the growth of the business and we're all, you know, it's amazing to see how these kind of blockchain holacracies work, you know, at a micro scale and at a macro scale. And what it really takes to build a movement, right. And then, in some ways, I guess it'd either become or create a meme. >> Well, I really appreciate the movement you've been supporting, we're here to bring theCUBE to the movement, our second show, third show we've been doing. And getting a lot more this year, as the ecosystem is coming together, the norms are forming, they're storming, they're forming, it's great stuff. You've been a great thought leader, and thanks for sharing the awesome range of topics here for theCUBE. >> For sure. >> Toni Lane here inside theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, we'll be right back. (energetic music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCube, covering CoinAgenda, brought to you by SiliconANGLE. (salsa music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to our special CUBE exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico. I've been here on the island all week, talking to the most important people, entrepreneurs, citizens of Puerto Rico, the entrepreneur, the students, connecting with Blockchain, investors, thought leaders, and the pioneers. I'm John Furrier, the cohost of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, and we're here with Crystal Rose, who is the CEO and co-founder of Sensay, doing something really cutting edge, really relevant, and kind of ahead of its time, but I think it's time to get it out there and get that token program. Crystal Rose, thanks for joining me and spending time with me. >> Thank you for having me. >> So one of the things I think that you're doing, and I want you to explain this because it's nuanced, and a lot of the super geeks get it and alpha geeks will get it, but the mainstream people are used to dealing in their silos. I use Facebook, I use LinkedIn, I use Twitter, I use chat, I use Telegram, I use these apps. The world's kind of horizontally being disrupted because of the network affect that Blockchain and Crypto is now the underpinnings of, and there's ICOs out there and other things happening, but it's a disruption at the technology stack with software. You guys are doing something with Sensay in the SENSE token that is changing the equation of how people come together, how people grow and learn, whether it's a nonlinear path of some proficiency or connecting with folks or just learning, whatever it is, it's a discovery mechanism. Take a minute to explain what you guys are doing and why it's so important. >> Well we built Sensay to connect everyone together without any borders or intermediaries, and so really it's as simple as every phone has the capability to have a messenger. We have five billion phones that have SMS on them, and so we wanted to take the most basic messaging system, which is the most important thing that people do, and connect it to any other messenger, so Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Slack, anywhere where people are chatting, we wanted to create a system that is interoperable and can decentralize your contact list, essentially. >> Yeah, so this is important, so like most people when they go to social networks you got to find a friend, you get connected. In some cases I don't want to have to friend someone just to have a chat, I mean I may not want to friend them, or I might want to or it's a hassle, I don't know who to friend. Is that kind of where you guys come in? >> Yeah, that's one really great use case, because things like Facebook max you at five thousand friends, so if you friended everybody that you had a conversation with, if you needed to know something. Let's say that every Google search that you did was actually a conversation, you would cap the number of potential contacts. We have a circle of people around us that extends out with different tiers. But I think some of the most important people in our lives are actually strangers. So instead of building the social graph we wanted to build the stranger graph. Sensay cares more about what you know than who you know. Because if we can connect people together around similar interests and like-mindedness, we're connecting tribes, and that's really the innate human connection that we're all looking for. And it's also when you extend yourself outside of your social graph, you're most likely to educate yourself or to uplift yourself more. So the way to level up is to get somebody who's an eight or a 10 if you're a five or a two, and find someone outside of your current circle. >> And that also eliminates all this group think we've seen on some of these hate threads that have been on, whether it's Facebook or some IRC backchannel or Slack channel, you see the hate just comes in because everyone's just talking to themselves. This is the new way, right? Connecting out? Through the metadata of the chat. >> Exactly, we want people to seek out good connections, helpful connections, and so if you can both contribute what you know you get rewarded. And if you can ask people on the network you also get rewarded. So by asking something, you're receiving a reward. It's a two-way system. So it's not just the person who is helping, so we don't really encourage an economy of experts. We think that everyone is a sensei. A sensei literally means a person who's been there before. So we think of that as somebody who has had that life experience. And I think if we look at the internet, the internet democratized expertise. It gave us the ability for every single person to write what they were thinking, or contribute some kind of content in some way. But for 20 years the internet has been free. It's a really beautiful thing for consumption, and open source is the absolute right methodology for software. When it comes to your own content a reward makes sense, and so we wanted to create SENSE on top of the platform as a value exchange. It was a point system, so kind of like Reddit Karma. And we wanted to let people exchange it out for some value that they could transact in the world. >> So basically you're going to reward folks with a system that says, okay, first ante up some content, that's your SENSE token, and then based upon how you want to work with people in the network, there's a token transaction that could come out of it. Did I get that right? >> Exactly. So the person who contributes on the network gets rewarded for that data, and it can be anything that you've done in the past, too. So if you have a lot historical data on Facebook or on GitHub for instance. Let's say you're a developer and you have a bunch of repos out there that could be analyzed to see what kind of developer you are, or if you've contributed a lot to Reddit, all of that data is out there, and it's been something that defines you and your personality and your skills and who you are, so you can leverage that, and you can get a reward for it just by letting Sensay understand more about you, so the AI runs through it. You get more rewards, though, if you have real conversations. So it's almost like a bounty program on conversation. >> So we have the same mission. We love what you're doing. I'm really so glad you're doing it. I want to get to an example in Puerto Rico where you've reached out with strangers, I know you have. And get that, I want to get to that in a minute, but I want to continue on the Sensay for a second and the SENSE token. As you guys do this, what is the token going to be looking like to the user? Because you have a user who's contributing content and data, and then you have people who are going to transact with the token, it could be a bounty, it could be someone trying to connect. How is the token economics, just so I can get that out there, how does that work? >> Well right now in Sensay the transaction is peer to peer, so both users who are chatting have the ability to tip each other, essentially. They can give each other some coins within the chat. We have the concept that when you're having a conversation it's always a buyer and a seller. It's always a merchant and a consumer, and sometimes those roles flip, too. I'll be selling you something and eventually you're selling me something. But it's a natural way that we chat to transact. So that was the first way that the token could be used. We then realized that the powerful part of the platform is actually everything underlying the application. So the layer underneath really was the most powerful thing. And so SENSE network evolved as a way for developers who are creating apps or bots to be able to build on top of the network and leverage the access to the humans or to their data, and so now the token can be used to access the network. You get paid if you contribute data or users and vice versa, you can pay to access them. What that's doing is it's taking away the advertising model from being the only entity that's earning a profit on the data. So you, the user, when you're giving your data to Facebook, Facebook earns a lot of money on it, selling it over and over repeatedly to advertisers, and while it's technically yours in the terms you own it, you don't actually have any upside of that profit, and so what we're doing is saying, well why don't we just let a potential business talk to you directly on your consent and give you the money directly for that? So that two or five dollars for one connection would go straight to you. >> This is the new business model. I mean, this is something that, I mean first of all, don't get me started on my ad and tech rant because advertising creates a bad behavior. Okay? You're chasing a business model that's failing, attention and page views, so the content is not optimized the proper way. And you mentioned the Facebook example. Facebook's not optimizing their data for a user experience, they're optimizing for their monetization, which is counter to what users want to do. So I think you kind of are taking it in another direction, which we love 'cause that's what we do, we are open source content, but the role of the data is critical so I got to ask you the hard question. I'm a user, it's my data, how do the developers get access to it? Do they pay me coins or... You want developers because that's going to be a nice piece of the growth so what's the relationship between the developer, who's trying to add value, but also respecting the user's data? >> Exactly, so the developer pays the network and as a user you're a token holder, you own the network, essentially. So there is really no real middle layer since the token will take a small amount out for continuing to power the network, but a nominal amount. Right now the most expensive thing that happens is the gas that's on top of Ethereum because we're an ERC20 token. So we're looking to be polychain. We want to move onto other types of blockchains that have better, faster transactions with no fees and be able to pass that through as well. So we really want to just do a peer-to-peer connection. There's no interest in owning that connection or owning the repository of data. That's why the blockchain's important. We want the data to be distributed, we want it to be owned by the user, and we want it to be accessible by anyone that they want to give access to. So if it's a developer, they're building a bot maybe, or if it's a brand, they're using a developer on their behalf they have to pay the user for that data. So the developer's incentives are completely aligned with the peer-to-peer architecture that you have, users interests, and the technical underpinnings of the plumbing. Is that right? >> Exactly. >> Okay, good, so check. Now I got that. All right, now let's talk about my favorite topic, since we're on this kind of data topic. Who's influential? I mean, what does an influencer mean to you? Is it the most followers (mumbles) it's kind of a canned question, you can hear it coming. I'll just say it. I don't like the influencer model right now because it's all about followers. It's the wrong signal. 'Cause you can have a zillion followers and not be influential. And we know people are buying followers. So there's kind of been that gamification. What should influence really be like in this network? Because sometimes you can be really influential and then discover and go outside your comfort zone into a new area for some reason, whether it's a discovery or progression to some proficiency or connection, you're not an influencer, you're a newbie. So, context is very important. How do you guys look at, how do you look at influencers and how influence is measured? >> I think at the bare bones an influencer is someone who drives action. So it's a person who can elicit an action in another person. And if you can do that at scale, so one to many, then you have more power as an influencer. So that's sort of the traditional thinking. But I think we're missing something there, which is good action. So an influencer to me, a good influencer, is somebody who can encourage positive action. And so if it's one to one and you get one person to do one positive thing, versus one to a thousand and you get a thousand people to do something not so great, like buy a product that's crap because it was advertised to them for the purpose of that influencer making profit, that metric doesn't add up. So I think we live in a world of vanity metrics, where we have tons of numbers all over the place, we have hearts and likes and stars and followers and all of these things that keep adding up, but they have no real value. And so I think it's a really, like you said before, the behavior is being trained in the wrong way. We're encouraged to just get numbers rather than quality, and so what I think a really good influencer is is somebody who has a small group of people who will always take action. It can be any number of people. But let's say a group of followers who will take action based on that person's movements and will follow them in a positive direction. >> And guess what, its a network graph so you can actually measure it. That's interesting... >> Exactly, exactly. >> I can see where you're going with this. Okay, so I got to talk about your role here in Puerto Rico. You mentioned earlier about reaching out to strangers, the stranger graph, which is a way, people's outside of their comfort zones sometimes, reaching out to strangers. You came here in the analog sense, you're in person, but on the digital side as well, kind of blends together. Give an example where you reached out to strangers and how that's impacted your life and their life, because this is the heart of your system, if I can get that right. You're connecting people and creating value, I mean sometimes there might not be value, but you're creating connections, which have the potential for more value. What have you done here in Puerto Rico that's been a stranger outreach that turned into a wow moment. >> Our outreach has been so far an invitation. So we bought a space here that's turned into a community center. Even at the very beginning we had no power as most of the places around that have been sitting for a year or two or since the hurricane, and so we put a call out and said we'd like to get to know the community. We're doing something called Let There Be Light, which is turn the power on, and you know, we put it out to a public group and saw who would show up. So basically it's a community, central building, it's a historical building, so a lot of people know it. There's a lot of curiosity, so it was just a call, it was a call for help. It was really, I think the biggest thing people love is when you're asking them for help, and then you give gratitude in return for that help and you create a connection around it. So that's why we built Sensay the way that we did, and I think there's a lot of possibilities for how it could be used, but having that encouragement of the community to come and share, we've done that now this whole week, so this is restart week, and one of the other things that we've done is help all of the conferences come together, collaborate rather than compete, so go into the same week, and put all of these satellite groups around it. And then we blanketed a week around it so that we had one place for people to go and look for all of the events, and also for them to understand a movement. So we since then have done a dinner every single night, and it's been an open invitation. It's basically whoever comes in first, and we've had drinks every night as well, open. So it's really been an invitation. It's been an open invitation. >> Well congratulations. I really love what you're doing. You guys are doing great work down here. The event this week has been great. We've got great content. We have some amazing people and it's working, so congratulations on that. As you guys look forward, one of the things I've observed in my many years of history, is that there are a lot of waves, I've seen all the waves, this wave's the biggest. But what jumps out at me is the mission-driven aspect of it. So I mean I can geek out on what's the decentralize and the stacks and all the tech stuff happening, but what's most impressive is the mission oriented, the impact kind of thinking. This is now, society is now software driven. This is a new major thinking. Used to be philanthropy was a waterfall model. Yeah, donate, it either goes or doesn't go. Go to the next one, go to the next one. Now you have this integrated model where it's not just philanthropy, it's action, there's money behind it, there's coding, there's community. This is now a new era of societal entrepreneurship, societal missions. Let's talk about your vision on this mission and impact culture that's part of this ethos. >> I think impact is the important word there. So we think about, we think about bringing capital, like you said with normal philanthropy, you can bring capital and you can continuously pump capital into something, but if the model is wrong it's just going to drain, and it's going to go to inefficient systems, and in the end maybe do some help, but a very small percentage of the capacity of what it could do. So what we have the concept of is bringing funds here. We have a fund that was just launched called Restart Ventures, and the idea is instead of compounding interests, we want to make compounding impact, and so it's a social good focused fund, but at the same time all of the proceeds generated from the fund recycle back into other things that are making more impact. So we're measuring based on how much impact can be created with different projects. It could be a charity or it could be an entrepreneur. And if we're getting a multiple, most of that money is going back. So a very small percentage goes to the actual fund and to the fund managers, and the lion's share of the fund is going back into Puerto Rico. So I think if we look at how we can help in a way that is constantly regenerative, sustainable is good, regenerative is better. We want to at least elevate ourselves and get to the point of sustainability, but we're not improving at that point. We're still just fixing problems. We want regenerative. So if we can keep planting things that regrow themselves, if we can make it so that we're setting up the ecosystem to constantly mend itself, it's like a self-healing system of software, this is the right way to do it. So I think that's the new model. >> You built in some nurturing into the algorithm, I like that. 'Cause you're not going to do the classic venture capital carry, you're going to rotate in, but still pay some operators to run it, so they got to get paid. So I noticed in the announcement there was some money for managing directors to do it. So they get paid, and the rest goes into the compounding impact. >> Right. >> Okay, so I got to ask you what your view is these days on something that's really been important in open source software, which again, when I started it was a tier 2 citizen, at best, now it's running the world, tier 1. Open source ethoses are sprinkled throughout these new, awesome opportunities, but community made it happen. What is your current view on the role of the community, communities in general, to make this new compounding impact, whether it's software development, innovation, impact giving, regenerative growth. What's your view on community? >> If community operates with a mentality of giving or contribution over consumption we do a lot better. So when you have an open source network, if a community comes and they contribute to it more, that's something that regenerates. It keeps adding value. But if a community comes and they just keep consuming, then you have to continue to have more and more people giving. I think a really good example of this is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of people who constantly contribute, and the only reward that they've ever gotten for that is a banner ad that says please donate because we don't do ads. So it's a broken model, because you want it to be free and you want it to continue to have the same ethos and you want it to have no advertising, yet the people who contribute most of the time also contribute most of the funding to keep it alive because they love it and care about it so much. So how could we change that model so that the community could give contributions while also receiving a way to make sure that they're able to keep doing that. And a reward system works, and maybe that's not the only solution, but we have to think about how we can keep creating more and more. >> Well I think transparency is one thing I've always loved. The thing that I always hear, especially with women in tech and these new important areas like underserved minorities, and also the bad behavior that goes on in other groups, is to shine the light on things. Having the data being open, changes everything. That is a huge thing. So community and open data. Your thoughts? I'm sure you agree? Open data and the importance of having the data exposed. >> One hundred percent. So our platform also has a layer of anonymity on the user by default, and part of the idea of being able to understand whether or not data is good. Because think of human data, we have to figure out quality. In the past there would be a validation system that is actually other humans telling you whether or not you're good and giving you some accreditation, some verification. This is our concept of experts on things. Now we would rather take consensus. So let's just crowdsource this validation and use a consensus mechanism that would see whether or not other humans think the data is good. If we're using a system like that, we have to have open data, it has to be transparent and it has to be able to be viewed in order to be voted on. So on our platform on just the first application on Sensay, we expose this consensus mechanism in a feature called Peek. So Peek basically lets you peek inside of conversations happening on the network. You can watch all the conversations that happen, the AI pulls out the good ones, and then you vote on them. >> It's kind of like when you walk into a nightclub, do I want to kind of hang out here? >> Yeah, you're kind of a voyeur but you get rewarded for doing it. It's a way for us to help classify, it's a way for us to help train the AI, and also it's a way for people to have passive ability to interact without having to have a conversation with an actual human. >> Well you're exposing the conversation to folks, but also you get signaling data. Who jumps in, who kind of walks away. I mean it's a gesture data, but it's a data point. >> Right, and it's completely private. So the beauty of the transparency is there's actually privacy baked in. And that's what I love about blockchain is it has all of the good things. >> Crystal, I got to ask you a final question. I know you're very busy, and thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me today here on theCUBE here in Puerto Rico. This week you've been super busy, you look great. I'm sure you've been up, burning the midnight oil, as they say. What is the, I won't say craziest thing because I've seen a lot of cool, crazy things going on here, it's been fun, what is some highlights for you? Conversations, meeting new people, can you just share a couple anecdotal highlights from restart week that have moved you or surprised you or just in general might be worth noting. >> I've been overall extremely surprised but the sheer number of people who showed up. I feel like a few months ago there was a small group of us sitting around wondering what it would be like if we could encourage our friends to come here and share the space. So just to see the thousands of people who have come here to support these several conferences has been amazing. My most surprising thing, though, is the amount of people that have told me that they bought a one-way ticket and have no intention of going home. So to make Puerto Rico your home I think is a really amazing first step, and I just did a panel earlier today with the person in government who had instituted Act 20 and 22, and that was the initial incentive-- >> Just take a minute to explain what that is for the folks that don't know what it is. >> Sure. So Act 20 and 22 are for the company and the individual respectively. They are a way for you to get a tax incentive for moving here as a resident or domiciling your company here. So you get 0% taxes. I think companies range up to 4% or something like that, and that incentive was created to bring more brilliant minds and entrepreneurs and different types of people with different vocations to the island. So basically, give them a tax incentive and encourage the stimulation of economy. So that has brought this wave of people in who have an idea that no taxes are great. At the same time they fall in love with the island. It's amazing because to me Puerto Rico is a combination of LA's weather, San Francisco's open-mindedness, and Barcelona's deep European history. It's just a really beautiful place. >> And it's US territory, so it's a short hop and a jump to the States if you need to, or Europe. >> Yeah exactly. And no customs and you have your driver's license to get here. Also it's a US dollar. And I say that because most people in America mainland don't realize that Puerto Rico is an American territory, and so they sort of think they're going to a foreign country because it's treated that way by our government. But what I've been really shocked about, though, is the sheer amount of innovation already here. The forward thinking ways of people and the embracing of things like open source and blockchain technology, because their minds are already in a mode of community, a mode of sharing, a mode of giving. >> We interviewed Michael Angelo from Edublock.ido, Edublock, they're connecting all the universities with blockchain. We also interviewed Damaris Rivera, with Puerto Rico Advantage. They'll move you down here. You can press a button, it's instant move. So folks in Silicon Valley who are watching who know us and around the world know theCUBE, there's a group of like-minded people here that have tech chops, there's capital flowing. There's capital people I know have moved here, setting up shop, as well as the Caymans and everywhere else, but it's nice. So it's kind of like LA. >> There is a lot of capital. I have just witnessed a couple hundred million dollars of funds that were established in the last couple of months. And this is around all different types of technology sectors. You don't have to be a blockchain company. You can be innovating in any way possible. One of my favorite projects is a machine that turns plastic bottles into diesel fuel. So one of the problems here is that the generators on the island, when we were here last time we met a guy that was working at a bar in a restaurant, and he was like, "Hey I saw you guys in New York Times "and I think you're like the Crypto people." And he had a conversation, and he said, "I was wondering if you could help my grandmother "who is stuck with no power, and it's been months, "and she's in her 90s, and she needs a generator to run "a machine that keeps her life supported." and so a couple of people went out to bring more fuel, bring a generator to donate. They started understanding that there are so many areas that still need this level of help, that there's a lot that we can do. So when I see projects like that, that's something I want to back. >> Yeah, it's entrepreneurial action taking impact. Crystal, thanks so much for coming out. Crystal Rose, CEO, co-founder of Sensay, real innovative company, pioneer here in the Puerto Rico movement. It's a movement, a lot of tech, entrepreneurs, capital, investors, and the pioneers in the blockchain, decentralized internet are all here. This is like the Silicon Valley of Crypto, right? >> I think they're calling it Crypto Island. >> Crypto Island, yes. It sounds like a TV show. We should be on it. It's not lost, it's Crypto Island. >> Exactly. >> Thanks so much for spending the time on theCUBE. >> Thanks John. >> John: I appreciate it. >> I appreciate it so much. Thanks for making sense of me. >> I'm John Furrier here on theCUBE here in Puerto Rico. Our coverage continues after this short break.

I'm from San Juan Puerto Rico it's the cube covering coin agenda brought to you by silicon angle hello everyone welcome to special cube covers we're here exclusive conversations at coin agenda we just had blockchain unbound Puerto Rico is where we're at and we'll covering all the trends and latest news and analysis and cryptocurrency blockchain decentralized internet my next guest is Dan Bates founder and president of impact PPA Dan great to have you on thanks John glad to be here so one of the trends I'm noticing is a couple things flight to quality on the ico side first of all lot of the Deadwood's being pushed aside by the community still some stuff out there that you know might not have a business model but good entrepreneurs doing it then you start to see real use cases emerging I interviewed Green Chain they're disrupting how produce grains movement between suppliers and buyers and other impact mission driven stuff like how do you solve the energy crisis right we're in Puerto Rico right the grids half alive everyone knows that you're doing something really compelling take a minute to explain what you guys are doing is you have a token up and running what are you guys doing what's your value proposition so what we do is we've created a system by which you can now have renewable energy delivered to developing nations and we've taken the intermediary out of the equation whereby the world bank historically would take years to fund a project if they would do that they're big trepidation was how do you get paid at the end of the day so what we've done is we've come up with a solution that allows for generation of rent you know with the energy using renewables and track it all the way through to a payment rail if you will that a user can now prepay for energy on their mobile device it's m-pesa if you know what end pace is in Africa 70% of the transactions in Africa are done on a mobile device we are decentralized and pace up for energy so ok mobile app I get out you everyone can think about BRR and all the benefits and Airbnb brings you just have stuff happened talk about what's under the hood what's actually disruptive about what you guys are doing give some specifics because you're tying into Isis and jittering energy using the blocks you have a token how does it all work okay so what we do is in in the in the ability to fund the project getting the World Bank getting USA USA ID out of the equation what we now allow for is the community typically we are very liberal or tend to skew liberal right we actually believe that climate change is real and we want to help support these economies and these new types of you know betterment of the planet right but we don't expect that to be a philanthropic effort so people will buy the impact token which will fund projects that will then create what we're doing right now it's an AR C 20 of what we call a gen credit not a secondary token it's a credit that allows people to access the ledger so a guy will go down to the store just like he does right now and he charges his phones with more minutes or with a data plan it's fiat to a plan a digital currency we do the same thing it's now fiat into a gen credit we call it that allows them and transact with the blockchain so we get identity we get reputation we get trust and honesty about those transactions using the blockchain okay so where does the energy come from because the energy sources now are interesting because you're seeing people do great amazing things solar panels wind farming they see an Asia top of the apartment buildings there's a lot of wind yeah generally but how do they move that power into the market all right so what we do is right now we're using wind and solar rooftop or micro grid for instance we just finished a project in Haiti doing 150 kilowatts for a town called les a wha they haven't had power in two years a hurricane matthew prior to Hurricane Maria coming through Puerto Rico Puerto Rico's in a similar situation right so we created this micro grid using their existing infrastructure of transmission to distribution then we put smart meters on the home that smart meter connects to the blockchain and now people can have power at their homes pay-as-you-go awesome so what I've been to some of the hurdles you guys have had obviously to me it's a no-brainer of energy being tokenized is that makes such sense why wouldn't you want to do that obviously these regulatory issues that are incumbent legacy Dogma or or specific legislation of paperwork what not where's the efficiencies being automated away with the blockchain and what are some of the hurdles that you guys have gone through to get to this point all right so we work in the emerging economies of the world oftentimes there is not the kind of regulation that we have in the US or in the developed world like the EU something like that so when we go out to remote we go out to remote places like you know in Kenya and Ethiopia Latin America wherever it might be we don't have some of the Institute's that you would have if you were trying to set this up in Palo Alto I don't have to worry about PG&E and an interconnect and an off take and all that so what we do is that we'll go out set up a micro grid we're giving power to people who may have never had it before so all those regulatory layers are stripped away they're grateful for it that can they pay for it yes they can't afford to go buy a solar panel and a wind turbine on batteries and inverters nor would they know how to hook it all up yeah but they know that if they can buy power on a cellphone like they're already doing for other goods and services now we've got a game-changer Dan talk about the token economics I get this the payment rail piece mobile app no-brainer I get that check okay easy to use now I want to as a buyer of energy there's a token I some children there where's the other side of the marketplace how does that token economics work do you just take us through a use case and walk us through that example sure so as I said the impact token is our base token that will be the the value token that purchasers will buy in order to fund projects once we go beyond that and we now have what we call a Jen credit it may not be a token in the traditional sense or a coin it's a credit that allows us to transact with the ledger that way we can know about these people one of the greatest opportunities that we feel that we have in the marketplace is identity and reputation you have a billion two people who don't have a connection what if we could learn about those billion too and understand how they use power and where they use power so Jen credits kind of off chain management that you're doing you write to the ledger for in term util access right for that Tran action I got to ask you about things like spoofing why can't I just take your energy this is where the tokens become interesting because I mean it should solve the spoofing problem well right and you know energy energy needs to be passed down copper it's got to go on a wire that doesn't mean somebody's not going to cut the wire and bootleg it and all that stuff smoothing is not going to be the problem in this case it is a physical connection that needs to be made our smart meters allow for us to turn on or off let that connection by the user right if he doesn't pay you don't forget it yeah you know there's vandalism they're stuffed all over the world and we have methods in place to try and mitigate that as much as possible you you saw our platform that we're building we're tokenizing our media business amazing you liked it was good thanks for the plug there I was an aspirin and we were talking last night about our you know generational gap between us and our kids and you have your son here and your son's working with you my sons Alex working with us we have a young team as well I want you to talk about someone who's so experienced in the business you've done a lot of variety adventures from you know film to entertainment technology us older veterans it's the polite way to say it have seen the movie before they've seen the waves this is a huge way but this wave is gonna be can surf a few of them hang ten on our boards but this wave is really gonna be powered and led by the younger generation what's your thoughts share your vision of the role that the younger generation has to take here and what makes them capable in your mind okay so I'm gonna answer that question two ways first of all I'm so enamored with what the younger generation is trying to do with this corruption let's change the existing paradigm and make something better that's what blockchain allows for all sorts of industries goods and services right it's gonna be amazing what these guys come up with that's one of the things I love about doing this thing right I'm an old guy and I get to hang around these young people makes me feel young again yeah but the other thing that we have and I think you share it as well as we have to offer to these young guys experience right it's not like we're gonna go out to a market that we don't know about and try and explore it for success you know I've been in the renewables business for ten years delivering projects to 35 countries I got my boots on the ground I got my hands dirty doing this for 10 years now and I think the other part of that building this project and making it successful is the team that we've put together behind it we have an advisor who advises presidents dr. Michael Dorsey that's really important that's valuable that he understands the global marketplace the way he does the other one is Vinay Gupta who has been in blockchain since the 90s and has always wanted to work in the developing world with a block came distributed ledger technology that's really important I think I want to just double down and we amplify that point this is not a young man's game only exclusively it's such this markets attracting alpha entrepreneurs older veterans because as you said earlier it disrupts every vertical that's right so experience and mentorship bringing people together that can help that's right celebrate the disruption that's right driven by the young guys cool I love that but it's not like Zuckerberg made this one comment oh if you're not under the age of 30 then you don't know such delivery he got his ass handed to him on that but in this case this market is open and willing to learn and the disruptions the mission that's right and this team matters that's our experience the makeup of your board makeup of your advisors since a roll for everybody look experiences capital right it is its own virtual currency having been in all these countries having worked with presidents having worked in the 90s you know since the 90s and what that is valuable it's intangible but it is valuable dan I think we just invented a new category in the ico category an advisor tokens [Laughter] cottage industry believe tokens anyway but imagine if you could actually measure an advisor yeah the quality of adviser and the roles that they play absolutely as a token that's coming up next in our our next I see oh hey I really appreciate what you're doing I love how you work with your son father-son team you recognize the role of how the generations can shift together love it love your mission thank you thanks for sharing the news coverage here in Puerto Rico been here on the island all week getting the best stories the best people sharing them with you were open content that's the cube doing our part here at coin agenda for one day we're not gonna be you tomorrow go to Vegas just came back from watching unbound great stuff John let me give you the the URL if you don't mind no problem please if you want to go learn more about us impact PPI calm great job impact PBA calm is the cube live coverage here in Puerto Rico more after this short break

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, It's The Cube! Covering Blockchain Unbound, brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to The Cube's exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico. We are on the ground covering Blockchain Unbound, Restart Week, Coin Agenda, a variety of events happening here in Puerto Rico, where the world is converging from Silicon Valley, New York, across the globe, here for a long week of bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrency, the decentralized internet. We're here for two days, wall to wall coverage. Here with me, kicking off, and special guest Miko Matsumura, who's the founder of Evercoin, also a venture partner at Bitbull Capital, influencer. Been around the block in the industry, seen many waves. Miko, great to have you on The Cube. >> Terrific, great to be here. >> So one of the things I want to get with you, we've had many conversations off camera over the past year, about what makes this wave super different than others. I've been saying, with Dave Allant and our team, that it feels like all the waves combined. I mean, look at all the major inflection points in the industry. The PC revolution, the mini computer revolution, the PC revolution, inner-networking with TCPIP, the internet revolution. You kind of had a web 2.0 thing going on, with the beginning of democratization. But now, major inflection point with infrastructure change with blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized applications, which is disrupting the developer community. So you have an entire stack being disrupted, and at the center of it is an opportunity. >> Miko: Yeah, I think what you described earlier in our conversation, about this notion of a killer app, right? There's a bunch of people kind of clowning around, saying like, "Oh what's the killer app for blockchain?" It's under our noses, it is open source money, right? So if you look at what happened with open source software, for the past 25 or more years, we've watched software eat the world. Software has eaten the world. We all know this. Mark Andreasen said it famously, right? So the point is, is that open source has eaten software. Right? So now, what do you think is going to happen next with open source money? Open source money is going to consume proprietary money. >> I completely agree with you, and you look at all the tell signs in the industry, a lot of people putting the brakes on Google banning ads on Google, you're seeing the SEC putting signals out there, but the problem is this is a global money marketplace. So you have a global ecosystem now, connected via the internet, you have disruptive technology that kills the gatekeepers and any central authority, and you have money. So you can put the big rock in the river and try to hold the stream, but the thing is just moving so fast that the dam can be broken no matter what's put in place, because moving money faster, running money, whatever you want to call it, makes a difference. And today, breaking news is that Coinbase got a license to support the UK's faster payment scheme, which will speed up time for faster payments. So essentially the UK is taking a pre-emptive move against the US government, this is a game changer. They could kind of go to the top of the pack in terms of sovereignty leadership in the financial world, because how they handle the money situation. If they tap the software market, if they make the open source money work, this is again, the game is on. This is a real data point, the UK government. This isn't some underground economy, this is a nation. >> Well, and there's no question that domicile competition creates an open playing field for a planetary establishment of protocol, right? So the thing that's amazing about it is absolutely that there's no national regulator that has a global footprint. And so at the end of the day, the thing that's fascinating about what's happening is that the reason why I'm so confident about open source money is that it competes for consent, right? So it's really trying to acquire users by providing better services. And what government entity can resist, for the long term, something that's actually trying to provide a better and better and better financial infrastructure? >> Miko, I've got to ask you, because I've seen your presentation, and we've talked many times about open source money. I want you to take a minute and describe, what is open source money? Also you mentioned software eating the world, that's the seminal Wall Street Journal article that Mark Andreasen wrote about around the 10X engineer, and how software, cloud, computing, all these big data technologies, can change the nature of enterprise competitiveness. You're kind of teasing that out with software and money, open source. What is open source money? >> So, if you go to the bitcoin.org website, you're going to see the title of the website, and it basically, title tag says "peer to peer open source money." So those aren't even my words, those are the words of Satoshi Nakamoto. Open source money. Open source money basically just means, So let's say that money is software, and it is software, so if you buy something with a credit card, what do you think is happening? It's all software. So money is already software. There's some money now, paper money, that's not software, but that's all going to become software. Once you accept that money is software, then what kind of software should it be, right? And what has happened is open source software has always eventually won with respect to closed source software. So proprietary money is probably back on its heels because open source money is coming, and I think that's really the power of developers and the power of consent. >> I think one of the nuanced points, just to kind of highlight that, to kind of take it one step further, is if you look at proprietary, you mentioned the word proprietary. If you look at the open source revolution with software, everything that was proprietary essentially got dismantled, down to either some irrelevant point, or a smaller role in whatever that system would be, whether it's a mini computer or a mainframe, or software. Open source always seemed to grow into the primary, first tier citizen of the mechanism. So there's history on our side. What, in your mind, makes this movement, with open source money, different? Is it the reshaping of the internet infrastructure stack? Is it the decentralized application developer? Is it the role of the currency? Because you now have three dimensions of change. >> Yeah, so to me, I love your mindset about this kind of combination, and I just want to characterize my position properly, which is that I'm not a crypto anarchist or even a crypto libertarian. And when people talk about proprietary money being back on its heels, if you watch what happened to open source and proprietary software, the proprietary software industry is larger and more valuable than it's ever been. So I'm not saying proprietary money goes away. It doesn't go away, it continues to grow and become valuable but what happens is open source money will essentially take over all of the commodity functions and become the platform. >> And certainly the alpha geeks, everyone that I know that's an entrepreneur, that I would call kind of pure entrepreneurship, whether they're old or young, are gravitating to this magnet of opportunity. What are you seeing? Obviously you're in a lot of advisory boards, and you really can't do all of them, but you're getting a lot of requests. We just had a conversation with some entrepreneurs here in the hallway. What are some of the conversations that you've had that really kind of point to the energy and the relevance of this new ecosystem that's emerging? >> I think one of the things that's extremely exciting to me is that there seems to be a race going on between basically three parties. I'd say one party is sort of what I call the blockchain for good. So there's actually a tremendous amount of NGOs, there's non-profits, there's the United Nations getting involved. Tremendous amount of folks working on beneficial foundation backed projects, ripple works. There's a tremendous, huge open source foundation feeling that's happening. Second party is really more of the commercial cryptocurrency and blockchain, represented in large part now by the ICO movement, about six billion dollars. But the third arm, which is actually the negative side, is that there actually are a lot of scammers, and a lot of, like, dark forces inside of the cryptocurrency movement. So that's why I think we welcome, kind of, more regulatory influence. Because, you know, none of us want to see bad actors in the space. >> And what's the coolest project you're involved in? Pick a favorite child. >> Well, at the moment, you know, the sponsor of this conference is actually lottery.com, which is tremendously exciting. A couple of others to mention that I think are exciting are Celsius Network, so that's a large scale lending platform, and then Hub Token. So Hub Token is building essentially a problem. It's a protocol that solves a problem of second party trust in the internet of value. >> Well, Miko, great to have you on. I really appreciate your friendship, and I really appreciate the feedback you've had for The Cube team so we can be better with our open content model, we're open sourced content, as everyone knows. Thanks for sharing your perspective in the data with the crowd. People can find you online, what's your twitter handle, how do they get ahold of you? >> So you can follow me on MikoJava on twitter, but my website is miko.com. Miko.com. >> Great URL, obviously an early pioneer of the domain name, land grab, great job. Miko.com. Miko Matsumura, thought leader, influencer, investor, advisor. Really in the front lines of this movement, this revolution. Legitimate revolution in the changing of the world for good and for businesses. This is The Cube coverage from Puerto Rico, we're back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)