>> Voiceover: From New York, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, welcome back, I'm John Furrier here in the ground in New York City, Manhattan, for Blockchain Week New York, also day three of Consensus 2018; it's a huge event, everyone's here in all the action. Philipp Pieper's the CEO and co-founder of... he's with Swarm Funds; now, it's an interesting story, we've interviewed a couple of other companies: Polymath, Securitize, these guys got a unique value proposition. Philip, Swarm Funds, tell about what you guys are doing? >> Sure. >> What's the value proposition, where you guys are at? >> So we are the first security token framework that is live in the market. We launched, actually, end of January, only three months after the ICO, and we focus actually on tokenizing LP positions and funds, and we do that with a unique legal structure, governing structure, and obviously token infrastructure, that actually is meant to become a lingua franca that anyone in the market can collaborate on, so we even invite the previously named companies to actually collaborate with this because it's not a one-person or one organization sellout. >> And you got a shipping product. >> We have a shipping product. We actually have business on it, which means that there's funds that have tokenized on our platform, four of them actually. We have another 50 right now in the pipeline, so the next couple of weeks we're going to see at least nine to maybe 15 that are going to come to the market. >> So, I understand your value proposition. Are you guys operationalizing venture capital or equity partners? Or is it targeting entrepreneurs themselves or both? Who's the customer for you? >> So, on the project side, on the investment opportunity side, it's actually people that have something that they've done in the past that have existing business and where we just become another part of their capital structure. So, when you >> Give me an example. >> When you focus on a fund, so for example, we have a fund called Andra Capital that is a pre-IPO tech fund, so you can buy into a composite of Airbnb, Uber, and other tech companies where they buy secondaries off the market. They're an existing fund, they have existing LP's, they have existing business, and for them to open up to the crypto landscape, both for crypto investors as well as family offices, we're that conduit. >> Yeah. >> So, for them it's no change of legal structures, they can just do this in the existing way, and for us in the crypto community it's an excellent way to democratize access to that, so you can get into these kind of things that normally were only for the privileged investors. >> And so the benefit to them is that they don't have to unwind or mess with a tangled web of deals and LP's, relationships, because it's complicated, the side deals, all kinds of, not side deals, but you know what I'm saying, like one, there's a lot of moving parts, right, so? >> Well, yeah, and even more so, they don't have to put all their chips into this one thing that, you know, we all believe that is going to be big, but who knows whether it's going to pan out? So, you know, if I would approach one of those partners and say, "Well, your entire fund has to be tokenized." That's a pretty big deal with a lot of resistance. In this way, they can just open up a backdoor saying, "Okay, let's test this out, see how it works" and, by the way, they can actually push their existing investors to that direction, too, because it has a liquidity to it. That's the key element that is missing >> Yeah and they don't have to do anything different, so it's really smart. So, I've got to ask you, so, your advice or security token's been a pretty positive reaction from most folks. Hey, finally a security token, there are people are raising money, that's what we're doing, I mean that's what we're doing, no one has product. I mean, we have a product, some people have products, you have products. The thing is that there's very few people that have products so they're basically raising money. So call it what it is, it's a raising money token. Security tokens are now good, but as the entrepreneurs out there, they say, "Well, do I just pledge with my cashflow, or do I put equity against it?" What's your vision on how entrepreneurs should think about what they give up for the tokens, how they securitize it? >> Are you meaning that the entrepreneurs actually come to the space with their entrepreneurial efforts or? >> So, I'm an entrepreneur and I say I want to raise 15 million dollars or 10 million dollars on an issuing a security token and what do I get for that? So the investor wants security. >> Well, the investor wants actually something that is reliable in the most legal way possible, which means that it is something that they can, you know, have confidence that there's something on the other end, that there is a trustful asset that is underlying, that there's a legal stress that they can put this to and if things go sideways, that they have a voice that they can actually govern their ownership with. >> What is that now, what's the standard? Is there a standard evolving around what that is behind the security token? Is it cashflow, is it equity? >> Well, so, in our case we pay attention to actually having a vetting process that actually makes sure that things exist where actually, so this one token being the utilities, sort of like, it's a token to consider us as an AWS for fund operations, so, we incentivize existing players to help vet. We are working with some of the biggest servicing firms and auditing firms to, in the end, actually put the rubber stamp on stuff saying this actually is in existence and it's being, you know, looked at in detail, and the community in the end then can actually say, "We want this, too" or "We don't want this." So, there's multiple hoops that someone has to jump through before they can actually claim to be on a network like Swarm on this SRC-20 token that we have. >> What's interesting, too, is that what I like about your business model is that there's leverage, too, and, as you do things, you don't have to do it again, and, so, everyone has to sort of replicate and provision their company some way, right? So, it's complicated. >> Well, and, by the way, just to extend that also to the fact that there's only, there's one investor graph that is a qualified investor graph that basically anyone can chip in to, and it makes it incredibly easy for a qualified investor to move around on amongst different security tokens, and not just do that, like on a dedicated platform, but we are taking this into existing exchanges. You can even think of a model where this works with a decentralized exchange, where people can confidently actually trade one another and they don't have to requalify with the decentralized exchange, which doesn't have an organization to qualify them. >> It sounds like cloud computing and devops in action. >> Yeah. >> Bringing in some crypto, so you probably bring great service, okay, what else is going on, how much did you raise, how big is the team, what's going on with the company? >> Yeah. >> What's next? What's on the road map? >> So, we actually started thinking this end of 2016, before this whole craziness started, so there's a lot of pen to paper that we had to put in place, so there's a preparation into the ICO that we did in September/October; we were very restrictive, the way that we did it, we had a token liquidator release in order to appeal to some of the more US-focused investors. We raised 5.5 million dollars back then, valued in ether, pretty good. We then actually, the foundation still hold half of the tokens, we just were really cleared to be not a security. In this realm, we clearly separated the security from the utility function and we are off to the races with actually not just being listed on exchanges but also to actually list the security tokens on exchanges with a clear mandate by the token issuers that that's something that they are qualified to do. >> That's awesome. So, Philipp, I'm going to give you a use case, if I'm going to do a token offering, say for theCUBE, hypothetical, wink wink, what do I do? How do I engage with you? Would I use your service? How would I use your service? I'm going to issue tokens, you know, we're building the business, we're building the brand, we're going to open it up. I don't have time to deal with all those details. It's a lot of hassles. Do I do the Cayman Islands, special purpose vehicles, I mean, where is my entity, what's my domicile, what's the law here? Do I use you? I mean, would I use you guys and that would be the service or are you targeting, would I have to go somewhere else? Who do I use? Who would I, how would I use Swarm? >> Well there's two parts to answer that question: one is actually, obviously, we have a lot of institutional organizations on the other end that have their own custom setup, they have existing things, we make it incredibly easy for them to engage with us because we form these SPV's which are, you know, so far we've trialed this in MBVI and Cayman's and Estonia and Lichtenstein, but those entities become shareholders of the underlying assets. So, if someone wants to list something, they go to tokenize.swarm.fund; there's an in-take form that actually allows them to supply their proposals, their proposals get put through different layers of vetting, so we work with... >> From your team? >> Well, first on our team, but we work with external people that vet that, too, and then actually it goes to an auditing firms that actually then say this is something real because before we take it to market, and actually offer it to the broader community, we really want to make sure that this is actually something that has validity to it because, as you know, market can be killed by the first ill leanings of actually something not being real. >> So do you pay for those service or is it paid in tokens? >> It's paid in tokens. Again, the analogy is the AWS, so it's basically, if someone wants to list, there's a gas for a fund listing that has to be paid, and that goes to both investor qualification as well as the auditing process. The same actually applies to the fund operations, so there's gas for fund operations, which goes to the technical nodes, the legal service providers we work with, accounting firms, people that want to do due diligence, like say I receive a nav report and that adds some value through it. >> It's coin-operated, literally. >> Exactly, but if I receive a net asset value report from one of the underlying assets, and I as an investor don't believe it, I can stake to say I want to have KPMG go off and actually validate that this is actually real and it's actually built on standards. >> You're bringing a lot of service providers together, you're also providing some base services, that's cool, what's next, what are you going to do this next year? What's next for you guys the second half of the year? >> I think we're just scratching the surface of what this is going to do. I mean, we're very happy that actually there's a very big focus by the market on actually security tokens, Wall Street is taking it extremely serious and legislators across the world are taking it seriously, so we're very, very fortunate to be in some of those conversations with legislators who want the security tokens base to be compliant with what they're thinking about. I think it's just going to be volume, on both ends, our target is to actually have a hundred thousand active investors engaged. We want to have at least a hundred funds that are live on the platform on the network, and we want to stitch partnerships with whoever wants to participate. That makes this a frictionless ecosystem such that everyone can continue doing their business. >> Well, we need more faster, better products out there. The SEC, you've seen some of the regulatory issues, slowing things down in the US and a lot of action going on outside the United States, so, the sooner the better, right? >> Yeah, but I think the SEC is taking the approach to say, "We're going to regulate the bad actors, but we're urging a self-regulatory position by the industry." And, so, efforts like all the ones that you mentioned and us actually going in the direction to be compliant, not shying away from having security tokens in a legal fashion is the good news because the more we show that the more actually they understand that this is not some kind of evasion strategy in many different directions. >> Yeah, and we need to move faster, cool. Well, great job Philipp, we've got a great job here, Swarm Fund, check it out, they're really making it easier for investors and limited partners, the Big Money, to actually move an encrypto, open up a door, put a toe in the water, and make money, get liquid, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks so much. >> We appreciate it, BlockChain Week New York City, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.

(exciting music) >> Announcer: From New York it's The Cube. Covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, welcome back this is The Cube. I'm John Furrier your co-host here. Host here in New York City for Consensus 2018 part of Blockchain Week, New York And we have Mimi Delam who is also the Co-Founder of the Crypto Rally Project. We just had your partner on welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so very much for having me here. I'm really grateful. So yeah lovely to see you in New York. >> Great to see you and I love the project we just heard the details about the Crypto Rally. >> That's correct. >> So what's your take on it. I mean it's exciting, what's your role? >> I mean besides being super exciting for us it's a very new way of us making a huge impact and a difference in the Blockchain world for the people who are around here taking it to another level through the media. And the sponsorships. I mean my role personally is that I'm a co-founder from the very nice team of the girls. Gaile, Agne and and me and a couple more people involved. We are very happy to take it to another level. We want people to have just a way of life so we're trying to make it. >> I love the excitement of the project and you guys have a great team but I love the international perspective. You guys were in London. And you came from Lithuania. >> Exactly. >> And London so it's going to start in London or Lithuania? Where's the rally going to start? >> Okay I'll tell you all in the details. So we started, I mean me, myself I lived for many years in London and our founder Agne been living there for many years as well, we started our Crypto Rally in Lithuania in July it's going to take place and then afterwards we're taking it to Dubai. The rest of the world countries who are very happy to take the country, sorry, we're very happy to take the place in the Cryptos and we're going to travel all around the world with this inception. It's like Formula One it starts from one place right now it's all around the world. >> And what's the goal to have fun? Educate people on Crypto? What's the objective? >> Objective is of course to educate the people for them to be a part of the Blockchain and a part of the something which is coming up new. We want to make sure that people are aware of the new world because it's very clear the fourth industrial revolution is coming, 3.0 life is totally different we cannot be living the same way any more. And of course we want to have fun. >> All right now what's it like in Lithuania right now? What's the culture for the Blockchain? Are people, must be exciting, what's the vibe? >> I'll tell you Lithuania is extremely educated and very high tech and fast moving so for us it's very important to make the spirit, the small country but it's very easy to communicate and make everything ready. We are very well known in the blocked in world and we want to take it to another level. Of course as I mentioned we're going to the different countries, we're bringing the concept over there. We're very happy to host in a different places. So that's our aim, just to the spread the world. >> Maybe you can help us bring The Cube to Lithuania? We need some hosts. >> We definitely would love to do that. >> Well you're a natural host and great mission. I love what you're doing. What's it like here in New York for you? What's your observation? What are you seeing? Do you like the content? Have you met some cool people? What's it like explain for people who aren't here? >> Okay. >> What's it like? >> So Consensus itself is one of the most exclusive, unique opportunities to be a part in the event. There are so many fascinating people. Very educated and forward thinkers, like mind blowing ideas just around the places. There are so many people. It's impossible to even get a track of it. I'm very excited to be in New York because to be a part of this event makes a huge difference and I'm just fascinated about every single day what is going on it's a whole week of events, whole week of the communication and meetings non-stop. And then. >> Social too. >> It's very social and people are very happy to hear about Crypto Rally. >> What's your favorite thing here in the event? What's, what do you like the best? What was your number one thing? >> I mean I like to be interviewed by you. (laughs) >> Oh, ticket. >> Bingo there it is, The Cube number one. Thank you for saying that. >> Thank you so much. >> Besides The Cube interview? (laughs) What session? The people, parties, was there any special moment so far that you think is a highlight besides The Cube interview? >> I mean to be honest I really do enjoy the after parties where the people are becoming more open because the first part, bit of the day is a lot of business going on. >> Yep. >> And then afterwards you're going to the more personal relationships and then becoming a little bit of the friendly. And obviously this is exactly what we want to replicate in the Crypto Rally if that makes sense. >> Yeah. >> Because we want to have four days events to start from, meet the people hang out with them, have a good business interaction with them and educate each other. That's what I love about after, afternoon parties over here. >> Yeah it's good. >> Because you know about. >> You want to meet people's soul, get to know who they are. >> Exactly, exactly it's nice to have a good connection and connectivity. >> Yeah. >> People have a great energy here and it's like the brightest minds are meeting here. Which is beautiful. >> Love your energy Mimi, love to have you on. What URL can we get the information at for the Crypto Rally? >> All right so guys right now you have to go to www.Cryptorally2018.com, #CryptoRally2018 or @Cryptorally2018. Please join us and tweet or telegram and all around the social media we're happy to be. >> How can someone get involved? How do sponsors get involved? How do people get involved in the project? >> I mean you have to apply for it. We are taking as well, we are taking it through the application process because we want to build a very community based first Crypto Rally. The, I mean just go on the website, reach us out, we're very happy to talk with everybody right now we want to have a community. We want to bring it to another level and I mean. >> Of course. >> I mean that's how it works right? >> We support you. We'll be a media sponsor, a media supporter. Thank you for coming on. >> Thank you so very much. >> Nice to see you. >> For having me. >> You're very welcome >> Really thank you very much. >> You're welcome, great energy great voice, love the new talent coming into the New York scene, bringing the global perspective here. Really exciting ecosystem that's developing, great tight knit community here in The Cube. Mimi you're part of it, you guys are doing great work. Love your mission. I'm John Furrier on the ground here in the open. Here in New York City at the Hilton in Mid-Town Manhattan for Consensus 2018. More coverage after this break, thanks for watching. (exciting music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE coverage here exclusively at the block party, at the Crypto-House's part of Blockchain Week in New York City, Blockchain New York. Also, Consensus 2018 is having a variety of other events. I'm here with Allan Rothstein, the co-founder of Strategic Coin, also managing partner at Decentralized Ventures. Hey welcome to this Cube conversation. Nights, night party here, exclusive event here in the East Village, thanks for joining me. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> So, co-founder of Strategic Coins doing some great work in the maturization of this sector. Still in the first in the half inning, bottom of the first, some would say but also Decentralized Ventures, which I love the name because what does it mean? I mean, it means crypto, token economics, block chain, brand new field. >> Exactly. >> Emerging very very fast. >> And it's global, so it's decentralized. Right now we're in Malta, but we're going all over the world, Estonia, other countries because that's where this market is going. >> So for the folks that don't really grock all that, how would you describe it to your friend that says Hey Allan, what is this all about? What is this decentralized tokens, ICOs, blockchain, bottom line me, what's going on? >> Blockchain is probably the first really global business model that is not controlled by anybody, by any single government, by any single company, by any single industry. It dis-intermediates all of these industries that are filled with middle-men and which prevent end users and peers from interacting with each other. >> I was told by some guy I was interviewing in Puerto Rico, you know the United States is the place where all the money went into because that's where the entrepreneurial energy was. And Europe was the entity that was slow, antiquated, all these rules, hard to make money, hard to be a capitalist. He goes: "now, the United States is turning into Europe." We are the new Europe in the US and all the money is going outside the US, into massively growing middle-class economies outside the United States. And the perfect storm is the crypto token economic model, where money is just running hard. Your thoughts on that comment and reaction. >> I think it's exactly right, and more importantly the road blocks being set up by the US government are not only sending the economics to other places in the world, they're actually sending the technologies to other places in the world. So I've lived in New York all of my life, I've been on Wall Street; the reason I'm setting up in Malta is exactly for that reason. Because it is very difficult to work in Blockchain and crypto here. We don't know what the definition is. The IRS says that cryptos are property. SEC says that they're securities. SFTC says they're commodities. The FED says they're currencies. So you have four different agencies claiming jurisdiction and you don't know who to report to. You don't know what the rules are. >> And all the service providers like law firms, and advisories, accountings, they all come to a screeching halt because they don't know what to say. They don't want to get sued. Entrepreneurs give up, that stifles innovation. >> It stifles innovation, but it, more importantly, it's really sending potentially the most important technology overseas. And you have other jurisdictions that are grabbing at it. You've got Bermuda, I work with the government in Malta, and they are setting up what they call Blockchain Island. They are setting up a crypto-friendly regime. This will be the first EU country with a full set of regulations. It's not that the regulations are easy but you know what the rules are. And at the moment, that's the only EU country that you know all the rules. >> As all these regulations, I mean GDPR is happening this month, I still think that's a shit show, in my opinion, but we'll see what happens there. This is, all these regulations, I get it, but I think that as the economy starts to go global, it's a competitive opportunity for our country and nation to be a digital nation and do it right. And also, people need advisory. What the hell is the playbook? You can't just go to the manual, there's no manual for this. There's no playbook. Strategic Coin, Decentralized Ventures, other leaders in the community on the finance side are pushing the envelope to try and lead by example. Because, as you just said, things are pretty much sideways from a regulatory standpoint. >> Yeah, that's exactly what we do. So at Strategic Coin, we help with jurisdiction. We help with the regulations, we try and direct companies to understand what they're dealing with. We do deep research for companies, we help them work on the corporate side, we really help them navigate some very difficult and choppy waters. >> What's the biggest challenge that companies have right now? Is it domicile, is it token economics? >> The biggest challenge is, there are two. One is regulation, knowing what the rules are. Second one is banking. Without regulation, bank will not allow companies who are getting funding from crypto to open accounts and accept funds. Once regulation is in place, the banks understand that they're no longer at risk of violating laws because they know what the laws are. So banking, in particular is a real issue around the world. >> What's the overseas outlook, obviously age is booming, there's been some, you know here sound here and there, shut it down, build it out, other countries are saying we're going to be the first global Wall Street, clearing out crypto, the Fiat, moving it around. This is all up in the air. Who's leading and who's not leading? >> Right now, obviously Malta's leading because of the first EU country with a full set of regulations that they've proposed. Singapore is looking to do this. South Korea is starting to now turn. They were looking to shut down exchanges and they're actually now starting to realize that they're just sending business and technology overseas. >> What's your story these days, what are you working on? What did you do last week? Did you fly to South Korea, I mean you traveling a lot? What kind of, what are you working on? What kind of things? Give me a little taste of how your life goes every day? What are some of the challenges, opportunities you're working on? >> Well, one of the challenges is trying to filter all of the business that is actually coming to us with Strategic Coin and with Decentralized Ventures. We can handle the business because we have a lot of the answers that people are looking for. >> So you need to hire people? >> We are continuing to hire people. What's important with Strategic Coin is that we're hiring Wall Street people. We're hiring veterans in the industry. Many of these companies out there now are 25 year old kids, mom and pops, who really don't even understand what they're looking at. >> You know, baseball, the old expression about a five tool player, what's the equivalent, crypto young gun that you look for? What are the attributes that you look for in a candidate that really can handle the pressure. I mean it's not pressure, it's really just more of the pace. You need smarts, you got to have energy, got to have integrity but also you got to push the envelope. >> They have to work about 35 hours a day. They have to have the capacity to really continue to learn very very quickly to understand, to take direction. And to really understand what this business looks like and where it's going. >> And good money making opportunities as well. >> There are tremendous money making opportunities as there are in any new industry, in any new technology. >> Before we came on camera, we were talking about your background, some of the things you've done entrepreneurially and also growth. What's your assessment of the current wave we're in? Compared, you seen many waves, of all the waves, compare and contrast order of magnitude, this wave versus other waves. >> What's interesting about this wave is there have been paradigm changes in industry, technology, and they've taken generations. So, an understanding of how that change happens, generally is from text books, you had the industrial revolution and first software revolution in these generations for people my age, or people in their 40's. You've seen the software revolution then you've seen the internet revolution and now you're seeing this, so you actually have experience in seeing how these play out. And that's part of the reason that this technology is moving so quickly. I know how it's going to go, I've seen how it's going because I was involved in the internet. >> Software economics, you've seen software economics before, you know what it looks like. >> I've seen software and I've seen internet. And with blockchain, we know blockchain is here, and we don't know what use it's going to be, we know a lot of these companies are going to fall by the wayside. We know a lot of these companies set up a mom and pop will disappear and we know a lot of these ICOs will be acquired by bigger ICOs who have more experience. >> Well you know, just to add two things to that list of awesome commentary is add in open source software and cloud computing and you got the perfect storm. On top of what you just said, that is the magic. Alright, so I got to ask you for the young people out there, what's your advise, or if you could talk to your 22 year old self right now, what would you say to yourself, walking into this new landscape that's exploding with opportunity, change in all theaters? >> That's a really good question. I would say to try and find mentors, learn from industry veterans, as opposed to setting up your own shop, setting up your own ICO, thinking you're going to raise 50 million dollars and you're going to conquer the world by the time you're 25. >> Allan, thanks for coming on to share. I know you had a big party, we're having a great time here. Thanks for taking a minute out of the networking and schmoozing and to come in and speak with us on theCUBE here in New York City. >> Thank you. >> Alright, I'm John Furrier, we're here at Blockchain Week, New York, of course theCUBE's continuing coverage. Go to siliconangle.com, thecube.net for all the videos. We'll be at Consensus 2018 all week. More coverage on Silicon Angle and thecube.net. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From New York, it's The Cube! Covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Hello, and I'm John Furrier with The Cube. We're back here on the ground for coverage of Consensus 2018, part of Blockchain Week New York, and we've got some amazing action going on here. We got Omar Bham, who's with Crypt0, C-R-Y-P-zero. Also got a great podcast. Great to see you. Crypt0 News, you're doing a lot of great social. Love the hat, love the swag. >> Thank you so much. >> Lookin' good. >> Thank you so much. Yeah, this is a swag actually, a follower of mine actually sent me, so I get these random boxes of just shirts, but I love 'em because my entire closet is crypto shirts, and now Goodwill, because I donate all these crypto shirts. (laughs) >> That's awesome. >> Yeah, thanks. >> Well, great to have you on. >> A pleasure. >> You're a celebrity, media celebrity, but you're really an example of a rising new kind of stakeholder in the ecosystem and the community. You're producing content. You're producing with the community. It's a co-development model. You're building a network. >> Yeah, it's... >> Not audience, they're already there, but you've got a network. >> Yeah, it's that thing where you want to find that niche. >> You know? >> John: Yeah. >> And it's just we've been blessed, some of us, to find this space pretty early on and develop that presence before others perhaps could. It's just a blessing. >> So what's your take on all this place? I got to ask you, what's your thoughts? Massive crowd. What's the analysis? >> You know, I was here last year, and we were expecting, I think it was 2750 last year, this year 4000. Turns out to be 8000 people, and a big trending Twitter post today was do you think that you're getting work done? This is my Amin Gunsir. He's one of the big blockchain, he looks at the code very deeply in different blockchains. And so he said, do you feel like you're getting work done with that many people, or do you feel like you're not? And more people were actually getting work done. I think it was, like, 62% to 38%, the vote. (John chuckles) So even with the amount of people here, people are close, tight, and still getting work, you know, (mumbles). >> Well, one other thing, and this brings up a good point. I mean, when you're face to face at a physical event, you have engagement on a whole nother level. It's not digital. Not digital face to face. >> Yeah. >> And I was down in the cafeteria for the little cafe. It's supposed to be public, open, for when you buy your lunch. >> Yeah. >> It was like a conference room. I couldn't sit down. People having meetings. There is so much business being done, relationships being built. So this community really is kind of getting work done. >> Yeah. >> And a lot of it's relationship-based. >> Sure. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it's a lot of it to do with old relationships blossoming into new relationships. It's that I trust somebody who I already trust. So a lot of these guys have been coming to conferences together for years. >> John: Right. >> And you get introduced to somebody, and then it just works that way. And that kind of a beautiful... >> John: Yeah. >> It's like a mesh network. It's not just coming here and trying to, you know, like, necessarily shill. It's like, oh, here's my friend who I trust. >> John: Yeah. >> We went to school together. And naturally automatically, maybe it's a human thing, we just connect to that person a little bit easier. >> Talk about the work you do. And you got a YouTube channel, you got a podcast, you do some Facebook. >> Yeah. >> What's the format of the show? What's your style? What are you looking for? What kind of content are you producing? Obviously it's very engaging, it's very popular. >> Yeah. >> What's your style? >> Well, originally my style was a belief that the economy was going to collapse, so I was a big investor in stocks, I was trading, and I was trying to save my 401(k). Believe it or not, this was a while back. And I was thinking, how do I grow my capital and preserve it? I was worried that we were going to have another collapse, like 2008 was the beginning of it. So I thought about the future, the singularity, and this one point where we look at Moore's law where computing prices get cut in half for chips every year and a half, was the original road map. Prices cut in half. And basically how do we connect that old world collapsing, perhaps, (John chuckles) into this new infrastructure? And cryptocurrency came at that point, where I had already had some bitcoin, and then Ethereum was coming out, and I realized Ethereum could very well provide that base protocol for the next internet of things, so... >> And the developer community uptake has been phenomenal for Ethereum. >> Yeah, it's incredible, yeah. >> So let's do a little show right now. Omar, what's going on? How's it going? (Omar laughs) What's the content like? What's the coolest thing you're seeing here? Share some stories from the show. What have you seen? >> Let me see. I did interviews with some huge people. So it's so cool just to run into, like, the creator of Lightcoin's right there giving out stickers for his cryptomagical friends. Creator of Monero talking about how he lost all his crypto in a boating accident to me yesterday. (John laughs) Talking to some big trader dudes. Hearing about some stuff I can't even talk about, like, because I promised, and we did a verbal NDA, and I honor those. But, I don't know, it's, everywhere you look, there's something to learn, and you'll be amazed. >> It's got everything into it. I mean, I love this wave, right, because one, technically it's some magical shit happening. >> Sure. >> And it's happening big time. Starting out is growing fast. Business side, radical disruption to business models. Community has been open source, kind of an extension to open source communities. So, and then you've got a glam factor, money. >> Um-hum. >> (laughs) Right, so, I mean, money, I mean... Well, what is it missing? >> You know, I had a friend actually tell me that he got kidnapped, he got kidnapped, tied up, and held at gunpoint for three hours for all his crypto, so he lost all his crypto. So mostly the people who are, like, way up there don't do all that flaunting and showy stuff. You look at the big developers aren't rolling up in the Lambos and Ferraris. Generally you want to be pretty humble and modest about what your earnings are. And so I think it's, maybe it's a sign of, like, that Floyd Mayweather phenomenon, let me show it off. >> John: Yeah. >> Yeah, let's flaunt it. But mostly, like, I think it's that, you know, when you work for somebody, you wear a suit. When you work for yourself, no offense. (laughs) >> Yeah. >> I think you look great. You go the jeans on. >> I'm not wearing a tie, so... >> Exactly. And then when you work for yourself, you can show up in pajamas. >> Yeah. >> So... >> Well, I got to agree with you that I love the mojo, and I think one of the things that's notable in this industry is the pioneers, the guys who are making the money on the front end, they're developers, too. >> Um-hum. >> They're not just, you know, guys rolling the financial Wall Street kind of thing. They're making money and they're paying it forward, right? There's a huge pay it forward culture here. >> Yes, absolutely. >> And I think that is, I think, the differentiator that no one sees, is that that ethos is self-governing. >> Um-hum. >> Yeah, I think there'll be a mainstream adoption pretty quickly. >> Um-hum. >> But still right now it's tight-knit. >> Um-hum. >> It's very cool, and it's a pay it forward culture. >> This is mainstream to me, man. Two years, seeing this space just blossom. But we're getting there. I think it's the early adopter phase. >> John: Yeah. >> Maybe a little bit of early adopter, early majority in the United States. It depends where you are in the world. In LA, everyone has at least heard of bitcoin... >> John: Yeah. >> ...or has some bitcoin where I live. It wasn't the case before when I was living in Miami and (mumbles). >> Well, Omar, I'm a big fan of your work. We showed you the clip or two. >> Oh, I'm a fan of yours. >> We're going to get that to you. >> I love what you're doing. Thank you so much for sharing it to me. >> Yeah. >> I have to have you on my own show, for sure. >> Yeah, what's the URLs? Give a plug, what's the URLs, YouTube channel, coordinates, how do people get in touch with you? >> You can go to youtube.com slash C-R-Y-P-T-zero, so it's basically crypto, but without a zero. You can go to Twitter, so you can follow me on... >> Without an O. >> Yeah? >> It's crypto without an O, or with an O? >> Not the letter O, just the letter, the number zero. >> The number zero, okay. >> So C-R-Y-P-T-zero. Then you go to Crypt0's News. Same way, I'm always Crypt0 with a zero at the end instead of a letter. So Crypt0's News, Instagram, Twitter. We're on SteamIt, Crypt0 everywhere. >> Well, let's do some code development together. You're now a Cube alumni. >> Yeah. >> Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much for having me. We just met... >> Yeah, yeah. >> ...but I'm really excited to have met you. Super personality, man. >> Love the new producers. We love co-developing. We do it out in the open. We're in the open right now. We're on the floor here at Consensus 2018 bringing you all the coverage. Going to do 10 more interviews tomorrow. I did eight interviews last night. We interview anything that moves that's high-quality. Omar, thanks for coming on. It's The Cube. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. >> Thanks, John. >> Announcer: Live from the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's The Cube! Covering the MIT Chief Data Officer and the Information Quality Symposium. Now here's your host Stu Miniman.

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, welcome back. I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE. We're here in New York City for on the ground coverage for three days, wall-to-wall for Blockchain Week, New York's part of Consensus 2018. Sold out show, we're out in the open. Open (mumbles) to all the cons here. Next guest is Alex Mashinsky, Founder and CEO of Celsius. Seasoned entrepreneur, great debater on stage, great brawl recently at the Milk Institute. We'll talk about that. But more importantly, he's got a great project called Celsius, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> So, I love we just chatted before the camera turned on about some of the things you've done. You've gotten into a little bit of a great heated panel discussion. With someone who actually doesn't even hold cryptocurrency. He's saying it's all bullshit. >> Yes >> Right, so tell about the story. It was written up by Bloomberg, what was this famous brawl in the Milk Institute? >> Yeah, so the Milk Institute, they've been having conferences for the last 25 years and they're trying to combine the making money with doing good in the world, right? So, it's doing well and doing good at the same time. And that's what crypto is all about, right? And so, they had a panel about crypto with me and Nouriel Roubini, who's like Doctor Doom who predicted the last 15 recessions. There were only two, but they were predicted all 15 of them. So, I was telling him, even a broken clock is right twice a day, you know? He was going at me, he was going at the community, he was calling it a scam. And when you don't own any coin and you have not come to an event like this and seen 8,000 people celebrate this innovation, power to the people, then what are you talking about? So, I was there to really defend the community. It wasn't about me or him. >> Yeah, you did a good job. Well, thank you for doing that. Also, you're on a great project. I've been talking about a lot of other things I want to get to in the industry that you have a view and opinion on I would like to get. But your project Celsius. Take a minute to explain that, because I think this highlights really what's going on. I chatted earlier today about token economics. This is a new way, a new infrastructure, a new capability, a new mechanism that's really becoming powerful, of a network effect. >> Yes. >> So, the old world was DNS. 30 years-old stack on ecommerce, search engines, they're not accurate for network effects, a new dynamic, new data source is happening and it's creating new value, new data. >> Yes. >> Talk about Celsius the project and your value proposition. >> Right, so Celsius Network is basically trying to create an algorithmic cloud-based solution that does everything in your best interest. So, you have to think of it as a basket of financial services that do simple things like give you a loan or allow you to earn interest, give you access to a lot of great financial products, insurance and other things, that altogether do everything in your best interest. And what we're doing is we're enabling 100 million new people to come into the cryptocommunity and enabling them to benefit from all these things both for the increase in the value of the coins but also allowing their money to earn money for them. And today, if you think about banks, right? They take your money, right? You make a deposit, they take your money, they'll lend it to me on my credit card, they charge me 25%, they give you 1%. So, they take all that margin that you talked about. They squeeze all of that and keep it to themselves. >> And they're representing two people. It's like a realtor, who do you represent, the buyer or the seller? >> They're a toll collector in the middle, exactly. They're not adding any value. >> So, the new shift is on user value-- >> Exactly. >> And you see real-world examples of this. The whole Facebook debacle, who owns your data, and Mark Zuckerberg was testifying in front of the Senate in Congress, saying, "No, we don't sell your data." But they license the data and they use it. >> They extract all the value from it. >> They don't actually sell the data, true. But they license the shit out of it, to target you. >> They squeeze every last penny out of it. >> This is now obvious to people. >> Yes. >> That problem. >> Yes. >> Talk about the cryptobenefits, where is this shift happening, users, the power to the people, I get the phrase, but where is it happening? The token level-- >> So for example, Yeah, let's take an example, so most of the people here on this floor, they take their coins, they put them in exchanges, they celebrate the fact that the coin went up 50, 100% or whatever, but they don't realize that they leaving a lot of money on the table, because these exchanges do shorting, front-running, all kind of other stuff that should be illegal, but they do it, so they announce these amazing earnings, Binance announced amazing earnings and a lot of that earnings comes from the money that should be given back to you and me. So, if you think about the credit card company giving you two percent back, this is kind of the same thing. We are basically taking all of that earnings and giving it back to the coin-holders and we're saying, "Don't keep your money on exchanges, keep your money in a wallet that represents your best interest." It extracts all that value and gives it back to you. >> And so, what's your value proposition? You know what, you should say, "Use our wallet, use our system." >> Right. >> And then you represent their currency? >> So, we huddle together, we create a giant pool of BTC, a giant pool of ETH, or other coins, and we lend against that. So, we can do loans to the community, we charge nine percent for asset-backed loans, basically, so you need a loan against your crypto. This way you don't have to pay taxes, you can defer your tax, you can get liquidity without triggering all the tax that today you have to-- or you can just earn interest. So, without selling the coins, you can basically generate five to nine percent income that's continuous on top of that appreciation, you still get all the appreciation of the coin, but you're also generating income. >> So, you can bring contextual services around the crypto-holder interest. >> Yeah, so we find people willing to pay that. For example, other crypto-holders who want a loan, and they pay us nine percent, we give five percent to the community. Hedge funds who short BTC or ETH, they pay us ten or 15%, we give most of it back to the community. But the beauty is that the coin-holder doesn't have to do anything. They don't have to move from this account to that account. They don't do transactions. All they have to do is decide if Celsius Network is doing everything in their best interest or not. And the point is is that the next 100 million people that are going to join crypto, they're not speculators or anarchists or libertarians like most of the people here on the floor. They're people who kind of look at all this, saying, "It's too complicated, I don't know what to do, I'm not going to get in at the right time, I'm not going to get out at the right time." They don't have anyone they can trust. >> So, I'm going to be able to ask the Average Joe six-pack question, "Hey that's all fine, I love what you're doing. Come on, sign me up. But wait a minute. If you put all this crypto in one spot, the frickin' hackers are going to get it. >> Right. >> Because, how do you protect me against-- I heard, see, Mt. Gox was in the-- and all this stuff's going on, I'm worried that it's going to get hacked. Even wherever I put it." >> Exactly. And then Nouriel basically asked me the same question. So, in 10 years since BitCoin was created, there hasn't been a single instance of anyone cracking the blockchain itself. All the theft, everything that happened was because we gave somebody our private key and we entrusted them with it, and they screwed up. Mt. Gox, it basically broke into the exchange and so on. So, we keep everything in cold storage. And it's not ours, we have a custodian that is a giant company that is willing to accept all that, keep it in cold storage and we lend against it. We lend against the pull. >> So the private key's going in cold storage? >> Everything is staying in cold storage, which is the safest way to keep your crypto. It's much safer than keeping it on an exchange or keeping it in a different place. >> And it's all through--it's encryption, it's never safe to--a private key's a private key. Right, I mean, we've seen this before. >> Exactly. >> It's not rocket science. >> But even if you keep it in your home, in your safe, that's not as safe as putting it in a facility that is resistant to nuclear attack and has four layers of security and no human can get into the last room. It's a physical connection. >> I've heard this problem, just estate planning, someone dies, where's his cryptokey? >> Exactly. >> Unlocking, say 30 to 100 million dollars' worth of crypto. >> Exactly. >> It's not obvious. Well, the guy was smart, he put it in lock boxes all around the country. Wait a minute, no one knows where they are. >> But as a custodian, if you show us that you are the ultimate heir and you have the legal representation, then we can handle it, right? We can transfer that. But really, you're protecting it against a hacker coming in and stealing it from you. All the legal ramifications still apply. >> So, let's talk about the industry. What do you like about the industry right now, and what do you think that needs more work on, faster, or behavior-wise, what's your general temperature-taking of the current community? A lot of back-end work being done. Some complaints I heard about the demos, where some people say the front end was pretty sucky. >> Yes. >> But I think that's because a lot of back end work's being done. >> Well, this reminds me of 95 through 2000, I wrote some of the original Void protocols and everybody told me it's not going to work, the Internet is too slow, you can't scale, it's not safe. >> Yeah. >> I hear the same arguments again and again. >> Exactly. >> Today a billion people use Void every day and they don't even know who created it or how it works. I go in a room, I do speeches, right? And I ask, "Who here knows how Void works?" Not a single hand goes up. So, we need to get to the point where blockchain and crypto works the same way, no one needs to understand how it works, they just need to use it and trust it. So, the biggest thing I think holding us up right now is actually not technical. Because there's over 130 different blockchains. And some of them solves the scalability issues and security issues. The problem is is that we kind of have the early adopter phase, but we cannot leapfrog into the mass adoption phase. Because we're still at the early phase of operation. >> Exactly, is this just evolution or is it something specific? >> Well, the applications that we have today are not things that most of the people on the planet can use. That's what I'm saying, like for example, lending and borrowing is much more attractive than trading coins with each other. >> Yeah, it's like the Web, and Web 1.0, I mean-- >> Exactly. >> Search was the first application, and then everyone went to there, check their stock quotes. >> Looking at travel-- >> Travel, buy your car-- >> Exactly. >> Basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs kind of things. >> Yes. >> So, but that was interesting, because it was a whole new way. And by the way, same arguments I heard in the Web. "It's so slow. A mini-computer's so much faster than this AOL thing at 9600 bot modem." But the apples weren't being compared to other apples. It was replacing direct mail where I used to put stamps on envelopes and mail things. >> That's right, look. The bank gives you one percent. We pay five percent. So, that is a very attractive reason to switch from the bank to Celsius. Also, most people don't realize that the power the bank has is because we make all the deposits there. We stop depositing money there, they will have to pay us five percent, because as the money leaves them, they will have to raise the rates, they're going to have to attract you with more interest. So, it's a win-win, the community wins on the crypto side, and we're forcing the banks to do the right thing. >> Alright, I want to get your opinion, Alex, on ICOs. Did you guys do an ICO? How much did you raise? And what's your general take of the ICO market? I mean, certainly, blockchain, I've said this before, takes inefficiencies and makes them highly efficient, and we know the capital markets are very inefficient, so it's a bubble, okay. I have a choice. Tokens or VC, it's a no-brainer, go tokens. >> So look, I've had coins since 2013, I've invested in over 30 ICOs myself, and then when I couldn't find what Celsius does, I decided to start a new company, this is my eighth company as a founder. And so, I raised a billion dollars on the VC side, I know how that world works, had plenty of exits, and here we went to the community, we excluded all the VCs, we did not take money from a single venture guy because this is all about building the community. So, we just closed our round, about a month ago, we raised $15 million. We had 15,000 people sign up, 95% men. And it just drove me crazy, because half of our company's women, I thought that at least half of the people would be female. And I realized how big the problem is that we do not-- I mean, if you look at the floor here, we do not include the stronger sex. So, she's female, exactly. >> I'm promoting it here. >> I agree, I'm a big supporter too, so, I think when you think about it, if we want to be inclusive and we want this revolution to take hold, we have to solve these problems. What is the killer app, where are the female participants, how do we make it global, how do we make it inclusive, and how do we make the user interface and everything else so simple that you don't have to understand anything to use it every day. >> And what's your vision on how the ICOs are going to trend? >> Right. >> More stability, obviously. It'll level out, the bubble will-- I don't think it'll be a massive pop, I think it's going to be a small squeeze, so I think there's enough community involvement that self-governance will kick, in my opinion, but what's your take on the ICO? >> So, we definitely, this is like a Cambrian explosion. So, we are throwing money at everything. So, we're throwing money at good projects, bad projects, it's like a spray-and-pray mentality of the old days in 95 to 2000, we've seen that before. But from this some great companies are going to be born and I think the winners here are going to be bigger than Google, bigger than Apple, because the market is bigger. Money is the biggest market in the world, right? There's nothing bigger than all the money in the world, by definition. So, it's bigger than advertising, it's bigger than the social networks and it's bigger than Apple and whatever they're making. So, I believe that out of these companies, there are several thousand companies here, 8,000 participants, there were 4,000 ICOs that already took place or that are coming to be and out of that you're going to have your giant winners. And obviously Celsius is hoping to be one of them, but it's whoever builds the biggest community is the one that's going to win. And for us, it's all about giving back everything to the community. >> Your mission is awesome, I love your mission, and I love your expertise, love your experience. I think the community really is great to have you being a champion, being a mentor, I know you're doing a lot of paying it forward, great job. What's your view for the young entrepreneur out there, or someone who's got a growing opportunity that says, "Hey, you know what? I'm actually tailor-made for decentralization, I have a network community, network effect, I have all these great things going on, I want to scale." >> That's a great question because-- >> What's the playbook? >> A lot of people come to me and say, Oh, I'm too late to the game." No one is too late to the game. The experts have a six month experience. So, you talk to most of the people here, this is the first event, this is the first show. So, what I say to a lot of entrepreneurs is that if you pick the right vertical, you can very quickly become the best in the world at it. And I think the first phase of evolution here in the blockchain is all about financial products and financial solutions. I wouldn't go after healthcare, I wouldn't go after-- so like, insurance, or solving financial problems that currently have giant toll collectors who collect all the value, like the banks, or like the financial service providers, the insurance and so on. So, if you can solve those areas, you can scale very quickly, because Interen already has six or seven billion people on it, so now you can just bring them all in and haggle on their behalf in the cryptocommunity. >> I feel like I should lie down on the couch and ask Dr. Alex for some more advice. So, I'm actually going to ask you some specific questions. >> No couch here, man! There's no off switch here. >> I'll pass out, so much action going on. I mean, the vibe here is amazing. So, theCUBE, we're doing an open token model, got a great community, we want to grow and be number one at digital media, covering events with a network effect, video and media. We see token as a great opportunity. What's your advice? You're on our advisory team, what do you tell us to do? >> So, the curation is excellent, I think you guys do a great job at pulling the content. And what's missing in this community is really an automated process that kind of asks the community, "What do you guys believe in?" It's very hard for most people here to figure out which ones of these thousands of projects are trending right now, for example. And we can all vote on our app, for example. If you could create an app that allowed all of us to vote during the show, on what's trending and you had those guys being interviewed instead of me, you would have the killer apps. All of us know what they are and are not, but we should vote on it. >> So, use collective intelligence of the data-- >> Yes. >> And make a content operating system-- >> Exactly, use your metadata that you're already producing to do real-time input and bring those guys here, interview them and ask them about why their projects are hot. Celsius, people ask me all the time, "How do I get involved? How do I get involved? I saw you on Rubena, I saw you on this show." And so, we manage to create a lot of buzz around us and there are a few other projects like that, the community needs to get around the good projects and support them, because when we spend a lot of money on bad projects, we're not giving enough support to the good projects. >> You got to close loop that data, make it a community brand. That's what you're doing, that's what we're trying to do here, covering the events. So, we're going to build a content operating system. >> There we go! >> Run-time assembly, whatever the votes-- >> Let everybody vote in real-time, yes. >> Give me 50 times I see the hashtag-- >> Right, and the size of the name grows based on the adoption. >> You would have to have, like, clips instantly available, you would have to have all the metadata-- >> It's all real-time. >> You'd have to have all that stuff available. >> And the community will post it for you, you just do the final interviews, just bring these guys and say, "Okay, you won number one, number two, number three, and you give them the awards. >> Awesome, I love this conversation, even though we're kind of riffing, having fun. But the point of it is-- >> It's a new start-up let's do an ICO. >> Let's do an ICO, we can (mumbles) with that. No, but this is really fundamental for the entrepreneurs at the tech culture, we're talking about basically dev ops. >> Yes. >> Using cloud computing, we can have unlimited-- >> You can spin it up in a few days. >> You can apply automation, AI, that's your point, trust the software. >> Yes. If you're doing it for the community, they will recognize it and adopt you very quickly. >> They'll apply a human curation layer on top of it. >> With full transparency, you've got to show that you're doing everything for the community, like what we're trying to do, right? We're showing, when we tell you you're going to earn 5.1%, you can dig in and see who's getting paid and why they're getting this much money, what's the allocation, every token that's being given to anyone, all the math behind it is fully transparent, right? >> Final question-- >> Try to ask the bank for that. See what they're saying. >> Transparency? Go find another bank. Final question, your summary of the show. What's your take, was it good? Good vibes? What was the content agenda? What was the most exciting thing you saw, what's your summary of Consensus 2018? >> So, Consensus, when they organized it, they were bragging that 4,000 people are going to show up, and that's why they moved to the Hilton from the Marriott. And then 8,000 people show up, the lines were outside the whole hotel, so it proves that the demand is there. Everybody wants to come and learn about it, they want to know why this is so hot, why this revolution is here to stay, so what I'm taking out of the show is that this innovation is just in its infancy and there's a lot of people who are still yet to join. And the best ideas, the winners, have not yet been decided. So, watch out for all those new ideas that we haven't heard about yet. >> And it's accelerated from other trends. >> Yes, it definitely accelerated. >> Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius, former entrepreneur of multiple startups. See, he knows the old way, he sees the new way, he's been a successful entrepreneur, seasoned community member. Thanks for coming on, we appreciate it. >> Thanks for having us. I appreciate it. >> I'm John Furrier here with theCUBE on the ground out in the open, in the community, CUBE coverage here, Blockchain Week 2018 New York. Thanks for watching. (electronic-based music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCube covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. (uptempo techno music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCube. We're here in New York City for Blockchain Week New York as well as Consensus 2018. You're watching theCube. We've got two great guests here. Cube alumni Al Burgio has been on many times. Hot start ups, Digitalbits. He's got a great project, and it's really getting a lot of traction. Been there before, fellow entrepreneur. He's got big news and he's with Jaime Leverton, general manager, VP in Canada and APAC for Cogeco Peer 1. Saw the press release, congratulations Al. >> Thank you, thank you John. >> Jaime, welcome to New York. >> Thank you very much. >> So Al, talk about the deal that you did with these guys. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> News went out so what's significant about it? >> I think it's very significant to the Blockchain space. In a lot of respect it's very powerful technology that a lot of people speak of when it comes to distributed ledger technology. But in some respects with regards to let's say certain industry it's still just starting to work its way into the space. We basically are trying to drive innovation at multiple levels, and we can achieve that with the support of great partners like Cogeco Peer 1. I'll let Jaime explain what they do, but from a partnership perspective. You can think of what we've created at Digitalbits really is this open source technology that we want many people to consume, not just consumers but the enterprises, SaaS companies and so forth. So a lot of those companies live in Cogeco data centers worldwide. And so they're a natural partner for us. They are a company we always see in the forefront of innovation, and they're doing it with Blockchain. So really excited to have them as a partner. >> Jaime, I want you to take a minute to explain what you guys do, and how that fits into Blockchain. >> I think it fits in incredibly well. So for those of you not familiar with Cogeco Peer 1. We own and operate a global network, so we have our own connectivity, as well as 16 data centers globally. We have our own private cloud. We partner with the hyperscale public clouds. We have managed hosting, co-location. We work with 6500 enterprise customers around the world who live in our data centers or on our networks. And we really believe that Blockchain is the future, and there is no better place for it to live than an infrastructure like ours. >> Cloud computing was always poo-poo. Oh cloud computing, no one will ever give up their data centers and hosting and cloud came together. But that drove a lot of growth. The same thing is happening now with these networks. You're seeing Blockchain needs to run on something. Just like the old argument was cloud is going to kill the server business. Well servers still need to be bought. So blockchain needs to run somewhere. >> Absolutely. >> On servers. >> Yeah. >> So some decentralized servers but some big ones too. >> Right. >> Is that how you see it? Is it actually what I'm seeing happening out here? >> That is exactly how we see it, and I feel very blessed for the infrastructure that we built. The reputation that we have in this industry which is literally perfectly poised to support web 3.0 and everything that is coming. Starting with partnerships like this. >> Al, I want to get your thoughts about. You know the networking business. You've done a couple start ups in the area and trends. You've done all that stuff. You guys just did some news out there where they're spinning up. Something we saw what happen with Stellar. >> Yeah. >> Okay, can you explain this nuance point 'cause it's an inside baseball geeky thing. >> Yeah. >> But it's really significant for the industry. >> Well at the end of the day, everyone is talking about enterprise adoption, enterprise adoption. But as we've just discussed. The enterprise today, the hardware is not their possession anymore. And so, they don't need to be the only organization to be able to support what the enterprise wants us to do or even a SaaS company. Many, in fact the majority SaaS companies don't manage their own hardware either. And they're relying on cog dividers to provide that compute storage and so forth. So there needs to be that proficiency. And almost like a standard, and not necessarily one. Let's say Linux is a standard. Windows is, there's different flavors of Linux. There's database technologies and so on. But whichever they're choosing to use. It needs to be supported at every layer of that digital supply chain. And we are basically, we see that. >> John: Yeah. >> And we're working with partners at every level there. The ones that we know get it. Really understand compute and network. 'Cause it's very important. >> We're in the hallway here. We're in the middle of the floor here at Consensus. So we've been hearing a lot of hallway chatter. And I always like to eavesdrop, being the journalist reporter guy that I try to be, as you know. But I hear a lot of things. One thing I heard all week consistently is that I'm going to spin up some Blockchain nodes. So it reminds me of the old days of spinning up clusters. Like storage clusters. So this notion of spinning up a Blockchain cluster I've heard or I've heard provisioning clusters or what does that mean? To spin up a Blockchain. Is it that trend that we're seeing? >> If it is a primitive Blockchain. Bitcoin for example, it's the grandfather of all let's say blockchains that we're familiar with or this era is familiar with. It does a few things. Processes transactions, anybody could spin up one and what have you, but if you want to take something and make it enterprise great. There needs to be APIs. You need to be able to know how to integrate. Consume those APIs and so forth. And so not every company is going to know how to do this. There's a gap. There's a shortage of Blockchain engineers. There's a shortage of engineers period that understand this stuff. So it has to be supported. It has to be supported. There needs to be companies that can support the enterprise to consume those. So spinning up is easy for an engineer that's efficient in Blockchain to say. Yeah, we're spinning up nodes. We're going to take our work really hard. Purchase hardware, deploy it, ship it many, many, many months. Maybe they'll use Amazon if that's well suited for them or some other platform provider like Cogeco or what have you. But the challenge is what's everyone else going to do? If they're not proficient at technology, they need partners that get it. And that's where managed cloud comes in, and that's where we're very focused. >> So what does this mean for Digitalbits and your project? I'm just trying to squint through it. It's nerdy, geeky stuff but I like it. It's networking but now you got a project called Digitalbits. You got some horsepower with the Cogeco deal, so you spin up Blockchain I can imagine. What does it mean for the Digitalbits project and the impact of what you're trying to do? >> It's an open source project, and from our perspective, we want to see many, many enterprises, and many, many SaaS and other organizations use this technology. It's not going to just happen. You don't just build it and they will come. So you need strategic partners that see the value in it. Whether directly or through lines of business that they have. And co-evangelizing this technology and supporting the enterprise and their consumption. And so again, partners like Cogeco really help us create that new standard of technology that they can consume and it becomes mainstream this way. >> Jaime, what's your take on this? Obviously you did a deal with these guys. What was the benefit of you doing it? Also your customers moving in the direction of having a decentralized application set of infrastructure to provide power the next generation. Why this deal? Why these guys? >> I think when we look at who we partner with and build out our ecosystem. It's really about the relationship with the individuals behind it. We're very much about trust. We've worked with Al before. We believe in his vision. We know that he goes at projects with passion and integrity. And ultimately the reason we did this with Digitalbits is because we believe in what Al's doing, and his track record. >> Well he knows technology. He's also been a successful entrepreneur. >> And he understands networks, sorry to jump in, but really understanding that the power of the cloud is only as good as the power of the network. And the closer you can bring those things together that's where the magic really happens, and no one understands that better than Al. And when you look to build that Blockchain going forward, that's what you need. That's the power that you have to be able to harness, and we don't have to educate him. Jaime, you've been doing a lot of innovative things. We were just talking before we came on camera. You got an innovation award last night in Ottawa. You couldn't make it down for the big party we had last night. >> I'm sorry I missed that party. >> With Jeff Besos' brother. It's really, really cool. What are you doing at innovative that you can share. I love what you're doing. It's great work. What are some of the innovation things that you're proud of that you can take a moment to share? >> We've partnered a lot with the incubators in Canada. So really working with start ups, next generations technology, supporting the people that we think are going to build the future. So that's where we put all of our attention as oppose to on a traditional large enterprise focus. Our focus is NextGen emerging incubators. We've had a lot of success in the gaming industry with artificial intelligence, which is really booming in Canada. Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto are creating incredible new companies focused on AI. A lot of them are partnered with us in our data centers and using our technologies. So really I just see us continuing to push further and further as the industry moves. We want to be there moving with it. >> Are you going to be on the Canadian boat tonight I call it the Canadian--? >> Yes, I'm going to be on the Canadian boat tonight. >> The Do-rio yacht. >> That's right, yes. Hopefully the rain subsides, but yeah I'll be on the boat. >> Great, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Al, congratulations on the news. Big news from Digitalbits open source project. Gaining steam, really disrupting the old loyalty platforms as one of its used cases. Check it out at Digitalbits. Any URL you want to share Al for the project? Digitalbits.io. You're watching theCube. I'm John Furrier, your host here in New York all week for Blockchain Week. Thanks for watching. (uptempo techno music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's The Cube! Covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Hello, everyone, welcome back. I'm John Furrier with The Cube. I'm your host here in New York City for Blockchain Week, Consensus 2018, as well. We're here with Colin Pape, founder of Presearch.org. It's got a search engine trying to replace Google, decentralized Google, decentralized search. Love this project, very ambitious. Colin, thanks for joining me. >> Great, thanks for having us, John. >> So I love the ambition of the project. Obviously love the search engine. But I've been ranting on The Cube. Everyone who knows me knows what I've been saying. Search is broken. >> Yeah. >> We still, Google's the only open search. At least they use, they're open. >> Facebook's closed. >> Yeah. >> Amazon's closed. >> Yeah. >> LinkedIn, Twitter, they're all closed platforms. >> Right, right. >> Plus the DNS needs to be modernized for the network effect. >> Right. >> It doesn't exist. >> Yes. >> So you can't actually have an effective search engine... >> ...in the new networks. >> That's right. >> The silos, yeah. >> There's no network search. You can't say, hey, what Colin said on The Cube, can you search that for me? Like, I like what he said, so give me some stuff. >> That's right. >> There's no keywords for that. >> Right, right. >> Search is dead, dying. >> Dying, yeah. >> You think, you agree? >> Yeah, there's been a lack of innovation. I mean, it's a service a lot of people don't recognize needs to be improved, but I think those who are really thinking about it from an innovative standpoint realize there's still a ton of upside, ton of opportunity, and some really original takes still to be had, so... >> What's your approach? In all seriousness, we love search, we love, we think it's got to change. You agree. Check, check. What's different? What do you, what's your approach? What's your strategy? How do you see it playing out? >> Sure, so we've got basically a short term and then a long term. So long term is actually building out a framework that different members of the community will be able to participate in. So teams of data scientists creating algorithms, feeding them into the system, getting traffic, testing if it's working, being able to share in the monetization, subject matter experts being able to assist with the curation of community content. And so that's kind of, you know, an actual search engine. Right now what we're doing is more of a search tool enabling different partners to come together to work against the search monopoly and to have their content discovered through the interfaces that they actually create with us providing an incentivization and a reward layer to get people to actually switch off of the Google search field. >> What I like about your idea, and I think why I like it so much is about the search, sites to search, 'cause I love search stories, is that open source has shown us a path. >> Yeah. >> Open source software has proven the model. >> That's right. >> Upstream projects worked by the community. >> Yeah. >> Downstream productization. You're essentially applying open source principles to solving the search problem by getting everyone in on the creation and then the ability to productize it on their own. >> That's right. >> Is that the way you're thinking about it? >> Yeah, very much. And that's really kind of what the framework will facilitate so that that reward and the sharing of the monetization, enabling people to have standards that they can build upon and have active personalization so people who are utilizing the engine will be able to specify, not just have everything kind of driven by their behavior, but what they want to see and who they actually want to support. >> So you saw our little video search engine. I gave you a demo of that. What'd you think? >> Amazing, amazing. That is really innovative, really exciting, and I'm hoping that that can be one of the options within Preserach to start. >> John: Yeah. >> And I think what you guys are doing with that is going to be phenomenal. >> Great. So how would we take that? So we have technology, you've got a collaborative mindset? >> Yes. >> Open door? >> Yes. >> Do I just go in and talk to you? Where do you live, Toronto? Where I'm living in Palo Alto? Is it a decentralized team? What's going on with your organization? How do you engage with people that want to work with you? >> Yeah, so we do have a decentralized team. We're kind of all over the world in various capacities. Main headquarters is in Toronto area, and then we have our tech team actually in Palo Alto, Rich Strenta, Greg Lindel, some guys that you probably know. >> Yup, I've interviewed them. Great guys. They know search. >> Definitely. So we're working with them on the technology side of things. But yeah, basically anybody can go to Presearch.org, sign up for an account, top right corner, there's a send feedback form. >> Did you raise any money, tokens money? >> We did, yeah, we did do a token sale last year, brought in 16 million. >> Sixteen. >> Yeah. >> Great, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Security or utility token? >> Yeah, it's a utility or a consumptive token. >> And you do that out of Toronto or the US? >> We did it out of Toronto, yeah. >> Okay, cool. And can I get tokens now, or... How does it work? >> So we ended our token sale. You can earn tokens if you just go onto Presearch.org and start searching. So we're paying basically up to eight tokens per day for people to run their searches through us, and we are working on a model where advertisers, basically people who have the need for the token will be able to come into the platform again and buy 'em. >> Got it, cool. Great, awesome. Colin, what else is new? What else are you working on? What's next? >> What's next? Yeah, I think there's a lot of innovation obviously coming out of the blockchain space. We want to basically just collaborate with any of these different projects that really, I think there's a mindset in blockchain. People that are actually a little bit altruistic, they're trying to build a truly better world. The kind of capital structure of a lot of these projects is really unique. It's not just about the exit, which is fantastic. More of a long-term mindset. And so we're just looking for, yeah, anybody who's got a project that we can partner up with, create a more compelling offering than some of the centralized services. >> And where can they find information? Website, URL? >> Yeah, Presearch.org, P-R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H dot org. >> Awesome. Colin, thanks for joining me. Search engines are being disrupted. Everything's disrupted. Crypto, blockchain, token economics changes the nature of the people involved and also the data that can be used. This is the phenomenon called token economics. We're covering it here, Blockchain Week. I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more coverage from New York City after this break. >> Aw- (sound cuts out) (musical sting)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live, from New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. (techno music) >> Hello and welcome back. this is the exclusive coverage from theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the co-host. We're here in New York City for special on the ground coverage. We go out where all the action is. It's happening here in New York City for Blockchain Week, New York, #BlockchainWeekNY Of course, Consensus 2018 and a variety of other events, happening all over the place. We got D-Central having a big boat event here, tons of events from Hollywood. We got New York money, we got Hollywood money, we got nerd money, it's money everywhere, and of course great deals are happening, and I'm here with two friends who have done a deal. Al Burgio is a CEO of DigitalBits co-founder, and Nithin who's the partner at Arcadia Crypto Ventures. You guys we've, you know, we're like family now, and you're hiding secrets from me. You did a deal. Al, what's going on here? Some news. >> Yeah, well first John, thanks for having us. We always love coming on the show, and really enjoy spending time with you and so forth. We, you know previous conversations that we've had, we were not out there fundraising. But really had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people Nithin and his firm being definitely one of them. And as a result of that, really building this, say, following, these relationships within the venture community, more specifically the crypto venture community. When we were ready to actually go out and do, let's say a first round, for us it happened very quickly, and it was a result of being able to leverage those relationships that we had. For me, it was kind of remarkable to see that support come and happen so quickly. Normally venture, it's just a process. Many many months. >> John: Long road. >> Then a month to close. >> John: Kiss all the frogs. >> Yeah, here it's like, you know, people can do due diligence on the fly, You have an opportunity with events like this. >> John: They're smart. >> They're smart, and and there's an opportunity to really foster these relationships in this really tight-knit community. And, you know, Nithin and his firm being obviously one of those. And so when we were ready to go out and do our first round, it happened quickly, and I'd like to think that in a lot of ways, it happened amongst friends. >> Well, you're being humble. We've been covering you, you've been on theCUBE earlier, when you just started the idea, so it's fun to watch you have this idea come to fruition, but you're in a, you're hitting a TAM a Total Available Market that's pretty large. And that's one of the secrets, to have a TAM. Aggressive bold move, we'll how it turns out for you, but you know, you got to have the moonshot, you're going after the loyalty market, which is completely run by the syndicate, what do you want to call it, the mafia of loyalty. >> Yeah, well, I would say that in some cases, those that are supporting us see that as really just one use case. Because we built this general-purpose blockchain, one of the use cases and one of the first use cases that were out there to support, happens to be the loyalty space. >> John: Big. And it's massive, highly fragmented but massive market, and we can solve a lot of liquidity issues with our technology. But then it goes beyond that. So it's a big market at the start, and then that can scale even greater from there. and I think that's part of what, I mean obviously, I'm not going to speak for Nithin. >> Nithin, let me weigh in here, pass the mic over. Nithin talk about the deal, why these guys? I know you met 'em, you like Al, and the feedback I've heard from other folks is he's a classic entrepreneur and that obviously, the entrepreneur gets the deal, but obviously you don't just give money 'cause you like someone. What about this deal is it that you guys like? You guys been there early, you got some great people on your team, what about this deal is it that you like? >> Sure, for us, Al met pretty much most of, almost all the criteria that we had, okay. That we had when we go, the thesis before we go fund someone. We don't get so many deals like that. Usually we get you know, they made 50% of the criteria, we might still put money because you can't get the 100%. So one thing, Al as a founder, he's experienced, he has done it multiple times before, he sold companies. Tech guy, which is very key for us. A tech project is very key. Okay, second thing, he's built the whole thing. It's not like he's raising the money to go and build it. He built it, now he's raising money to go for go to market strategies, which makes sense. He's shown it, and we tested it out. So like, we were completely blown away. He has a team behind 'im. He's built a team on every side, on the marketing side, on PR, events. And the idea, this is a general blockchain, but he's addressing a very specific issue. It is a real problem. Loyalty points, or rewards points, or gift points. Or whatever you call them. It is segmented, it's fragmented, and this is a chance. And there might be many people who are trying to solve this problem, but I think Al has the greatest possibility, or probability, of becoming the winner. >> You and I have talked on theCUBE before, both of you guys are CUBE alumni, I know you both, so I'll ask you, 'cause I'll just remind everyone, we've talked about token economics. One of the things that's coming up here at the Consensus 2018 event in New York, onstage certainly, and some fireworks in one of the sessions, is like if you're not decentralized, why the hell are you doing a decentralized model? So one of the criterias is, the fit for the business model, has to fit the notion of a decentralized world, with the ability of tokens becoming an integral part. What about this deal makes that happen? Obviously, fragmentation, is that still decentralized? So, how are you sorting through the nuances of saying, okay, is it decentralized the market for him, and this deal? Or does it fit? >> See no, decentralize is one thing okay, in here, more than decentralized, I would say there was the platform, so that all the companies can come in, use this common platform, release it, and as a user you're getting a chance to atomically swap it if you don't like something. Most of the reward points or loyalty points go waste. Maybe the companies want it to go waste, I don't know if that is. >> It's a natural burn at equilibrium going on anyway right? Perfect fit! >> So that is the only, that was the only doubt that we had. Would companies want this, because do they want their customers' loyalty points going waste rather than swapping it for something else? That was the only question that we had. Well, that's a question that will get answered in the market. But otherwise we hadn't seen something like this before. >> What's your take of the show so far? We saw each other in the hallway as we were getting set up for theCUBE, for two days of coverage, in New York, for Blockchain Week, New York, what's your take? Obviously pretty packed. >> Oh my god, it's so packed, and it's great, the show is going on. It is bringing a lot of money in, it's bringing all the investors in a new money, old money, traditional money, nerd money as you said. >> It smells like money! >> Everybody's coming in. See the beauty about those things coming in is, you're going to get a lot of people from other fields that are going to come into this field to solve problems. 'Cause earlier, if there is no money coming in, you're going to have very smart people, or very intelligent people stick with physics or whichever was their field. Now, they're going to look into the space because they're getting paid. See that brings more people who are intelligent, and who can solve problems. That is very key for me. >> Al, I want to ask you as an entrepreneur, one things you usually have to struggle with, as any entrepreneur, is navigating the 3-D chess you got to play, whether it's competitive strategy, market movement, certainly the market's moving and shifting very quickly, but you've got growth, big tailwind for you. What's your takeaway? Because now you have new things coming on. Every every day it seems like a new shoe is dropping. SEC's firing a warning on utility tokens, security tokens are still coming, are now coming online, but that looks very promising, and then ecosystems become super important. You guys just announced news this morning around the ecosystem. >> Yeah, tomorrow we have some. We had some news today, but we have more tomorrow. >> John: Well talk about the news. >> Yeah, so we have a multi-tiered go to market strategy. Obviously in the loyalty space, again I want to emphasize, it's just one use case, but it's a massive one. You have brands, the enterprise. And many of those those enterprises or brands may operate their loyalty program internally, in terms of like back offices systems, in some cases they're outsourcing the app to a SAS provider, some application provider, that's kind of hidden in the background. But let's just say like Hilton. I use Hilton, it's the location for the event, but Hilton, you have this user experience using this app, but maybe that technology, the SAS application that's powering that, is actually not Hilton technology. And so let's just say, there's 30 million people in the Hilton program and there may be 30 million of them on the Marriott, coexisting on some SAS application. And so that's another important category for us. SAS providers and so forth, supporting that industry. And then last but not least, today, whether enterprise or SAS company, many cases not touching their own hardware, right? They're using the cloud. >> So they're outsourcing the backend. >> Yeah, and so you have managed cloud providers. >> So what does it mean for the market? I don't understand, I'm not following you. >> Well, I guess what I'm saying is that there needs to be a common standard, across enterprise application provider, in global cloud community, cloud is the new hardware. >> True. So horizontally scaling loyalties as we were (mumbles). >> Exactly, so we have, we're basically securing partnerships on all three levels, to make sure that, if you want to use new technology, you want to ensure that it's widely supported, across a variety of partners you may want to work with if you're an enterprise. Whether, a software company, cloud company, and so forth. You want to be able to ensure that it can back up the truck. So we've basically signed partnerships at all of these tiers. You're going to see news in the morning. It's late here on a Monday evening. So tomorrow 9:00 a.m, major cloud company, one of the major cloud companies, and there's more to follow, making an announcement that they've joined our ecosystem partner program, and supporting this open source technology in a number of different ways. Which we're really excited about. >> You see ecosystem as a strategic move for you. >> Absolutely, this is, for us, this is, it's all about helping the consumer, but it's not about one consumer at a time for us. It's very much an enterprise play. It's one enterprise at a time. And with each enterprise we basically add to the ecosystem millions if not tens of millions of consumers instantly. >> Nithin I want to ask you a question, because what he just brought up is interesting to me as well. As a new thing, it's not new, but it's new to the crypto world, new to the analog world, that's not in the tech field. Tech business, we all know about global system integrators, we know about ecosystems, we know the value of developer programs, and community, all those things, check, check, check. But now those things are coming to new markets. People have never seen an ecosystem play before. So it's kind of, not new, it's new for some people, it's a competitive advantage opportunity. >> True, it is. See the whole thing is so new, that you can't even define it at this point. It's very hard to define. It's like, see, as an example I would say, none of us thought that when the iPhone came, there would be a 60 billion dollar taxi sharing economy that comes out of it, right? Same thing. Blockchain comes, we just don't know. And it's very hard to predict. >> New brands are going to emerge, I mean if you look at every major inflection point, I point to a couple that I think are relevant, TCP/IP was created, internetworking. >> Yep. >> That essentially went after proprietary networks, like IBM, Digital, Stacks, but it didn't replace, it wasn't a new functionality, it was interoperability. >> Yes. >> The web, HTTP, created a whole new functionality. >> Yep. >> Out of that emerged new brands. >> Yeah. >> So I think this wave's coming is a, new brands are going to emerge. >> Here, what's the brand, I don't know what's going to emerge. There it was interoperability. >> John: Well, new players. >> It's here, it's more, the collaboration. The collaboration is so huge, it's the scale is so huge, in the sense you can collaborate across the world. You're cutting those borders, there are no borders that can hold you. Even though interoperability happened in internet, There were the Googles, and the Facebook, that still had those borders. >> Well, don't put it, Cisco came out of that, 3Com, and those generations, but the hyper-scalers came out of the web. >> Yep. >> So I'm saying, well I'm saying, I want to get your reaction to, is I think that is such a small scale relative to blockchain and crypto because it's global, it's every industry, it's not just tech it's just like everything. So there's got to be new brands. Startups going to come out of the woodwork, that's my point. >> It's not yet time for the brands to come in. See that's the whole thing. So let's put it this way, the internet was there from 1978, if you really look at it, ARPANET or DARPA, those things were there. Email was there, but it was by 1997, or by the time we all came to know Google it was 2001. There is that gap between the brand forming, because it has to permeate first, more people have to use it, like what is the user-- >> Everything was was a bubble, but everything happened. I got food delivered to my house today, right? It happened, people were saying that's a crazy idea. >> It's now it's going on, right. So it's the timing and they know the time for it to permeate so here, how many people are using Bitcoin, and to do what? Most of them are just speculating right? There's very few real use case of remittance or speculative trading, that's what's happening. See that's what I said. The other use cases, it has to permeate. And that comes with more user adoption. And the user adoption initially is going to come from the speculation. >> I think it's a good sign, honestly I think it's a tell sign, because I remember when the web was new, I was in coming out right and growing in the industry. People were poo poo, oh that's just for kids. The big company's said, we wouldn't, who the hell is going to use the World Wide Web? Enter the search engines. >> I remember that like it was yesterday. I forget that I'm not a kid anymore, and I had the opportunity to be an entrepreneur during that era. One of the things I want to add is that, we had, I think what Nithin is really pointing out, it started with the infrastructure, you had network engineers and ISPs, you know, and email. But what was the enterprise application here? What was that consumer application, and that followed right? So it started infrastructure, then it evolved. Once we saw these applications, enterprises started to go crazy. Whether it was the Ubers of the world surfacing, or enterprises reinventing themselves, that's kind of the next wave. >> Well, this is why I think you're a good opportunity. 'Cause I remember licking stamps and sending out envelopes to get people to come to a seminar, held at a hotel. That's how you did it in the old world. The web replaced that with direct response. >> But there's some, there's something else-- >> The mainframe ran faster than the web. You're replacing an old loyalty, that's like licking the stamps. It's not about comparing what you're doing to something else. >> There's also something that helps, that we're not acknowledging, that really helped take internet from 1.0 to 2.0, it's Linux. You know I remember websites were insanely expensive. It was Windows servers, it was Sun Solaris, all of this crazy, expensive, server systems, that you needed to have, so the barrier of entry was extremely high. Then Linux came along, and you still needed to have your own data center space, and so still high, but the licensing fees kind of went away. >> And now with containers and Kubernetes-- >> Exactly. >> I made a bet I was going to get Kubernetes in a crypto show. >> Anybody from a bedroom could start a company, right? You could do it with your pajamas still on. >> John: Well orchestration's easier. >> Absolutely. So this has started, this really, revolution. Now you have blockchain and you start to introduce enterprise-grade blockchain technologies, it's the next wave, you know, it's not VoIP, it's value over IP. >> Okay, I'm going to ask both you guys a final question, to end this segment here at the block event. I know you guys want to get back, and I'm taking you anyway from the schmoozing and networking and the fun out there, deejay. Predictions, next year this time, what are we going to be? What's the we're going to look like? What's going to evolve? I mean we had a conversation with Richard, who partnered with you guys at Arcadia Crypto Partners, saying the trading things interesting, the liquidity has changed. What's your take? I want you guys both to take a minute to make a prediction. Next year, what's different, who's out, who's in, what's happening, is it growing? >> So I, you know, I would say this, surprisingly, CTOs, I love CTOs, but many CTOs, I would say that well above 50% of CTOs, still can't spell blockchain. Really, and what I mean by that, really understand the transformational power what this is, in terms of how this is really web 3.0. This is going to change so many industries, create so much value for consumers, help businesses and so forth, and we're going to cross that 50% mark. >> Next year. >> With CTOs-- >> 50% of what? Be clear on-- >> Basically, we're going, in terms of the net, that blockchain's going to capture, and really enterprises and not just enterprises, service providers and so forth-- >> 50% of the mind share or 50% of the projects? >> Yeah no, I'm talking it's, people aren't going to be saying, oh, blockchain, isn't that Bitcoin? They're going to really understand, and they're going to understand that impact. And over the course of the next 12 months, we're going to see that. And it starts, obviously in many cases, with the CIO, CTO of many companies. There are definitely a lot of CIOs and CTOs on the forefront of innovation that get it, but what I'm saying is that more than 50% don't. >> So you're saying-- They're very busy in doing what they're doing today, and it hasn't hit them yet. >> To recap, you're saying by next year, 50% of CTOs or CTO equivalents, will have a clear understanding of what blockchain is-- >> Absolutely. >> And what it can do. >> Absolutely. >> Nithin, your prediction, next year, this time, what's different, what's new, what's the prediction? >> So, one of the key things that I think is going to happen is there's going to be a lot more training, and knowledge that's going to spread out, so that a lot more people understand, what blockchain is and what bitcoin is. Even now, as Al said, he was telling about CTOs, if the CTOs are, that's the state, that they can't spell blockchain, imagine where the real common man is. You've got people like Jamie Dimon coming on TV and saying he doesn't like Bitcoin, but he likes blockchain. I'm like, what the heck is he saying? That he likes a database? >> He was selling it short 100% (chuckles) >> Yeah, he likes a database. And then you have Warren Buffett coming over there-- >> Rat poison. >> And then this is rat poison. And like my question is, does any of his funds buy gold? Do they buy gold? He was telling that this is only worth as much as the next buy buying at a higher price. >> What's Warren Buffett's best tech investment? >> I don't know, I think he bought Apple, he started buying Apple now, right? When it's reached a thousand bucks? Or it reached a trillion dollars or close to that, or 750 billion? >> The Apple buy was 2006. If you were there, then you were good. >> Yeah, but-- >> So, your prediction? >> Market wise I don't know, what's going to happen? I'm expecting this, the crypto, the utility token, or the crypto market, to be at least a six trillion dollar business. But it'll happen next year? Definitely not. But I've been proven wrong, like I was expecting it to happen by 2025, but then it went to 750 billion by December. Well, it's not too far. >> You did get the prediction right, in the Bahamas at POLYCON18, about the drop around the tax consequences of the-- >> Right. >> People slinging trades around, not knowing the tax consequences. >> Right, right. We don't know because, who knows? Because what is going on over there, is IRS is still saying it's a property. That's what the last (slurs) is. SEC is saying it is all equity, and the CFTC was saying it's commodity. So what tax do I pay? >> Okay, lightning round question, 'cause I want to, one more popped in my head. The global landscape, from an investor standpoint, the US, we know what's going on in the US, accredited, SEC is throwing, firing across, bullets across the bow of the boats, kind of holding people in line. What percentage of US big investors will be overseas by next year? >> Percentage of-- >> Having, meaning having deals being done, proxy deals being down outside the US, what percentage? >> It's still going to be low though. That is going to be low, because that, I don't think the US investor, means the large scale of those investors-- >> You don't think the big funds will co-locate outside the US? >> There will be some, but not enough. >> Put a number, a percentage. >> Percentage-wise I think it's still going to be less than 10%. >> Al, your prediction? >> In terms of investment? >> Investment, investors saying hey, I got money here, I want to put it out there. >> Outside of the United States? >> Share money, not move their whole fund, but do deals from a vehicle. >> Do deals outside. I think I agree with Nithin. >> Throwing darts at the board here. >> No, I'm going to clarify. There's definitely massive investment happening overseas. In some respects probably bigger than the United States. So that's not going away. If anything that's going to grow. But your question is, in terms of US entities, making abroad investments, overseas investments, versus just domestic? I think that trend doesn't necessarily change. You have the venture community, there are certain bigger venture funds that can have global operations 'cause at the end of the day, they need to have global operations, to be able to do that, and most venture funds aren't that massive, they don't have that infrastructure. So they're going to focus on their own backyard. So I don't necessarily think blockchain changes the venture mindset. It's just easier for them logistically to do due diligence on their own backyard and invest in those. >> Guys, always a pleasure. Great to see you. You guys are like friends with entourage here, great to get the update here at Blockchain Week. We get to Silicon Valley week, we'll connect up again. I'm John Furrier, here in New York, theCUBE's continuing coverage of crypto, decentralized applications, and blockchain of course, we're all over it. You'll see us all over, all of the web, all the shows. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's The Cube, covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone and welcome back, I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube. We're here on the ground, in the middle of all the action. Consensus 2018, I'm here with Andrew Prell, with Convergence. Cube alumni, we met in Puerto Rico, industry legend, veteran, been around, welcome back. >> Thank you, like to be here. >> So Convergence, you guys got a unique opportunity, we did a deep dive on YouTube, check Andrew Prell, Convergence, youtube.com/siliconangle, great video to watch from Puerto Rico. Quickly, one minute, explain what you guys do, and then we'll get into the new hot news. >> All right, so we're reimagining the whole video game space. We marry the consumer game industry to the out of home entertainment industry, into one operating layer, where all devices get to play against each other, in the same game space. Then we put our virtual currency on the Blockchain, to eliminate all the fraud and theft that happens when people try to convert their digital assets to actual cash. >> Okay, so what's the news real quick? Give us the update, what's going on, what's the update? >> Well see the update, we had initially named our token, back in September of 2014, while we're building everything out. We had named it Nano. Raiblocks, put it out on the Blockchain, just what a month ago, month and a half ago, as Nano, so we had to rename the token. So we announced, and we've already burnt them, put them on the Blockchain, they're in our wallets right now, on May the fourth, we announced our new token, as the Droid coin. So May the fourth be with you. (laughter) These are the Droids your looking for. So we have the Droid coin now in twenty different wallets ready to start deploying them as our white paper states. >> And you get the big momentum going on. Team updates, any new personnel, what's going on, what's the progress? >> Well the personnel actually, we just had a major event, called run for the unicorns, we had it in Louisville, Kentucky, derby week. And we took all the VIP's and press and that to the derby at the end of the week. It was a really great event. There's when we rolled out the coin, we had the team up on day two talking through all of it. It was really an awesome event then, we're now here at Consensus talking with Ledger. What they're doing right now really works well with our investment funds. 'Cause we did the, we talked last about the virtuous circle of a token based investment fund, and where we're breaking up ten funds allowing the VC's to have nine of them, and go up against the DOW on the Blockchain. Well the vault that the Ledger has, we're starting to walk through with them because we'll bring it to it's limits and it really seems like something awesome for, you know, just the whole Blockchain industry in general, in having that security at a industrial level or a institutional investor level. >> Andrew I would literally appreciate you coming back on. Real quick, what are you learning here at the show? What are doing, any business deals? Let's get the update on the ground here for you. >> On the ground here for me, we're actually have several major deals in the works that we're trying to close right now. If all goes well, by the end of this week, if not next, we will be done closing our funding rounds, period. And then from that point on, the only way you'll be able to get our tokens is to buy them from some of the startups that we're investing in, so. >> Great model. Check out our YouTube video with Andrew, deep dive, changing the gaming industry a whole nother level, really innovative solution and business model. And the tech underneath is all cutting edge. Andrew thanks for coming on The Cube again, giving us a quick update, I'm John Furrier here on the ground at Consensus 2018, in Manhattan at the Hilton Midtown for Blockchain week, New York City. >> But did we tell them where they can find our stuff? >> Go get, give the URL plug. >> Yeah, ico.silicanexus.com and fund.silicanexus.com that's where you can find all of our information on everything we're doing. >> All right, good luck with the progress, we'll be right back with more coverage after this break. >> Thank you.

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week, now here's John Furrier. (upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome back, this is theCUBE's coverage here in New York City in Manhattan at the Hilton Midtown for Consensus 2018 part of Blockchain Week New York. Our next guest here is Greg Landegger who's with Smith Parsons and Whittemore also known for Bit Digest, investor in this space since the beginning, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me John. >> So I've got to ask you, you've been an investor in a lot of coins and equity deals the space is now busting out, I mean first of all are you amazed by the amount of people here? >> I'm more than amazed, it's surreal. >> And you now have an interesting culture of new investors in the space coming in. What's it like for you working with the new investors? >> So we are a single family office that started originally in 2014 and the way I describe it is for the past few years I was the loser at the lunchroom, everyone was making fun of me and then last year all the cool jocks wanted me to sit at their table. (John laughing) A lot of our bankers, all the traditional firms, started calling up saying, "What are you doing? What is this bitcoin thing that you've been spending your time on?" >> So you had a nice little cover story there for a while but can't ignore the returns, at the end of the day. >> That's exactly right, last year was too good a year. >> Alright, so talk about some of the dynamics that you're seeing here at Blockchain Week. What are you seeing? What's the top story, what's the big news that you think is most important? >> I think the news right now is that there's real development going on, I mean we're all waiting, the holy grail to me is coming up with an institutional custodial project. Ledger Wallets announced something today so we're very excited about that and there's more and more effort being done in that area. And that's really what'll bring in more people into the market. >> Big controversy yesterday in the panel about you know Blockchain washing or you know seeing blockchain, pretty heated argument there, your thoughts? I mean obviously, it's early, embryonic, it's growing really fast, I've heard the same arguments when the web came along, too slow, you know it's not fully functional, but it was still early. Same here? What's your take on all this? >> As an investor we'd like it to be must faster, but realistically everything's surpassing any expectations. I mean nobody, if you talked to people early last year we would laugh about people predicting bitcoin at 2,500. >> So with the coins, talk about the investment you're making in coins. >> So we invest it. >> 'Cause that's different than the equity. >> It is, but we had a learning experience where one of our companies ICOed, we chose not to participate in it and it was the wrong decision, it really told us we need to be on the equity side as well the coin side. >> When was that? Early on or? >> Last year. >> Last year. >> The middle of last year. >> Okay, so what kind of coin deals are you doing? What's that profile? >> So we do a little bit of everything, I mean we've come up with a term rebel coins which are the top six coins, it's Ripple, Etherium, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, and Lightcoin, we like those. Then we invest in a total of about 20 coins. >> And the blockchain doesn't bother you in the performance and all that good stuff? >> No because we're making a bet on the future of different things >> Long game. >> It's a long game for us. >> What's your criteria for investment? You obviously get the, you're kind of a rebel in yourself, but your returns are there, I've seen this movie before in the web, but everything happened in the web and the returns were made you know really before the dot com bubble popped around 2001 timeframe. But there's still great returns, but the decisions were interesting then. How do you make your choices? How do you know what a good deal is? >> It's, I'd say 80% the team. Do they have the experience? Do they have an understanding of what they're doing? I mean I have a lot of great ideas on things I know nothing about and know I'll never succeed in 'em. So if we find a team that is experienced in an area, understands it, has a real go to market story, >> Interesting enough. >> that's exciting us. >> Okay so it's the classic criteria with a twist. How about running hard? You say really you got to run hard in this game it's a fast-moving, unlike the dot com bubble, this thing is highly accelerated, you got to, you can't be sittin' on you butt on this one. >> No agreed, you've got to be very aggressive in the area, but I think with the ICOs there's more money up front than people typically had and that's really what's changed the market a lot for us, is it's not a deal where the venture capitalists go out and give a million dollars to five companies, wait to see what happens, now those five companies are able to raise a lot more money, but it doesn't guarantee they'll succeed. >> Greg you've become kind of a great known investor, certainly the Bit Digest is well-known for great following there. I got to ask you the double coin question, pun intended. There's the good and the bad, name something that's really good about this industry right now, that people should know about that might not be familiar. And what are some of the things that you're concerned with? That you want to see kind of stopped, or bad behavior eradicated? Share your perspective on the double coin side of the life if you're in the crypto world. >> So let's, starting with the bad, I think it's education, people don't understand what's going on. We keep on hearing about Mt Gox, Silk Road, that's in the past, bitcoin, and I use bitcoin as a general term at times, but you know it is not a, I mean it's a transparent currency, it's safer than a lot of other things out there, people don't understand that and I blame the media a lot for just repeating the story, maybe it sells papers, but just people aren't explaining what's really going on in the market. >> That's the Ed model for you, if it leads, if it bleeds, it leads, and that's a story. No but I think people see the ICO things too happening right? They go, "Okay, there's been some scams on the ICO-side, so I've heard that story, you know I'm worried about that." >> I mean I've spent some time in the microcap space I dealt with a lot more questionable people in microcaps than I deal in crypto. >> You mean in the traditional market? >> Traditional, pink sheets area. >> So I think what's different now, I'd love to get your perspective on that I see at least, observation wise, is you have an open source ethos kind of community model where there's a lot of self-governing going on. Are you seeing the same thing? Is there people talking, it's a tight knit community, still small, growing, is there like a special self-governance thing going on in the finance world? I mean you know there's been talk on people kind of organizing, syndicating, pooling deals together, which is natural. But how about the self-governing aspect of it? >> You know I think, I mean people, the funds or the actual token offerings themselves, that's still something that needs to be addressed, people haven't done it in the same way a typical equity raise would be done and a lot of the different fund managers, let me back up by saying this is the most open market I've ever seen where everybody is willing to talk to each other to try and share ideas and make this grow and a lot of the fund managers are now looking at it saying, "We need some more governance." There're things going on today, such as in the ICO market, if you invested in equity, you never thought that a ICO offering may occur originally and is it a liquidity event and what happens? So we're trying to come up with some governance that hasn't existed but probably needs to be, but to be fair the companies that we've been lucky enough to invest with are supporting the ideas. >> Yeah so there's liquidity going on. It's a new kind of liquidity. What is that liquidity? Where is the liquidity? It's not just a Kickstarter campaign, there's actually liquidity going on. >> There is liquidity going on and I think we're trying to figure out how to now take equity that is established in the traditional sense, we talked about security tokens, but the companies that are actually have issued ICOs are trying to determine how to give a dividend or some form of liquidity to the shareholders and that's a new market. >> Greg does the domicile matter to you? Where they are located? I mean I've heard things like special purpose vehicles have always been kind of an analogy. >> I mean traditionally I will say no, our attorneys would say yes, but if it's a Cayman, we've invested in some Cayman companies, Europe, Asian companies, so that really doesn't bother us that much, again it's the team >> It's not a deal killer. >> It's definitely not a deal killer. >> But you'd prefer, obviously, security token, in the US. >> Delaware-based would make us the happiest. But if they have a real team behind it, if they have real attorneys, real auditors, we'll look past that. >> And global reach, that's a big factor. >> Absolutely. >> How much is global impacting this world? I mean, we're in the US, we're kind of turning into it. >> It's incredibly, but I think the one area where we need to do a better job is in expanding it, I mean there are a lot of foreigners at this market today, at this event, but it's, we know the US market really well, we don't know what's going on in Asia, we read the trade magazines and that's how we know what's going on there's efforts now, I'm even, Consensus announced today they're having an event next year, or this year, in Singapore. We need to have greater reach to share what's going on around the world versus what a few people are telling us. >> John: You see that as a big issue? >> I do, we don't see what's going on in China today, we don't see what's going on in Singapore, the Philippines, and that's where a lot of the effort is going on. >> Well I think you're right, I think one of the things and that's where fake news on Facebook, you know with the whole election here in the US and now outside influence, whether it's terrorist groups or propaganda-based systems, quality of the data >> That's exactly right. >> is a really important with real time. >> And the data's limited today, I mean it's not. >> I agree, I mean we totally agree with the same thing. Okay final thought, walk away this week from big data, not big data, Blockchain Week NYC, your big walk away here this week. What's your takeaway? What do you take home? >> We went in the right direction, I mean that this is still developing, we're not there yet, there's still a lot of work to be done, but long-term whether you believe in digital currencies or not today, this is something that central governments are looking at in supporting, enterprise is getting into it, and this is the future. So we made the right choice. >> And is it only going to get better you think? >> Absolutely. >> Yeah I think stability-wise, technically, and the business models are starting to shake out. Just quickly before, I know you got to go, thank you for your time, quickly token economics, big part of the business model side of it your thoughts and reaction to how that's going and how people should start thinking about that if they could meet their criteria for some sort of de-centralized business opportunity. >> So I think, it's looking at network usage, I mean that's really the way we look at it today, the fundamental model doesn't work, or we haven't been able to determine how to do that, but adoption, it's growth, and that's how we've focused things and see where it is. >> Well congratulations for all the work and all the work you're doing and that continue to do. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Great to have a big-time investor on theCUBE here. Big-time investors, we had entrepreneurs, we had folks from Europe, Lithuania, all over the world here on theCUBE, we're out in the open. This is theCUBE covering Blockchain Week New York City Consensus 2018, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. Stay with us for more, after this break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. (digital music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE coverage here on the ground. Here in New York City for Consensus 2018, sold out event. This is the premiere show for the Crypto Blockchain world. It's part of Blockchain Week, New York City, #BlockchainweekNY, for New York. A lot of events going on. Everyone's here, a lot of breaking news. I'm here with CUBE alumni, Dan Bates, ImpactPPA. He was on with us in our show in Puerto Rico, at CoinAgenda. Dan, great to see you, thanks for comin' in. >> Thanks, John. Glad to be here. >> So, you've got some hard news. Tell us a little about the conversation we had about, couple weeks ago, in Puerto Rico. You got a great mission, renewable energy. You got a token. You've been busy. You got a concrete deal. You're doing business. You're not just saying it, you're doing it. >> Yeah, shocking. >> Take a minute. What's the hard news? >> All right, so we're really proud to announce today, that we signed a deal with the Indian government, which is essentially going to lift 50 million people out of poverty. Women. How they're going to do that is they're going to help restart their textile industry. It's called Harit Khadi. It's an old craft of India, spinning cotton into really high quality fabric. What they're going to do is they're going to put an energy efficient loom in a woman's home. It's going to be powered by our technology. And the whole process, all supply chain and payment will be managed by our token. >> Take a minute real quick, to explain the technology. I know it's recycling. We've done it before. But for this first, while we're going to get context for this big news, what's, real quickly, what do you guys do? >> We install renewable energy systems on rooftops. In this case, it'll be a rooftop. In many cases, it's large microgrids. So, we use wind and solar technology to drive to batteries. And then we allow people to pay for power on an as needed or pay a you go model. It's very much like what M-PESA does in Africa. We've de-centralized electricity. De-centralized M-PESA for electricity. >> You took an economics utility, great thing. By the way, state of California, where I live, just mandating all new construction have solar panels. Not sure they're going to tokenize it. They might be getting it all wrong. But, you do an amazing mission. Great technology. But I'm amazed by the real deals you're doing. You got a PO in hand, real business. >> Yes. >> Signed. >> Yes. Sealed and delivered. >> Yes. >> What is it? How much, what's goin' on? This is big news. >> Yeah, the purchase order that we have is going to represent one quarter of 1% of this project. It's designed to put 125,000 women to work. I can tell you the number has a lot of zeros on it. >> So there's real cash in the barrel? >> This is a nine-figure-- That's right. This is nine-figure purchase order, that we have out of them. It's a big deal. 100 million plus. >> Yeah, 100 million plus. >> Just as a POC. >> Just on the POC, yeah. What we're going to be doing is we're setting this deal up now. End of June, early July, we will doing the inauguration on the first textile facility in Kahana, which is a city in India. And Prime Minister Modi is slated to cut the ribbon, to set this project in motion. His goal, and the Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises, Minister Singh, whom I met with a couple of weeks ago, they are committed to bringing 50 million people out of poverty. >> So this is really high impact, in my opinion, pun intended. You got a ImpactPPA. You got a mission-driven organization, real problem, growing middle class, by the way, is coming fast and furious. >> Exploding. >> You're connecting energy with token economics. Real money's on the table. Real impact to people's lives, with democratization. In this case, it's not, but it could apply to any other thing. This is just one example. >> That's right. This is the largest, in my opinion, from my view, from my vantage point, this deal alone, the pilot actually, that quarter of 1%, is the largest commercial blockchain project in the world. I can't see of anything else that's even close, right now. >> The claim has been made. The largest commercial blockchain deal in the world done by Dan Bates, ImpactPPA. Congratulations. Great stuff. Great to have you on theCUBE. >> Thank you, John. >> We want to ask you now, shift gears to the event. You were out late last night, networking celebrating the success, doing more business. What are you doing here? Obviously, you're not done. It's the beginning of a big deal. There's only one deal. What other things you got goin' on? >> Oh, we got projects. We just signed a partnership with the Earth Day Network. They're responsible for launching Earth Day, 48 years ago. We've got a project with them, 50 by 50. We're going to be doing 50 installations around the world with our partnership by their 20th, or their 50th anniversary in 2020. We're here talking to protocols. We're here talking to strategic partners at Consensus. And it's an amazing show. The energy around here is just unbelievable. >> You know what I love about your project? And you know, we've talked before, but for the folks watching, you combine a mission-driven, high-need deal, electricity, with technology. I mean, it's.... If I'm a young person, I want to be in this business. How're you onboarding people? You guys are hiring? What kind of people are you hiring? >> Well, of course, we're looking for developers to help us with the token piece of it, the blockchain piece. We're also looking for guys who can help us get this thing to scale. That's going to be really critical. So we're talking to a whole bunch of guys around protocol to see who can bring on board, in this case, 125,000 people, like tomorrow. We're also looking for energy guys, engineering guys, because we've got projects all over the world. Don't forget, we're still doing those 42 cities in Haiti. Microgrids all up and down the West Coast of Haiti to help these people lift themselves out of darkness. We do that too. >> Dan, congratulations. You guys're doing great work. >> Thank you. >> I'm proud to know you, and I really believe in what you're doing. Thanks for doing it. >> Great. >> Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, John. >> theCUBE coverage here in New York City. Big news. The largest commercial blockchain deal that we know of, that we've seen. If there's others out there, come challenge that and let's see it. Real offers being done. Dan Bates, ImpactPPA, CUBE coverage, here in New York at Consensus Blockchain Week. Be back with more, thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello, I'm John Furrier, here in New York City, for on the ground coverage of Consensus 2018, it's part of Blockchain Week, New York. All the action's happening here, sold out show, tons of events happening in New York City. You got the New York City crowd, you got the Hollywood crowd, you got the tech crowd, all kind of coming together, entrepreneurs, the entire ecosystem. My next guest I Lars Rensing, who's the co-founder of Arc.io, its own blockchain, its own coin, CFO. Thanks for joining me today. >> Thanks John for having me here. >> So your signs everywhere I see, Arc.io, you're a big sponsor, top-tier sponsor. Congratulations. >> Thanks, thanks. >> Why sponsoring this event? >> Because it's a big event, lots of commitments, lots of people will be here, lots of important people are in this space, so like this is a good area to be and show ourselves more. >> You guys have a lot of traction with your offering, your project. Can you take a minute to explain Arc, >> Yeah sure. >> What is it? What is Arc coin, what's the development plans? You have multiple moving parts to this opportunity. Take a minute to explain. >> So what we're trying to build is the interoperability between blockchains, because we see that every use case probably needs their own blockchain, otherwise, you get one single point of failure. Where you you see them clogging up, old projects watered down because we have more blockchain. So every use case should have their own blockchain really. >> And also blockchain has different developer ecosystems too. You might want to have certain developers, like JavaScript might like Hyperledger, right? >> Yeah, exactly. Once every, like that's also what we are building with our SDKs, every developer in their own language, getting into blockchain is important, because there are not that much blockchain developers at all >> What's going on now? Obviously you guys are a blockchain platform. Developers really are engaging. What's your strategy with developers? >> So far we are working on our new V2. We started from scratch because we saw some limitations in our code, so okay, we needed to start from scratch, build a new V2, and we are internal testing that right now and working on that. >> Do you guys publish your roadmap? >> We publish a roadmap but we don't give dates. (John chuckles) Because we feel like we launch when it's ready, not when we set a date. We launch when it's ready. >> What's the community like for Arc? What's it like, what's the vibe? >> Really good, really commitment, working together. We're working actively with the community because we ask feedback from them. Like, with the V2 when we publish, okay, we're going to work on this project or on a V2, we ask community what's your feedback on it, and we actively took feedback from them and made it into the, in our development. So you're the CFO and co-founder, and you got a lot of co-founders, I know you got some other co-founders. >> Yeah. >> But I just love having a CFO that's not talking speeds and feeds on the spreadsheet. You also know the technology, you're in the community. I've been saying on theCUBE many times now that a new role's emerging in these companies of Chief Economic Officer. >> Yeah. >> 'Cause the token economics and the developer, there's interplay now between the business and the technology. Can you talk about that? >> Yeah sure. When we started, we really looked into the economics, how are we going to build it, how are we going to look into our Arc, the token is economize. How are people going to use it. So we saw that if you do an infinite supply of new tokens, because people are burning money. In this space it's still, insecure to sometimes lose you best basis. So money is still burnt. So you need some inflation to keep running your tokenization. >> You guys have an ecosystem? >> Yeah. >> What is your ecosystem strategy? You have developers. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else in the ecosystem that's notable? >> So far we are working on our core code, and when we are done with that, we are looking into partnerships and expanding our ecosystem with different projects. One of them is currently is Persona, which is a personal identity on the blockchain >> Lars, how did you get into all this? I mean, did you just fall out of a boat one day and fall in the water and say, hey blockchain? Was there a project, was it open source? Did you come in for a certain... Did you have an itch you were scratching? How did you guys get into this? >> I got into this because I have always had, my background is in construction, but I always had a passion for IT, and the new developments in that. So I started reading more about blockchain, and how it works and how it can change the world. So I said, okay, this vision is so great, I want to do something with it, and work more on this than my real job, and at the time I was not really practical to do both anymore, so I said okay, I'm going to full-time with this because I love this. >> When did Arcs all come together? What year, when did it all kind of come together? >> August or September 2016 we started. >> So you guys a couple of years ago, good. So it's a couple of years under the belt. So I got to ask you the question that comes up a lot here on theCUBE in my Cube conversations is, you have people looking at the new wave. >> Yeah. >> The infrastructure's changing completely over from old e-commerce web stack to a whole new network effect, decentralized and distributed, distributed computing's still very relevant, cloud computing of the source, now you've got decentralized. People are asking themselves, is a blockchain and decentralized apps a fit for me? So the question to you is, how do you answer that question? When someone says, "Why blockchain?" what's the answer? >> Depends, because you know always, blockchain is not always the answer. I think some people are putting too much blockchain on projects were are not really needing blockchain. And so I think it really depends on the use case or if it's needed. It's a solution to a problem. It's not always the... Not always needed, in that sense. >> John: Well, it's got to be a good fit. >> Exactly. >> You can't just say I'm doing blockchain and just throw it on top of it. >> No. >> It's got to be decentralized, it's got to be some... Well it kind of depends on the token too. Can you explain the token strategy? So let's just say, okay, I have a decentralized vision, architecture, but now I have to make my economic model match my token model. So there's certain coins, you have work coins for utility, you have you know Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium. So there's different approaches. What's your vision on how that's going to play out? Will it sort itself out? Is there a certain swim lane or a certain token model that fits a certain use case? Is there any patterns emerging? >> I think it really depends on what is needed, where are you looking at, where it's used for, is it just for utility, is it for security, it's really different but... So we said like, every use case would have their own blockchain, but because if you want to do something specific for your token, you can adapt to it, and not be stuck with the project you're working with. >> So you got to think it through. >> Yeah. >> Really do some deep thinking. >> Yeah. >> It's almost like designing an architecture for an OS. I mean it's really an operating system kind of decision to the business logic. Okay, so back to the event, you're a big sponsor. What's going on here for you? Obviously you've got great visibility. You guys doing any activities, are you showing anything, what's the big focus for the show for Arc? >> Just more, being out more to the world, bring everyone more, seeing what we are building and showing us like, and educating everyone what you are building and what you are doing and that we are actively working even with the French government about Arc. >> Why is Arc exciting for your contributors? What are they saying about you? What are some of the community mem... What's the feedback? >> That we are really engaged with the community, and that the community's even here, and we are actively talking with each other and even discussing the development with them, and even brainstorming with them. So we are really engaged with the community. >> Is there a differentiator that you have on your blockchain, is it faster, is it better, is it, what's the... What's the core thing that you tell people on why they should work with you? >> We are dedicated proof of stake, but in the vision that we are not vote multiple times, which your stake, you can only vote one time, and maybe that 80% of the coins in circulation are used for voting. So, and 51% to take is almost impossible, and there's lots of decentralization that delegates even. >> What does that mean for them? What's the impact to your partners and customers and users? >> The delegates are really helping because of their... Not only they provide a service to securing the network, they're also actively promoting our... Doing meetups, just everything, it's creating a great community. >> So it's growing? >> Yeah. >> Lars, thanks for coming on. Congratulations, you're a true entrepreneur. Love the hustle, love the fact you took a bold move in the big sponsorship. That was a tough decision, no, probably easy decision? >> No, it's a tough one. >> Big money. Good luck, Lars, with Arc.io, great project, got a good success, very community focused. Check 'em out online at Arc.io. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. theCUBE.net is our URL, we're out in the open, we're in the open here on the floor at Consensus 2018, part of Blockchain Week New York. Thanks for watching, more live coverage after this short break.

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello, everyone, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here on the ground in New York City for Consensus 2018, part of Blockchain Week New York. #BlockchainweekNY. We're here, with Judy Gordon with OmniSparx. It' a startup, they just looking for an ICO, getting it going, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> We're in media row here, all the action going on at the Hilton, there's a packed event. What's it like? You're navigating this sea of growth. You guys are a startup, it must be amazing. >> It is amazing. And what's been the best part for us is meeting all these amazing projects that our company is hoping to support. >> Take a minute to explain what you guys do, stage of the company, how many employees, what you guys are doing, looking for some funding partners. Take a minute to explain what's going on. >> Yeah, so we are a community management platform. We are a product for community managers of all kinds of projects to help manage this very difficult problem that they have. With so many community members, so many are anonymous, so many are causing problems, but yet they need community members to really build their projects. We are just finishing up our angels, our friends and family round, and we're starting our seed round. >> Where are you guys located? >> We're located in Chicago. >> Okay, cool, Chi-town. >> Yes, we have about, we have five members of the team in Chicago and we have a development team in Serbia. >> What's your background? How did you get into this role? What's your role in the industry? How did you get here? >> So, I've been in marketing for large corporations and small startups. And one of my old bosses from Motorola started the company and invited me to come on in and do marketing. And it's been, it's an amazing space right now. >> Interesting opportunity for startups here with Blockchain and decentralized applications. But you mentioned community software. When was the last time the technology stack in community software's been modernized. I mean Slack is like a poster child. It's essentially an IRC message group with a user interface with great APIs. I love Slack. We use it, but that's not really modern software. >> Right. >> So how are you applying Blockchain and decentralized applications for a new modern community approach? >> So first of all, we're letting community members and media managers use whichever tool they want. So from our perspective, you can use Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, all the tools that you use today. But right now they have to go from channel to channel and manage all these different channels. So now they'll be able to do it from one space. But the way we're revolutionizing it is, and the challenge with crypto is that there are all these anonymous participants. So there's all these token holders out there, but you don't know who they are. Well, we have an app where people can go in, they sign in for the app, they tell you if they want to that they're your token holder, what their social handles are, and so that you can do direct outrates. >> So you guys actually going to have a token? Is it going to be an ICO, public, private, security token, utility token, can you just share some insight into what the strategy is. >> Yeah, so our plan is to do an ICO. We're following all the US regulations. And we'll have a token. Our token is going to be, it's a security token, and crypto projects will be able to use it as a way to do community outreach and do campaigns. Community campaigns. >> Any good leads here at the show? >> Oh, yeah, every single community manager we talked to has been interested. There's so many great projects out there. They all want to build a community, they all need community to thrive, and they all need a tool like ours. >> Well, since you said as an industry veteran, I want to get your take while you're here on the event. What's your experience here? What's the main content? The people who couldn't make it here, obviously they sold out, what's the show about? What's the core themes? What's resonating from a content thematic standpoint that you've observed? >> Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, there's so much excitement, so much growth, so much opportunity. I think what struck me, as I was waiting to be interviewed here, so many languages. People from all over the world are here to learn, to network. And what I've always found is so wonderful about the crypto community is it's really a community. People want each other to thrive. >> It's a tight-knit community. I got to say, it's very strong. They're very opinionated. They're not afraid to share opinions. We just had Jimmy Song on from Blockchain Capital, and he's really vocal, but it's cordial, it's civil, and there's some civil discourse which moves the needle. >> Yeah, and everyone wants everyone to succeed. >> Right, awesome. One of the things I noticed was a lot of the women in tech panels going on, still it's a sea of men here. You're a woman here. What's it like, we need more women in tech. >> Yes. >> What's your, what are you doing to change that? Obviously you're here. Is there more women coming on board? Is there groups out there within this community? What's the women in tech angle? >> Yeah so, I was surprised and I knew there were very few women in Bitcoin, but looking around at Blockchain, there really aren't that many women here. And so, but I think it's a great space for women. I think there's a lot of opportunity for women. And there are several organizations working to promote women in this space. >> It's really rockin'. >> Hopefully next year it'll be different. >> We need more women. So more women out there. Judy Gordon is here, she's with OmniSparx startup. Changing the game with new infrastructure for communities. I'm John Furrier here on the ground here at Blockchain Week Consensus 2018. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Voiceover: From New York, it's the Cube! Covering Blockchain week. Now here's John Furrier. (music) >> Hello, everyone, I'm John Furrier. We're here on the ground, exclusive coverage for Consensus 2018, part of Blockchain Week New York Hashtag us BlockchainweekNY for New York. I'm here with Jimmy Song, who's a partner at Blockchain Capital. A celebrity in the industry, original core bitcoiner, does a lot of work teaching programming- programmable programming bitcoin dot com, also- >> Programmingblockchain.com >> I mean, sorry- programmingblockchain.com On the panel, yesterday, really kind of calling out in really a provocative, in discourse way- Civil discourse, state of the blockchain. Welcome to the Cube conversation. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, it's a pleasure. >> So, great to have you on! One, you do a lot of due diligence for Blockchain Capital out in San Francisco, you seal a lot of deals. You're in the space, been there early- on a panel, yesterday, here at the event quite a lot of fireworks going on. You were kind of throwing some haymakers out there, some Molotov cocktails, creating a provocative civil conversation around the state of blockchain- we call it blockchain-washing, where people kind of throw blockchain at something and then say, "We're good, but not good." Your thoughts on that? What was the reaction? >> Yeah, so, I mean Amber Baldet went up and she talked about her product and I just saw lots and lots of buzzwords. And I didn't know what the heck it was, and I thought the rest of the audience doesn't know what it is, either, if I can't get it. I'm a technical guy, I've been around for a while, and I don't understand what the hell this is. And really, a lot of these decks, they just show different pictures of companies and say, all these other people- it's all social signaling, right? It's not about the tech at all, or what it's all about. So I just sort of gave voice to all those people in the audience that were thinking, "What the hell is this? This doesn't make any sense." So I said, "I just see a lot of buzzwords and I don't know what this is and I'm kind of cynical about all this stuff 'cause I've seen so many decks that are like this." And I said, "I don't know if there's anything here." I think a lot of the stuff that's being sold in this industry is just snake-oil. >> Snake-oil is something that people are worried about, but also there's obviously two perspectives: One is, I'm long on the sector, I love the action, I compare to the big waves we've seen. Lot of growth coming. You can kind of easily connect those dots, but the reality is it's still maturing, still embryonic, still more work to do. There's companies out there that are trying to get on the wave. But the model of their business and/or their tech is centralized. So you can't just flip the switch and that was one of your key points. I really want to unpack that. This is a fundamental ethos and also architectural challenge You got to be compatible with the infrastructure the way it's rolling out. Describe what more in detail what you mean by your thoughts on having a decentralized either, company, or architecture. >> Yeah, so a lot of these companies are taking a centralized system and trying to add a decentralized tech into it, like a blockchain. And it doesn't work because the fundamental proposition of a blockchain is that no single person controls it. But these are companies that are trying to control it. I wrote an article yesterday, I released an article yesterday morning, in preparation for what I was going to say on the panel, in part because-- and it's called, "Why Blockchain is Hard" Large part of blockchain is it's extremely expensive in so many ways. And it doesn't really make sense to do it unless you get decentralization. But if you have a centralized point, you're having to trust that centralized entity, anyway. So, putting that thing into it doesn't really make any sense and the tech is just not a good fit. >> You and I were talking before we came on camera about our computer science backgrounds and high-fiving each other, but the bottom line is we've seen paradigms in computer science that have done a lot of these things before: Gamification, token economics, rewards programs. All kinds of things that have been done with traditional databases and distributed computing. So, the question that I hear a lot is, from people that like the wave, the sea of possibilites, they ask the question: Why blockchain? So that's the question I want to ask you. If someone's out there, looking at their business and Okay, what is this? Why blockchain? What's in it for me? How do you react to that? How do you answer that question? 'Cause it's an important one. You're either "yes" or "no"-- It's kind of, almost binary. "Yes, I'm in, it's good for me" or "not compatible." What's your response to the question? >> Yeah, so first of all, that is exactly the question you should be asking as a business person. If you're not getting any ROI out of it, then why the hell are you using it? Vast majority of the time, you're not going to get anything out of the blockchain unless you're using bitcoin or something like that which actually is sort of sound money that's not inflated away by the government and things like that. But there are aspects of the blockchain that I think are very useful. I think 99% of the products that are out there that are touting blockchain-- most of them are really looking at a technology from 1991. Public key cryptography. They just want proof that certain things happened and they want transparency around that. And if you have that, you don't really need the entire apparatus of a blockchain, you just need the public key cryptography. Why do you need the whole blockchain? It's so confusing to me why they conflate the two because it's-- public key cryptography is so much easier to understand. >> And there's some overhead involved in blockchains, it's early on. What are some of those areas that are obvious, that you can just share for the folks that aren't inside the ropes on the industry? What are the obvious areas of concern in blockchain? Latency, gas, turnaround. What are some of the things? >> From a blockchain's perspective, first of all it's extremely hard to develop. As a programmer, agile methodology, obviously, has been very popular. You iterate over and over again. Facebook's motto is "Move fast and break things." You can't do that on a blockchain. You can't move fast, you can't break anything. 'Cause if you break anything, the entire data block structure is completely corrupt and then it's no longer useful. So you have to get everything right at the first time. You have to also-- like you said about gamification-- you have to be very careful about incentives 'cause if you get the incentives wrong and someone has an economic incentive to abuse your blockchain, they're going to do it. There's also all sorts of costs from a maintenance perspective 'cause you have to not only store the data, you have thousands of nodes, everyone has to store the data, everyone has to verify the data, everyone has to transmit the data. This is 1000X the cost of a centralized database. That's a tremendous cost to pay and you could do a lot of the same things that you're looking for if you're a centralized entity already, with back-ups, receipts, audits, public key cryptography. There are ways to get a lot of the things people are touting without necessarily using this heavy, heavy, expensive slow apparatus. >> It's like building the Linux kernel when all you need is an application. >> Yeah. >> And the developer requirements are high. >> Yeah, yeah. >> As well as the overhead involved, and cost. >> Yeah. You're trying to use a construction vehicle to run your groceries, or something. >> It's crazy. >> Just find the right tool. >> What are some of the things that you could share for folks watching, either entrepreneur, developer, or business executive, that says "Hey, you know what? I want to learn more." Obviously, there's some good trends going on. The trend is your friend. You see cloud computing horizontally scalable, fully synchronous platforms. You got open source rising at a whole 'nother level, really good things going on there. Now you enter blockchain decentralized applications. What's the areas that people should focus on to go to that next level? Whether it's a toe in the water or just to jump in and get going. >> There's several things to unpack in that question. First, I think if you are interested in what blockchain technology actually is you should really study bitcoin 'cause that's really the first place it came and I would argue the only place that it actually is decentralized. Everything else has some single point of failure and most of it is not really decentralized. The other thing is, there are aspects of blockchain technology that are very interesting that you could totally utilize for your own thing. Like public key cryptography. I was talking to a startup, yesterday. They were saying, "We're going to use the blockchain to do something to optimize this part." I was like, "Why don't you just use receipts that are signed? 'Cause I think that's all you need." And they were like, "We never thought about that. We've never heard of these receipts! What the hell are receipts?" Well, they've been around for thousands of years, You could have them signed with a public key-- a private key-- and you can verify with a public key. There are all sorts of things that have been around for thirty years that you could utilize but they just don't realize that it's there. And blockchain is sort of a way to bring in into the conversation. >> Jimmy, talk about the ICO craze. Obviously, one of the things that I think is important is that when you look at these new waves of change, efficiencies are key, right? Inefficiencies get abstracted away with abstraction layers and what we see with blockchain is early indicators of where we think it might go. It takes an inefficiency and makes it efficient. No one control, maybe some democratization thrown in there. I don't see venture capital private financing-- >> Mmhmm (affirmative) >> seems to be inefficient with all the ICOs, it's like, a lot fundraising going on with ICOs. What's your take on ICOs? Good, bad, ugly, at the moment? Legit? >> I think ICOs are a broken business model. Completely broken business model. You're funding something-- you're funding a restaurant, you're selling seats to a restaurant before the building's built. Right? Or you have a menu, or anything. And the whole thing about an ICO is you have to design the incentives, there's a blockchain, most of them, right? And you have to design the incentives at the beginning and it can't ever be wrong. If it's broken in any sense, then you can't pivot! Most startups, you fund them, you believe in the people, and you go, okay, well, if it doesn't work, at least we invested in smart people that could pivot they could do something else. You can't do that with an ICO. And right now, my take on it is, the reason that they're getting funded is there's a big public demand for asymmetric payoffs. That's why lotteries are popular. But the government no longer has more or less a monopoly on lotteries. You have ICOs and things of that nature so, I don't know. I just don't see them as being a legit business model or that many good things coming out of it because they are, more or less, kickstarters where the people that are delivering don't have to deliver anything to take the money. >> It sounds like a great thing if you want free cash. It's not a business model, I agree. Is it a mechanism? Do they hang around? Does it morph? Or does it just completely go away in your mind? >> I was talking more about utility tokens. I think security tokens might have a place, so if you already have a business and you want to securitize it, sort of outside that investment banking infrastructure, that might make sense. You have efficient distribution mechanism for dividends or something like that and preferred shares, whatever. That could be useful and it does sort of take out some middle-men. But as far as ICOs as they're currently construed as a way to raise money, not really. >> Jimmy, I want to ask you: we've seen three kinds of companies in the ICO space. Startups selling seats to a restaurant that doesn't exist, yet. Not going to last long. Okay, put that aside. And then, the Hail Mary play. "Shit, we're going out business!" It used to be open source, now let's do an ICO. So, we got to guess and throw money at the wall-- we do a Hail Mary. >> Uh huh (affirmative) And then the middle one is growth opportunities. Some companies that say "Hey, you know what? We have a decentralized-- we might have token economics built into our model. We could actually turn this into a growth strategy for our business-- both business model and technology platform. For those companies, what does that picture look like and what is your recommendation for someone, entrepreneurial or techie, to take their business and create a growth strategy, both CTO, CEO-level approach? What's your view? >> I've actually heard a term of exactly what you're describing and it's called the reverse ICO. And it's these companies that exist that can't raise any funding so they use an ICO to raise money. I actually don't know how that's going to shake out or whether or not it's recommended 'cause we really haven't seen much of it, yet. >> It's a pivot. >> It's a pivot and a way to get money that's in a cheap way. I don't know how long it lasts. >> Well, legit growth company-- say, self-funding or done some V.C. Say some guy's going, "Hey, we want to grow. We have traction. We're an existing business. And I have some databases. I might want to open it up and do token economics or apply blockchain if available." What should they do? What's the vision of how a growth strategy-- a real growth strategy can be built? >> Man, I wish I could answer that question, 'cause I might try it! >> I know, that's why I'm asking. It's the million-zillion-dollar-question. >> It's really difficult to know and I encourage entrepreneurs to experiment in this area and obviously if you were doing unethical I wouldn't recommend it at all but if there's a real way that you can do it without screwing up, screwing your investors or your users or your employees, then by all means, try it! But I'm not going to tell you that something's going to be successful. I really don't know. >> Jimmy, thanks for spending the time, I know you're super busy. I know your voice is going-- you've been on panels. You've been doing a lot of networking, meeting a lot of folks. Thanks for spending time here on the Cube. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much, it was a lot of fun. >> We're here on the ground in New York City for Blockchain Week. This is Consensus 2018, Silicon Angle the Cube Coverage. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching more coverage here at thecube.net (music)

>> Voiceover: From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello and welcome to exclusive CUBE coverage here in New York City for Blockchain Week, NY Blockchain Week New York City. CUBE's coverage continues with cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, the applications of blockchain. Our next guest is Richard Rofe, who's the co-found partner of Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Welcome to this CUBE conversation. >> Thanks, good to be here. >> So when you're in that neck of the woods, New York City, obviously Wall Street, you know, they traded across the wall in the old days, and then it became now the Wall Street, it's changing. We're seeing crypto and token economics really driving the entrepreneurial energy, both on start-ups, as well as in the capital market. And you guys are on the front end of that, with some awesome investments advisory. And what's the craze all about? I mean, you have more practical view, your firm, conservative and also aggressive. What's your take? >> Well, first off, I'm a little older than most of the guys in the space, so I have a different perspective. I did come from Wall Street prior to this, I ran a hedge fund for 12 years, and before that I was basically an entrepreneur my whole life, software and other things. So, I looked at this a little differently, than probably some of the younger guys do. I've kind of seen this before? I think I saw it with the internet. And I think it's a world-changing shift, and we're an early part of it. We've been in for a while, actually in this space forever. Cause, you know, this space isn't that old. So, six years out of 10, we've been in it from the beginning, basically. >> You know, us old guys look at the waves, these waves of innovation, we're like hanging ten on the old big surfboards, and the young kids are ninjaing up on the small board. What is the younger generation looking at? Cause they're certainly, I wish I was 20-something, this is the best wave I've seen in tech revolution coming, all the ingredients are there, the capital markets are changing radically, the technology product market is changing radically, the global landscape's changing radically, the regulatory landscape, and everything else, is a perfect storm for innovation. >> Rapid change, I got involved early around 2012, just to give you a, you know, since we're at a conference this week, and see how crowded and incredibly busy it is, takes up an entire giant hotel, and bursting into the street, when I, in 2012 when I went to the very first conference, that I attended anyway, you could fill a small room with every single person at the conference. So the growth has been insane. It is driven by younger people, but the beauty of this is it's driven by people all over the world. This is not just an American thing. This is a worldwide thing. This is a shift, a technology shift that I don't think we've seen since basically the advent of the internet itself. >> You know, there's an old expression, both sides of the table, you've been an entrepreneur, you've been an investor. A hedge fund is almost the third side of the table, it's like 3D chess almost, you are now playing in the crypto world. Being an entrepreneur, you've been there, done that, hedge fund you had to run money and make great investments. Now, with this new crypto phase, how are you looking at it? Because you have the experience, you can see the growth in the younger generation, new disruptive people literally just flying blind, just going crazy with some good stuff. How are you managing that? How do you look at the marketplace, how do you make your bets? >> Good question. It's difficult. First of all, the barrier to entry is low. At this time, anyone who understands technology is really getting involved, and for good reason, but therefore you have, hundreds and hundreds of deals that come your way on a weekly basis. So you have to really pick and choose through the ones that are interesting. And you apply the same techniques that you applied as an entrepreneur and an investor prior to that, you look at the underlying business, the area that the blockchain will disrupt, change, shift, how it will do it, how long it will last, and how many people will be interested in it. And if you find the ones that are attractive and interesting, then you find the team that's attractive and interesting. That's the big point, is that you really want to have a very good team, you care so much about their background, their technology background, as well as their business background. If you can put those things together, you have a winning investment, and then you try to do it. >> You and I were talking before you came on camera... crowd sales and Kickstarter, Gofundme, as great ways to get capital. But now there's really no liquidity there. Talk about the dynamics because I think, you know, traditional investors in this market say "hmm", and there's so much more coming that'll create more stability obviously. We see some of that, I'll get to that in a second. But I want to get your take on, from an investor standpoint, the notion of liquidity, and also an entrepenuer's standpoint, access to capital. Talk about the dynamics between access to capital and liquidity for the investors and for the entrepreneurs. >> Also great points. I mean, right now, we have something that is giving both things, right? Access to capital, worldwide access to capital, from the smallest investor to the biggest investor, everybody has an opportunity, where before it was really limited, and then you have liquidity in that if you have a token or a coin, that's tradable, whether it's on an exchange, or private trade, you can actually liquidify your investment. Where if you were in a private company in the past, and I've done many of those, you're locked in. You're kind of at the mercy of the organizers of the company, whoever they are, the people that run the business. And you're kind of stuck there, good or bad. In this case, you have the ability to trade in and out, just as you would with a public stock. >> So you can get some liquidity in the front end, while private still, so it's kind of like a little liquidity market. I want you to address a question that's come up, an observation that we've made on theCUBE. We were at the Bahamas at Polycon 18, Puerto Rico. Not in the US, is New York or New York City the capital, you know, of money, that's where money never sleeps, so to speak, Gordon Gekko would say, in the old Wall Street quote. But this is a global phenomenon. We're outside of the United States, there's a lot of action. Let's talk about the role of global money. >> Well, that's part of the excitement of the whole thing. It's not just the United States. It's all over the world, so it's really democratized investing, it's democratized finance, it's changing the landscape completely. And I think that it's unstoppable. I do think that regulation, and I know we talked about that earlier too, is a good thing. I think that regulation is necessary, because you can't just have a rogue environment completely, but on the other hand too much regulation kills things. So there has to be a happy medium and hopefully they'll find that. >> I love the invisible hand strategy, and certainly let capital take, but you want to have some signaling, SSC's been doing that. I just don't think it's stoppable in my opinion. But I want to go shift to where entrepreneurs are looking at the capital markets. Today the choices are bootstrap, friends and family, small sized business, cash flow business if you will, or go venture capital or private equity, if you have the kind of multiples that would warrant that, assuming the sector is in vogue at the moment. Which, you know, always a coin flip. Here, with token economics, there's a huge access to capital. Bubble we're seeing certainly is reflected in that. What are you looking for, when you see that kind of behavior? How do you manage the risk, how are entrepreneurs navigating that world? >> First of all, managing the risk, it's tough obviously. Especially as I mentioned earlier, there's so many deals coming at you at all times, so you have to choose wisely, that's the first way to manage risk. Always was the way to manage risk. People used to ask me in the hedge fund business, how do you manage your risk? Well, I only try to invest in the things that I think have the best upside, and the smallest downside, it was pretty simple. And it's the same here. It comes down to at the end of the day, what businesses are you choosing? The other thing is that, you know, first of all there's inherent risk. You can never get around that fact. But if you really believe in the long-term future, and you're willing to go through some ups and downs, and there are going to be, and there have been, as we know, over the past 10 years, and there will be more in the future. You have to be willing to ride those waves. And if you can do that, then I think your risk will just mitigate over time, as long as you're a smart, wise investor, and of course spreading it around. You don't want to be in, you know, all your eggs in one basket, then you'll take a giant risk. >> Yeah, it's one of those things where you don't want to zig when you should have zagged, with all this going on. It's certainly a turbulent landscape, I've heard phrases like, it's like wet cement, you don't know when it's going to form, all these kinds of phrases. So the question I want to ask you is, what do you look for? What are you looking at, what signals are you trying to synthesize, what's the tea leaves that you're reading, what're you looking at? What's concerning you, what are some tell signs that are going to help you navigate the investment side and advisory side? >> With regard to the entire space, we're looking very much at regulation, we want to know what the regulators want. I'm not sure they know what they want. We speak to them, we keep them pressed on the situation from our end, and we hear back from them on with their thinking. We'd like to see some regulation over time, but it's complicated because they don't even know what they're looking at yet. That's a big part of it. They're not sure how to regulate something that they don't understand. And there are very few people in this space, and this is one of the biggest risks. There are very few people that even do understand it, and are in this maze. >> I was telling an entrepreneur just here today, and then last week, it's in the Bay Area in California, they're more progressive than their suppliers, their law firm, and some of their accounting help. They're more progressive on the front end, they're actually advising the law firm on deals. >> And that has happened, that's happened with us, in fact we've recently put a structure together, where we taught the law firm how to do it, the law firm was impressed with it. They had to go study it, they spent a few weeks, and they came back and said "Hey, this is a great idea, we're going to do this with everybody else going forward." And that basically came from us backwards. >> Did they bill you for those hours, or did you charge them? >> Great question, I really hope not. I'm going to ask my partner if we got billed for anything. >> Rich, I want to ask about blockchain, we got to see Consensus 2018, it's happening here in New York, big event, part of CoinDesk too, they're doing a great job, content program's been solid. It's been super crowded, they need a bigger venue obviously, the demand was high and sold out. And I know there's a lot of side events going on, a lot of activity. What is your take away, what do you look this as saying? Is it like, wow, what's your take on the impact of the momentum? >> Well, first of all, as I mentioned before, I saw this thing with my own eyes, right, from a little tiny room in Las Vegas, was the entire conference, to what we saw today. With people in the streets who can't even get in, thousands and thousands of people in one hotel, which is probably not even cut out for that many. I think it's incredible, the momentum says a lot, by the way, talking about mitigating risk, there's not just so many people, there's so many smart people, that are figuring this out, one by one, and getting involved early. And that really gives me a lot of confidence, in terms of the long-term strategy. If this thing grew by, you know, two or three times, four or five times what I saw in 2012, I would not be nearly as excited. What I'm seeing here, this mass load of people, who are fighting to get into an event, right, into a venue, and the intelligence, and the kind of people they are, and how educated they are, it really gives me hope. And it reminds me, of early days in the internet, where we saw the super smartest people, kind of broke away from the crowd, did their own thing. We saw guys leaving traditional firms, going and starting companies, the Amazons, the Googles, the Facebooks, and things of that nature, which became the largest companies in the world. >> And there were problems there too. You had back-dating stock options, you had all these deals where revenue is revenue, and then accounting issues, but again all that is just a symptom of a growth market. Final question for you, when you look at what you guys are doing, and how you're investing, how you're getting involved in companies, you're also an advisor to Bloq which is having an event here in New York City. How are you navigating the hiring, the partnership, the community aspect, as in the financial community, like the entrepreneurial community, there's a tight-knit bond. How is it evolving, how are you guys shaping that, what are some of the things you can share around the financial community? >> Well, we do advisory work, so we work with a lot of different clients that want to get into the space. We work with some very traditional clients, that are not really technologists, and those are the most interesting ones. They're difficult, because they don't understand a lot of it, and I don't blame them, I come from that world too. So, we have to really hold their hand, and we deal with a lot of very smart tech people who come from a whole other, but don't know the business side so well, so we kind of work with both. In terms of our own hiring, and who we bring on to our company, we really look for a very unique person, which is, usually in this case a younger, because of the space itself, we look for everybody, but we don't find that many people my age and older, that even want to spend time, let alone understand it. >> Some smart kid "I don't want to work at Goldman Sachs, they're old." >> Listen, and again, we saw this in the internet, you could not get a smart kid out of college to get a regular job back in the Nineties. They were all going to Web startups. Kind of same thing here. So we have a great pool to choose from, we try to pick people that are on the cutting-edge, but that also want to work hard. Because, again, it's a start-up industry, right? So, think about the hours, you know, you're really going to put in a lot more than you would at a nine-to-five job. Your weekend, nights, you know, the phone, you're connected 24/7. But the hiring's been, uh, we have a staff of about six people, and I think they're great, but we do hand-pick them and it takes a while. >> Take a minute to explain what you guys do, how many investments you've made, you've been there early, the year 2012 you mentioned, early on. >> I started in 2012 in terms of in just the space itself, due to my friend Matt Roszac at Bloq, who was really early, a year ahead of me there, and he got me involved, but I didn't really start making serious investments. My first investment was in 2014, we invested in a settlement and clearing house company, that's now one of the fastest growing banks in the country, and then we got into some of the coins, and some of the platforms, that's where we invest the most, and a few deals here and there. And then we started to do advisory work, because let's face it, we knew what we were doing, we were ahead of the curve, we certainly understood it, and so many people want to get into something that they don't know, they're going to need someone to hold their hand all the way through. So, our advisory business is our main stable business, and then we invest into certain deals that we think are interesting, a lot of them are platforms. >> Yeah, and token economics is driving all that. Richard, thanks for coming on, appreciate taking the time to come on CUBE, I'm John Furrier, we're here at New York City for Blockchain Week New York, and this is theCUBE exclusively continuing coverage of the cryptocurrency craze, token economics, obviously blockchains enabling technology underneath it, and the whole new Internet infrastructure is transforming with cloud, everything behind it's really exciting. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From New York it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Everyone I'm John Furrier, the cofounder and cohost of theCUBE. We're here in New York City for exclusive coverage of Blockchain Week New York put out with a variety of events. One is Consensus 2018 sold out packed house as well as another event Cryptohou.se here in East Village for a great event. And I'm here with Patty Perez who's the owner of the Cryptohou.se, used to live here. Hey thanks for having us today and I want to What's the story, you own this place. It's now a great venue for inspiring a lot of entrepreneurs who couldn't have an outlet to have their voice heard. >> Well originally this was my yoga school. It was a live work house for ten years and I closed it seven years ago and just lived here and, and now I'm ready for my next venue and I was telling my boyfriend that, you know, I really want to do something with my house. Sort of like the yoga school, but I'm so excited and interested in Blockchain for the last year and wouldn't it be great to have a social club or an education hub for this because I have no idea what's going on and I want to learn. And so why not have all the thought leaders come to my house and, and teach each other and just open it up to all of us because I know you're learning every day. I know I am. >> That's fantastic, and then in forces they learn the whole time and that's why they make some influences, but I think what's important here that I want to just share and it's a great story and I think you really deserve a lot of credit for it is that it's a venue for people to not only learn and share their experiences but it's also an outlet for some collaboration in the open in a way that's community based. It's not like a structured event, big tent event, sponsors everywhere, you know, make money. This is about people, the community having a access. And so I got to ask you when did this happen? Like just, 'cause I love this place. >> Well we've been coconspiring it and I've been speaking with Strategic Coin like come on, let's do this, let's do this at my house and they're so busy with you know a million projects and but somehow the waters parted and here we are and we got a great team together and Strategic Coin has been just amazing and >> Well I got to tell you in California, last week I was in San Francisco for some events, Red Hat Summit, big open source community. Of course we watched the Twittersphere and the Snapchat sphere, Instagrams, Facebooks of the world all that place. You guys had great buzz over the weekend and even coming in yesterday and today. A lot of great community conversations, not just people promoting their, their event at like Consensus, hey come to our booth. There's just authentic knowledge being shared on the digital sphere and that works, that connects with people so congratulations. >> There's a great need obviously, above and beyond us or anyone, it's so organic and today, yesterday there were a series of speakers and they were all amazing and interesting but today the conference took on what we coined as the unconference and sure enough it was more of a boxing ring than a conference, of debating and just sort of being in the vulnerable place of actually not knowing something and being in the inquiry in that uncomfortable space and people felt so comfortable to take deep dives into what they're actually wanting to create or, you know, so it's-- >> That's great progress too, when you have a debate and not have to worry about being judged doing a learning exercise. >> Exactly, and you don't have to, you know, look a certain way or have your, you know everyone was really like, you know what? And you don't know what you're talking about. It's like wait a minute. >> Sounds like my Facebook feed. >> (laughs) >> What did you learn this week? What was the big surprise for you? What was a cool thing you've learned? Can you share an anecdote so far from this week? >> Wow, that's a good question, and I have to respond right this moment. Well, the greatest thing that I learned is how much people need education around this. You know it, not just businesses, but everyone because it ignites, I think so. And also one thing that I've noticed more than anything else is that there is an interculteration between the old bankers and the new kids that are really and the old bankers are saying well you kids are idiots. There is an interculturation between the old bankers and the new kids that are really and the old bankers are saying well you kids are idiots. >> Cation like this in a way that can be contentious, offending sometimes, on the other side of the debate. But it's floating in the digital sphere so we believe at theCUBE, we've seen it with content. Good content, authentic, genuine content codeveloped creates community karma, and you're doing that here. >> Yes, I think so, and also one thing that I've noticed more than anything else is that there is an interculturation between the old bankers and the new kids that are really, and the old bankers are saying well you kids are idiots. And the new kids are like oh my God. >> John: Get off my lawn. >> And so it's so much fun just meeting in the middle and it's a whole new culture that's being created. >> Well I was having a conversation with Richard from Arcadia Crypto Partners and I was, and there needs to be some mentoring because this is an opportunity for both. I mean I know some of the smartest guys from Crypto are old dogs and gals, they're out there but the young guns have the energy and the ideas as well so I see a mix and I think it's important that the older generation, if you will, that's like I'm talking about me myself, you know, really kind of let the young kids in-- >> And there's a young kid in you that is so excited right now, I see it in your eyes. >> I wish I was 20 something, I wish I was 20. It's the most exciting wave, I've been involved in a lot of waves of innovation. This one, by far, is the best. >> I see the inner teenager right now. >> Okay we're bonding here on theCUBE. Patty thanks so much for doing what you do and Cryptohou.se is an amazing initiative and project, very strong mission, love the mission, and I love to promote it. Thanks for having us on theCUBE, thanks for having us-- >> Thanks so much, thank you. >> We appreciate it. I'm John Furrier here at the Cryptohou.se for the Block event but there have been events all week as part of Blockchain Week New York. Of course theCUBE is there covering it as usual. Thanks for watching, see you next time.