>>Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage here in Monaco for the MoCo crypto summit. I'm John fur. You're host of the cube. We got a great guest Dustin plant Boltz who is a crypto advisor, but also the crypto editor for Forbes Monaco here. Seeing the official event, the AAL event of the Monaco crypto summit in Monaco, your coverage area for Forbes, your MCing. Welcome to the >>Cube. Thank you for having me. And it's, it's always fun when I get to have an event in our backyard, cuz I get to hear what others know. And to me I'm very curious. Yeah. Always >>Learning. So you're on the MC on the stage here, you know, queue in the program online great program. So it's innovative event, inaugural event, great name by the way. Crypto summit and mono crypto >>Summit. Yeah, the MoCo crypto summit. >>That sounds like I want to attend every year. >>You're you're more than welcome to attend next year. >>Well, I hope so. Either way. I'm at the Al event with you. So gimme the take on what's on stage. What's been the program, like what's your observations going on here at the event today? >>So what we're starting to see globally is this digitization of things and the people that are part of the innovation side. And so that's what we've been able to see this morning. We're we're now at the break is what sort of companies are out there, the good ones and what are they building? Is this innovation? Is it even innovative and figuring out how they're gonna do it and the roadmaps to getting there from the metaverses to NFTs and even to decentralized finance. >>Yeah, it's the number one question I get is what's legit. What's not legit. And then you're starting to see the, the, the wheat and the shaft separating here and you know, something called crypto winter. But I don't see it. I mean, I see correction for some of the bad things going on in terms of not having the right underpinning infrastructure, the creative ideas are amazing. We're also seeing like digital bits and other platforms kind of coming together to enable the creators and, and the NFT side for instance has been huge. What has been your observation on that enablement? Because you have two schools of thoughts. You have the total nerds we're up and down building everything. Then you have artists and creators, whether it's music, tech apps building, they don't necessarily want to get 'em to the covers. They don't want to deal with all that. Yeah. Have you seen, what's your, what's your take on that? >>So I I'm seeing that a lot of these major brands, you know, they they're striving for excellence. You know, they're being more careful of who they partner with and the types of companies and you know, they, they look at it from reality and a little tough love to figure out should they align their brand. So what we're seeing here is is that there is so much inertia moving forward. That we're just at the beginning of this thing. Yeah. McKinsey recently said that the ecosystem will be over $30 trillion. So when you recognize that we are so early and it's those right now, or some might say are the risk takers. But to me there, aren't taking risk. They're being a part of making history. >>Yeah. You get the pioneers and you get the financial. So as they come together, how do you see the market? Cause what I've noticed with crypto and here in, in this, this market is international. One lot of international finance us is kind of lag behind. You got all kinds of rules, but you got the, the combination of the, the future billionaires. Sure. Okay. The pioneers and then the financeers yeah. Coming the money, the money and the power coming together. What's your reporting show you that's going on right now? What should people know about on how this is evolving? What they shouldn't >>Expect? Well, so you have a group that wants to become cryers they're seeing these individuals globally. They're making lots and lots of money, but what they don't realize is that not everybody is gonna have that outcome, but looking at the technology aspect of it and how it's going to improve a system that many can agree is collectively broken legacy just can't move beyond. It was never designed to you'll see people take shots at certain card companies and I go, but you recognize they developed the assembly line. And so I'm seeing that the smart money they got in long ago, believe it or not. And those now they're looking out for their errors are the ones that saying, I will not have an excuse when my, my grandkids or my, my nieces or my nephews, when they come and ask, where were you when the greatest transformational shift in human history, from both education to jobs, to careers and even wealth was being shifted to a digital world, why were you on the sideline waiting? And so I think what we're gonna see is this tsunami coming, and it's gonna start with one big player and then two and five, you go, go alone. You go far, go together. You go further. And that's what we're seeing is that this collective is moving forward >>And the community, we just had Beth Kaiser on, I've known Beth for many, many years. And she's what she's her journey has done. She's had a great mission and then gets she's a data scientist and came to Analytica. Now she's doing work with Ukraine and the rallying support around it has been impressive. And it's a community vibe, but the community's not just like sympathetic they're hands on together to your point. >>Yeah. It, but it also takes courage. I mean, you look at Britney Kaiser and what she had, and to me, courage is not, not having fear. Courage is not allowing the fear to stop. You, you know, recently asked my executive coach, who's 85 and I'm turning 39. This question of, do you let fear stop you? How do you decide? And he said, you know, you can either let, you can either ride the dragon. And I said, or let the dragon chase you. And Brittany has been one of these that made a decision to do what was right. And it came down to integrity. Yeah. >>So what are you have to these days what's going on in your world? >>What is going on in my world? So I moderate events all over and I connect and I like to ask people questions. So I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna turn at the interviewer on the >>Interview. It's good. Natural. >>What are you learning? >>I mean, I'm learning, I mean today or this week or this month or this year. Well, I was just talking with Brittany about this. The security world is converging cloud technology, cloud computing. That revolution has just been amazing. Amazon posted their earnings yesterday. They blew it away as far as I'm concerned. So they kind of show there's no tech recession. I've learned that this recession, that we're so called in is the first downturn in tech where there's been cloud players as hyperscalers as an economic engine. Okay. So from a, from a business perspective, Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure now Google cloud, Alibaba's now in, in international version. This is the first time at downturns ever happened with cloud computing as an economic engine. And so therefore what I'm seeing is the digital transformation that's happening across the world for enterprises and entrepreneurs is not stopping. >>It's actually accelerating. So although the GDPs down in inflation is down, you're seeing a massive shift continuing to accelerate, spending and transformation with cloud technologies and decentralized. So you can almost see it kind of in the, this event and other events, even some of the bigger events, the best smartest people are working on it. The applications in all the categories are transforming. If cloud is step one, decentralized gonna be step two. So I see that kind of bridge going from cloud computing, cloud native to decentralized native. And I think a D DAPP market's gonna just explode. I think NFTs are just scratched on the surface. I think that's kind of, I won't say gimmicky, but I think no, but you're right, much more of a much more of a, an illustration that there's more coming. >>There is a lot more coming because people are seeing that there's more to an NFT than an ugly luck and J you know, ugly and JP image that there's, that there's data in there. And that your avatar will be stored as just that as an NFT. And I learned today from go of sing, that decentralization is, is the key to innovation. And I agree with that statement. Holy. >>Yeah. I mean, I think access to stuff is gonna be multidimensional. Like you think about the NFT as, as an ID, whether it's him or UN unstoppable domains is that company just got financing another round where the billion dollars, their concept is like, Hey, one NFT is your access for all of your potential identities in context. >>And isn't that exciting that we're now gonna be at this stage where you travel with you. Yeah. Instead of someone else traveling with you, you get to decide who you will be. And to me, everything you're doing in this world, this reality is now becoming part of your digital asset as a whole. >>I remember when I started my podcasting company in 20 2004, early pioneers, Evan Williams was there with Odo and you had, you know, the blogging revolution going on that whole democratization wave actually didn't happen right then. But all the people that were involved in that web two oh, kind of CRAs was all about democratization. It's kind of happening now. I mean, 15, 20 years later at web services is transformed cloud the democratization for own your own data, putting users in control. And I think in the middle of that, the Facebook's the world, the world garden data, you know, manipulation kind of took it off track a little bit. So I think now I'm, I psych to see that it's back on track to where it was. I mean, Facebook made billions of dollars. Now you got LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn's great for your resume, but it's also become a wall's garden with no data export. >>Yeah. And then >>No APIs keep >>Changing. Think about this. That if you wanna apply for a job, just change something quickly. Yeah. Ah, now you're the senior VP. Yeah. Before you were, you're an office manager >>Like to see the immutable block change, >>You don't get to see when did the record change. Yeah. >>Reputation data. You're a digital exhaust people gonna wanna reign that in. And I think the user in charge message that Brit Kaiser was talks about is hugely a mess under, under, under amplified concept. Digital assets are key, but the data ownership is something that I think is, is >>Powerful. So I'm gonna be launching a brand new company in and around September called cryptos. And it's a crypto career center. Think of it like the, the crypto for LinkedIn, that it's an aggregator becoming the industry standard for education, becoming the industry standard for crypto ships, with partners like ledger and moon pay and Casper labs. >>Look at this, we got an exclusive scoop on the cube. This >>Is the first time I will tell you this the first time in, in an environment like this. Yeah. That I'm excited to, I'm excited to talk about, right. Because it's time to be part of the change. Yeah, exactly. You know, as a father, I look at, I know where it's headed in the world of business. I know in the world of this, that we're gonna call the internet of connected things. Yeah. That it's gonna require you to have a certain talent skill or a certain certification. And to me, it's important to have an industry that supports one >>Staff and also, and also history on misinformation, smear campaigns can happen and ruin a career >>Overnight. Can you imagine that one little thing and because the internet never forgets. Yeah. It stays around indefinitely. >>The truth has to come out. Dustin. Great to have you on the queue. Thank you so much. Final question. What have you learned in there is MC what's your takeaway real quick? >>What I've learned is I never tire of learning. Thank you again, to learn more. Dustin plan.com. >>All right. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Cube coverage here at Monaco. I'm Shawn furry. We'll back with more coverage after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone to theCube's live coverage of the Monaco Crypto Summit here in Monaco. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube, and Lauren Bissell here, founder and CEO of Immutable Industries, focused on the advancement of technologies in art, entertainment, blockchain across multiple sectors. Great background in entertainment music, complying that into the convergence and to crypto. Welcome to theCube. I appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. Thank you guys for having me. It's been an incredible day so far. >> So we were just talking before we came on camera, your background and just the people you've worked with in the music industry. You've been there for a very long part of your career, from the beginning. Now you're on the wave of Web3, crypto, DeFi. There's a confluence of refactoring businesses. We're seeing that impact. And I think a lot of people, finance and entrepreneurial, the best brains are coming into the sector because it's an opportunity, clearly, to reset and refactor old antiquated business models and practices, in a new way to achieve the same things. Better, faster, cheaper >> Exactly. Better, faster, cheaper, is good sometimes, other times that's... We will see. But I think for me, coming in from the music industry was something that, I honestly never expected to be involved in blockchain and futuristic tech. It's always something that I admired, but I didn't really see, "Okay. Here's how I can be involved in that." I was obsessed with it. But as I was sort of progressing my career as a music producer, I saw so many issues with the industry. The way capital came in, the way that it was distributed. I mean, these things are still happening today. But I was just constantly looking around for better solutions and how to make this work in a better way. In 2017, when I started really diving into crypto, that was something where I saw a huge opportunity for the entire industry. The music industry is notorious for just sort of being behind the curve when it comes to new tech. And it's a shame. When you're in an industry that's full of art and innovation, you would think that it's something... It's an industry that would embrace this position. Maybe some people do this, and I applaud those people very much. But in general, the music industry is kind of behind. We live a little bit in the Wild West. Not in the futures way, but kind of in the old way. I'm just really excited to be able to bring these things into the industry. >> It's interesting. I'm not in the industry, in the music side, but I've been on the software industry, where you had the proprietary software, the rights, and people used to build software. And then when the company went under, the software was gone, lost forever. And in around the late eighties, nineties, open source movement happened, and it just changed everything. And I think, to me, I feel like this is a similar structural inflection point in change, where rights are changing. People are still holding onto like, "He can't use the copyright." And I even saw a stat that said, with AI now, you can actually copyright every single melody, every single note in music. So that means like, "Who the hell's going to develop anything?" So are even rights even matter? So rights, ownership, art, mixing. Funny story of my son, a year and a half ago, mixed an old song from a band that wasn't around, and it became a TikTok sensation. Hundreds of millions of listens, and then the Spotify and Apple account was making like 20,000 a week, and DistroKid cut him off. Because someone went back and claimed the copyrights. But it was a mix of a couple of different pieces of the song for a new melody. But because that wasn't his work, the middle man killed the account. >> Right. But if there had been maybe an easier solution for him to go get those rights. So I actually used to be a rights and royalties negotiation specialist. I was on the phone with labels, every second of every day. From a producer standpoint, you're trying to find something that works for the artist, something that works for the label, something that you can arrange in perpetuity, if possible. But it's just... Again, there's so many people that have to just get on the phone- >> Like a busy gen system of like- >> Yeah. >> Weirdness >> Right. >> What's the solution? >> I mean, right now one of the favorite... It's super simple. Smart contracts related to publishing and royalties. Now you still need, probably in the interim, someone to go out and... The old school job for someone in rights and royalties is sitting in a restaurant and listening to see if the music is being played, and then you write it all down on a piece of paper. I mean, that's quite old school, but that still happens in a lot of places. So we can kind of move into smart contracts for the payment systems, and eventually we can move into AI, to actually detect what music is being played where. Just to go, not really on a tangent, but it's like, "Okay. Well, are we taking a job away from someone who's supposed to sit in a restaurant and listen to the music?" Well, I think we're developing a lot of new jobs by needing to generate this software. This is more- >> I've heard that. We've heard that argument before, "Oh! Bank tellers are going to be put out of business by the ATM machine." Turns out there's more branches now. >> Right. >> Okay. There's a total waste there. I mean, people say that are like... I mean, but it does bring up the next gen, the creator, the young artist, the ability to collaborate with smart contracts, the removal of the middle person in all this, the intermediaries. That's really the key, right? >> I think it is the key. And like I said, before removal of the middle person, some people would look down on that. I think it's more efficient systems. When you have more efficient systems, you have more efficient societies, you can create bigger and better things. So is there a change process that has to happen there? Yeah, of course. But this is humanity, this is history, this is what happens. >> Okay. So you're a pro, you've been through- >> I just embrace that. >> You've been through the business, you got the scar tissue, you got the experience, you got the brains. Now you're here in the front of a new generation, a lot of pioneering going on, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. Some people... Blood's spilling on the ground. There's a lot of stuff going on, that is opportunity. What are you up to? How are you attacking this market, how do you look at it, what's on your mind? >> Yeah. I mean, so what's funny, I've actually been spending the last few years, sort of directly advising individuals and companies in the music industry. So everyone from artists to label executives, content distribution executives, licensing teams and publishers, and sort of explaining, "Here's how things work. Here's how we think they're going to go. And here's how, instead of running away from that and trying to block your artists from using that system, we can actually use this to enhance the financial pie of the music industry, instead of just trying to steal a piece of everyone else's pie." That's what I really want to do, is, the industry pie can get bigger. We don't need to steal your blueberries. It's just- >> They're picking up crumbs and fighting over crumbs >> Exactly. The industry changed, and I understand why it's scary. I really, really do. I've lived through this. But it's going to be- >> What do they say? What's your advice to them, and what's their reaction? Is it like, "Yeah, you said that you'd get lip service." Or like, "Yeah, we're trying my best. I'll stop drinking, I promise." I mean, I've heard... I tried last week. I mean, are they actually getting it done, or they don't know what to do? >> Yeah. Well, I think it starts with individuals. I actually spent a lot of time working with individuals on education and how they can take that information to their companies or implement that in their companies. It's on sort of a corporate level. It is slower. That's okay. That's expected. But educating sort of individuals, like I said, that's what I've been doing for the past few years, is what's really been helpful. Because if you just kind of do this overnight, I understand it's not going to happen overnight. But being able, like I said, to figure out, "Okay. We grow the financial pie for the whole industry." This accumulates, this helps the health of the industry. Like I said, I grew up in the industry. I care a lot about the industry. I actually want to see good things happen- >> Positive change. >> It's in my heart, in my soul, to make the music industry- >> So Lauren, I got to ask you. So as you see the industry changing, and it's going to be hard to get people to go through transformation. >> Yeah. >> They have to get there. Otherwise, they'll be extinct. And we kind of see that. Is there new brands emerging that have a clean sheet of paper? Because I'm a far young artist, I'm saying to myself, "Okay. If I can write my own ticket..." And by the way, brands become platforms is a big trend you're seeing with NFTs and- >> Yeah. >> And these great Web3 platforms. So I got more social power, I got collective intelligence, I got network effect, I got fans. All that's tappable now from a monetization standpoint. >> Yeah. >> Are there new agencies, new brands, emerging that's artists friendly like this? >> I mean, that's one of the reasons we're here, to begin with. I'm obviously just going to mention Digital Bits, because they're literally creating NFTs for brands. I'm here because I believe in what they're building. Their model is applicable to brands, it's applicable to artists and athletes. I actually truly believe in what they're building and how they're doing it. NFTs is a faster way to achieve what we thought we were going to achieve with sort of the tokenization of a person or an individual brand. NFTs, I think, is a better way to do that. Obviously NFTs are tokens as well, but it's a different type of thing than an ICO. >> It has more versatility and it's got the same kind of characteristics- >> Yeah. I think you can build more community with it, you can maintain the value of the token itself, the non-punchable token itself, a little bit better, and you can build community around it. >> What are some of the companies you're advising and people you're advising? Are they record labels, are they executive, like an executive coach on one end, business consultant on the other? >> Yeah. >> What's some of the range of... >> So I actually advise a couple of brands, I can't completely speak about in the music industry, but from the executive position, I do advise individual executives from the label and the content distribution side, on sort of how to implement futurist tech into their company a little bit better, and sort of what the real things that are going on, the new things that are going on. I actually just took on a role for a company called Cyber Yachts, which I'm really excited about. This one's just going to be fun. International music, entertainment, fun. >> Do you need some media up there? We'll have to do interviews on both- >> Yeah. You can come on the metaverse yacht and the physical yacht, if you want to. But- >> Monaco's a great place for that. >> We will be here. >> All right. >> Absolutely. >> So tell me about the future of some of these big agencies you mentioned? Because if you look at the market right now, if you zoom out, content is king, distribution is Kong. That's what they say. There's a lot more distribution now more than, it seems, content. That's maybe on some perspectives. But it seems like there's a lot more outlets looking for better content. >> Always. >> Do you agree that distribution's hungry for the content, or is there more content than distribution? >> I think it just depends on the type of content. If you look at the content that's being distributed over, say social media, for example, there's a plethora of content. >> Yeah. I guess I'm not- >> There's actually, now, this new hierarchy there, where you have to really scrap to get to the top. So in a weird way, you're seeing that sort of mimic. We see how societies work. So now that's become very hierarchical, and that's almost mimicking the way the traditional industry has been developed. So we go through these cycles. >> It must be hard for a record label to try to do the A and R job, when you have more artists emerging from TikTok, Instagram, the social networks, or- >> I would say their job's probably gotten easier. >> Do you think because of the filtering? >> Well, yeah. Now you can view so much talent in a tiny amount of time online. Now, do I know what they are like lives, do I know how they perform? No, I got to go figure that out. But before you had to go to clubs and sit in there, and run around a city. You can only be in so many places at one time. >> You got to chase content down, look it down. >> Yeah. >> All right, so what's the most exciting thing that you think is happening in the whole crypto world, that's people should pay attention to, that's going to impact some of the mainstream? What's the most important things, do you think? >> Well, something that's actually, somewhat unrelated to music, which is government adoption. Sorry, but hands down, that is the most exciting and important thing that's going on right now. >> Adopting it and embracing it is important. >> Adopting it, embracing it, new regulations coming out. >> Are you happy with the progress? >> Yeah. I mean, it takes time. But right now we're the biggest sort of country that sun is, El Salvador. >> And now Monaco's leaning in. >> Now Monaco is obviously leaning in, that's... It's exciting. It's really exciting. >> Well, to me, I think Digital Bits, so when you climbed in earlier, is that, there's a legitimate crossover between the physical asset, digital asset world, and now the kind of the tough parts, the in between the details and the gaps, the contracts, the royalties. >> Yeah. >> Compliance. What does that even mean? >> Right. >> How is that going to get sorted out? Do you think this is going to settle itself out on its own or self govern, a little bit of a iron hand in there, or... >> It'll be a mix. I mean, there's a lot of trial and error going on right now, as far as governments. Like I said, there's really only a few places in the world that are doing it. I applaud these places for their bravery because... Don't get me wrong. It's going to be a struggle. There's going to be failures and successes, and being willing to be one of the countries that does that, that shows some grit. I really respect it. >> And the upside is if they get it right, it's huge. Lauren, final question. What are you up to next, what's on your mind? What are you working on beyond this consultancy? What's around the corner for you? Where do you see the self dots connecting in the future? >> Well, I'm really... Right now I travel quite a bit. I spend a lot of different... A lot of time at different conferences. I spoke earlier a little bit about an education program that I'm developing with an alliance with Draper University in El Salvador. So I want to finish the programming for that. We're going to scale that out across multiple countries. And that's everything from education for governments and education for people that, maybe just recently heard of Bitcoin and they don't even know how to go about seeing what it is. >> 5G in emerging countries is pretty potential there. >> It is. Absolutely. >> Great stuff. Lauren, thanks for coming on theCube sharing. >> Thank you so much. >> I appreciate it. Lauren Bissell here on theCube, I'm John Furrier, live in Monaco, for the Monaco Crypto Summit, Digital Bits. We got a big gala event tonight with Prince Albert in attendance. A lot of action, a lot of big news happening here. All the players are gathered for the inaugural Monaco Crypto Summit. I'm John Furrier. We'll have more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

[Music] hello everyone welcome back to the live coverage here in monaco for the monaco crypto summit i'm john furrier host of thecube uh we have a great great guest lineup here already in nine interviews small gathering of the influencers and the people making it happen powered by digital bits sponsored by digital bits presented by digital bits of course a lot happening around decentralization web 3 the metaverse we've got a a powerhouse influencer on the qb ryan gills the founder of openmeta been in the issue for a while ryan great to see you thanks for coming on great to be here thank you you know one of the things that we were observing earlier conversations is you have young and old coming together the best and brightest right now in the front line it's been there for a couple years you know get some hype cycles going on but that's normal in these early growth markets but still true north star is in play that is democratize remove the intermediaries create immutable power to the people the same kind of theme has been drum beating on now come the metaverse wave which is the nfts now the meta verses you know at the beginning of this next wave yeah this is where we're at right now what are you working on tell us what's what's open meta working on yeah i mean so there is a reason for all of this right i think we go through all these different cycles and there's an economic incentive engine and it's designed in because people really like making money but there's a deeper reason for it all and the words the buzzwords the terms they change based off of different cycles this one is a metaverse i just saw it a little early you know so i recognized the importance of an open metaverse probably in 2017 and really decided to dedicate 10 years to that um so we're very early into that decade and we're starting to see more of a movement building and uh you know i've catalyzed a lot of that from from the beginning and making sure that while everything moves to a closed corporate side of things there's also an equal bottom-up approach which i think is just more important and more interesting well first of all i want to give you a lot of props for seeing it early and recognizing the impact and potential collateral damage of not not having open and i was joking earlier about the facebook little snafu with the the exercise app and ftc getting involved and you know i kind of common new york times guy comment online like hey i remember aol wanted to monopolize dial up internet and look the open web obviously changed all that they went to sign an extinction not the same comparable here but you know everyone wants to have their own little walled guard and they feel comfortable first-party data the data business so balancing the benefit of data and all the ip that could come into whether it's a visualization or platform it has to be open without open then you're going to have fragmentation you're going to have all kinds of perverse incentives how does the metaverse continue with such big players like meta themselves x that new name for facebook you know big bully tons of cash you know looking to you know get their sins forgiven um so to speak i mean you got google probably will come in apple's right around the corner amazon you get the whales out there how do is it proprietary is walled garden the new proprietary how do you view all that because it's it's still early and so there's a lot of change can happen well it's an interesting story that's really playing out in three acts right we had the first act which was really truly open right there was this idea that the internet is for the end user this is all just networking and then web 2 came and we got a lot of really great business models from it and it got closed up you know and now as we enter this sort of third act we have the opportunity to learn from both of those right and so i think web 3 needs to go back to the values of web one with the lessons in hindsight of web 2. and all of the winners from web 2 are clearly going to want to keep winning in web 3. so you can probably guess every single company and corporation on earth will move into this i think most governments will move into it as well and um but they're not the ones that are leading it the ones that are leading it are are just it's a culture of people it's a movement that's building and accumulating over time you know it's weird it's uh the whole web 2 thing is the history is interesting because you know when i started my podcasting company in 2004 there's only like three of us you know the dave weiner me evan williams and jack dorsey and we thought and the blogging just was getting going and the dream was democratization at the time mainstream media was the enemy and then now blogs are media so and then all sudden it like maybe it was the 2008 area with the that recession it stopped and then like facebook came in obviously twitter was formed from the death of odio podcasting company so the moment in time in history was a glimmic glimmer of hope well we went under my company went under we all went under but then that ended and then you had the era of twitter facebook linkedin reddit was still around so it kind of stopped where did it where did it pick up was it the ethereum bitcoin and ethereum brought that back where'd the open come back well it's a generational thing if you if you go back to like you know apple as a startup they were trying to take down ibm right it was always there's always the bigger thing that was that we we're trying to sort of unbundle or unpackage because they have too much power they have too much influence and now you know facebook and apple and these big tech companies they are that on on the planet and they're doing it bigger than it's ever been done but when they were startups they existed to try to take that from a bigger company so i think you know it's not an it's not a fact that like facebook or zuckerberg is is the villain here it's just the fact that we're reaching peak centralization anything past this point it becomes more and more unhealthy right and an open metaverse is just a way to build a solution instead of more of a problem and i think if we do just allow corporations to build and own them on the metaverse these problems will get bigger and larger more significant they will touch more people on earth and we know what that looks like so why not try something different so what's the playbook what's the current architecture of the open meta verse that you see and how do people get involved is there protocols to be developed is there new things that are needed how does the architecture layout take us through that your mindset vision on that and then how can people get involved yeah so the the entity structure of what i do is a company called crucible out of the uk um but i i found out very quickly that just a purely for-profit closed company a commercial company won't achieve this objective there's limitations to that so i run a dao as well out of switzerland it's called open meta we actually we named it this six months before facebook changed their name and so this is just the track we're on right and what we develop is a protocol uh we believe that the internet built by game developers is how you define the metaverse and that protocol is in the dao it is in the dow it's that's crucial crucible protocol open meta okay you can think of crucible as labs okay no we're building we're building everything so incubator kind of r d kind of thing exactly yeah and i'm making the choice to develop things and open them up create public goods out of them harness things that are more of a bottom-up approach you know and what we're developing is the emergence protocol which is basically defining the interface between the wallets and the game engines right so you have unity and unreal which all the game developers are sort of building with and we have built software that drops into those game engines to map ownership between the wallet and the experience in the game so integration layer basically between the wallet kind of how stripe is viewed from a software developer's campaign exactly but done on open rails and being done for a skill set of world building that is coming and game developers are the best suited for this world building and i like to own what i built yeah i don't like other people to own what i build and i think there's an entire generation that's that's really how do you feel about the owning and sharing component is that where you see the scale coming into play here i can own it and scale it through the relationship of the open rails yeah i mean i think the truth is that the open metaverse will be a smaller network than even one corporate virtual world for a while because these companies have billions of people right yeah every room you've ever been in on earth people are using two or three of facebook's products right they just have that adoption but they don't have trust they don't have passion they don't have the movement that you see in web3 they don't have the talent the level of creative talent those people care about owning what they create on the on what can someone get involved with question is that developer is that a sponsor what do people do to get involved with do you and your team and to make it bigger i mean it shouldn't be too small so if this tracks you can assume it gets bigger if you care about an open metaverse you have a seat at the table if you become a member of the dao you have a voice at the table you can make decisions with us we are building developing technology that can be used openly so if you're a game developer and you use unity or unreal we will open the beta this month later and then we move directly into what's called a game jam so a global hackathon for game developers where we just go through a giant exploration of what is possible i mean you think about gaming i always said the early adopters of all technology and the old web one was porn and that was because they were they were agnostic of vendor pitches or whatever is it made money they've worked we don't tell them we've always been first we don't tolerate vaporware gaming is now the new area where it is so the audience doesn't want vapor they want it to work they want technology to be solid they want community so it's now the new arbiter so gaming is the pretext to metaverse clearly gaming is swallowing all of media and probably most of the world and this game mechanics under the hood and all kinds of underlying stuff now how does that shape the developer community so like take the classic software developer may not be a game developer how do they translate over you seeing crossover from the software developers that are out there to be game developers what's your take on that it's an interesting question because i come to a lot of these events and the entire web 3 movement is web developers it's in the name yeah right and we have a whole wave of exploration and nfts being sold of people who really love games they're they're players they're gamers and they're fans of games but they are not in the skill set of game development this is a whole discipline yeah it's a whole expertise right you have to understand ik retargeting rigging bone meshes and mapping of all of that stuff and environment building and rendering and all these things it's it's a stacked skill set and we haven't gone through any exploration yet with them that is the next cycle that we're going to and that's what i've spent the last three or four years preparing for yeah and getting the low code is going to be good i was saying earlier to the young gun we had on his name was um oscar belly he's argo versus he's 25 years old he's like he made a quote i'm too old to get into esports like 22 old 25 come on i'd love to be in esports i was commenting that there could be someone sitting next to us in the metaverse here on tv on our digital tv program in the future that's going to be possible the first party citizenship between physical experience absolutely and meta versus these cameras all are a layer in which you can blend the two yeah so that that's that's going to be coming sooner and it's really more of the innovation around these engines to make it look real and have someone actually moving their body not like a stick figure yes or a lego block this is where most people have overlooked because what you have is you have two worlds you have web 3 web developers who see this opportunity and are really going for it and then you have game developers who are resistant to it for the most part they have not acclimated to this but the game developers are more of the keys to it because they understand how to build worlds yeah they do they understand how to build they know what success looks like they know what success looks like if you if you talk about the metaverse with anyone the most you'll hear is ready player one yeah maybe snow crash but those things feel like games yeah right so the metaverse and gaming are so why are game developers um like holding back is because they're like ah it's too not ready yet i'm two more elite or is it more this is you know this is an episode on its own yeah um i'm actually a part of a documentary if you go to youtube and you say why gamers hate nfts there's a two-part documentary about an hour long that robin schmidt from the defiant did and it's really a very good deep dive into this but i think we're just in a moment in time right now if you remember henry ford when he he produced the car everybody wanted faster horses yeah they didn't understand the cultural shift that was happening they just wanted an incremental improvement right and you can't say that right now because it sounds arrogant but i do believe that this is a moment in time and i think once we get through this cultural shift it will be much more clear why it's important it's not pure speculation yeah it's not clout it's not purely money there's something happening that's important for humanity yeah and if we don't do it openly it will be more of a problem yeah i totally agree with you on that silent impact is number one and people some people just don't see it because it's around the corner visionaries do like yourselves we do my objective over the next say three to six months is to identify which game developers see the value in web 3 and are leaning into it because we've built technology that solves interoperability between engines mapping ownership from wallets all the sort of blueprints that are needed in order for a game developer to build this way we've developed that we just need to identify where are they right because the loudest voices are the ones that are pushing back against this yeah and if you're not on twitter you don't see how many people really see this opportunity and i talked to epic and unity and nvidia and they all agree that this is where the future is going but the one question mark is who wants it where are they you know it's interesting i talked to lauren besel earlier she's from the music background we were talking about open source and how music i found that is not open it's proprietary i was talking about when i was in college i used to deal software you'd be like what do you mean deal well at t source code was proprietary and that started the linux movement in the 80s that became a systems revolution and then open source then just started to accelerate now people like it's free software is like not a big deal everyone knows it's what it was never proprietary but we were fighting the big proprietary code bases you mentioned that earlier is there a proprietary thing for music well not really because it's licensed rights right so in the metaverse who's the proprietary is it the walled garden is the is it is it the gamers so is it the consoles is it the investment that these gaming companies have in the software itself so i find that that open source vibe is very much circulating around your world actually open maps in the word open but open source software has a trajectory you know foundations contributors community building same kind of mindset music not so much because no one's it's not direct comparable but i think here it's interesting the gaming culture could be that that proprietary ibm the the state the playstation the xbox you know if you dive into the modding community right the modding community has sort of been this like gray area of of gaming and they will modify games that already exist but they do it with the values of open source they do it with composability and there's been a few breakthroughs counter-strike is a mod right some of the largest games of all time came from mods of other games look at quake had a comeback i played first multiplayer doom when it came out in the 90s and that was all mod based exactly yeah quake and quake was better but you know i remember the first time on a 1.5 cable mode and playing with my friends remember vividly now the graphics weren't that good but that was mod it's mod so then you go i mean and then you go into these other subcultures like dungeons and dragons which was considered to be such a nerdy thing but it's just a deeply human thing it's a narrative building collective experience like these are all the bottom-up type approaches modding uh world building so you're going to connect so i'm just kind of thinking out loud here you're going to connect the open concept of source with open meta bring game developers and software drills together create a fabric of a baseline somewhat somewhat collected platform tooling and components and let it just sell form see what happens better self form that's your imposing composability is much faster yeah than a closed system and you got what are your current building blocks you have now you have the wallet and you have so we built an sdk on both unity and unreal okay as a part of a system that is a protocol that plugs into those two engines and we have an inventory service we have an avatar system we basically kind of leaned into this idea of a persona being the next step after a pfp so so folks that are out there girls and boys who are sitting there playing games they could build their own game on this thing absolutely this is the opportunity for them entrepreneurs to circumvent the system and go directly with open meta and build their own open environment like i said before i i like to own the things i built i've had that entrepreneurial lesson but i don't think in the future you should be so okay with other companies or other intermediaries owning you and what you build i think i mean opportunity to build value yeah and i think i think your point the mod culture is not so much going to be the answer it's what that was like the the the the dynamic of modding yes is developing yes and then therefore you get the benefit of sovereign identity yeah you get the benefit of unbanking that's not the way we market this but those are benefits that come along with it and it allows you to live a different life and may the better product win yeah i mean that's what you're enabling yeah ryan thanks so much for coming on real final question what's going on here why are we here in monaco what's going on this is the inaugural event presented by digital bits why are we here monaco crypto summit i'm here uh some friends of mine brittany kaiser and and lauren bissell invited me here yeah i've known al for for a number of years and i'm just here to support awesome congratulations and uh we'll keep in touch we'll follow up on the open meta great story we love it thanks for coming on okay cube coverage continues here live in monaco i'm john furrier and all the action here on the monaco crypto summit love the dame come back next year it'll be great back with more coverage to wrap up here on the ground then the yacht club event we're going to go right there as well that's in a few hours so we're going to be right back [Music] you

(upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. It's the CUBE's live coverage from Monaco for the Monaco Crypto Summit. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE. We're getting all the action here as the world goes decentralization as assets from the physical world connect with virtual to hybrid steady state. But Mattia Baldassarre's here, founder and CEO of Epico Play. Welcome to the CUBE! >> Thank you, John >> So I love to have you on. I love the Italian accent. Get a little European going here. We're from Silicon valley, where you're in Italy. Great to have you on. So Epico Play, what is it? >> So Epico Play is an innovative startup with the aim to digitalize the sport industry, to support clubs, federation leagues, to move into the digital era. Right? So we build up a technology. It is, actually two heads. One is a kind of white label technology for, you know, small, bigger club and then a B2C platform api-play.com where you actually can open up your own engaging channel straight away and allow clubs to have a digital infrastructure, to engage directly with their community, to monetize it and to make together some let's say two way engagement experience. Because we are used today, to just, you know a communication usually by this brand that has one way. So I tell you something, here is something, you know we create something together between the brand that is a club and the community itself. So it's kind of our ability to lump these experiences. >> Yeah. So I saw something on YouTube a day and a half ago. Roma soccer team introduced a new player and the fans were going crazy. They had a little light show. He comes out with the Big Digital Bits logo on this jersey. I forgot who the player was. You know, it was a young player. >> Dybala. Paulo Dybala. >> Yes. And the fans packed the place. And I know he's got the sponsorship with Digital Bits. So Digital Bits is sponsoring that club, but then the underlying technology. Are you over the top? Are you building apps on top of digital bits? >> Yes. I mean, that's also one of the, you know touching point of our partnership. Digital Bits today we announce our partnership with them, with Digital Bits Foundation. They're going to become, you know, our blockchain partner. They will support us on offering the token service to clubs. And for sure, we are going to, we are aiming to create our own token for Epico Play Platform which will always be the substances of the Digital Bits blockchain. And a second step will be for sure optimizing the relationship of Digital Bits, you know, also around the world. >> Yeah. >> But on ourself already has, you know a big pipeline of clubs onboarding. And I was telling before in the in the Summit is not just, we don't want just the top clubs. Right? That's easy. They have money. We want to help, you know, smaller club to go into this new era. Otherwise they're going to lose a lot of audience. They're going to lose a lot of revenue. >> It's interesting Mattia. I was telling earlier guests we had on about the meta version, sports. Sports clubs have been savvy around data for a decade, over a decade, all the big clubs that have TV contracts, certainly. They know how to manage, use technology to manage the team. They have technology to manage the stadiums and they have technology to manage the fan experience which was normally ticketing and, you know, I got a beer, I go to my seat, get stuff delivered, get a shirt, you know spot pricing, being smart. >> Sure. >> So with data. So, okay. That's good. That's a nice foundation. Now with the digital side of things and NFTs you've got assets and you've got a whole other level of interaction on the assets, the player, the brand the fan who can be a player and a fan. And so like now the multiple dimensions of new use cases. >> Completely. It is I believe it is, is like the game A New Hero, you know? So the touching point are much more our, let's say the Gen-Z, you know, the teenager, like they need more, much more input during the week. You know, for our, for my generation going to the stadium was the most exciting thing. So we were waiting for Sunday to go to the stadium, right? Now, the kids, they have so much information that if you don't engage them through this kind of fun engagement during the week, they will play PlayStation, you know or play whatever gaming on Sunday instead of watching the live match. >> But so to get that example let's stay with that for a second. You use your personal experience. Because I felt the same way for sports. If they could reach you during the week you'd be engaging with them. >> Exactly. You collect more data. >> You were ready. >> Exactly, you collect more data and mostly you have a higher quality of the data itself because you see how they behave. You see what they like, not just on the offline pitch. Right? But you can track everything here. So it's a, I think the big step that we bringing also into, into sports >> You know, I did a talk over 15 years ago at MIT and I said, web one was about information. Web two is about connections. And web three is about relationships. Okay, not just who you, you know connected to with devices, relationships. And guess what? Community, NFTs, self-expression, engagement, and the engagement patterns are changing as well. You're talking about things that aren't around right now. >> Yeah, exactly. >> This is new, new benefits. >> It's a new benefit, completely >> New benefits of everybody >> Completely for everybody. And especially, you know, actions that clubs need to do if they want to evolve, you know, that's I think really crucial for them. >> Great. You're building on Digital Bits. Where are you with the company? Talk about the origination story. How did it get started? Did you wake up one day and the apple fell on your head and you said, well, what happened? What's going on? >> So the story is this one, I worked in media, into sport media industry with a big group in London for a long time. And then I was also the CEO of a sport, OTT broadcaster. It is international, but I was taking care of Italy. While I was getting along with clubs, federation leagues, I said, there is a missing here. Right? They still not consider this as a main aspect. They always scared of investment or investing money in this. Right? So that's why we say, okay, you know what when I quit my job, we say, okay, I want, I'm going to... >> You just quit your job. Say I'm going to quit. >> Okay, no, I finished the season. Then I say, okay, done. Now I'm, I'm already thinking about what's going on. And then I open Epico Play. We also, with these mission say, okay there is an opportunity. There is a need in the market. And again, John, I'm not talking about just the top three teams of each league. I'm talking about all the teams. >> All the teams. >> All the teams, professional clubs, being basketball and volleyball. You know, all the sports need these changes. >> Yeah, some are bigger than others, but it's the power law. They all have communities. >> But if you aggregate all the small and medium teams, you know, right, You reach 1.5 billion fans. Right. So huge amount of data. And again, with our technology, we are able to give this environment without an investment from the club. So they are more open. They feel more like comfortable. And we are going to make money together with that. >> And they contribute the assets. So they're partner. >> Yeah. We are completely partner. So we build ecosystem, we then, for them and we make money together. >> It's a joint venture kind of, not formally but it's a win-win. >> It's a win. >> Not a lot of money out of pocket. They put a little bit probably to integrate in, but not big numbers. >> Not a lot of impact on the cash flow because in their mind is still for sure. The pitch, not the field is the most important thing. >> Yes. >> So that's why, okay, then we will help them. Okay. Don't worry. >> It's all upside for them. Do they have a rev share on things too? >> Yes. Exactly. >> So they do a business deal on their side? >> Yes >> So they're happy. They have the option for the future and... >> We build up everything for the future. Then we keep starting and keep monetizing together. So into different ways. >> So can you get some good tickets when the CUBE is in town? >> Whenever you want John. (laughs) >> Of course. What's next for you? Take us through your fundraising. You're building your team. Take a minute to put a plug in for your company. >> We actually, at the end, like seen around 1.2 million. Between, you know, an investment group that we're working with. This other venue, you know, one big TECHO company and some angel, strategic angel investor. Now we are also closing another bridge round to go then in 2023 to make a big round, you know, and scale internationally. So already, now we are approaching five to seven countries new countries, especially, you know, also going to South America where there is a massive adoption of this kind of opportunity, especially in terms of data. Then straight after we're going to, you know, make this fundraising and expand our business. Be really aggressive. As I told you before on the fact that, okay you know what we do the investment. Just let's build us your ecosystem together. >> Yes. >> And then we see, you know can be a different element between eventually other competitors will come out after. >> Okay. Great venture. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for coming on the CUBE. We'll see you at the yacht club later today. >> Thank you so much. >> The big gala event. Stay right there. We're wrapping it up here. I'm John for you here live in Monaco with the CUBE, Monaco Crypto Summit. All the next generation, new wave of businesses being refactored with new technologies, bring in value. That's what decentralization is, web three all coming together. Of course the Cube's covering it like a blanket. I'm John Furrier. We'll be back in more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>>Okay, welcome back everyone. This is the Cube's coverage here. Monaco took a trip all the way out here to cover the Monaco crypto summit. I'm John feer, host of the cube, a lot of action happening presented by digital bits and this ecosystem that's coming together, building on top of digital bits and other blockchains to bring value at the application. These new app, super apps are emerging. Almost every category's gonna be decentralized. This is our opinion and the world believes it. And they're here as well. We've got Oscar ballet CEO co-founder of Agora verse ago is a shopping metaverse coming out soon. We'll get the dates, Oscar. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>We were just talking before you came on camera. You're a young gun, young entrepreneur. You're a gamer. Yeah, a little bit too old to miss the eSports windows. You said, you know, like 25. It's great until that's you missed the window. I wish I was 25 gaming the pandemic with remote work, big tailwind acceleration around the idea of this new digital VI virtual hybrid world. We're living in where people want to have experiences that are similar to physical and virtual. You're doing something really cool around shopping. Yeah. Take a explain. What's going on when the, I know it's not out yet. It's in preview. Yeah. Take a minute to explain. >>Absolutely. So a goers really is a way to create those online storefront environments, virtual environments that are really much inspired by video games in their usage and kind of how the experience goes forward. We want to recreate the brand's theme, aesthetic storytelling or the NFT project as well. All of that created in a virtual setting, which is way more interesting than looking at a traditional webpage. And also you can do some crazy stuff that you can't do in real life, in a real life store, you know, with some crazy effects and lighting and stuff. So it's, it's a whole new frontier that we are trying to cover. And we believe that there is a real use case for shopping centric S experiences and to actually make the S a bit more than a buzzword than that. It is at the moment. >>Okay. So a Agora is the shopping. Metaverse a Agora verse is the company name and product name. You're on the Solona blockchain. Got my notes here, but I gotta ask you, I mean, people are trying to do this right now. We see a lot of high end clients like Microsoft showroom, showroom vibes. Yeah. Not so much. E-commerce per se, but more like the big, I mean it's low hanging fruit. Yeah. How do you guys compare to some other apps out there? Other metaverses? >>I think compared to the bigger companies, we are way more flexible and we can act way more quickly than they can. They still have a lot of ground to cover. And a lot of convincing to do with their communities of users metaverse is not really the most popular topic at the moment. It's still very much kind of looked at as a trend, as something that is just passing and they have to deal with this community interaction that is not really favorable for them. There are other questions about the metaverse that are not being talked about as often, but the ecological costs, for example, of running a metaverse like Facebook envisions it, of running those virtual headsets, running those environments. It's very costy on, on, on the ecological side of things and it's not as often mentioned. And I think that's actually their biggest challenge. >>Can you get an example for folks that don't are in the weeds on that? What's the what's what do you mean by that? The cost of build the headsets? Is it the >>Servers? It's more of the servers, really? You need to run a lot of servers, which is really costly on the environment and environmental questions are at the center of public debates. Anyways, and companies have to play that game as well. So they will have to find kind of this balance between, well, building this cool metaverse, but doing it in an ecological friendly manner as well. I think that's their toughest challenge. >>And what's your solution just using the blockchain? Well, an answer to that, cause some people say, Hey, that's not that's, that's not. So eco-friendly either, >>That's part of it. And it's also part of why we're choosing an ecosystem such as Lana as a starter. It's not limited to only Salana, but Salala is, is known as a blockchain. That is very much ecological. Inclined transactions are less polluting. And definitely this problem is, is tackled in the fact that we are offering this product on a case by case scenario brands come to us, we build this environment and we run something that is proper to them. So the scale of it is also way less important that what Facebook is trying to build. >>Yeah. They're trying to build the all encompassing. Yeah. All singing old dancing, as we say system, and then they're not getting a lot of luck. They just got slammed dunked this week on the news, I saw the, you know, FTC moved against them on the acquisition of the exercise app. >>It's it's a tough, it's a tough battle for them. Let's say they >>Still have, they got a headwind. I wouldn't say tailwind. They broke democracy. So they gotta pay for it. Right. Exactly. I always say definitely revenge going on there. I'm not a big fan of what they did. The FTC. I think that's bad move. They shouldn't block acquisitions, but they do buy, they don't really build much. That's well documented. Facebook really hasn't built anything except for Facebook. That's right. Mean what's the one thing Facebook has done besides Facebook. >>I mean, >>It's everything they've tried is failed except for Facebook. Yeah. >>So we'll see what's going on with the Methodist side. >>Well, so successful, not really one trick bony. Yeah. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp, you know, and not really successful. >>That's true. They do have the, the means though, to maybe become successful with something. So >>You're walking out there, John just said, Facebook's not successful. I meant they don't. They have a one product company. They use their money to buy everything. Yeah. And that's some people don't like that, but anyway, the startups like to get bought out. Yeah. Okay. So let's get back to the metaverse it's coming out is the business model to build for others. Are you gonna have a system for users? What's what's the approach? How do you, how are we view viewing this? What's the, the business you're going after? >>So we are very much a B2B type of service where we can create custom kind of tailor made virtual environments for brands, where we dedicate our team to building those environments, which has been what we have been at the start to really kickstart the initiative. But we're also developing the tool that will allow antibody to develop their own shop themselves, using what we give them to do something kind of like the Sims for those that know, building their environment and building their shop, which will they, they, they will then be to put online and for anybody of their user base customers to have a look at. So it's, it's kind of, yeah, the tailor made experience, but also the more broader experience where we want to create this tool, develop this tool, make it accessible to the public with a subscription based model where any individual that has an idea and maybe a product that is interesting for the metaverse be able to create this virtual storefront and upload it directly. >>How long does it take to build an environment? Let's say I was, I wanna do a cube. Yeah. I go to a lot of venues all around the world. Yeah. MOSCON and San Francisco, the San convention center in Las Vegas, we're here in Monaco. How do I replicate these environments? Do I call you up and say, Hey, I need some artists. Do you guys render it? What's the take us through the process. >>Yeah. It's, it's basically a case by case scenario at the moment, very much. We're working with our partners that find brands that are interested in getting into the metaverse and we then design the shops. Well, it depends on the brands. Some have a really clear idea of what they want. Some are a bit more open to it and they're like, well, we have this and this, can you build something? >>I mean, I mean, I can see the apple store saying, Hey, you know, they're pretty standard apple stores. You got cases of iWatches. Yeah. I mean that's easily to, replicateable probably good ROI for them. >>Exactly. It's it's is that what you're thinking? Their team. Exactly. Yeah. It depends. And we, we want to add a layer of something cuz just replicating the store simply. Yeah. It's it's maybe not as interesting, you know, it just, oh, okay. I'm in the store. It's white, everywhere. It's apple. Right. It's like, oh I'm in at the dentist, but we want to add some video game elements to the, to those experiences. But very subtle ones, ones that won't make you feel, oh, I'm playing one of these games, you know? It's yeah. Very supple. >>You can, you can jump into immersive experience as defined by the brand. Yeah. I mean the brand will control the values. So you're say apple and you're at the iWatch table. Yeah. You could have a digital assistant pop in there with an avatar. Exactly. You can jump down a rabbit hole and say, Hey, I want this iWatch. I'm a bike mountain biker. For example, I could get experience of mountain biking with my watch on I fall off, ambulance sticks me up. I mean, all these things that they advertise is what goes >>On. Yeah. And we can recreate these experiences and what they're advertising and into a more immersive experience is what we're trying to our, our goal is to create experiences. We know that, you know, why does someone is someone spend so much at Disneyland? It's like triple the price of whatever, because you know, it's Mickey mouse around you. It's, that's the experience that comes around. And often the experience is more important than the product. Sometimes >>It's hard. It's really hard to get that first class citizen experience with the event or venue physical. Yeah. Which is a big challenge. I know the metaverse are gonna try to solve this. So I gotta ask you what's your vision on solving that? Okay. Cause that's the holy grail. That's what we're talking about here. Yeah. I got a physical event or place. I wanna replicate it in the metaverse but create that just as good first party citizen like experience. >>Yeah. I mean that's the whole event event type of business side of the metaverse is also a huge one. It's one that we are choosing to tackle after the e-commerce one. But it's definitely something that has been asked a lot by the brands where like we want to create, like, we want to release this store for an event that is in real life, but we want to make it accessible to the largest number. That's why we saw with Fortnite as well. All those events, the fashion week in the central land. And >>Sand's a Cub in the Fortnite too. >>There you go. And so the, the event aspect is super important and we want those meta shops to be places where a brand can organize an event. Let's say they want to make the entrance paid. They can do an NFD for that if they want. And then they have to, the user has to connect the NFD to access the event with an idea. Right. But that's definitely possible. And that's how we leverage blockchain as well with those companies and say, you know, you're not familiar with >>This method. You're badging, you know, you're the gaming where we were talking earlier. Yeah. Badging and credentials and access methods. A tech concept can be easily forwarded to NFTs. Yeah, >>Exactly. Exactly. And brands are interested in that. >>Sure. Of course. Yeah. By being the NFT. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I gotta ask you the origination story. Take me through the, the, how this all started. Yeah. Was it a seat of an idea you and your friends get together? Yeah. It was an it scratch. And when you're really into this, what's the origination story and where you're at now. >>So we started off in January really with a, quite a, a different idea. It was called the loft business club. It's an NFT collection on the Salina blockchain. And the whole idea beyond it is that NFT holders would have access to their virtual apartments that we called the lofts. It got very popular. We got a really big following at the start. It was really the trend back in January, February. And we managed to, to sell out successfully the whole collection of 5,000 NFTs. And yeah, we started as a group of friends, really like-minded friends from my hometown in, in, met in France who are today, the co-founders and the associates with different backgrounds. Leo has the marketing side of things. A club has the 3d designing. We had all our different skills coming into it. Obviously my English was quite helpful as well cause French people in English it's, it's not often the best French English. Yeah. And I was, the COO has been doing amazing on the kind of the serious stuff. You know, the taxis lawyers >>Operational to all of trains running on time. >>Exactly >>Sure. People get their jobs done. >>Yeah, exactly. So >>It's well too long of a lunch cuz you know, French would take what, two hour lunches. Yeah. You >>Have to enjoy it. Yeah. >>Coffee and stuff. That's wine, you know about creative, >>But yeah, it's, it's a friend stuff that started as a, as a passion project and got so quick. And today I'm here talking to you in this setting. It's like, >>You're pretty excited. >>I mean it's super excited. It's such a we're you know, we feel like we're building something that's new and our developer team, we're now a team of 15 in total with developers based in Paris, mostly. And everybody is, is feeling like, you know, they're contributing to something new and that's, what's exciting about it. You know, it's something that's not really done or it's trying to be done, but nobody really knows the way >>It's pioneering days. But the, but the pandemic has shifted the culture faster because people like certainly the gen Zs are like, I don't wanna reuse that old stuff. Yeah. And, but they still want to go to like games or events or go to stores. Yeah. But once to go to a store, I mean, I go to apple store all the time where I live in Palo Alto, California. And it's like, yeah, I love that store. And I know it by heart. I don't, I don't have to go there. Yeah. Walking into the genius bar virtually I get the same job done. Yeah, >>Exactly. That's that's what we want to do. And the other pandemic is just it's it's been all about improving, you know, people's condition, life conditions at home, I think. And that's what kind of boosted the whole metaverse conversation and Facebook really grabbing onto it as well. It's just that people were stuck at home and for gamers, that's fine. We used to be stuck at home playing video games all day. Yeah. We survived the pandemic fine. But for other people it was a bit more of a new >>Experience. Well, Oscar, one of the cool things is that you said like mind you and your founding team, always the secret to success. But now you see a lot of old guys like me and gals coming in too, your smart people are like-minded they get it. Especially ones that have seen the ways before, when you have this kind of change, it's a cultural shift and technology shift and business model shift at the same time. Yeah. And to me there's gonna be chaos, but at the end of the day, >>I mean there's fun and >>Chaos. That's opportunity. There's a fun and fun and opportunity. >>It's fun and chaos, you know, and yeah. Likeminded people and the team has really been the driving factor with our company. We are all very much excited about what we're doing and it's been driving us forward. >>Well, keep in touch. Thanks for coming on the cube and sharing, sharing a story with us in the world. We really appreciate we'll keep in touch with you guys. Do love what you do. Oscar ballet here inside the cube Argo verse eCommerce shop. The beginning of this wave is happening. The convergence of physical virtual is a hybrid mode. It's a steady state. It is not gonna go away. It's only gonna get bigger, more cooler, more relevant than ever before. Cube covering it like a blanket here in Monaco, crypto summit. I'm John furrier. We'll be right back after this short break.

>>Hello, welcome back to the cubes coverage of Monaco, crypto summit presented by digital bits. It's a conference where a lot of the people using digital bits and the industry coming together around the future of crypto in the applicates got a great guest garage, rod cot, founder, and CEO of an innovative company. Love this co I love this company, Luke mogul, Rob, thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Oh, >>Thank you for having >>Us. Yeah. So I checked out what you guys are doing. You've got the sports metaverse angle going on with super valuable, cuz sports is super entertaining. Uh, people are engaged. There's huge fan base, huge online now, digital convergence going on with the physical, you know, you see all kinds of sports betting going on now everything's going digital. There's a whole nother consumer experience going on with sports and the game is still the same on the, on the field or so to, or the court. That's correct. Yeah. Now it's going to digital take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. >>Yeah, so yes, we are building out a sports ERs where we are bringing athletes, whether they're NBA stars, NFL stars, w N B a many of those athletes into meows giving them the ownership of the entire, um, meows commerce along with gameplay. So that's something from our perspective, this, uh, this is something that we're focused on. We're building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums. Athlete can create their own training centers, media hubs. Um, and imagine Lisa, Leslie for example, is building out a woman leadership sports academy, right? We have Michael Cooper building out defensive academy. So those are all the brands. We have 174 NBA w N B stars. And, um, and we are building out this, >>The brand is the brand, is the platform that's correct. That's the trend we're seeing. And it's, it's also an extension of their reach in community. So there's, they can convert their star power and athlete with owner's approval. If they probably write it on to the contracts, he, they can imagine all the complications, but they bring that online and extend that energy and brand equity yep. To fans and social network. Yeah. >>And many of these athletes are tremendous successful in their web two careers, right? Yeah. Um, some are current athletes, some are former athletes, but they have built such a brand persona where people are following them on Instagram. For example, Carlos Boozer. He has like almost 6 million followers between Twitter and Instagram and those kind of brands are looking or how do I give back to the community? How do I engage with my community and web three? And especially with our platform, we are giving that power back to the players. >>So you guys got some big names booers on there. You mentioned Carlos Boozer. You mentioned that Lisa, Leslie others among others, Michael Cooper throw back to the old Lakers, uh, magic. Johnson's kind actually here in crypto. We just saw him in the lobbies and in dinner and the other night, um, at Nobu, um, you got a lot of NBA support. Take a take, take, even explain how you're working this angle. Uh, you got some great traction, uh, momentum. Um, you got great pedigree, riot games in your career. Uh, you kind of get the world, the tech world, the media world, as it comes together. What's the secret sauce here? Is it the NBA relationship combination of the team explained >>It's really focusing on what, uh, we are building on me was focusing on players first, right? So players are literally, we call our platform as, uh, owned by the players, made for the players. Uh, and engagement is really all done through the players, right? So that's our key sauce. And when we worked out with NBA, we, we are part of the NBA BPA acceleration program for 2022 that is funded by a six Z, uh, and, and many others. Um, and our partnership with league is very critical. So it's not only partnered with player association partnered with leagues, whether it's NBA, w N B a NFL. So those are the venues. And this becomes almost a program, especially for athletes to really generate this lifetime engagement and royalty model because some of this famous athletes really want to give back to the communities. So like for example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but Lisa, Leslie really wants to empower women leadership, leadership, and really help, um, women in sports, for example. Right? So those are the angles that, um, that really people are excited about. >>Well, for the people watching that might not understand some of the ins and outs of sports and, and rod, your background in your team, it's interesting. The sports teams have been on the big day to train for many, many years. You look at all the stadiums. Now they've got mobile devices, they got wifi under the chairs. They use data and technology to manage the team. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> manage the stadium and venue and operations suppliers, whatnot. And then also the fans. So you, they, they got about a decade or so experience already in the digital world. This is not new to the, to the sports world. Yeah. So you guys come to the table kind of at a good time. >>Yeah. Especially the defi of the sports, right? So there's a defi of the finance, but this is the really, uh, a, a decentralization of the sports is something that there's a lot of traction. And there are many companies that are really focusing on that. Our focus obviously is players first, right? How do we give power to the players? Uh, and those are really driving the entire engagement. And also the brands >>How's the NBA feel about this because, you know, you got the NBA and you get the team, you got the owners. I mean, the democratization of the players, which I love by the way that angle kind of brings their power. Now's the new kind of balance of power. How is the NBA handling this? What's some of the conversations you've had with the, the organization. >>Yeah. So obviously there are a lot of things that, uh, people have to be careful about, right? They have existing contracts, existing, digital media rights. Um, so that's something that, uh, we have to be very tactful when we are working with NBA and NPA, uh, on what we can say, we cannot say. So that is obviously they have a lot of existing multimillion or billion dollar contracts that they cannot void with the web because the evolution of web three, >>You know, I love, uh, riffing on the notion of contract compliance when there's major structural change happening. Remember back in baseball, back in the days before the internet, the franchise rights was geographic territory. Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, if you're the New York Yankees, you're doing great. If you're Milwaukee, you're not doing too good, but then comes the internet. That's good. That's no geography. There's no boundaries. That's good. So you're gonna have stadiums have virtual Bo. So again, how do they keep up with the contracts? Yeah. I mean, this is gonna be a fundamental issue. >>That's >>Good. Good. And I think if they don't move, the players are gonna fill that void. >>That's correct. Yeah. And especially with this, this an IL deal, right. That happened for the players, uh, especially college athletes. So we are in process of onboarding 1.5 million college athletes. Uh, and those athletes are looking for not only paying for the tuition for the colleges, but also for engagement and generating this early on, uh, >>More okay. Rod, we're gonna make a prediction here in the cube, 20, 20 we're in Monaco, all the NBA, NHL, the teams they're gonna be run by player Dows. Yeah. What do you think? A very good prediction. Yeah. Very good prediction. Yeah. I mean you, I mean, that's a joke, I'm joking aside. I mean, it's kind of connecting the dots, but you know, whether that happens or not, what this means is if this continues to go down this road, that's correct. Get the players collectively could come together. Yeah. And flip the script. >>Yeah. And that's the entire decentralization, right. So it's like the web three has really disrupted this industry as you know. Um, and, and I know your community knows that too. >>Of course, course we do. We love it. >>Something from sports perspective, we are very excited. >>Well, I love it. Love talking. Let's get to the, to the weeds here on the product, under the hood, tell about the roadmap, obviously NFTs are involved. That's kind of sexy right now. I get the digital asset model on there. Uh, but there's a lot more under the coverage. You gotta have a platform, you gotta have the big data and then ultimately align into connecting other systems together. How do you view the tech roadmap and the product roadmap? What's your vision? >>Yeah. So the, the one thing that you had to be T full, uh, as a company, whether it's LUT, mogul or any other startup, is you have to be really part of the ecosystem. So the reason why we are here at Monaco is that we obviously are looking at partnership with digital bits, um, and those kind of partnership, whether it's fourth centric, centric are very critical for the ecosystem in the community to grow. Um, and that's one thing you cannot build a, another, uh, isolated metaverse right? So that's one thing. Many companies have done it, but obviously not. >>It's a wall garden doesn't work. >>Exactly. So you have to be more open platform. So one things that we did early on in our platform, we have open APIs and SDKs where not only you as an athlete can bring in your, uh, other eCommerce or web, uh, NFTs or anything you want, but you can also bring in other real estate properties. So when we are building out this metaverse, you start with real estate, then you build out obviously stadiums and arenas and academies training academies, but then athletes can bring their, uh, web commerce, right. Where it's NFT wearables shoe line. So >>Not an ecosystem on top of Luke Mo. So you're like, I'm almost like you think about a platform as a service and a cloud computing paradigm. Yeah. Look different, not decentralized, but similarly enabling others, do the heavy lifting on their behalf. Yeah. Is that right? >>So that's correct. Yes. So we are calling ourself as the sports platform as a service, right. So we want to add the word sports because we, uh, in, in many contexts, right. When you're building metaverse, you can get distracted with them, especially we are in Los Angeles. Right. >>Can I get a luxury box for the cube and some of the metaverse islands and the stadiums you're doing? >>We, we are working >>On it. We're >>Definitely working on, especially the, uh, Los Angeles, uh, stadium. Yeah. >>Well, we're looking for some hosts, anyone out there looking for some hosts, uh, for the metaverse bring your avatar. You can host the cube, bro. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate. What's the, what's next for you guys, obviously, continuing to build momentum. You got your playful, how many people on the team what's going on, give a plug for the company. What are you looking for share with the audience, some of the, some of your goals. Yeah. >>So, uh, the main thing we're looking for is really, um, from a brand perspective, if you are looking at buying properties, this would be an amazing time to buy virtual sports stadium. Um, so we are, obviously we have 175 stadiums in roadmap right now. We started with Los Angeles. Then we are in San Francisco, New York, Qatar, Dubai. So all those sports stadiums, whether they're basketball, football, soccer are all the properties. And, uh, from a community perspective, if you want to get an early access, we are all about giving back to the community. Uh, so you can buy it at a much better presale price right now. Uh, so that's one, the second thing is that if you have any innovative ideas or a player that you want to integrate into, we have an very open platform from a community engagement perspective. If you have something unique from a land sale perspective yeah. Or the NFD perspective plug, contact us at, at Raj lumo.com. >>And I'm assuming virtual team, you in LA area where where's your home. >>So, yeah, so I live in Malibu, um, and our office is in Santa Monica. We have an office in India. Uh, we have few developers also in Europe. So, uh, and then we are team of 34 people right now >>Looking to hire some folks >>We are looking for, what >>Are you, what are you looking for? >>So, uh, we are looking for a passionate sports, uh, fanatics. >>It's a lot, not hard to find. Yeah. >><laugh> who knows how to also code. Right? So from blockchain perspective, we are, uh, chain agnostic. Uh, but obviously right now we are building on polygon, but we are chain agnostic. So if you have any blockchain development experience, uh, that's something we, we are looking for. Yeah. >>RA, thanks for coming out. Luke Mo check him out. I'm John furry with the cube here in Monaco for the mono crypto summit presented by digital bits. We got all the action, a lot of great guests going on, stay with us for more coverage. Um, John furrier, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage in Monaco. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. Monaco Crypto Summit is the event and there's a big conversation later at the yacht club with Prince Albert and everyone else will be there, and it'll be quite the scene. And Rachel Wolfson is here. She's with Cointelegraph. They're the media partner of the event, the official media partner of the Monaco Crypto Summit. She's also MCing the event on stage, presented by DigitalBits. Rachel, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> So I know you're busy, thanks for taking the time cause' you got to go jump back in and moderate, and keep things on track. This isn't an inaugural event. So DigitalBits has exploded on the scene. I just saw a thing on YouTube news around this soccer player in Rome, has DigitalBits logo on their jersey. They're a big to do cause everyone's popular and they got a couple teams. So real world, kind of, assets coming together, what's going on in the event that you're MCing? What's the focus? What's the agenda? What's some of the conversations like? >> Yeah, definitely. Well, it's a great event. It's my first time here in Monaco and I'm loving it. And I think that Monaco is really becoming the next crypto hotspot. Definitely in terms of Metaverse and Web3 innovation, I think that we're going to start seeing a lot of that here. That's what we're seeing today at the Summit. So a lot of the presentations that we're seeing are really focused on Web3 and NFT platforms, so for instance, obviously what DigitalBits is doing. We watched a video before the break on Ecosystem and the Metaverse that people can join and be a part of, in terms of real estate, but we're seeing a lot of innovation here today with that. I moderated a great panel with Britney Kaiser, Lauren Bissell, Taross, I'm blanking on his last name, but it was about blockchain and how governments are implementing blockchain. So that was also really interesting to hear about what the Ukrainian government is doing with blockchain. So there's kind of a mix, but I'd say that the overall theme is Web3 and NFTs. >> Yeah. Britney was mentioning some of that, how they're going to preserve buildings and artifacts, so that in case they're looted or destroyed, they can preserve them. >> Right. I think it's called the Heritage Fund. And I just think it's such an interesting use case in terms of how governments are using blockchain because the best use for blockchain in my opinion, is recording data, and having that data be permanent. And so when we can have artifacts in Ukraine recorded on the blockchain, you know by being scanned, it's really revolutionary. And I think that a lot of governments around the world are going to see that use case and say, "Oh wow, blockchain is a great technology for things like that." >> So DigitalBits had a press conference this morning and they talked about their exchange and some other things. Did you attend that press conference or did you get briefed on that? >> I did not attend the press conference. I was prepping for my MC role. >> So they got this exchange thing and then there's real interest from Prince Albert's foundations to bring this into Monaco. So Monaco's got this vibe, big time. >> Rachel: Right. There's a vibe (John chuckles) >> What does it all mean, when you're putting in your reporting? What do you see happening? >> So, I mean, I honestly haven't covered Monaco actually ever in my reporting. And John, you know I've been reporting since 2017, but the vibe that I'm getting just from this summit today is that Web3 and NFTs are going to be huge here. I'm speaking, I haven't... You know, there's a panel coming up about crypto regulations, and so we're going to talk a little bit about laws being passed here in Monaco in terms of Metaverse and digital identity. So I think that there are a few laws around that here that they're looking at, the government here is looking at to kind of add clarity for those topics. >> I had a couple guests on earlier. We were talking about the old days, a couple years ago. You mentioned 2017, so much has changed. >> Yes. >> You know, we had a up and down. 2018 was a good year, and then it kind of dived back and changed a little bit. Then NFTs brought it back up again, been a great hype cycle, but also movement. What's your take on the real progress that's been made? If you zoom out and look at the landscape, what's happened? >> Right. I mean, well, a lot has happened. When I first entered the space, I initially came in, I was interested in enterprise, blockchain and private networks being utilized by enterprises to record data. And then we saw public blockchains come in, like Ethereum and enterprises using them. And then we saw a mix. And now I feel like we're just seeing public blockchains and there's really... (John chuckles) But there's still our private blockchains. But today, I mean, we've gone from that in 2017 to right now, I think, you know, we're recently seeing a lot of these centralized exchanges kind of collapsing. What we've seen with Celsius, for instance, and people moving their crypto to hardware wallets. I think that the space is really undergoing a lot of transformation. It's really revolutionary, actually, to see the hardware wallet market is growing rapidly, and I think that that's going to continue to grow. I think centralized exchanges are still going to exist in custody crypto for enterprises and institutions, and you know, in individuals as well. But we are seeing a shift from centralized exchanges to hardware wallets. NFTs, although the space is, you know, not as big as it was a year ago, it's still quite relevant. But I think with the way the market is looking today, we're only seeing the top projects kind of lead the way now, versus all of the noise that we were seeing previously. So yeah, I think it's- >> So corrections, basically? >> Right. Exactly. Corrections. And I think it's necessary, right. It's very necessary. >> Yeah. It's interesting. You know, you mentioned the big players you got Bitcoin, Ethereum driving a lot. I remember interviewing the crypto kiddies when they first came out, it was kind of a first gen Ethereum, and then it just exploded from there. And I remember saying to myself, if the NFTs and the decentralized applications can have that scale, but then it felt like, okay, there was a lot of jocking for under the covers, under the hood, so to speak. And now you've got massive presence from all the VCs, and Jason Ho has like another crypto fund. I mean, >> Right. you can't go a day without another big crypto fund from you know, traditional venture capitalists. Meanwhile, you got investors who have made billions on crypto, they're investing. So you kind of got a diversity of investor base going on and different instruments. So the investor community's changing and evolving too. >> Right. >> How do you see that evolving? >> Well, it's a really good point you mentioned. So Cointelegraph research recently released a report showing that Web3 is the most sought after investment sector this year. So it was DeFi before, and Web3 is now leading the way over DeFi. And so we're seeing a lot of these venture capitalist funds as you mentioned, create funds allocated just to Web3 growth. And that's exactly what we're seeing, the vibe I'm getting from the Monaco Crypto Summit here today, this is all about Web3. It's all about NFT, it is all about the Metaverse. You know, this is really revolutionary. So I think we're definitely going to see that trend kind of, you know, conquer all of these other sectors that we're seeing in blockchain right now. >> Has Web3 become the coin term for Metaverse and NFTs? Or is that being globalized as all shifted, decentralized? What's the read on it? It seems to be like, kind of all inclusive but it tends to be more like NFT's the new thing and the young Gen Zs >> Yeah want something different than the Millennials and the Xs and the Boomers, who screwed everything up for everybody. >> Yeah. (John chuckles) No, I mean, it's a great question. So when I think of Web3, I categorize NFTs and the Metaverse in there. Obviously it's just, you know the new form of the internet. It's the way the internet is- >> Never fight fashion, as I always say, right? >> Right. Yeah. Right. (John chuckles) It's just decentralization. The fact that we can live in these virtual worlds and own our own assets through NFT, it's all decentralized. And in my opinion, that all falls under the category of Web3. >> Well, you're doing a great job MCing. Great to have you on theCube. >> Rachel: Thanks. I'd like to ask you a personal question if you don't mind. COVID's impacted us all with no events. When did you get back onto the events circuit? What's on your calendar? What have you been up to? >> Yeah, so gosh, with COVID, I think when COVID, you know, when it was actually really happening, (John chuckles) and it still is happening. But when it was, you know, >> John: Like, when it was >> impacting- shut down mode. >> Right. When we were shut down, there were virtual events. And then, I think it was late last year or early this year when the events started happening again. So most recently I was at NFT NYC. Before that, I was at Consensus, which was huge. >> Was that the one in Austin or Miami? >> In Austin. >> That's right, Austin. >> Right. Were you there? >> No, I missed it. >> Okay. It was a very high level, great event. >> Huge numbers, I heard. >> Yes. Massive turnout. (John chuckles) Tons of speakers. It was really informative. >> It feels like a festival. actually. >> It was. It was just like South by Southwest, except for crypto and blockchain. (John chuckles) And then coming up, gosh, there are a lot of events. I'll be at an event in Miami, it's an NFT event that's in a few months. I know that there's a summit happening, I think in Turkey that I may be at as well. >> You're on the road. You're traveling. You're doing a lot of hopping around. >> Yes I am. And there's a lot of events happening in Europe. I'm US-based, but I'm hoping to spend more time in Europe just so I can go to those events. But there's a lot happening. >> Yeah. Cool. What's the most important story people should be paying attention to in your mind? >> Wow. That's... (Rachel chuckles) That's a big question. It's a good question. I think most, you know, the transition that we're seeing now, so in terms of prices, I think people need to focus less on the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum and more on innovation that's happening. So for instance, Web3 innovation, what we're seeing here today, you know, innovation, isn't about prices, but it's more about like actually now is the time to build. >> Yeah. because the prices are a bit down. >> Yeah. I mean, as, you know, Lewis Hamilton's F1 driver had a quote, you know, "It takes a team. No matter who's in the driver's seat, it's a team." So community, Wayne Gretzky skates where the puck is going to be I think is much more what I'm hearing now, seeing what you're saying is that don't try to count the price trade of Bitcoin. This is an evolution. >> Right. >> And the dots are connecting. >> Exactly. And like I said, now is the time to build. What we're seeing with the project Britney mentioned, putting the heritage, you know, on the blockchain from Ukraine, like, that's a great use case for what we're seeing now. I want to see more of those real world use cases. >> Right. Well, Rachel, thanks for coming on theCube. I really appreciate it. Great to see you. >> Thanks, John. >> And thanks for coming out of your schedule. I know you're busy. >> Thanks. Now you get some lunchtime now and get some break. >> Yeah. Get back on stage. Thanks for coming on. >> Rachel: Thank you. >> All right. We're here at the Monaco Crypto Summit. Rachel's MCing the event as part of the official media partner, Cointelegraph. Rachel Wolfson here on theCube. I'm John Furrier. More coverage coming after this short break. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

okay welcome back everyone we're here live in monaco for siliconangle thecube's coverage of the monaco crypto summit i'm john furrier your host we're here with al berger the founder of the digital bits blockchain digital bits is presented it's an open ecosystem they're the main presenters bringing everybody together al burgia is the man of the hour al great to see you cube alumni great to see you again john thanks thanks for having me back on the show it's been this is an inaugural event yeah you you and your team put together the digital bits foundation um the digits blockchains enabling technology the proof is in the pudding as i always say now you're seeing companies building on top of the ecosystem why monaco this is inaugural event what's going on here what's the motivation what does all this mean all this stuff coming together share uh why monaco i mean there's uh it's part of this next chapter for us things are happening in monaco and and um um we've yet to unveil that and we thought you know what better place to unveil what we're doing in monaco other than to do it in monaco so that was really the genesis of what gave birth this idea to have the monaco crypto summit um but that evolved beyond just sharing the nexus of it all there are organizations that here that have come from all over the world and will be sharing for the first time how they're also utilizing the digital bits watching not bad to come to monaco in the summer though it's pretty pretty nice area beautiful views yeah summer time in monaco is always great but this inaugural event first of all i love the name so congratulations on the name i think it's got a lot of legs to it i think this will be something that's going to be around for a long long time so it's a good good call there there's a lot of other dynamics going on prince albert's got some involvement he's interested in crypto we're going to hear more about that in the yacht club presentation later tonight you got startups companies building on top of the capabilities of digital bits you know you and i have talked in the past on the cube about the technology um your technologists uh followed a lot of your adventures to success and exits multiple exits in tech silicon valley knows you everyone knows you know around the world it's kind of like a cloud game but it's decentralized you've got infrastructure platform applications um there's super applications and decentralized device to all kinds of new stuff going on so you have a stack kind of going on here in a decentralized way and been validated by all the big names jumping in and changing their business models and horowitz you name it now a global financial markets converging on this huge opportunity around crypto and d-apps everything's happening so what's your reaction to someone who's been through many cycles built companies and sold them and been successful what's your analysis i mean this journey is then different and you has a unique some similarities but definitely some unique characteristics in prior journeys uh in in you know venturing off to found a company and so forth and for me it's been obviously the traditional way um you know prior to this obviously it was in the valley and and had uh uh quite the journey um what i would say this time is um with all that's happening in blockchain and cryptocurrency it's the amount of say capital formation the amount of people involvement in into an early technology into an evolving technology and there's various subcategories now across nfts metabours and um and all things fungible um there's a global stage immediately and um and it sort of creates these sort of mini vortexes of getting more people involved um it's it's kind of some semblances of like the dot-com bubble in a sense but with a much bigger ecosystem um in comparison to what we saw in the 90s um the thing about blockchain is that it it needs to the more successful blockchains out there need to evolve into becoming as decentralized as possible and so as to use your analogy of stack i mean it is incredibly important to have contributors at all layers protocol layer application d app layer in many corners of the world but it all starts with an idea so it's really hard to go from point a to point b um like any other new opportunity and so for us it's been a journey we're evolving in this next chapter um and a lot of that will be evident today throughout the course of the summit we'll start to see and start to feel even more so how uh the digitalbits ecosystem is is becoming more and more decentral we're going to see a bunch of folks coming on us off stage are going to come here sit down on thecube and chat with me about their opportunities how would you describe for the folks watching now what's going on on stage here all day and then obviously there's a vip gala tonight at the yacht club with prince albert in attendance and his team and a bunch of big power players what's happening here what's the what's the vibe what's the purpose what's being presented can you just quickly share uh take a minute to explain what's going on so relative to to the summit um it's you know organizations uh platforms um there's there's uh a few metaverse uh platforms here that will be um i mean they've been in in existence but they'll be unveiling um their connection and how they're leveraging the digital business watching for the very first time and so um but also other categories as well even um soon here massive multi-billion dollar real estate development all coming to um the digital blockchain so this is the physical world massive uh resort um real estate development completely being tokenized you just had some success in digital assets obviously the roma team i saw the announcement on on youtube was pretty big um you get digital bits on the jersey a new player so caught my attention you got sports teams you got here you got applications people building on top of digital bits why for us it yeah vision is needs to be supported by a strategy um from inception it was finding ways to take an enterprise go to market strategy and and uh some of it may be a bit of trial and error in the early you know onset from 2017-18 when it when the journey kind of began for the digital biz blockchain but um also part of it is timing and one of the things that we saw more recently again kind of like the journey and the stack you're referring to before nobody foresaw the pandemic nobody foresaw that the whole world would be at home staring at a screen um and figuring out what to do with their time and many of the world for the first time began to learn about blockchain and cryptocurrency for the first time in the onset of this pandemic and so that became a huge accelerant for the space and so um another quote you know i've i'll take away from you that i you know recall you saying many years ago um you need to have a horse on the track to be in the race yeah we're very fortunate to have a horse in the track by having already a number of years of development um awareness so that when there's kind of like these market shifts that can become an accelerant we're in a position to to move with the industry um and so it's been an incredible couple of years i mean it was great for you guys yeah and so there you know there's different contributors in the ecosystem some some that i'm affiliated with that have done things in the sports space um and other things that i'm not affiliated with there's a lot of things that again are emerging today that are happening in different categories or themes of metaverse for example um and i'm humbled by it just simply by the virtue of the fact that they're utilizing the digital that's watching but i had no um stake in building what they've built in terms of this is enabling technology so just to kind of pivot off you said yeah the pandemic was a tailwind now for um this movement for many reasons one people sitting at home boy hey this is technically vegas work on the blockchain two the future of work or the future of how things are organized is was remote work remote work is like next door neighbor to decentralization like i mean come on you're talking about people going this is not the future is not where it used to be that kind of galvanized a lot of people and also the business models have shifted so now post pandemic everything's hybrid which is virtual physical so that's the perfect storm so total acceleration agree um and we're seeing the traction now what's interesting about what you guys are doing is you're enabling people to build apps on it that's the platform and and that's that's again what i want to ask you is i had people always ask me what's digital bits so i'm going to ask you what is digital bits well digital bits is both the name of a blockchain it's also the name of a cryptocurrency the native cryptocurrency of the digital bits blockchain and so um it began 2017 as a fork of stellar in terms of the original repository um and you know there's a question i was asked earlier today in a press conference of like oh there's all these blockchains well we're still in this like early stage uh this early part of this uh evolution and so i i don't necessarily see a lot of what's happening out there as competitive but rather complementary because in unison you know there's different use cases different categories uh where kind of a blockchain can find its array of adoption in in this sort of phase of it all um for us um we've been referred to as a few different things one of which is you know the aspiration become this blockchain for brands i think today we'll learn that it's become much bigger than that in terms of its capability it's not necessarily that um it's as a result of new technology it's the tech a lot of this technology has been there it's just how it's being exploited and used um we're unveiling today for example and part of now this chapter for me is working with um community um developers hold on before you get there so okay i see digital bits i love the name by the way so thanks for that you kind of get to the news now you have a press conference take me through the press conference what's the news what are you guys announcing here today so the press conference we we did share not everything uh there's more um uh likely in store by the end of today that's not on the agenda uh and and maybe i'll be back on the show later today um we will have you back we'll find out come on but in terms of in terms of what we shared so far at the press conference um uh it was centered around two key themes i wanted to um obviously talked about the array of things to come today but focus on some of the things i'm directly involved in one of which was nico swap and the other are the number of things involved here within monaco so in terms of nico swap um by way of nane nico and in the spirit of decentralization nico in ancient greek means victory for the people so we thought that was a fitting name for the platform it's a decentralized exchange platform on uh the digital bits blockchain um filled with liquidity pool technology automated market making technology it's it's but by way of comparison digital bits is version of let's say a uniswap but lower cost faster and so forth and there's a number of organizations here today that will uh are announcing that they're deploying on nicos bringing their token to the digital bits blockchain and and launching um on on nicoswap so we're i'm super excited about that this is you know part of evolution and part of fostering decentralization um and so what that enables is by virtue of uh being able to again help helping other organizations getting their horse on the track the common denominator for us is digital bits it's um you know the fact that every application every utility token every nft you know does require digital bits including the digital bits currency to provide that security to to be used for gas fees and and and so on and so forth so um the blockchain itself the cryptocurrency it's kind of a common denominator beneficiary uh the one way you can kind of think of it um but yeah we shared a lot around an ecoswap um uh what it looks like and um its key functionality and and who are some of the organizations that are uh on on board day one the other part of the press conference today we shared um was more monaco centric digital bits in monaco and this journey is just beginning uh it's super humbling it's super exciting for me to be a part of it um there is again no real particular order there's a an ecampus that's focused around cyber security and blockchain education for both private sector and public sector so um academia so skills government issues solve some skill gap correct right it's an organization a financial institution a whole department needs to know more about blockchain how they can leverage it um digitalbits um is the blockchain um that is forming the first part of the curriculum for this ecampus that's launching here in monaco with uh uh an organization called amvini the other thing uh that we shared and announced uh today is that um the first sov first and only sovereign cloud in europe is the monaco cloud as recently launched what makes it soft and in essence is a few aspects of its characteristics but digital bits blockchain nodes are being deployed in the monaco cloud um and so beyond the nodes that already exist it's um the network is further being let's say hardest to bring your scale in resiliency you know the whole thing around censorship resistance right the more nodes there's a huge strategic aspect to obviously deploying nodes in in sovereign clouds um and so in europe the first for that is the monaco cloud so we're really honored to be working with the team there and mvne and so forth for that and then um and then as well um a number of months ago we began a journey with the prince albert of monaco foundation um the the chair president is uh prince albert and um the uh vice president ceo is olivia windham who was in attendance at the uh at the press conference as well and um and we unveiled um the foundations uh platform entirely built on the digital bits blockchain uh utilizing the digital bits cryptocurrency um as well as uh nft ticketing and so forth uh so we unveiled that we showcased that for uh for members of the press um how it will be used and and so forth some of the questions you got um i mean it went everywhere from um there was a regulatory regulation question related to europe um to questions around decentralization what are what are we doing how do we compare to uh proof of work you know why why digital bits a big part of that is i think we have a lot of common values with um the foundation of prince albert foundation uh around the environment being eco-friendly and so on and so forth and so um um questions of that sort you know how what do you know what's the next chapter look like and and how how um is more and more decentralization in my view going to be fueled and you said you got some announcements you can't talk about um coming okay so is that what's that going to be related to you get a little bit of teaser on that is it going to be something how big we be massive is it the grand finale or is it it's not a finale the unveiling it's an op unboxing of a new deal what's what's what is it a deal is it technology um it is uh um it's it's um large uh organization um that um is is leveraging uh both um the digital bits watching and digital body swerve that one okay good well al thanks for coming on and congratulations we will catch up with you either at the end of the day here on the live program or we will be at the yacht club in monaco yacht club tonight for the big event we hope to be live there but if not we will report on that yeah thanks for having me john all right congratulations digital [ __ ] really rocking the world here in monaco love the name digital bits makes tons tons of sense platform to enable applications this is the future you're going to start to see this decentralized model that kind of looks like cloud computing but not it's a technology enabling the creative and the and and the application transformations to decentralization it's coming almost every single category will be centralized we'll be covering a blanket on the cube i'm john furrier thecube thanks for watching [Music] you

[Music] okay welcome back everyone it's thecube's coverage here in monaco i'm john furrier host of thecube monaco crypto summit presented by digital bits uh media partners coin telegraph in the cube a lot of great stuff going on here digital bits and the ecosystem around the world come together to talk about the next generation uh nft environments metaverse uh blockchain all the innovations going up and down the stack of the decentralized world that will be soon a reality for everybody we have a great guest david lutzkach here who's the co-founder of aftermath islands metaverse which i got a little sneak preview of but david thanks for joining me thanks john great to be here uh we had dinner the other night at nobu it's great to know you get to know your background you've got a stellar uh pedigree um you've run public companies you've been involved in tech media across the board again this is a ship we're seeing like we've never before perfect storm technology change cultural change business model transformation all around deep decentralization crypto token economics decentralized applications metaverse i mean come on we haven't digital identity there was identity which you're involved in take us through what are you working on take a minute to explain what you're working on and then we'll get into it so aftermath islands is is really a culmination of three things uh digital identity the ability to prove who you are because we think the internet and i think everyone would agree the internet's broken you know um nefarious actors bad actors can be anywhere um hacks fake spots so by being able to prove that you're a real person not necessarily verifying your identity but prove that you're a real person um can add a lot of benefits to everyone in the ecosync system second thing is we combine that with avatars nfts and credentials because i'd like to represent myself as a little more buff than i am and maybe a little taller and then the third thing is we put it in a unreal engine so real realistic photo realistic game engine metaverse that requires no downloading it's all pixel streaming just like you'd stream netflix you can stream the game i want to ask because this is i know it's a hard problem because i've asked a lot of people the same question the unreal engine is really powerful and the imagery is amazing like gaming we all know what it looks like it's hard it's not everyone's getting it right what makes it so special how are you guys cracking the code well i think it's our experience i mean we've worked for major entertainment companies major technology companies major sports companies so um as i just use your word because it being i want to be humbled by this but we do have a great pedigree we've also brought great people to the table so having a platform isn't enough we've got great creators and uh we've got great storytellers so we've got the anisiasa brothers one mariano is is a illustrator and former special editor uh project center at marvel and his brother fabian is our storyteller who's the co-creator of deadpool so we've got great people and with unreal engine 5 we've really taken it from the ground up we've looked at it and and we've really combined it with new gpu cloud serving and pixel streaming so that you're so the individual that's that's involved engaged immersed is now really playing it without having to download a graphics package yeah and also you drop some names there and some and some brands i know there's a lot more at dinner we've talked a lot about them you you know all the top creators and again i love the creator culture i mean that's the new buzzwords around but ultimately it's artists people building stuff application developers in the software world movies and film art art and code is kind of coming together it's the same kind of thing media and coding it's like the same mindset you know creative exactly crazy good smart in a good way in the blockchain it's harder because you've got all this underlying infrastructure and stuff to provision and build often created say oh man it's like doing chores it's like i just want to build cool stuff i don't want to get in the weeds of all the tech right this is like whoever cracks the code can unleash that heavy lifting so the artist can like feel good about kicking ass well i'm i'm being a slot a little sly here because we've sort of broken it into three areas and we've used blockchain to book and the platform so we still think that that gaming in the interactive platform has to have centralization it has to have decision making we have a great community um between twitter and discord we have over 30 000 people and we have organizations that have already um spawned um themselves up or spun up to manage our landowner ownership and some of our guilds for some of our professions but at the same time they're allowing us to make decisions based on what the community wants i mean i've heard recently um i don't want to say it's a horror story but it's been difficult that consensus-based models for development have to get consensus and not everybody agrees you still need the leadership i mean you still need sort of a captain on a ship to make sure that the dictatorships are work and well and linux um tried that and they've worked for a while but when they moved over to we're going to make some decisions have an opinion right whether it's centralization it's faster yeah consensus systems can be diverse and time-consuming well they can be political as well i mean you can you can it can become problems so at the front end we've got digital identity and that's all blockchain based and at the back end we have over 20 services including dids and did com which is decentralized identifier communication and all our services are blockchain based but in the middle um connected to nft's blockchain and everything else and to our teacher identity we have a game or a game platform or a open world platform that is centralized built in unreal engine so that we can make those decisions that spur on individual development it's an architecture it is i mean this is essentially an operating environment exactly you can have the benefits of the decentralized all your data on your identity okay and then have the middle be the playground and built right now that has to get done faster and you're constantly iterating exactly so you need to have that exactly so what are people saying about this to me i think that makes a lot of sense people are very intrigued um we're getting a lot of traction first of all unreal engine in the middle um brands love it because it provides a realistic view of a brand brands have spent you know hundreds of millions of dollars building brand equity and they don't necessarily want a cartoon representation of their brand so brands love it um uh we showed a video here at the monaco crypto summit of some and our videos available online on youtube but we're showing realistic we can create realistic avatars so people are really excited about what we're doing you know david i think one of the things i've had controversy statements in the past that got all the purists going back to 2018 you know throwing tomatoes at me but other halfs like loving it because at that time there was dogma around block change got to be done you know it was slow and gas so why i can use a database now we use the blockchain for smart contracts right which you that's what you want to do you want to have that locked in you want immutability so again this opportunity is to advance faster and not have to get stuck in the dogma but maybe get it back to it later database is a great example i agreed i think i think over time the community will take over the entire platform but i think at the beginning you have to have again you have to have a rudder on a ship to make it go somewhere it's called product market fit exactly you got to get to the market exactly with a product you've got that i want that exactly i mean unreal engine is hard i know what are some of the people you worked with because i think i think what i like about what you're working on is that you are and i think a great poster child of in terms of the organization of a group of people that are pros that want to do great work in a new world with the kind of experience and tools that they had in their old world right faster cheaper better more control when we were there at web one we're there at web two and now with web three we have the ability to fix some of the things that we thought were wrong with web one and two so and move into the ownership economy and and really um for us we've got a great team of people you know around the world that we work with and we're starting to bring in larger organizations to support us i mean our digital identity we're really working with the backbone at ibm and digital identity is very different in blockchain than is crypto and we're working with great people in crypto now we announced today that we're minting our native token dubs with digital bits so we're really excited about that yeah yeah let me ask you a question because i love the fact that you brought multiple ways of innovation again i've mentioned on that with shared experience there different different ride for different waves what have you learned and shared to folks who are going to dip their toe and get on their surfboard so to speak use the california metaphor for both californians what is web3 wave like how's it different from two what's the learnings can you share scar tissue experience observation anything around what you're doing now so they can get insight into this wave well you know web 1 and web 2 were broken i mean you could never go in i think we had this discussion you could never go into an electronic store in the real world write your information down on a piece of paper and expect that you'd walk out of the store with the purchase but we can type in information that is non-verified until i could take my friend's credit card know where they live and use it by using digital identity at a front end we create one user one account that user can have thousands of verifiable credentials around them and hundreds of avatars so i think what we've really learned is the ability to progress in a way that that really puts data back in the hands of consumers and makes them the owner of their identity by starting there we have a world in front of us that is valuable to marketers valuable to brands and valuables to individuals and whether it's education whether it's government services whether it's retail everything can be built on that simple premise that i am myself it's interesting there's a constant technology we're called presence you know you're present at an event you're present at a store you're present and some reality physically and you have credentials around that presence contextually exactly you're saying you can have one nft one digital identity or identity and have multiple identities that have contacts all stored i'll store it in an avatar it's like changing your suit hey i'm going into the apple store i'm now my apple john and and think of it this way um brands can now connect with you and give you promos give you product based on the information that you're willing to share with them about your real person and your avatar becomes your intermediary so your payment information stored within your digital identity and your avatar not at the retail level so this is a concept we've been working on for a long time i think we're talking about dinner but i want to bring this up for you for you to come and get a reaction to is that if what you just said is true that means if i'm the user and i have power to control my data the script flips now i'm brokering my data to the brand exactly not the other way around exactly or some intermediary i'm in control exactly and i could demand based on what my contextual relevance is to the brand and the brand is willing to pay for that because if you think about it today um social media unfortunately is plagued by fake accounts you know and issues and and so brands are spending all this money and they're getting slippage and breakage and that's spent if they know your real person they're more likely to want to give you an incentive to engage with them because it's a one-to-one transaction that creates value that's a great point you mentioned twitter earlier look at elon musk uncovered all the bots on twitter um and if they ever did the facebook i'm sure there's a ton of different accounts on facebook but you know it's out there these walled gardens have nefarious bad actors man it's not truth isn't what's the truth i mean gaming has this right now it's like you're anonymous you can go down or you got to go real name so we've got a hybrid you can do anonymously verified so because we use biometrics to verify that you're a real person so you can stay anonymous but we know you're a real person because your biometrics belong to you well david great to have you on thecube you got a great insight and experience thanks for sharing thank you john uh what's next for you guys you want to put a plug in for what you're working on you're looking for people funding more action what are you guys doing right well we've we've self-funded to date and we're we're finally going to be releasing um opportunities for people to engage with us in tokenomics and that's why we've we're working with digital bits but we're also looking for great people and great partners we're creating an interoperable open um uh world where we want to bring partners to the table so anyone who's interested reach out to us all right david guys thanks for going on thecube all right more coverage here on thecube we're all over this area going back to 2018 we brought thecube to all the events been covered on siliconangle.com since 2010 and watching this wave just get better the reality is here it's a metaverse world it is a decentralized world happening to everyone monaco crypto summit here in monaco thanks for watching we'll be right back with more after this short break you

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCube and ETR, this is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> When a piece of digital art sells for $69.3 million, more than has ever been paid for works, by Gauguin or Salvador Dali, making it created the third most expensive living artists in the world. One can't help but take notice and ask, what is going on? The latest craze around NFTs may feel a bit bubblicious, but it's yet another sign, that the digital age is now fully upon us. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon's CUBE insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we want to take a look at some of the trends, that may be difficult for observers and investors to understand, but we think offer significant insights to the future and possibly some opportunities for young investors many of whom are fans of this program. And how the trends may relate to enterprise tech. Okay, so this guy Beeple is now the hottest artist on the planet. That's his Twitter profile. That picture on the inset. His name is Mike Winkelmann. He is actually a normal looking dude, but that's the picture he chose for his Twitter. This collage reminds me of the Million Dollar Homepage. You may already know the story, but many of you may not. Back in 2005 a college kid from England named Alex Tew, T-E-W created The Million Dollar Homepage to fund his education. And his idea was to create a website with a million pixels, and sell ads at a dollar for each pixel. Guess how much money he raised. A million bucks, right? No, wrong. He raised $1,037,100. How so you ask? Well, he auctioned off the last 1000 pixels on eBay, which fetched an additional $38,000. Crazy, right? Well, maybe not. Pretty creative in a way, way early sign of things to come. Now, I'm not going to go deep into NFTs, and explain the justification behind them. There's a lot of material that's been published that can do justice to the topic better than I can. But here are the basics, NFTs stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. They are digital representations of assets that exist in a blockchain. Now, each token as a unique and immutable identifier, and it uses cryptography to ensure its authenticity. NFTs by the name, they're not fungible. So, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies, which can be traded on a like-for-like basis, in other words, if you and I each own one bitcoin we know exactly how much each of our bitcoins is worth at any point of time. Non-Fungible Tokens each have their own unique values. So, they're not comparable on a like-to-like basis. But what's the point of this? Well, NFTs can be applied to any property, identities tweets, videos, we're seeing collectables, digital art, pretty much anything. And it's really. The use cases are unlimited. And NFTs can streamline transactions, and they can be bought and sold very efficiently without the need for a trusted third party involved. Now, the other benefit is the probability of fraud, is greatly reduced. So where do NFTs fit as an asset class? Well, they're definitely a new type of asset. And again, I'm not going to try to justify their existence, but I want to talk about the choices, that investors have in the market today. The other day, I was on a call with Jay Po. He is a VC and a Principal at a company called Stage 2 Capital. He's a former Bessemer VC and one of the sharper investors around. And he was talking about the choices that investors have and he gave a nice example that I want to share with you and try to apply here. Now, as an investor, you have alternatives, of course we're showing here a few with their year to date charts. Now, as an example, you can buy Amazon stock. Now, if you bought just about exactly a year ago you did really well, you probably saw around an 80% return or more. But if you want to jump in today, your mindset might be, hmm, well, okay. Amazon, they're going to be around for a long time, so it's kind of low risk and I like the stock, but you're probably going to get, well let's say, maybe a 10% annual return over the longterm, 15% or maybe less maybe single digits, but, maybe more than that but it's unlikely that any kind of reasonable timeframe within any reasonable timeframe you're going to get a 10X return. In order to get that type of return on invested capital, Amazon would have to become a $16 trillion valued company. So, you sit there, you asked yourself, what's the probability that Amazon goes out of business? Well, that's pretty low, right? And what are the chances it becomes a $16 trillion company over the next several years? Well, it's probably more likely that it continues to grow at that more stable rate that I talked about. Okay, now let's talk about Snowflake. Now, as you know, we've covered the company quite extensively. We watched this company grow from an early stage startup and then saw its valuation increase steadily as a private company, but you know, even early last year it was valued around $12 billion, I think in February, and as late as mid September right before the IPO news hit that Marc Benioff and Warren Buffett were going to put in $250 million each at the IPO or just after the IPO and it was projected that Snowflake's valuation could go over $20 billion at that point. And on day one after the IPO Snowflake, closed worth more than $50 billion, the stock opened at 120, but unless you knew a guy, you had to hold your nose and buy on day one. And you know, maybe got it at 240, maybe you got it at 250, you might have got it at higher and at the time you might recall, I said, You're likely going to get a better price than on day one, which is usually the case with most IPOs, stock today's around 230. But you look at Snowflake today and if you want to buy in, you look at it and say, Okay, well I like the company, it's probably still overvalued, but I can see the company's value growing substantially over the next several years, maybe doubling in the near to midterm [mumbles] hit more than a hundred billion dollar valuation back as recently as December, so that's certainly feasible. The company is not likely to flame out because it's highly valued, I have to probably be patient for a couple of years. But you know, let's say I liked the management, I liked the company, maybe the company gets into the $200 billion range over time and I can make a decent return, but to get a 10X return on Snowflake you have to get to a valuation of over a half a trillion. Now, to get there, if it gets there it's going to become one of the next great software companies of our time. And you know, frankly if it gets there I think it's going to go to a trillion. So, if that's what your bet is then you know, you would be happy with that of course. But what's the likelihood? As an investor you have to evaluate that, what's the probability? So, it's a lower risk investment in Snowflake but maybe more likely that Snowflake, you know, they run into competition or the market shifts, maybe they get into the $200 billion range, but it really has to transform the industry execute for you to get in to that 10 bagger territory. Okay, now let's look at a different asset that is cryptocurrency called Compound, way more risky. But Compound is a decentralized protocol that allows you to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies. Now, I'm not saying go out and buy compound but just as a thought exercise is it's got an asset here with a lower valuation, probably much higher upside, but much higher risk. But so for Compound to get to 10X return it's got to get to $20 billion valuation. Now, maybe compound isn't the right asset for your cup of tea, but there are many cryptos that have made it that far and if you do your research and your homework you could find a project that's much, much earlier stage that yes, is higher risk but has a much higher upside that you can participate in. So, this is how investors, all investors really look at their choices and make decisions. And the more sophisticated investors, they're going to use detailed metrics and analyze things like MOIC, Multiple on Invested Capital and IRR, which is Internal Rate of Return, do TAM analysis, Total Available Market. They're going to look at competition. They're going to look at detailed company models in ARR and Churn rates and so forth. But one of the things we really want to talk about today and we brought this up at the snowflake IPO is if you were Buffet or Benioff and you had to, you know, quarter of a dollars to put in you could get an almost guaranteed return with your late in the game, but pre IPO money or a look if you were Mike Speiser or one of the earlier VCs or even someone like Jeremy Burton who was part of the inside network you could get stock or options, much cheaper. You get a 5X, 10X, 50X or even North of a hundred X return like the early VCs who took a big risk. But chances are, you're not one of these in one of these categories. So how can you as a little guy participate in something big and you might remember at the time of the snowflake IPO we showed you this picture, who are these people, Olaf Carlson-Wee, Chris Dixon, this girl Sono. And of course Tim Berners-Lee, you know, that these are some of the folks that inspired me personally to pay attention to crypto. And I want to share the premise that caught my attention. It was this. Think about the early days of the internet. If you saw what Berners-Lee was working on or Linus Torvalds, in one to invest in the internet, you really couldn't. I mean, you couldn't invest in Linux or TCP/IP or HTTP. Suppose you could have invested in Cisco after its IPO that would have paid off pretty big time, for sure. You know, he could have waited for the Netscape IPO but the core infrastructure of the internet was fundamentally not directly a candidate for investment by you or really, you know, by anybody. And Satya Nadella said the other day we have reached maximum centralization. The main protocols of the internet were largely funded by the government and they've been co-opted by the giants. But with crypto, you actually can invest in core infrastructure technologies that are building out a decentralized internet, a new internet, you know call it web three Datto. It's a big part of the investment thesis behind what Carlson-wee is doing. And Andreessen Horowitz they have two crypto funds. They've raised more than $800 million to invest and you should read the firm's crypto investment thesis and maybe even take their crypto startup classes and some great content there. Now, one of the people that I haven't mentioned in this picture is Camila Russo. She's a journalist she's turned into hardcore crypto author is doing great job explaining the white hot defining space or decentralized finance. If you're just at read her work and educate yourself and learn more about the future and be happy perhaps you'll find some 10X or even hundred X opportunities. So look, there's so much innovation going around going on around blockchain and crypto. I mean, you could listen to Warren Buffet and Janet Yellen who implied this is all going to end badly. But while look, these individuals they're smart people. I don't think they would be my go-to source on understanding the potential of the technology and the future of what it could bring. Now, we've talked earlier at the, at the start here about NFTs. DeFi is one of the most interesting and disruptive trends to FinTech, names like Celsius, Nexo, BlockFi. BlockFi let's actually the average person participate in liquidity pools is actually quite interesting. Crypto is going mainstream Tesla, micro strategy putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets. We have a 2017 Jamie diamond. He called Bitcoin a tulip bulb like fraud, yet just the other day JPM announced a structured investment vehicle to give its clients a basket of stocks that have exposure to crypto, PayPal allowing customers to buy, sell, and Hodl crypto. You can trade crypto on Robin Hood. Central banks are talking about launching digital currencies. I talked about the Fedcoin for a number of years and why not? Coinbase is doing an IPO will give it a value of over a hundred billion. Wow, that sounds frothy, but still big names like Mark Cuban and Jamaat palliate Patiala have been active in crypto for a while. Gronk is getting into NFTs. So it goes to have a little bit of that bubble feel to it. But look often when tech bubbles burst they shake out the pretenders but if there's real tech involved, some contenders emerge. So, and they often do so as dominant players. And I really believe that the innovation around crypto is going to be sustained. Now, there is a new web being built out. So if you want to participate, you got to do some research figure out things like how PolkaWorks, make a call on whether you think avalanche is an Ethereum killer dig in and find out about new projects and form a thesis. And you may, as a small player be able to find some big winners, but look you do have to be careful. There was a lot of fraud during the ICO. Craze is your risk. So understand the Tokenomics and maybe as importantly the Pump-a-nomics, because they certainly loom as dangers. This is not for the faint of heart but because I believe it involves real tech. I like it way better than Reddit stocks like GameStop for example, now not to diss Reddit. There's some good information on Reddit. If you're patient, you can find it. And there's lots of good information flowing on Discord. There's people flocking to Telegram as a hedge against big tech. Maybe there's all sounds crazy. And you know what, if you've grown up in a privileged household and you have a US Education you know, maybe it is nuts and a bit too risky for you. But if you're one of the many people who haven't been able to participate in these elite circles there are things going on, especially outside of the US that are democratizing investment opportunities. And I think that's pretty cool. You just got to be careful. So, this is a bit off topic from our typical focus and ETR survey analysis. So let's bring this back to the enterprise because there's a lot going on there as well with blockchain. Now let me first share some quotes on blockchain from a few ETR Venn Roundtables. First comment is from a CIO to diversified holdings company who says correctly, blockchain will hit the finance industry first but there are use cases in healthcare given the privacy and security concerns and logistics to ensure provenance and reduce fraud. And to that individual's point about finance. This is from the CTO of a major financial platform. We're really taking a look at payments. Yeah. Do you think traditional banks are going to lose control of the payment systems? Well, not without a fight, I guess, but look there's some real disruption possibilities here. And just last comment from a government CIO says, we're going to wait until the big platform players they get into their software. And so that is happening Oracle, IBM, VMware, Microsoft, AWS Cisco, they all have blockchain initiatives going on, now by the way, none of these tech companies wants to talk about crypto. They try to distance themselves from that topic which is understandable, I guess, but I'll tell you there's far more innovation going on in crypto than there is in enterprise tech companies at this point. But I predict that the crypto innovations will absolutely be seeping into enterprise tech players over time. But for now the cloud players, they want to support developers who are building out this new internet. The database is certainly a logical place to support a mutable transactions which allow people to do business one-on-one and have total confidence that the source hasn't been hacked or changed and infrastructure to support smart contracts. We've seen that. The use cases in the enterprise are endless asset tracking data access, food, tracking, maintenance, KYC or know your customer, there's applications in different industries, telecoms, oil and gas on and on and on. So look, think of NFTs as a signal crypto craziness is a signal. It's a signal as to how IT in other parts of companies and their data might be organized, managed and tracked and protected, and very importantly, valued. Look today. There's a lot of memes. Crypto kitties, art, of course money as well. Money is the killer app for blockchain, but in the future the underlying technology of blockchain and the many percolating innovations around it could become I think will become a fundamental component of a new digital economy. So get on board, do some research and learn for yourself. Okay, that's it for today. Remember all of these episodes they're available as podcasts, wherever you listen. I publish weekly on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. Please feel free to comment on my LinkedIn post or tweet me @dvellante or email me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com. Don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey action and data science. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Be well, be careful out there in crypto land. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soft music)

>> Hi from Toronto, Canada. It's the CUBE covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018 brought to you by the CUBE. >> Welcome back to the live coverage. Day Two of the CUBE here in Toronto, Ontario in Canada for the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference wall-to-wall coverage Day Two. A lot of action going on. Tons of great content, tons of great after-hour networking. Just overall great vibe. In light of the market crashing, bitcoin stabilizing, some old coins getting crushed. We got it all covered for here. I'm John Furrier, your host for the CUBE, and our next guest is Nithin Eapen, who's the chief investment officer of Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Arcadia Crypto Ventures, welcome to the CUBE, good to see you. >> Hey good to see you too John. Thank you for having me here. >> Keep alumni in the know. Okay. So first of all, you're an investor in crypto. Everyone's running for the hills. A dip is happening, a crash, or some will say. Your perspective, what's happening in the market? >> See, happening in the market. So typically just like in any asset class, there was a huge run-up that happened very quickly. It didn't go up slow, alright? And the geeks were in early, the libertarians came in after that, then there were speculators. And the retail market also came in, and they all came in together for let's say the December after the November Thanksgiving week and everybody learnt about cryptos, they came in. Alright, the next set of guys haven't come in. Alright? So there's nothing for them there. Nobody's holding them there. And there were expecting the institutional investors to come in and that hasn't happened due to custody problems, ETF problems and all that stuff. Alright, it started going down. The weak hands are falling. The weak hands are keeping on falling and as with any technology, any bubble of people have come in, now they feel that okay the world is coming to an end and they are selling all their stuff. All the ICOs that have raised money in Ether, selling the Ether. All this together is pushing it down, and everybody's waiting for that next set of investors, or the, every 10 X, I mean, an asset goes up, there's a new set of guys who are supposed to come in, and this time it hasn't come in and we're waiting for that. >> You're on the panel here at the event. A lot of different panels, but one panel I watched you were on, you talked about the token model, people were holding Ether. It's kind of a debate, you know, and Bradley Rotter, another investor was saying, hey, there are too many tokens out there. You had different perspective, but one of the things I wanted to get your reaction to is that people who held on to the Ether lost their runway and it creates a harder road to hold. So people were converting to Fiat. This is a big issue. How are we going to get by this? This whole lot of Ether, more people are going to come in. The dynamics of investing in this token model, has it changed? How are you looking at it, and I'd say, how do you help startups? >> So regarding a lot of tokens, first thing is there are a lot of tokens out there. See that is going to happen. It's just like in the 1999, okay, a lot of websites and a lot of Internet companies, pet.com, everybody's an Internet company. Same way, everybody is a token. 95 to 99 percent of them are going to go away and the good ones will rise from those ashes, okay. Now regarding runway, a lot of these projects have pretty much raised enough money for 50 years of runway. So it has crashed one-fifth, okay, they have 10 years worth of runway. Typically, in the olden days, a small company with an idea or a MVP was max going to raise one million to two or three million, alright? And all of them anyway have that even after Ether has crashed. I'm saying, just don't panic okay? You still have 10 years worth of runway. Utilize that, build upon it because the high period may be over where you can just raise money on a white paper. You've got the money, build yourself. You promised your real investors I'm going to build this great thing. So this is where we're going to see the great founders to the average and the bad ones where they've hit a wall, they don't know what to do, they'll fold their hands and walk away. Really good founders, they're resilient. They will, no matter how hard they're pushed to the wall, they're going to come up with the product, you see, and they're going to try to meet customer demands. They're going to get through the feedback loop, check what the customer wants and start delivering it. >> So basically what you're saying is there's so much money being raised, and I agree with you by the way. If you go the classic venture capital route, if you had a Powerpoint or prototype or even a working product with recurring revenue, your serious preferred stock financing will be anywhere from three to 15 million. >> Oh my god. And that's high end. >> That's a high end. >> 15 million will be on the high end. Some cases are raising 50 million, some cases 70 plus million, so even if you cut that in half, it's still a better outcome on the first round. I agree at that, so I think that's interesting. The other one that you mentioned is that things are dynamic, that we're seeing here at the show is in the hallways, everybody's talking about flight-to-quality. And I was talking yesterday on the wrap-up of Day One that you can tell the good deals from the bad deals by is the venture architecture working for the coin, or is the coin working for the venture architecture. And so this flight-to-quality combined with how people are optimizing their build up is critical. >> Yes. >> Talk about some things that you're seeing with this flight-to-quality. Is there anything in particular? Is it blockchain? Is it token economics? Where's the quality deals from your perspective? >> I feel quality lies in the founder of this. The founding team, because the idea, if you really ask me what is an idea here? An idea is just like mental masturbation. Guys who sit there can come up with so many ideas. That's what ideas are, okay? Now taking these ideas to fruition, like building it. There's a capital raising part, okay? Now a lot of people are good at capital raising. They're raising money and a lot of capital coming in. That's awesome because you need capital to attract talent to the space because a lot of talent who are maybe in astrophysics or in mechanical engineering, you want that talent to come here and come with ideas and build the stuff. Okay, the capital has come in. Now once the capital has come in, you really have to build the stuff. Even after you build the stuff, you have to go find the customer right? You have to go and acquire customers and all these three things coming together are so hard in reality. And that's why the venture capital always give a little bit of money to make sure that these guys are not wasting the whole thing away, right? >> Well, the other thing I want to get in touch, get on to you is here is that, in the old days, Silicon Valley, you got to move there, the VCs were there. Now, talking about the global phenomenon, the capital formation is both inside the United States and outside the United States. Certainly inside the United States, you're starting to see the formation around traditional structures, security token, which is more like, it feels like a security, a more preferred financing model. Equity's now involved. Outside United States, a booming utility token market. Your thoughts on how that's progressing, still open, still crazy? What's your thoughts? >> So the capital model, the beauty that has happened today is, earlier, you had to pitch to two hundred VCs or three hundred VCs to get one guy to put money into it. Most of the time, they'll be wasting your time, alright? So you had to go to them to get a million. And you didn't have any other option. You couldn't get it from a small enthusiast of your project to give you five hundred bucks or a thousand bucks. So now, you have that option, okay. Now that option is being cut by regulation, by the STC and people like that coming in saying, oh you can't do that, it has to be a security token. Alright, let's make it a security token. The moment you make it a security token, my question is, can you raise money from outside? Are you stopping that? Then again it doesn't really make sense. You're cutting the small investor, the chance for him to buy into a good, okay? It was only the VCs like Sequoia, or somebody like that, who could access a deal like Google. Now we have a chance for something like Google to come up with the common man whose putting five hundred, like Ethereum. There was no venture capitalist or Wall Street who got involved in Ethereum. The real money was made by very common people who supported a decentralized world computer. >> All CVCs get it now, market entries or whoever's getting involved, starting to see VCs dabble in there. Has that changed the investment dynamic at all? >> It has because the VCs, they have this feeling they've missed out, right? So now they're putting in five and 10 million dollars into a project, valuing a project to three hundred million. It changes the dynamics because now all these guys, like, there are so many projects that are raising like a hundred million because the VCs, all these private investors, are giving 10, 15, 20 million. Like recently for example, they've raised a 300 million dollar fund. They can't invest 10 thousand to 50 thousand to 100 thousand, right? They have to push 10 million to manage the money. That is skewing stuff, and I personally am not very interested in those kinds of projects, because it's without a community power at that time, so I don't know how the token economics is going to be fruitful for the second investor, the third investor. >> And Block Tower, we found out yesterday, is also investing in putting a fund together, a venture fund. It's interesting. We'll see how that shakes out. One thing that is going to change is the dynamics. You mentioned community, obviously, a big part of that. Big community here at the Futurist event, Toronto. So they've got a Canadian culture, a lot of Ethereum DNA in this area. What are you hearing at this event? What are some of the things that you're hearing in the hallways? You've obviously been on some panels at this event, and you're highly networked. What are you hearing? What's, with your ears to the ground, what's it telling you? >> You were talking about Block Tower, yes, they're doing a venture fund. It's great. He's a very very smart investor and they're going to do very well. On the ground, so most of the questions right now are coming, so we've reached the point that okay, we have built up the blockchains or the bit coins. We want it to be faster, alright? Everybody's looking for scalability. Who can bring scalability? The EOS guys are out there. They are saying they can do, you know what, five thousand or 10 thousand or 100 thousand transactions per second. So scalability is a very very big thing. I personally consider something like interoperability, bigger. Interoperability in the sense, alright, so now you have these multiple chains. It's just like multiple types of phones. Now imagine you had an AT&T phone and you couldn't call the Verizon phone customer, alright? We're at that point. We have all these chains, there's Ethereum, there's One Chain, there's EOS. Okay, I've built, let's say, a distributor app, let's say it's a poker app on Ethereum. But I can't play with the guy who's on EOS right? What if he also wants to play poker in this poker app? Is there somewhere we can make this integrate and interoperable? Now to make it interoperable, now we have, if we go into details, there are assets, there are tokens on both sides. How can we transfer tokens from one chain to the other chain making sure there's no double-spend happening? >> I mean there's two things. That was the consumability, making it easy to use, one. And two, I think you're right on. Interoperability's huge. You got to have that. >> Interface, as you said. Interface is big. To make it simple, it's still the geeks. In geeks, a lot of people are using command lang prompts. You can't expect the common man sitting at home. It's just like email. Email was there from 1978. It's only when all these tools like, beginning '94, and the browser came in, that people started using it. So those things have to come in. >> A lot of work's got to get done. So many on the blockchain side. Well, great to have you on. Good to see you. Congratulations on your panels and this afternoon, you're doing a good job. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. >> Thank you so much, John. >> Any predictions by the way? >> Predictions, I don't know, I'm not a predictions guy. I just go with the market. >> Price of bitcoin 20 thousand? >> Oh I never get into those predictions. I never want to get it. I think that it's possible that the bear market can continue for a longer time based on the fact that the newer money cannot come in. It has happened before. Bitcoin has fallen so many times at the 70, 80 percent range and then it stayed stagnant for a year before the next round up came. >> And certainly we got work (inaudible). Thanks for coming on. Keep coverage here live in Toronto, Ontario. Keep coverage here with the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference here of two days. Day Two, keep coverage. We're back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

(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)

(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)

>> Narrator: From New York, it's the CUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, welcome back. This is the CUBE here in New York City on the ground for Consensus 2018. Part of Blockchain Week New York City. I'm John Furrier your cohost of the CUBE and Enrique Rodriguez is here with me. He's a blockchain guru and he's part of the Crypto Consulting Group. Welcome to the CUBE. >> Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. >> So love that big coin little thing there. >> Yeah. >> Come on are you holding som bitcoin right now? >> Yeah yeah. >> So tell me about your project says in the hallways here and checking in on what's going on. You're working with Andrew Prell the alumni. >> Yeah. So. >> On a cool project, so explain what that is. >> So the project with Andre or what we do? >> What you guys do first. >> Yeah so essentially you know there's a big problem right now with people trying to get into the space. There's a lot of pitfalls new comers fall victim to and there's not a lot of education out there. It's really fragmented across the internet. So what we're really trying to do is provide you know really great resources to people that are looking to get into the space. We essentially want to be the on ramp for people looking to get into the crypto space. >> Where you located? >> Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah so it's a different location. I think that's why we stand out quite a bit cause we're trying to bring such a new and disruptive technology to a place that's not so on the leading edge of technology sometimes. >> And you know it's cool about it too is I live in Silicon Valley. It's good to be the epicenter, everyone's got to go to Silicon Valley. The blockchain phenomenon and crypto in general is a global thing. >> It is. >> It is not one place. You can be anywhere. >> Absolutely. >> What are you doing, what are you working on with people? What are some of the things that your projects attacking. >> Yeah so right now we're really working on our educational events. We're really putting together just great content for people to come and join us and really just learn about the tech. We're also working with Andrew Prell from Silica Nexus project. He's having ICO soon and one of the things we're doing for them is really auditing the accounts that they have their tokens in. So they have in their tokenomics they have funds set aside for the team, for the advisors. All these different things and they also have ten investment funds that they're going to be using to essentially get more developers to develop on their project. So we'll be auditing those transactions that they send out just to ensure the transparency and that people know the investors that are putting their money into this project. Know where those funds are going. >> So basically it's an audit trail but it's not code review. So when you do smart contracts, there's one aspect which is code review. >> Yeah. >> And the other side of this, the coin so to speak is the transactional efficiency and affectiveness. >> Yeah no absolutely so if out of this wallet they send ten thousand droids to this developer or this project. We are essentially going to be putting together reports for that. So it's all about auditing and the transparency available. >> So you're automating his system end to end so he can manage it. >> Absolutely. >> Cause alternative is what? What's his alternative. Andrew's in particular. >> Yeah I think he went to the big four and they really didn't know. I guess display enough knowledge about the blockchain, the blockchain explorers and all those things and really came at a high price and so instead of do it themselves. It's something that we do on a regular basis. You know blockchain exploring, just looking up transaction. Second nature to us so I mean it's really good fit and it's an industry first. So really could be a break through for ICOs to come so we're hoping it works out well. >> Enrique how did you get here? What's your journey and tell your story. >> It has been awhile so. So I'm 23 years old, around the age of 20 I started hearing about bitcoin and blockchain. I worked at UPS in the international department in Louisville which if you're not familiar. We have the world port, the biggest automated hub in the world but we were having a lot of problems with the supply chain. You know packages going missing, invoices being fraudulent. A lot of manual paperwork. So really just looking into some of these problems and trying to find a solution. Stumbled into blockchain and really went down the rabbit hole and haven't came up since. I started telling people about it, meeting with people. >> So you became an enthusiast, evangelist. >> Yeah and so I mean it's really grown from me meeting people in restaurants, coffee shops and now we have office. We have eight consultants working with us and really trying to make a national network of people that can just educate. You know investors and individuals on the technology. >> Are you happy you made the move? >> Oh so happy, you know I work for myself now. It's really the happiest I've ever been. I'm passionate about something that could potentially change the world. And so I love the space I'm in. Just being here with so many like minded individuals you know from so many different backgrounds. It really is a beautiful thing that CoinDesk was able to put together here. >> And it's also cool, a lot of new people are coming in. Both old and young. I mean old guys like me and so Dan Bates on just before. We're kindred spirits, we're the old dogs. He's doing real business but the young guns are making it happen too. >> Absolutely. >> So it's not about ageism. Lot of us old system guys know this is all one big operating system. >> Even with our clients, we have people as young as 15 coming in like hey how do I figure this out and 85 people that don't even have email set up. You know want to get involved in this space. I mean we have a wide spectrum of people. >> If you got an AOL account we're ignoring you. Although I just try to turn my on that instead have the throwback. >> That's what it is. >> I got to ask you because one of the things I've really been apart of in my whole life in computer science is open source. Even when I was renegade back in the old days now it's tier one. Open source, cloud computing, has really and open source particular. Really built the idea of a community. >> Absolutely. >> The blockchain community is very small still young tight knit and growing. So as people come in, what's your advice to people entering the community. How thy should align, what should they do? >> Yeah this is something that we have to deal with a lot and so whenever because a lot of the headlines that go around. You know the bitcoin bubble all the crazy gains the lambos. People come in with this mindset that it's a get rick quick thing. You know they want to dump money into the newest ICO or the next big bitcoin and well you really have to educate them on is that this is a long term play. We're still very early in this space. Never invest anything that you're not willing to lose and so a lot of these. We call them the commandments actually just in a podcast episode on them. So there's a lot of just base level things that we try and enlighten our newcomers in. It's been a really great because a lot of people whenever they learn about this technology under the surface. It's just enlightening and so it's been great the community grows. >> A lot of businesses are growing into the community. A lot of people are joining the community but also a big trend is that big business and small medium sized businesses are looking at as an opportunity. So I got to ask you the question right which is I see a lot of people out there that are passing themselves off as code gurus because they bought bitcoin in 2013. >> Oh absolutely. >> They don't, but they haven't actually built anything. >> Yeah. >> So a lot of people are hiring fraudsters. So I'm not saying, there's nothing wrong with trading bitcoin and being involved in the currency. >> Absolutely. >> But the difference between someone who buys currency and builds the next generation with the community. How does someone vet that person? How does some a business owner how do you figure out the pretenders from the players? >> Yeah I think it's really about getting to know the person that you're talking to about this. Seeing how transparent they are, their ideologies, why they're in this space. Why they bought bitcoin a lot of these fundamental questions that you could tell a lot about a person from their answers. Because we've come across that a lot. Whenever reason I started this company is because you know over the past three years or so it's been a lot of trail and error really trying to figure this stuff out. >> I always ask too, what have you built. >> Yeah no absolutely and so we're currently actually in the beta version of a platform that we want to build that's essentially going to allow us to connect these consultants as well as a portfolio tracker but. >> I got to ask you the question. What's the coolest thing you've done? >> The coolest thing I've done, probably getting my pilots license a month after my drivers license in high school. Just in general you'll be able to leave school and go fly planes. All of my best friends were in a class. You know it was really, it was amazing. >> Surreal, Enrique great chatting with you. >> You as well. >> Awesome voice. So glad to have you on the CUBE and good luck with your venture with Andrew Prell. That's cool project and on the things you work on. Best success to you. Enrique Rodriguez here on the CUBE breaking it down. Lot of new action going on, lot of great voices. Lot of talent coming into the community of course it is a community. It's tight knit, it's early growing super fast and as the crypto action. This is the CUBE bringing it all to you. I'm John Furrier we're watching after this short break. We'll be right back.