(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live, from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's the Cube, covering Polycon '18, brought to you by Polymath. >> Welcome back to exclusive Cube coverage in the Bahamas, for Polycon '18. This is the show about cryptocurrency, token economics, and the future of work, and the economies and digital nations. And the Cube's here for two days of wall-to-wall coverage. And we're excited to have the CryptoKitties team here. The phenomenon that took over the blockchain, really started to show the value of smart contracts, in a really cool, playful, fun way, really important story. Jody Rebak and Alex Shih, welcome to the Cube. >> Hello, welcome! >> Thanks for having us. >> So, love the shirts, love to get one for myself someday, but you got any extra shirts, I'll take one. >> We do, we do. >> Okay, great. >> We'll give you one. >> Love to have one. Okay, so CryptoKitties, for the folks that living under a rock for the past year, has been a real phenomenon where people were actually, you know, creating--well you describe it. >> Okay so CryptoKitties, the purpose is to bring the first billion people to the blockchain, and CryptoKitties was the first endeavor in order to do that. So it's really a gaming and collectible game on the blockchain. It's kind of straightforward. You buy a kitty, and with your kitty, you can sell it, breed it, there's a whole marketplace. You know, since the initial launch, we've had a bunch of special kitties get released. We recently launched in China, so there's a ton of kitties coming down the pipeline, so breed your kitties. >> So the fun game turned into quite an interesting experiment, because people love fun, around tech, when tech is kind of boring sometimes. You blockchain, you know, what does that actually mean? What happens under the hood? So you guys kind of brought a fun piece of it. Was it by design, the growth? Was it more like, was it what you expected? Take us through some of the inside the ropes, the company, like, was there a moment where you said, "Oh my god, can you believe what's happening? Like, this is really taking off." Or was it planned? Take us through that. >> Sure, so I think inherently, the blockchain technology-- like, blockchain is not something that's inherently easy to explain, so we wanted to do that in a fun, simple way, so that people could learn about smart contracts, and they could learn about all the benefits, about being decentralized, and sort of putting trust on the network. So that was our initial, sort of, goal. We have an amazing team behind us, so the creative team just said, like, "We want to bring kitties to the blockchain." So the group with Axiom Zen and CryptoKitties has been working on blockchain technology since 2014. CryptoKitties was our first public project. And I think, you know, the team came together very quickly. I think we built this in four to six months. You know, I think we were all surprised with the success of it, and bringing down the Ethereum network, slowing it down, so I remember the team launched, and I woke up one morning with hundreds of emails from media outlets just saying, "we want to do a story on you" It was really, really exciting, and the team worked really hard, so we're really proud about it. >> It's one of those, it is kind of a pinch-me moment, because you're like, "oh my god, this is like highly successful." And that's really fun, and I think it's a great example of how you can use this fun technology in a way that people can relate to but it also brought up some technical challenges because, I think, at the time, and even now, it takes a lot, probably the number one use case of Ethereum blockchain. I mean, I don't know. Is there another use case that's actually as pervasive as CryptoKitties? >> You know what? I'm not sure, but I think one of the really interesting things for us was we learned a lot with the scalability and it's been interesting to see, sort of, other teams reach out to us and sort of sharing our learnings, because, I think, in order to continue sort of, building the ecosystem, we really need to share learnings, and you know, not hoard information So, you know, we're definitely looking at scaling, I think you know one way we've addressed it is sort of building a lot off-chain to speed up transactions. But, I think, that there's a lot to learn, and it's going to take, sort of, the ecosystem working together and sharing idea and knowledge to-- >> What have you learned? What are some of the things you guys learned on the experience, both on the kind of, business-side, integration-side, developer-side, to some of the really hard-core, you know tech, infrastructure pieces? What are the learnings? >> I think the reality is neither of us are technical people, so it's probably do a disservice to try and speak to that. >> Is there one, is there a couple things that jumped out at you, was it performance, was it just--? >> I think because there, you know, we're only starting to see applications built on the blockchain, you don't know what you don't know. And the team behind CryptoKitties and Axiom Zen, we built a number of products, we have a bunch of projects that we've worked, and we have sort of our developer process But when you're working with a new technology, and you don't know what you're dealing with, it's hard to anticipate, and I think, following best practices, leveraging, you know, other teams and working with the community, that's I think what we learned most, is you need to, you know, rely on the community and share learnings. >> Take a minute to talk about what you guys do there, each of you, what your role is at CryptoKitties, what you're focused on, and what's going on in the company--without giving away all of the trade-secrets of course. >> Yeah I know, there's a lot we can't talk about. >> I mean, what's your role? What are you guys overseeing? What are you building? >> Perhaps we should explain a bit about Axiom Zen, first and kind of the set up amongst CryptoKitties, if you want to take a stab at that. >> Sure, so Axiom Zen is a venture studio. We've been around for five years. So, we have a part of the business that's focused on consumer blockchain technologies. We have quite a big enterprise SAAS business. So one of our companies is called ZenHub, if you've ever heard of them, ZenHub, and then we have sort of a joint venture part of the business where we work with companies to build and launch amazing and impactful tech companies. So, CryptoKitties was born out of our consumer blockchain, and specifically, our foundry. So my role with Axiom Zen is, I'm Chief of Staff, and I work with the Executive team on strategy, I work with the Operations team, a lot of special projects and a lot of, you know, with tech companies, there's always things, special initiatives that are coming up, and I really love to focus on that. >> And you've got to be always learning, right? I mean, like you said, you're trying new things. >> Yeah >> So it's kind of like, a studio, meets venture incubator, meets R and D, meets builder culture. >> Everything, yeah, and I think sort of, I'll let Alex speak to his role, but one of the reasons, our team is 80 people. CryptoKitties' team is 30, but everyone who comes and joins the team is an entrepreneur at heart, so I think that's why we've been able to accomplish so much. >> Alex, your role. >> So, I recently joined the company, and I came on as CFO, so-- >> So you run all the numbers, man, those gas prices on less than twenty. So, I mean, you got to keep the trains running, making sure the lights are on >> Sure. >> 80 people total, including the 30 in the CryptoKitties? >> Yeah, inclusive of the 30. >> Okay, so, what's the outlook? What's the objective of the firm? You guys continue to experiment? Do new, more projects? >> Yeah, I think, so one of our, we wrote and published the ERC721 token. We didn't do it, but someone--Dieter Shirley did, within the team, so I think we want to continue to focus on that. You know, we have a number of projects in the pipeline that we're not able to talk about publicly, but definitely exciting this happening. Continuing to build CryptoKitties, I mentioned we did a China launch, so we're continuing to expand and just build, so yeah, we've got a lot of exciting things to do. >> China must be really big. (Alex laughs) >> Yeah. >> Must be huge. >> Yeah, one of-- >> Asia must be hot. >> Yeah, well, I think sort of-- >> Mobile phone usage, just incredible. >> They're leaders in the collectible gaming space, so it naturally made sense for us to go there. >> Great, well, hey, congratulations. What's going to be the outlook for CryptoKitties? You mentioned the marketplace. What are some of the cool things that are going on, that you can point out, that people might not know? >> Do you want to talk about our China launch, and the special kitties, or? >> I think you're doing a great job, keep going. >> (laughs) Okay so you know, we recently launched in China, it's Chinese New Year, so we have a bunch of sort of special kitties being released. We just had a company call earlier today, where we saw a preview of some of the kitties that are being bred. There's some dragon kitty, there's dog kitty, so I guess, look at the cool kitties. Building a story of your kitties. >> I think it's just been great stuff, again, like I said, at Sundance, we saw the VR/AR world starting to really go down this road of some new creative digital, and I think this is a great example of where I see it going which is you know taking this new decentralized infrastructure and creating new experiences, so congratulations, CryptoKitties. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Alright, the Cube bringing new crypto experiences to our footage again we're going to do a lot of blockchain cryptocurrency shows. This is the first one of the year, been covering bitcoin since 2010, so we're proud of that, and look for the cube at events, but here at the Bahamas, we'll be here for a whole nother day tomorrow, keep on watching, got a few more interviews to wrap up day one, got some big guests coming, be right back after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's The Cube! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by BlockChain Industries. >> Hello and welcome to this special exclusive coverage, in Puerto Rico, for BlockChain Unbound, I'm John Furrier, the host of The Cube. We're here for two days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our next guest is from Hashgraph. He's Leemon Baird, who's CEO? >> CTO, and co-founder. >> CTO, okay that's great. OK, so you got on, you're about to go on stage, Hashgraph launched two days ago, a lot of buzz, we talked to a couple entrepreneurs in your ecosystem, early partners, doing some healthcare stuff. What is Hashgraph, why is it important, and why are you guys excited? >> Oh, yes. So this is, this is fantastic. Two days ago we were able to announce the existence of a public ledger, Hedera Hashgraph Council. The Hedera Hashgraph ledger is going to be a public ledger with a cryptocurrency, file system, smart contracts in Solidity. All Solidity contracts run without change. It is built on a consensus algorithm, called Hashgraph. And if you want to know what that is, in 12 minutes I'll be speaking on this stage about what it is. >> OK, so I'll see everyone who knows what hashing is, but I mean what makes you guys different, if it's going to be that protocol, is it the speed, is it the performance, reliability, what's the main differentiator for you guys? >> Yes, so it's security and speed and fairness all at the same time. It's ABFT security which is very strong. It's hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, with a few seconds latency, even in just one shard. That's even before you add sharding to get even faster. And then it's fairness of ordering. Three things that are new, it's because of the Hashgraph protocol, which is different from just hashing. >> Interviewer: Yeah. >> But it uses hashing. >> Yeah. So here's the question I have for you, what's on people's mind, whether they're an investor in a company that's in your ecosystem, how can you bet on a company that's only two days old? Why are you guys important? What's the answer to that question? >> The answer to that is, we are not two days old. (laughter) >> Two days launched. >> Two days launch, but first of all, the Hashgraph algorithm was invented in 2015. We have been having Swirls incorporated, has been doing permission ledgers for a couple years now. And we have great traction. We have a global presence with CU Ledger, the credit unions around the world. >> So, we have got real traction with the permission ledgers, and for years people have been saying, "Yes, but what we really want is a public ledger, could you please, please, please do that?" >> And what are some of the used case data coming out of your trials before you launch? I mean, what were the key criterias on the product side? What was the key product requirements definitions that you guys focused on? >> So, speed and security, having them both at the same time. And usually you have to choose between one and the other. The security we have is very high. It's ABFT, which means that, double spins won't happen, and it's hard for someone to shut down the network. But you know what, even the credit unions, I think were even more interested in the speed. The truth is, at a small number of transactions a second, there's things you can do, but in a large number, there's more things you can do. >> You know there's a lot of activity on the value creation side, which is really phenomenal, so creating value, capturing value, that is the premise of this revolution, but let's just put that aside for a second, but the real action is on the decentralized application developer. These are the ones that are looking for a safe harbor, because they just want to build new kinds of apps, and then have a reliable set of infrastructure, kind of like how cloud computing had dev ops movement. That's what's going on in this world. What's your answer to that? What's your pitch to those folks, saying, "Hey developers, Hashgraph is for you." What's your answer? >> Yes, and by the way, this is not just to new developers. We've got 20,000, I think, now on our telegram channel. We have amazing response from our developer community. We have a whole team that is working with them to develop really interesting things that we have demonstrations and so on. So, my pitch to them is thank you because we have them in addition, since we can run Solidity out of the box, all of those developers have already been developing on us for years without knowing it. Thank you and for others, there's no limit to what you can do when you have speed and security at the same time. >> So, Solidity, talk about the dynamics of this new language. Why is it important? And for someone that might be new to that approach, what's your story? What do you say to them? "Hey, it's great, jump right in?" Is there a community they can come to? Do you have a great community? What's the story for that new developer? >> Yes, so I would tell the new developer, "You know we'll probably have a new language someday, but right now we're sticking with the standard. We're starting by supporting the standard language." On these ledgers, there are smart contracts, which are programs that run on top of them in a distributed way. You have to write them in some programming language. Solidity is the most common one right now. >> Is the smart contract, the killer app going on, in terms of demand, what people are looking for? Or is it just the ledger piece of it? What's the main, kind of, threshold point at this point and juncture? >> We see cryptocurrency is a killer app in many industries. Smart contracts is the killer app in other industries. File storage, actually, with certain properties that allow irevocation servers is the killer app in certain industries and we are talking on having to gain traction in all three of those. >> OK, talk about the community, which, by the way, it's great. There's a new stack that's developing. I know you're going on-stage and I'd love to spend more time with you to talk about those impacts at each level of the stack. But, let's talk about your community. What are you guys doing? How did you get here? What's some of the feedback? What's some of the conversations in the community and where you're going to take it? >> OK, the conversations are amazing. The interest is amazing. There appears to be this enormous pent-up demand for something that can have security and speed at the same time, along with this fairness thing. People are talking about doing whole new kinds of things, like, games where every move is an action in the ledger, is a transaction in the ledger. The fairness is important and the speed is important and you want security and then anything involving money, you want security and anything involving identity, you want security, so these are all... What we're hearing from people is, "We've been waiting." In fact, literally, every big company has a blockchain group and what we keep hearing is, "We've been excited for years, but we're not doing anything yet, because it just wasn't ready." Now, the technology is ready. >> So, tired, kicking to actually putting some stuff into action. >> And that's happening now. That's what our customers tell us, "We've been kicking the tires, we've been holding off, we've been waiting for the technology to be mature." Now, it's mature. >> What are some of the low-hanging use cases that you're seeing coming out of the gate? >> So, the credit union industry is going to be using this for keeping information that credit unions share with each other, information about identity, information about threat models, information about contracts they have with each other, all sorts of things like that. We have Machine Zone, multi-billion dollar game company was on the stage with us, talking about how they are going to be using this for doing payments for their system. Just, Sat-oor-ee is amazing. Watch the video. Gabe did an amazing job there on his stuff. And he said the reason they had to go with us is because we were fast and secure and no-one else is the way we are. >> What are some of the white spaces that you see out there, if you could point to some developers and entrepreneurs out there and say, "Hey, here's some white space. Go take it down." What would you say? >> Exactly, find a place where trust matters. I do hear people saying, "I want to start a company, but, you know, we could run on a single server and be just as good. Well, great, then use a single server and be just as good. (laughter) >> Good luck with that. (laughs) >> No, no >> Yeah, but, that's just their choice. >> Don't use a hammer when a screwdriver is appropriate. >> Yes. >> Not everything is a nail, but you know what? There's a lot of nails out there. What you should do is, if trust matters, and if no one person is trustworthy. If you want your users to be able to trust, that a community is trusting it, then you need to go to a ledger and if you want speed and security, then go with us, especially if you want fairness. Look at auctions. We've had people build an auction on us. Look at stock markets, look at games. Look at places where fairness matters. Look at us. >> So, I got to ask about a reputation piece, because in fairness comes data about reputation and I see reputations not as a single protocol, but a unique instance in all applications, so there's no, kind of global reputation. There might be reputation in each application. What's your view on reputation? Is that going to be a unique thing? How do you guys deal that with your fairness, peace, consensus, what's your thoughts? >> Reputation is critical, identity is critical. The two of them come together. Suited in amenity is critical. For reputation, you can have your how many stars did you get, how many people have rated you? We're not building that system. We're building the thing that allows you to build that system on top of it. Anybody can build on top of it. What you do need, though, is you need a revocation service and a shared file service that no-one can corrupt. No one can change things they aren't supposed to change. No one can delete things they're not supposed to delete. People say immutable, well, it's not really immutable. It's just make sure it mutates the right way. >> And also, cost and transaction cost and speed is a huge issue on Blockchain as we know it today. Ethereum has took a lot of hits on this. What's your position, ERC 20? People are doing a lot of token work without the smart contract. We're hearing people saying that it's not ready, there's some performance issues outside of CryptoKitties, what else is there? What's your thoughts? >> Exactly, so, ERC 20, since we do Solidity, we do ERC 20 if we want. If you want, anyone who wants to can do it. But, you talked about the cost of the transactions. If you're going to charge a dollar a transaction, there are absolutely useful things you can do, but if you're going to charge a tiny fraction of a cent per transaction, there are whole new use cases you can do. And that's what we're all about. >> Awesome, Leemon, I know you got to get up on stage, but I got to ask you one final question. Where do you guys go from here? What's on your to do list? Obviously, you guys, what's the situation with the funding? A number of people in the company, can you share a quick snapshot of what you guys have raised, what the status of the firm is and what your plans are? >> The interest is fantastic. We have raised money or are raising money. We have people working for us and we're hiring very fast. >> Did you raise equity financing, like preferred stock or are you doing ICO? >> Hudera is not equity. Hudera is just a simple agreement for future tokens and we have various things going on. (laughter) You know all the space, but, of course. So, there's a lot of things going on. Swirl's head equity, we're led by NEA. The first round was led by NEA. We're not taking, sorry, we're not selling equity right now in Swirls, but-- >> So, NEA is an investor. >> Oh, yeah, >> Who's the partner on-- >> Sorry, in Swirls. >> Oh, Swirls. >> It's confusing. Hudera is the public, Swirls is the private. Both are important to the world. We continue to do both. I'm CTO of both, I'm co-founder of both. >> It's a corporate structure to get around the new-- >> Not to get around, not to get around. It's because it's two different things. Public and private are really two different things. >> Explain the difference real quick. >> Yes, private is you have several companies like just credit unions in it and it's important that no one but a credit union run a node. It's important. Public is, I want everyone to run nodes, not just people with mining rigs. Every person can earn money running nodes, that's the goal. >> And having that corporate structure gives some stability to that positioning. >> It's all about stability and the public ledger has to be run by someone who isn't me. It has to be run by 39 different companies, not a single entity for trust. >> Great, well, this is also a great topic. We don't have time for it, but this is super important. Corporate governance on how you structure the company, which relates to the IP and its relationship to communities is super important. >> It's radically different than what we're doing. It's because we started from sin, it has to be trustworthy. You need to split governance from consensus. We want millions of nodes doing consensus for transparency, so you know what's going on. We're going to release the code as open review so everyone sees what's going on. It's incredibly important, but you also need governance by people who know what they're doing, but not one person. It's got to be split, so 39 Fortune 100, but global, across the world, across different industries, 18 industries across different companies running it. Not us running it. >> Interviewer: That's where community matters. >> Them running it, incredibly important, incredibly important. >> OK, we've got to go. Congratulations, Hashgraph, two days old. Protocol worked for multiple years, coming out of the closet, doing great work. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on the Cube. >> Thank you very much >> Good luck on stage. We'll be back with more coverage here in Puerto Rico. This is the Cube. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to our exclusive coverage of, in Puerto, Rico for Blockchain Unbound. This is the industry conference room. People around the world from Silicon Valley, New York, and around the glove, coming to Puerto, Rico to talk about Blockchain decentralized internet cryptocurrency and really the future of society and global economic value creation of course our continuing coverage is focusing La Sierra for 2018. Our next guest is Mark Jeffery, CEO and Co-Founder of a company called Guardian Circle. Welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So you guys are doing something really interesting, so we, first of all, we like to geek out, as Fred say, "We're alpha-geeks." But we love IoT, cloud computing. You're doing something really interesting right now with Blockchain and this new decentralized internet around something of a critical infrastructure nature. Take a minute to talk about Guardian Circle's product, the coin, token that you're doing, and what it all means. >> So, Guardium is the token, the company's called Guardian Circle. Together they comprise global decentralized emergency response. So, six billion people on earth have no 911, There's just no magic number you can call, right? So hold that in your mind for a second. The other one billion of us, we do have 911, but it's not very good, it hasn't been really updated since the 60's. If you call 911 and if you're lucky enough to not get a busy signal, they have no idea where you are. Your location information is not transmitted. Which Uber can find you more easily than 911. Which is just insane, but that is the way it is. So, nevermind, so throw all that out >> So 911 is broken? 911 is broken. >> Yep If you have it, it's broken, and most people don't have it, so throw the whole thing out the window, let's start over. What would we build today? The way the world should work is whenever you're in trouble, no matter where you are on the globe, all you should have to do is press a button, that button sends an alert up to the Cloud, the Cloud looks down and sees what people and resources are already nearby, and then activates, coordinates, pushes all that help to you as quickly as possible. So, ten people in three minutes. That's what were, that's our-- >> So a couple things going on. So to me when you say, what should we start from scratch, put in my little operating system design network solutions add on, all kind of rolled into one as a stable, fault-tolerant, resilient, robust, always on network. >> Yes. >> Database that is fully interoperable and updated in real time of every number, every location, every persons capability to understand the discovery and resolution of a number. >> Yeah, so >> So that sounds like the internet. That sounds like the internet. >> (laughs) Well that's a little bit, probably further than we're going right now, but yes. Ultimately, you're correct. That would be the ultimate-- >> So no legacy baggage, 1960's Telco. >> No >> We're talking about immobile, in Africa for instance, there's more mobile penetration than anything else. That's what they got. >> Yes. >> So every country is their own sovereign kind of architecture? >> Yes >> Are you guys looking at it from a global perspective or regional? >> Global, so we think that, I mean, this is, this thing should be mobile native, location aware, and the alert should go out to multiple parties. And the phone number is your identifier in this system, but it's effectively an IP based system, really, so you're right. We have to balance that against privacies, so you get to decide who is on your alert grid, right? So you have to emphatically say, yes my friends, family and neighbors, and the subscription services, and if available, these official services. >> So Blockchain can solve the immutability privacy issue? >> Yes. >> The decentralized nature of network effect is a dynamic that people look for in good deals or good architecture. That's in place. >> Yes. >> People have a social graph, interest graphs connections. So the analog world is going digital. I mean, the old days was, is there a doctor in the house? But you were limited by how far you could yell. >> Right. >> So here you're saying literally, if you connect properly, the users in charge are their, their data. >> Yeah. >> They can dictate what they want to connect to, where, is that kind of how it works, is it peer to peer? >> Yeah, it's sort of peer to peer. I mean, a lot of people think, a lot of people mishear me a little bit and think that when you press that button, the alert goes out to everybody that's nearby, right? So total strangers that may or may not be trustworthy are suddenly coming, that's not what I'm saying. That is not what we're doing because we don't want to accidentally summon Jack the Ripper, like that's, you don't want to make a bad situation worse, right? So, you explicitly invite people into your protection grid, we call them guardians, hence, Guardian Circle, that would be your guardian circle. And you can have an unlimited number of them, so six, 6000, however many friends you have. Then we will also feature paid subscription services where you will be able to subscribe to, like, your local EMT collective, or your local license and bonded arms security, or if you're in a remote corner of the world, you could subscribe to the guy with a truck, who could run you down the mountain, right? When you're having medical problems. So it's going to vary depending on where you are in the world. We're also working with the Women's Safety Xprize, we're a partner, we're the backend of that prize. Which is an IoT device contest to make a panic button device, right? So when you push the panic button, what happens? It goes into Guardian Circle. >> So how does token economics fit into this? So I'm getting why it's tokenizable, How does it work mechanically? Do I buy tokens for safety? Is it like, I mean, take us through some of the use cases. >> Yeah sure, so there's five different ways in which we use the token. The first one is, obviously, to create the, to buy emergency response subscriptions. Now we're going to allow you, or provide a way for you to, as a consumer, just swipe your credit card in the app, and in the background you'll be purchase Guardium tokens, right? And it'll re-up every month if you don't have enough in, it'll be that sort of thing. So you might not even really be conscious of the fact that you're using cryptocurrency. If you are, there's a wallet that'll allow you to just use the cryptocurrency manually, the way you do any, any right now, right? >> And. >> So there's that. >> Okay so continue. >> Yep, the second thing we're going to do, we think that giving will be a big behavior in our universe, so you're going to be able to send Guardium directly to a beneficiary in the developing world. And what's cool about that is it doesn't go through a governments, a bank, or an organization. So remember Red Cross in Haiti? Can't happen here, and we're going to go even further than that, down the road, you're going to be able to track every dollar that you donated as easily as a FedEx, right? >> So you are creating a direct relationship between people who might want to help people and then a direct access for resources for the user. >> Correct. >> And so that's the primary, kind of a two >> That's one major flywheel. >> major flywheels going on. >> Just like people sponsor a child, safety is one of the biggest problems in the world. In fact, some people say, this guy named, Greg Hahn, who says it's the number one problem in the world that all other problems flow from the fact that people in the developing world aren't safe. Why don't they have water? Cause they're not safe. Why don't they have education? Cause they're not safe. Lawlessness has to be solved first. >> Trust is a huge part of this too. >> Yeah. >> So how do I set this up, where are you guys in the system, is there a product up and running, how do people get involved with your project? Take a minute to share that. >> Sure, so we have apps released today and they're distributed world-wide on IOS, Android, and Alexa. We also have an open API that lets anyone plug any alert device into our grid, obviously we have to, we want to know who you are first, but basically everyone is welcome. And so, and then our token sales site is at Guardium, Guardium.co. >> G, Guard, ium, Guardium. >> Yes, Guardium. >> And then Guardian Circle? >> Correct. >> Guardium with the m and the end of the token. What's the plan, what are you guys, how much have you raised, what's the story? Yeah, so we're selling ten million dollars worth of tokens, which represents 30% overall, 33% overall. We have a 100 million tokens in the sys, that, that's it, that will ever be distributed. It's on the NEO Blockchain, so we are, we are, we're sort of different from a lot of other folks. We're one of the very first western, we're not the first but we're one of the firsts. >> NEO has a good reputation of high performance. >> Yes >> Is that one of the considerations you had for them? >> Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, we deal in emergencies, so our tolerance for things like CryptoKitty swamping the network is very low. So yeah, so we liked what NEO had to say in a lot of ways because of that. >> I interviewed the CryptoKitties at Polycon, interesting story. It's a Pokemon moment for the internet stare. Well congratulations Mark, what's next for you guys, get through the sale, how's the team makeup look, what's going on with the company? >> Yeah, get through, I mean, definitely get through the sale is the biggest thing right now. We're a small team of, like about five people, plus some contractors. The next big thing that we have on our agenda is we're going out to India in four weeks to actually test the Xprize IoT panic button devices on the streets of Mumbai, so Guardian Circle plus device. >> Intense environment a lot of people there. >> Yeah. >> So let's talk about you. What is your background that got you here, or was there an itch you were scratching? Why this time, also the way to attract a lot of alph entrepreneurs, this is a disruptive time, but why Mark Jeffrey's, why now, why Guradian Circle, what's the passion behind it? >> So, well I started life as an engineer, but I won't bore you with all my adventures up until this moment. But in 2013, I became very interested in Bitcoin, wrote a book called, Bitcoin Explained Simply. Got the book, got the little crazy thoughts in my head. >> You're an author, speaker >> Right, same thing. >> distinguished influencer. (laughs) >> So that was sort of how that side began. In 2014, I basically, my girlfriend at the time had a stroke, she's fine, but at the time she was all alone. And she was on the floor of her garage, and I took her to the hospital, brought her back, and afterwards, I realized, she was alone for about a half an hour, if this had been a real stroke, this could have been very serious, she could have died, she could have been paralyzed. And she was drowning in help, there were about seven people who were either driving by or nearby while this was going on, within a 1000 yards. And she had no way to get to them. >> Yeah, yeah, a personal example of what you're doing. >> And I also realized, the other component was, all the help, I didn't know six, five of the other six people, they're her friends, they're not mine. But during her emergency, all of us need to be sharing location and in communication with each other immediately. And the importance of that just cannot be overstated in emergencies, seconds count. And so putting instant communications so that we can coordinate a response is the second-half of the problem. I initially did not intend to build an app. I went looking for this app and what I discovered was there are a ton of panic button apps, but all of them neglected solving the second-half of the problem, which is organizing the response. >> Yeah. >> And getting people on, in the same-- >> Mobilizing resources. >> Yeah, getting everyone into a war room without requiring them to know each other ahead of time, that was the big thing, no one had thought of that, so. >> It's like rolling up services when you need it instantly. It's like a compiler. >> It's at hawk services. >> You know, compile everything >> Yes, exactly. >> at real time assembly. >> Real time assembly, yeah >> Operating system. (laughs) >> that's exactly, it's great. That's actually a really good way to put it, yeah. >> No, but this is also pretty important, so it was a great personal example, thanks for sharing that personal story. But you know, there's a avalanches, whether you're a skier, it's people who go rock climbing, there's all kinds of use cases where a mountain biker is missing, all kinds of-- >> Remote locations are really big ones. >> I'm scuba diving, where are people, where were they last? So a lot of this is, are location based, and no one knows what the situation is, so the alerting is only one step to the value chain. >> It is, but I think, sorry you have a question. >> No, no, I was going to ask you, where does it go from there? >> Well I think, I think there are a lot of, I think safety check-ins, I think there's other things that we can do, but the one thing that, the one lesson that I've seen again, and again, and again, and again is that the companies that fail invariably, oh, the companies that don't focus always fail. So you got to pick one thing and be the best in the world at that one thing. And the emergency situation is our one thing, and that's big enough. >> Well, I think you have a great opportunity and we'll splint through the, as the evolution of this market grows, it's kind of a moving train, but the value promises is legit. I was talking to Fred Krueger, your friend and colleague in the business, it's a marketplace of these days, so it's money and marketplaces, in your case it's safety, marketplace. I could envision a day with your services where I publish and subscribe to services, I got in a catalog. >> Yes. >> Hey, I know my risks, everyone knows what they do in vanity, or risk factors whether you're jumping out of an airplane, or double black diamond skier. I would love to go to Lake Tahoe, or a mountain, or a place like this, and saying, I'm going to take some chances, here's what I'm going to subscribe to. >> (laughs) You're going to have to subscribe to some extra tokens while you're there. >> I would use Guardium. It could be more, I'm just brainstorming, thinking out loud, but I mean, that's the kind of web services framework you could bring. >> That's exactly right. >> Is that they way you guys are thinking about it? >> I do, I do, I'm so focused on this sort of food and shelter stage of our life right now. >> Yeah, get an ICO done. So yeah, we've got tons of all those ideas written done but we're not quite there yet, but when we get there, great ideas, absolutely. >> Well the use cases are changing because the peoples expectations are changing and now technology can meet these cases. So I'm seeing a lot of social entrepreneurship being done that are coming in through a funding vehicles that never would have got funded on venture capital funding. >> Totally correct. >> Whether it's battered women applications, human trafficking, safety apps, stuff that can make money, not be a kazillion, billion dollar business, but really change society and makeup. >> You've hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of Blockchain companies or ICO companies, this stuff, the venture guys, would never fund it because their model doesn't allow for it. They have, all these things have to be Facebook potentially, or they just have no tolerance for it. >> And the philanthropy world is not incented on economics, and also when the project loses its grant or funding the stack just gets thrown away. >> So this allows for sustainability for mission-based investing and developing. Slowly, I see societal entrepreneurship categorically going to boom from this wave. >> Yeah, totally agree. >> Across the board. >> The world will become a better place, we'll have better companies. >> Mark Jeffery, Guardian Circle, co-founder and CEO. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage here on the ground in Puerto, Rico for Blockchain Unbound. A lot of great stuff here, a lot of great start-ups, investors, of course theCUBE. 2018 will be covering all the shows. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.