>> Narrator: From New York, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey welcome back, everyone. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the host. We are in New York City for Blockchain Week NY for New York. Part of Consensus 2018. A lot of activity is happening, and I'm here with Agne Kazakaskaite who's the president of Vilnius Blockchain Association. Did I get that right, your name? >> Yes, that is correct. Agne Kazakaskaite from Vilnius Blockchain Association. >> Thank you for coming on. Appreciate you taking the time. First of all, I got to say I love what you're working on. You got this really cool project. Take a minute to explain what the Crypto Rally is. It's really cool. What is it? >> Sure, so Crypto Rally's an innovative concept. In short, it's Formula 1 with Davos. It's a marketing platform for blockchain companies to showcase their innovations, what they have developed in blockchain technologies. It's a car racing event. First it's starting in Lithuania, and then we're going to Dubai and China, taking our partners and sponsors together with us. And they receive a huge global media exposure by participating in Crypto Rally. >> So, the purpose is to take the cars and travel around and do education. Is it inspiration to partying? Is it fun? What is the format? >> What is the format? So, the format is we're traveling from Vilnius to the seaside and back. And Crypto Rally stops in six pit stops. In those pit stops, we have performances, car drifts, drag races, and the blockchain companies showcase the innovations. Let us say, automatic blockchain company that is installing sensors in the cars, they can showcase how it actually works. Say it's a blockchain company that opens the wallets for customers, they can open the wallets there and then. Yes, of course it's a party. We have parties. We have 3D projections on the walls. We have augmented reality games. All of this is interactive experience for the blockchain companies and for the community to participate together. >> And it's going to be fun. >> Yes. >> Informational, educational. Where'd the idea come from? >> It was my idea, actually. I worked before with Formula 1 teams. We consulted them. And I understand the concept quite well, actually. It's a racing event, but in a sense, it's a marketing platform. You put stickers on the cars, and if you can call it circus, travels around the world giving immediate exposure to the company that participate in it. And cars just add a sexiness to all of this event. >> That's beautiful. Who's involved? Can you talk about the names of people that are involved? >> Yes. >> Sponsors and communities. >> Yes, of course, Bee-li-al's already participating. We have local partners at CoinGate who actually are installing cryptocurrency payments all along the route of Crypto Rally. So wherever Crypto Rally goes, each country will be cryptocurrenc-inized. >> It's a treasure hunt meets car racing meets partying blockchain style. >> Exactly, it's really really fun. >> So what's your background? How did you get into this? I mean, it seems very cool. >> Yes. >> We love it. I love it. >> Thank you very much. My background is in finance. I studied in London, investment and financial risk management. I worked in an investment bank for a little bit. Then consulting company. And now I'm doing a master's degree in blockchain. I believe it's a great opportunity for our generation of people to make a huge impact to the world. I'm so excited about this new era. I can't contain my happiness. >> I love your story. I think it's phenomenal. >> Thank you. >> I think you're dynamic, vibrant, super smart. But I look around here at the hotel, it's a sea of men. We need more women in tech. >> Exactly. >> Tell all your friends. >> Exactly, exactly. So we're trying to change that. The Crypto Rally team consists girls actually who are our partners. It's Emile and Gaile, so three of us founders were female. So we're changing the whole blockchain ecosystem. >> Thank you so much for doing it. Thanks for coming on and sharing. Love to go along for the ride. Take theCUBE with you. Maybe we could be media partner. We'd love to promote it. Keep in touch. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for coming on. >> Thank you. >> TheCUBE Crypto Rally. TheCUBE, we're rallying here day one of two days of coverage. We were at eight interviews last night at the crypto house. This is Blockchain Week in New York City. We are rallying. The Crypto Rally, check it out. Is there a URL they can go to? Crypto Rally website? >> Yeah. >> Share the address. >> Cryptorally2018.com. >> Check it out, Crypto Rally. This is theCUBE rallying in New York City. Be back with more coverage after this. Thanks for watching, I'm John Furrier.

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

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week. (light, upbeat music) Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier. We're here on the ground in New York City for consensus 2018's Blockchain Week. I'm here with David Siegel who's the CEO of the Pillar Project, also the author of the Token Economics Handbooks, entrepreneur, mentor to companies. Thanks for coming on. >> Sure. Thank you John. Great to be here. >> So, I'm excited to talk with you, because I've been saying all week I love token economics. It's a core part of the business model, disruption. >> Right. >> It's part of the key formula where Blockchain shines. It's where the rubber meets the road as some say. So, let's jump in. >> Sure. >> In a, how much is being discussed here about that. I mean, obviously ICOs are well known and people are looking at that road, but token economics, the importance of it. >> First, I think it's important to understand we're at the very beginning of this. It's a steep learning curve. We have these old model T tokens called the ERC20 Token, which we will get rid of and build better things. We have models that are mostly based on old, you know whenever there's a new technology, we first imitate the old stuff until we see what the new. So one of the really exciting new things that's come out of this is effectively the Ethereum model, where you raise some money. You build a system, and it's open source. It's free. Anyone can take it and do anything with it, but it requires its own token to work. And the people who sell those tokens, you sell about 70% to your funders. And that creates the economy, but you hold about 30% back, and as the value goes up, as the network affect kicks in, and as these things rise in value, your 30% funds the project indefinitely after you run out of the first. So that's a pretty exciting model. That's what I call sort of basic Tokenomics. You have no business model. You have no income model. You're totally open source, but your token powers your platform, and you have some tokens in your back pocket. >> Yeah, and the general form that you see is 70 30, roughly. Is that just a pattern? >> That's about, that's normal. Now, that in a single sale, and what we see now in ICO land is pre-sale and then the big sale. I think we'll go to a more staged model, because I think too many companies are over-funded, too many projects are over-funded. 240 million dollars for status, maybe we don't need that much to start a project with a white paper. So, I think we're, I hope we'll go to a staged model. >> Explain stage model. >> You might sell 20% and raise what do you need to get to first base, three million to show a minimum viable product and get traction. >> Yeah, it makes sense. >> You know, what projects need more than three, maybe four? I mean, you don't need 20 million. And then you do that, but now you've got 80% of tokens in reserve. so now things are going well. Your token has gone for let's say five cents to 20 cents. You can sell another 20%. >> So the funding of the platform is that token economics kick in, per your other example, that 30% 70 goes raise and 30% funds the platform indefinitely. >> Yeah, that's typical. >> If you do the staged approach, what you're saying is there's more power in reserve to fund the platform. Cause if you can, if you get to first base, you might get to second. >> I think investors have been too gullible. And they're looking at these 50, 80, hundred million dollar raises and going oh me too. I have fear of missing out. I want to get in on that too. That's the big deal of the day. That is the one that's probably going to have lousy returns, right. These things are over-funded and not, there's no real give and take with the market. >> Yep. >> You know to get, like, nothing ever really works the way you plan. No business plan is ever worth anything. Think of, you know, Google, Apple, Microsoft. Their first business plans are for something else. (John laughs) So, find groups of people that you can give money to, not too much, get to first base, get some traction. Make something, listen to the market, continue to, you know, build what people want. And then your token will rise, and then you sell the next-- >> So I got to ask you. >> You know what. It's very much like venture capital, right. We do it in stages. >> It's pragmatic. It's the right way, I think an investor and the entrepreneur, by the way, your point is also valid, because like in venture capital, if you take on too much money, you could actually fail. You're not optimized, and we've seen that before. >> It's not good allocation of capital now. We've got a lot of innovation to do. Wouldn't it be great if we could do a thousand projects at like two or three, four million dollar level and see which ones come out of that? And then give them more. >> David, let's walk through a use case. So I'm a entrepreneur or I'm a growing business, and I maybe bootstrapped it or maybe took a little bit of the seed funding and did some cloud technology, open source, and whoa I've got a product. And I go, you know what, the growth strategy for me as a company is use token economics, because I got to decentralize use fit there. >> Sure. >> And I see a way to scale and grow with tokens. How should I set up my token economics? I got security tokens. I got utility tokens. Do I do a (crosstalking) purpose vehicle? It just sounds so complicated. >> I'm making funny faces John, because I see too many tokens, where you know, we always say, and I'm a token designer, well, what does a token do. Well the answer is it raises money. That is the number one answer. It raises money. Well, does it actually do anything for the token holders? Well, I'm not sure. >> Maybe down the road. >> It gives you access to the system. Is that a good answer? So, I think actually we should be turning most of these token sales into equity sales. And that's a different kettle of fish. So, I honestly think people misunderstand the ICO concept. And they should, we should think of ICOs as we know them today as project finance, not corporate finance, not company, not start up finance. Start up finance should be done with equity. >> That's a great point. >> Equity is something you hold very dear. There's only a hundred percent of it. You sell it only if you need to to get to the next level. And equity means your shareholders are along for the ride. They may have to vote you out of your job at some point. >> it's happened to me before. Happened to me before. That's venture capital. >> You may be acquired. You may, any number of things can happen to equity. And project finance is different. So, the Pillar Project is an open source project. It's a non-profit foundation in Switzerland. No one owns it. It can't be bought. Our goal is to do one project that we said in the white paper. We are on track to do that, but if for some reason we couldn't do that, I think the money should go back to the people who funded your white paper, not some random ride off in the hay. >> David, take a minute to talk about the Pillar Project. I was going to get to that. Let's go to that. What's the Pillar Project about? How did this come to life? >> Sure. >> What's the current status? >> So the Pillar Project is a good example of an open source non-profit project that uses Tokenomics and is not a company and has no equity. We have a token that will give you access to our wallet, which is coming this summer. And the wallet's meant to be, initially just a cryptocurrency wallet, like many others, but with so many differences John. So, for example there will be a name look up, an address book, and you'll find me by name, and you'll send me tokens, currencies by name, or you'll trade with me by name. You'll never see an ether address. You'll never see a Bitcoin address, no fishing, no hacking, no whacky cut and paste errors and mistakes. For example, the Blockchain Explorer will be built into our wallet, so as you send me something or trade something, you'll be getting status information all the time. You'll never go to a Blockchain Explorer. All these nice things are built in. We have lots of features for your mom to make it easy for her to understand and keep it very simple. >> So you've abstracted away some of the complexities. >> We've added complexity on the back end to do the services that make the front end very simple. >> Okay, got it, and what's current status of the project funding wise. >> We'll be shipping the first. Well, we raised money last July. We had a 20 million dollar funding last July. That has gone up, because ether has gone up. We got about 50 people full time. We're in London. >> So you're at first base or second base? >> We'll be on first base in July. We've got to get our product out the door. >> It's the wallet. >> It's a wallet to start with, but also it will help you manage your personal data. It will help you be GDPR compliant. We'll have an exchange, and we'll be doing equity ICOs. We'll be doing, in the wallet, we'll be doing, for example, with the utility ICO, you'll issue your token, you'll sell it to people. They'll buy it in the wallet, and then trading will be immediate. You'll be listed, everything right there. Don't move stuff around. We're trying to create a place that's safe for consumers. >> Got it. Alright, I love this concept about open source. And, it's kind of threaded. Some people are open source guys, like me and you who have seen that movie go from in a radical second tier citizen to primary tier power in the world. As Blockchain takes a community focus, we're seeing the same business model that made Red Hat very famous, that's powering the Linux Foundation. This notion of projects. >> Yeah. >> And in open source, it's a distinction between project and product, upstream projects, a community, downstream products. Downstream activity is where people productize the project. >> Yes. >> I see a pattern happening in this world where we're starting to see some of that. >> Interesting, okay. >> Your thoughts on this, because that's Ethos has proven, this world has got a lot of growth to it. Are we seeing this open source ethos and principles, architecting in some of the successful crypto projects? >> I would take this productization analogy pretty far, because it's true in the profit world too. It's true with startups often do this as well. It's a service. You get better at it. You productize it. That's pretty common. So I think that's part and parcel of just solving customer needs and then scaling, right. The non-profit thing or the open source thing is different, because you can't make money on your open source thing. You've got to find another way, right. And here in Blockchain world, we're using scaling effects and tokens. So let's go to Tokenomics, where you can start an ecosystem fresh with a token that has no value. And Ether had no value on day one, right, almost no value. And through network effect and use and the fact that it's a limited number. The limited number's important. The limited number makes it so that it's scarcity, right. It's got value to people who can see oh later it might be worth more. So you got both natural buyers and speculators coming into a system. And this is what's giving the SEC a hard time, because they can't see whether it's... >> They don't understand it. >> Is it a security or is it a gym membership? >> It's a serious problem, because they don't understand it. And they're causing a lot of, they're stunting a lot of growth in my opinion. But the thing about token economics is what you're getting at, and this is where I trying to squint through the noise. I understand in an infrastructure web one dot O. You got URLs. You got DNS. You have infrastructure. >> Yeah. >> Google has cost per click. All that apparatus doesn't work for network effects. So if you look at network effects as being the main value proposition in most of these opportunities, why were we using E-commerce stack, an old model, because how do you measure networks? Tokens are becoming and wallets are becoming a key infrastructure. I see this coming. >> Yes. >> And I see the network effect tokens becoming both an instrumentation vehicle and a transactional currency opportunity. So, this is a dynamic that Blockchain could really and tokens... >> So I think the huge opportunity John is that instead of fake news and fake everything and fragile DNS systems and things that are centralized, we can decentralize things now with a token at the center that puts skin in the game. And a great example is science. You know we do science pretty badly. It's whoever can get budget for whatever whacky project. And if we had a betting, a side bet system, where people could bet on the outcome of projects, even when you propose them, the people who make the decisions of whether to fund these things could look at the odds first of what the crowd thinks. And if the crowd is right about the outcome, the winners take the money from the losers. And this skin in the game concept is being used... >> Yeah, it's a marketplace. The market dynamics of what you just said I think is very important. This changes the evaluation structure based upon new information. >> So, the price of fake news is almost zero. And we saw that in the last election. We see that in Facebook everyday. We see that on the front page of the New York Times. The price of fake news is close to zero. If it costs you money that it, when it, turns out your stuff is fake, if you have to put up money alongside your news, and then we find out it's fake, and you lose it, that will change things. >> Yes. >> So the skin in the game tokens, and you can actually google skin in the game tokens and learn a bunch of interesting models is what's coming next. >> Well, we have to bring you on board theCube project that we're starting. We're tokenizing our platforms, and we think about this all the time. >> Yeah. >> It's very cutting edge. David, really great to have you on. Talk about the book. Where can we find it? Are you on Medium? >> One quick thing. You know, we're going to have token camp coming up in Lithuania. We've got a one week workshop and un-conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. I know that sounds like nowhere. >> What is that? What's the date? >> It's July 15th to 22nd. It's free. Pillar's paying for it. It's at a resort. We're taking over a resort with crazy crypto people, skin in the game tokens, token camp. We've got a business agility camp for entrepreneurs, for investors, for coders. We're going to do, in fact we're, I can just announce right now that we're doing a hackathon with Radix, an incredible new Blockchain and a bunch of interesting people. Lex Okland will be there, Venay Gupta. We're going to have learning, learning for seven days. >> That's at a resort. >> It's at a resort in Lithuania. >> So it's all one compound. >> Yeah, we're taking it over. And there will be a little golf. But it's good for families. We did it last year. >> I checked it out. It's got a lot of lake there too. You got a lake. You got golf courses. >> It's going to be really fun. And we did it last year, and people were learning until one o'clock in the morning. >> What's the capacity you're looking at for that event? >> 500 people. >> So intimate. It's a very intimate event. >> It should be perfect. We're going to be blasting out. You should come. We're going to be blasting out on 4K. We've got enough bandwidth to send to YouTube and to wherever else you want to distribute video. You could be part of the media center. >> Awesome, well David Siegel, great to have you on. Final question, your take away from Blockchain Week. Obviously, new entrants are going to, new actors are coming into the system, community's booming. It's still tight knit, but now you have finance. You have tech and you have developers all coming together. Your thoughts of the show this week, Blockchain Week. >> Yeah, one thing, the demos are pretty lame in general, I think. We still aren't paying much attention to user experience at all. >> Yep. >> I think the enterprise guys have a lot to learn, because they're kind of playing their normal enterprise game. And it doesn't look so good here. >> Yeah, Jace was talking about the Blockchain washing. (David laughs) Basically, putting a Blockchain-- >> We added Blockchain to this enterprise project and look. >> Yeah, is that a real dynamic in your opinion? >> I think they're figuring it out. I think some of the academic and some of the white paper stuff I've seen is okay and commercializing it. They're on the path to learning how to commercialize it. But they're not part of us. They're not, they'll never be crypto-anarchists, okay fine. But they don't really seem to get us and to be part of it. They're, it's amazing to see a conference where IBM, Microsoft, you know these other big names, are deloyed, are, like, in their own little pockets on the side, and no one's paying. >> John: It's a toe in the water for them. >> They're not paying much attention, because you go in there, and it's the normal marketing jargon and brochures. And it doesn't feel like they're really engaging. >> Yeah. >> I'd love to see more engagement with our community. >> And I think they got to really get engaged in. The good news is, for IBM at least, they're part of the Linux Foundation and Hyperledger Project. So, we're seeing some open sourcedness there, I mean. >> I'd like to see more thought leadership, more real, you know, publish some papers. Come to our conferences and give us some substance. >> Well, I mean, I talked to Michael Dell and Pat Gelsing for instance, and, you know, they are into Blockchain. Michael Dell's watched watched Oslo's videos. He'll probably watch this video. They're learning. And the statement is what they're doing is they're giving it to their R and D teams, so office of the CT. They're not really, so it's very academic, to your point. They haven't really operationalized the ethos and product. >> You know what? >> It's time for experiments. There's no way you're going to blockchain your whole company, your whole supply chain. It is time for experiments, and it is time for guys like Michael Dell to jump in and say we are-- >> What's your advice to Michael? What would you tell him to do? >> It's time for experiments. We're going to do some things. We're going to try some things. We're going to partner up. The Hyperledger stuff, you know, try more than that. Don't just be, go into meetings and summits and top down. Try some bottom up stuff of empower your employees, Michael. You're not Michael, but I'm telling you (John laughs) Michael empower people to try some things. They might even not be... They might be quasi-legal, but if it's an experiment, you're going to learn something. And then you can talk to the lawyers. Don't have the lawyers and the management say what the program is. >> Cause that'll put it in a box. >> They won't get it. >> They won't get it. They'll stop the action. >> They won't find that-- >> Ask for forgiveness, not permission. >> Ask for, go do it. Go build. Get, hire some crazy crypto people, and tell them to look for inefficiencies in your whole operation and cut them down by 90%. >> David, great conversation. We could go for another hour. You're going to be a regular, I can tell, on theCUBE. When we do our live format, we're going to certainly have you back. Keep in touch. >> Sure. >> I'm John Furrier here at Blockchain Week in Consensus as wrapping up the day three of coverage. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Be right back. (light, upbeat music)

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