>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's the CUBE, covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat Spanish-style music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here in Puerto Rico for exclusive CUBE coverage, I'm John Furry, you're host. Here, with Blockchain Unbound, this is a global event. From everyone from Silicon Valley, New York, Miami, Russia, Eastern Europe, all over the world, and Puerto Rico coming together, talk about the future of the economy, Blockchain decentralized apps, and more. Our next guest is CUBE alumni, and part of our inaugural crypto currency coverage, from Polycon 18, back to give a command performance, Nithin Eapen Chief Investment Officer at Arcadia Crypto Ventures, good to see you. >> Good to see you too John. >> So, you had a great showing at our first crypto event, PolyCon, great to see you back in the trenches, you're out, hard-working, pounding the pavement, doing deals. What's your analysis here, I mean, you're here networking, you checked out the sessions. What's your take? >> We've met some really good founders, really good projects, so that's the key thing that we are looking for. The main idea as our tagline says, "We back Blockchain's best." We are looking for the best founders. We are looking for the teams, then for the idea. Anything that's decentralized, we are backing them. >> So, network effect has been a big part of the conference I've been having. We talked about security tokens, utility tokens. A lot of interesting things going on here, but there's a backdrop. You've got multiple events going on. You've have Blockchain Unbound, run by Blockchain Industries, great team, which put this event together in five weeks. So, shout out to those guys. >> (laughs) You have Coin Agenda, >> That's coming! going on, another event going next door, which is after this event. And then you have a lot of series of little events, meet-ups, the local community had a great crypto mixer, Puerto Rico, a lot of action. >> Too much action, and it's like at the same time, look at it, TokenFest in San Francisco, another 2,000 people over there, here people are on the waiting list, so much action. >> And that's going on this week, as well. You have anyone going to that event? >> I know, I've got a lot of friends going over there. For me, it made sense, this is closer. I thought I would meet a lot of them. Puerto Rico is better I found, you know? >> A lot of big money here, a lot of smart money. >> A lot of smart money, a lot of big money. >> John: Global? >> Global, and the greatest part of Puerto Rico is, it's bringing this concept like, they have reduced taxes for US people to zero percent for individuals, for the next, until 2036. Now that's a big difference. If you want to change your domicile to Puerto Rico, for your business it's 4% corporate taxes, and individual it's 0% now, that's... >> John: But you got to move here. >> You got to move here, okay. But you don't have to give up your US citizenship. Now, I think what's going to happen right now is they're going to be other states maybe going to compete for this, or other countries are going to compete for the capital to flow, where does capitol flow to? Capital will flow to cheaper places, or lesser taxes. >> So, I got to ask you, I was talking to you earlier this morning, here on the CUBE I said, "There's two killer apps, one of them is money." Money is the killer app. >> No doubt! >> Your reaction to that? >> It is, okay all of our lives, let's say for your son, or my kid, or for me, what my parents, when we went to school, why did they make us go to school or learn, they tell us, "Okay you got to go to college!" Why, they want us to have a better life, they want to have a better car. How do you get them, you want money for them. But in none of those years did somebody teach you, how does money originate? What is money, is it something you should buy the Garmin? So in everything that we go for, unless we're the Buddha or Jesus himself, we do it for money. >> Well you bring up a good point. I mean I have a immigrant background from my family, my wife's family as well. >> Where did you come from? >> Well I'm actually Native American, I mean American. >> Okay But two, three generations back they, Ireland, >> Ireland, okay! French Canadian, a little bit of Armenian in me but that's okay, all kind of blended. I'm in the melting pot, I'm not 1st generation but, in Boston where my parents were from, very much an immigrant town, and they didn't have any money. So if you look at now, what's gone through the financial dot-com bubble, which had some impact, but the financial crisis is 2018, if you look at what's happened since then, the generation of millennials there in more debt. They're not realizing college, it might not be the thing. So we went to school so that we can have a better life than our parents did. Now it's like everyone's realizing that, shit we're screwed. So watching as a path, of freedom. >> It is! A new way to create wealth, capture the value, but in a new way. >> Yes, because you have a chance to be a part of an economy without, a permission of a centralized organization. So, earlier if you wanted to work somewhere, you needed an organization to work. This is making it much easier to be a part of the economy. to contribute, to help people to get help, all this is happening and you don't have to go to school. Maybe school is overrated, our colleges overrated. It is too expensive, you spend 200 thousand dollars on college. What is your ROI, when is your ROI? Maybe some disciplines have it. But this is your chance to.. >> Well, you you know that we love media and our disruptive media at the CUBE is to do things differently, but lets talk about some current events that's been happening. So this week, John Oliver created a video trashing crypto currency, it was actually funny. But it got to the Brock Pierce part, and he really had it out for Brock Pierce. He absolutely destroyed him. >> He did! And since then, he lost his place EOS. They wiped away all his DNA of evidence with the company. This is a comedian, at John Oliver, you're a freaking comedian. What gives him the right to I have that kind of influence on someone's job when he's just telling a joke. There's no actually substance of any facts of any kind at what he's doing, So that's a central authority figure that took an editorial comedic routine, and put it out there, but people think that's news. >> See, >> That's not The power of media, that the power of all the old traditional media, is that they had a bigger reach. I think it's going to change, it is going to be the YouTube's. And it's going to become a decentralized YouTube equivalent, or a decentralized media equivalents. Like, a lot of people have made memes and you know, fun videos that go viral and they'll take things down. The same, John Oliver obviously, he has us laugh. >> He's funny as hell though. He is funny as hell! >> You got to admit, >> He's pretty funny! The bit was really good, >> But end of the day, but he really went after Brock Pierce. Something was going on there, he took him down. >> See the traditional industries or traditional media they want to take down everybody that they don't consider, the birds of a same feather, this is somebody weird, like Trump, they try to take down Trump. They will try to take down anything which doesn't fit their globalist, elitist agenda. End of the day, like Brock Pierce sitting on a billion, and John over with his comedy, who has the bigger laugh? I don't know, if you ask me. >> When you have F U money like Brock Pierce does, I'm sure it rolls off his shoulders. But it does impact the ecosystem a bit. Basically EOS has erased his name in any capacity. So, obviously this impacts to public opinion. So these comedians and news rep, they have an obligation to share the data. Editorializing, I mean I do it all the time, don't get me wrong. >> (laughs) But, there's a point, consensus is part of the algorithm now in these Blockchain and Crypto communities where you have Blockchain as a store, against him. >> Okay! But consensus and transparency is a huge deal. >> Nithin: Yes! >> This is part of the formula. >> I know but see, the whole thing... When John Oliver does something, it's not about consensus. He can do it, okay, it's going to change! It's like this, when Bitcoin came in 2009, the traditionalists were coming up at the story that, "it is fake money, it's not going to go anywhere." Then it became one dollar, they were just laughing at it. Then became 10 dollars, they said it's going to go down. Then it became hundred dollars, they did the same thing. And it's only after long time they will realize, "Oh my God, it's changed." The rock has been pulled under my leg. It's like when Amazon came, all the traditional retail guys said, "Nobody's going to go and buy a book without touching it." Now we have Toys "R" Us that just went bankrupt. There's no more Toys" R" Us, you know, you have to buy your toys pretty much from Amazon at this point. >> Well everything in the model of future will be all contexual so, videos, comedian, news articles, reports, editorial, all will roll into one thing. That's going to be a great thing. >> Yes! >> And media is going to take a lot of, natural language processing, it's going to get transcript link. I think you're already doing it right, you're going to take a transcript of what I speak, you're going to attach the words, you're going to attach it to brands, you can sell that, and that is going to be the future. >> Well lets get some of that intellectual property out of your head and into the camera, and for the audience. What are you hearing in the hallways here, obviously this is a great networking event here. Lot's of agendas, phenomenal, as well as we had over sold almost by double. There's people out in the hallways, it's sold out, so there's a lot of Lobby Con going on. There's a conference within the conference going on. >> Nithin: It is! We call it Lobby Con! >> (laughs) What are you hearing in the hallways, what is some of the cool things that's new to you, that you're discovering? >> So lot of people are now telling me they are very excited about security tokens. They're telling me they're buying security tokens. I asked them, which security tokens? It's not there yet, okay. See, that's where I tend to differ. If security tokens are going to be the big thing, I'm going to be buying it because we are informed. >> John: Buy everything that moves. >> We buy it as it moves, but, security token, my question is, so you're trying to make something that is a utility, now you're going to make it security? So that is equity markets, there is a CC for that. And you're going to fit this in over there, I'm like, I don't know, what are people trying achieve? This is a free market and they're trying to bring it into regulation. >> What's a red flag for you as a, security token implies directly that you're securing something. What are they, >> You're pretty much What are people securing, equity, future cash flows, dividends, what are some of the vehicles you've seen? >> At that time they are pretty much secure, or securing future cash flows as dividends. They're going to give dividends, they're saying if you're a token holder, you're going to get dividends. My question at that time is, then why do you want a token, why can't it be in equity? Oh, you think you can come with their argument that it's more liquid, but equity's a liquid. I don't think it isn't a liquid. But it is a great way to go around and secularize a lot of things. You can have a small business, think of it, you and me we have a small business, let's say we have a partnership We have a small... >> We have a small business, We have a small business, we have a partnership. It's very hard to exit out of a small business. If we can fractionalize the ownership of a business thru tokens, and there might be people are willing to buy, put thousand dollars in, and maybe I can exit at some point. Otherwise there's no exit for me. It's very hard to exit out of a small business. Now then, what's the difference between that and equity? I don't know you know, those lines are blurred but, I'm happy for the fact that something like that will give liquidity to a lot of small business owners. America is a country of small business owners. Across the globe it supports small business owners. If it brings liquidity, okay I'm happy with that. But it's really beating the purpose that we don't want a centralized power controlling us. Because now that you have Google and Facebook that banned crypto-currency ads. Why, Women's Day, all our data, they give us a free access but they hold a lot of our personal data. I'm thinking, the guy who brings in the, a decentralized search or a decentralized social media, I'm going to invest in them. I don't care if their a success or if the success will come later. There are going to be multiple libertarian investors like me that's going to invest in them. >> What I learned was that money is a killer app, and I'll stand by that. I think marketplaces are also the killer app. You ever think, >> Perfectly true! that this conference, that kind of validates where I was thinking was, the people who nailed a business model, that's the critical, critical pacing item. If you screw the business model up, you go sideways. The technology risk isn't as bad as the business model decision risk. So I'm seeing the successful ICOs, or plays, have a lock in on the structural value proposition and to be directionally correct, with an understanding of what the hedge is on the technology. >> Yep! >> So they can manage it. So it's like programmable plumbing. They're recognizing that dynamic. The other thing that I'm learning is that the money flow from other countries is massive. If you want a money launderer from Colombia, it's coming in from Metadine Narcos. It's coming in from Japan, and China. Bitcoin and Blockchain is a money transfer opportunity so, I'm seeing a massive amount of money, flowing in >> Capital is flowing, in massive waves. >> it's flowing in. >> And it's good, and even if these projects fail, it's a good thing because, you had all this money that was stuck somewhere, that flowed in, and as I said, many of those projects are going to fail. Let them fail, because this money has flowed in, you will have a lot of people come and work on these projects, and eventually the correct solution will emerge. >> And new structural dynamics are at play. And new investors are coming in. >> New investors, so many new investors. You know the funny thing John, after we met at Polycon, I think that 99% of the people I meet here are totally new. All the guys we met at Polycon in Bahamas, totally different. I only know very few people that I met over there. So that means a whole set of investors, or common people, who just want to learn about it, totally new. That's really good! And who wins here, the average citizen entrepreneur, the average citizen player that wants to start something whether it's a banking, a service provider of some sort, a entrepreneur, or a new financial instrument or firm, all have greenfield opportunity here. >> Because, see earlier when you wanted to raise money, I was talking to a founder the other day, I asked him, how hard it was for you to raise your first raise, like 10 years ago? He was telling me that he walked the doors across multiple VCs, to kind of scrap in one and a half million dollars. And then he did his second loan after eight years. >> He'd have to crawl on his knees to get that. >> And that too, you won't get the attention, you need to know reference, now you have a chance to go to the world, and monies were, so easy money coming in is a bad thing in a way that most entrepreneurs will feel the investors will lose their money. but that's different, but it at least you have access and you can try to think that you had any in mind earlier. You had no option, they would take a big stake. Now there's no dilution, this is pretty much cloud funding on steroids. You have a chance to go to market, you get the go to market money and see if it works. And if it doesn't work, let's fix it after that. >> Nithin, I got to get your thoughts on building a company, 'cause obviously, you're also not only in this as an investor, you're also doing strategic advisory work for people building the venture architecture and then the actual build up plans for their venture. So you've talked about this in the past, you have a relationship with some protocol guys, you can check with them, there's some good network there. But there's also a dynamic with this industry where the business development aspect of it is really important. People are partnering, >> Very very important. And there's a way to partner and a way not a partner. There's a way to do token economics and there's a way not to do token economics. What is your advice, to companies that have a good thing going on, they have a tail wind at their back, they got wind in their sails, but have to make some hot partnering decisions. Looking for fellows, fellowship in that ecosystem. How do you advise folks in this partnerships and then talk about token economics after? >> So the first thing I would tell founders is to reach out. This community is very very supportive. Like you can reach out to me, you can reach out to other guys, LinkedIn, Facebook, or come to these events, and in the hallways. Say your idea and you need help, because you will need help, you cannot run this alone. You are running a company, you are running your team. Have a good team, that's a first thing. Have a great team, great founders, vision, execution, you need that. The next key thing is, you have to think about marketing and how do you market, you need to get some big names on your board who can reach out to their network and tell them about your idea. And they reach out of the rest for you. >> So networks are super important. >> Super super important, like... >> So advisor, that their advisor selection should be based on their network that they bring to the table. >> Right, so the first advisor selection is the guy who will help you flush out your idea properly as tokens. The next advisor set is a marketing advisor or a technical advisor. The marketing advisers also very important because you need to market the product, get the money in, because end of the day, you need money to build it. You need to pay your employees, whether it's in Bitcoins or in fear, It doesn't matter, one of these is required. So you have these three things, then you need to build strategic partnerships in your business. Say, let's see your a loyalty points guy, like Al is doing, You know Al right? >> Al Burgio, >> From FuZe Chain now doing DigitalBits. Hot deal, hot deal! >> Hot deal, hot deal. >> Look at what Al did, he went out, he got his strategic partnerships with the loyalty guys, now he's got the brand, the strategic partnerships, he's built a product already. The money he needs is only for go to market so that he can push it to multiple companies and get them on the chain. Brilliant idea so, strategic partnerships, advisors, founding team, and then, show the idea to the people. Go out there, let them know that this is what you're doing, why this idea is great, how big is the market, there was a problem that you're solving, what is your solution. Explain yourself frankly and honestly, and I think the community will reward you, to go and find your dream. >> Great point, be honest, ask for help. Again, I can't reiterate my experience of, I'll share, is during the computer revolution, Internet revolution, Web.1.o, and now partnering in the early days when it's forming, can make or break a company. Make or break a company. >> Very True! So, note to that, okay now, token economics. >> Nithin: Sure! >> Sounds easy, but you really got to make sure that you have a good economic framework that matches the value proposition. Talk about what you advise there. >> So last day of the one founder restart to me, ICO is going on for our seventh day into the ICO. He's raised less than 300 thousand dollars. I meet him, and he needs help. After what, seven days into the ICO, all I could tell him is, shut off your ICO, it's not going to raise money. He's like, "Why," and I'm like, he said, "read this paper." I'm like, "There's nothing in this paper "I can put money into." And he's like, "Why is that?" So I asked him, so how many companies has he put his money into, how many points has he bought? Four years, he has not bought a single coin. And he's flustered something by himself. So he's never bought a coin, and he's expecting people to buy coins at his price. So I tell people, either you should notice, you should be an investor yourself. So there are different kinds of investors, there are institutional investors that are funds, family offices, and then are retail investors. If you're not any one of these, or any one of in this group, how do you know what these guys are buying it for? So reach out to them! >> That's where the advisory comes in, Know your customer! >> Know your customer! And not the KYC in a different way, but know 'em from a marketing standpoint. Know how the retail, >> Exactly! purchase is made. >> Because if... >> If you yourself are a buyer, at least you have some idea. If you've never bought a token, and if you're, I had another founder tell me that, my tokens are worth hundred million. I'm like, you don't have a user, you just have a product. You're tokens are worth shite, if you ask me. It's worth zero, I can tell my house is worth hundred million dollars. It's only worth as much as the top buyer. How much is he willing to pay for me? So I told the founder, I'll pay so much for this price because I think, if it's about that, there's a huge risk as the main investor coming in. He doesn't agree! >> So lets talk about some, how rounds are being done now. So one trend that I'm seeing, not, I shouldn't say trend, a few deals I've seen done, but it seems like a trend, I'm trying to get validation on this, Where people are avoiding the public ICO altogether, doing all privates. >> Yes! Basically over subscribed round. Trend, dynamic, real deal, what's your thoughts on reaction to that? >> It's just that the founders are adapting. Because if you go to the public, the moment you're going to the public, what's happening is, there's the SEZ component. Whether it's a utility and they can come after you, so they have made it private. And then they went after, and even further, a lot of the founders that I know, they just stopped accepting money from US entities or US individuals. Well it's a bad deal for a small investor. See the big investors are wealthy investors. They all have an external entity where they can invest into it. What about the small investor who was investing thousand dollars or 5,000 dollars? Now you have pretty much shut out his chance of getting into a great ICO. So the founder is going to raise his money from maybe Korea, Japan, China, and Singapore. He's going to form a company or a foundation in Cayman, or Lichtenstein, or Gibraltar. The small investor is a loser. The large institutional investor has no loss in this process, so, that is the founder adapting because he does not want, >> They want to manage, >> They don't want it to become lawsuits, basically. >> Compliance, audits, SEZ problems, they don't end fencing problems. >> So now let's compare, in contrast, different kind of companies. US based company, wants to raise money in the US, they do accredited. But they want to go outside, say Asia, or an Asia company wants to raise money in the US, what's that dynamic like, what are the issues? >> I think what's going to happen is they going to, some of them are going to register themselves as a security token, some of them are going to do just a reg D for very high net worth individuals. And the common, the the public round, they going to raise it from the China, the Korea, Japan, or is lobbying them. And that's what I think, multiple small countries are going to come into the space, which they know now, they can get the capital flowing into their company, and they going to allow their rules to be lax. They going to let capitol flow through. And then US will have to change, or maybe UK will have to change, whoever is against this will have to change. Capital means money, belt capital, and resource capital, like humans, we tend to move to places that are freer. Why did I move from India to US, or why did your parents or the earlier generation move to US? >> John: For a better life. >> It's a better life, the real better life is, you have the freedom over your property, the fruits of your labor. If the fruits of your labor are taxed at 50% or thirty, the more it goes up, you just don't want to work anymore, or you're going to to search for that place that will tax you less. >> Like Puerto Rico! >> Nithan: Puerto Rico! >> Are you bullish on Puerto Rico? >> I am bullish on Puerto Rico because, these, if they can sustain this, and have the rule of law, means they can protect people's wealth, like from crime and all those things, crime or being kidnapped. These two things happen, I'm telling you, most people will move or some of state will have to change their laws. >> They got to get >> the security up. Nithan, thanks so much for coming on the CUBE. Really appreciate your insight. Thanks for sharing! >> Thank you very much. This is the CUBEs exclusive coverage from Puerto Rico where we're getting on the ground here. Getting all the data from the Blockchain Unbound Conference. Part of restart week. I'm John Furry here, we've got more coverage after this break, thanks for watching! (upbeat electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's The Cube. Covering Polycon 18, brought to you by Polymath. >> Welcome back, everyone, this is The Cube exclusive coverage at Polycon 18, put on by Grid Capital and Polymath, of course The Cube is independent publishing, digital TV and research. Of course we're covering all the action this year in the crypto-space blockchain, crypto-currency token economics. Big news here with Polymath is announcing a partnership. We've got Trevor Koverko is the CEO of Polymath Amir Kaltak, CEO at Lexit. You guys just came off stage and announced a partnership. Your ecosystem is growing, you guys are enabling platform. Talk about the relationship. >> You want to start? >> Please, I insist. >> Alright, fine. So awhile ago we just realized that what Trevor and his team are doing is just fitting right in what we do. We, the marketplace for M&A, helping to liquidize assets, and a security token, in its purest form, is an asset. So we want to help, we want to work together and create an ecosystem in the future between Polymath and Lexit, that is basically the thing that we want to figure out and how to do it. >> Yeah, no, we're big fans of the project, and more importantly the team behind the project. That's always what we look for when it comes to any investment, or purchase, or partnership. We're really excited. >> This is really a great sign for you guys. Congratulations, Polymath and Lexit, you guys are growing companies. This is the magic of platforms, right? You guys have collaboration, ecosystem partners really become instrumental for you guys, so it's a good sign. You get the leverage, the platform, you get some time to market faster, time to value, this is what it's all about, right? >> I believe that security tokens are going to be a big part of our future revenue on Lexit itself, and I can't miss out on that one, and I'm happy that we meet at that early stage, so to say, where everything happens. Where we set the path into the future. So let's see what happens. >> Amir I want to ask you, as someone who's partnered (inaudible), why Polymath? What was compelling for you? What was the reason? Obviously they have a secure token, so it's a platform, and it's a trend that's your friend right now. So why Polymath? >> There are multiple ones. Trend isn't that right, but the thing is, I'm old school, right? If somebody I know and trust tells me this is a great person I need to talk to, this is a great project, then I do it. So, Tim Frost of Taurus Solutions was the guy who connected us in New York on a brief meeting, and now more and more, and so this is how we started. And I go with my gut feeling. If I see a sincere man, I see a sincere man, and I would like to work with him. >> Great. Platform-wise, API's, how's it going to work? You guys, can you share any details? I missed the announcement because we were doing Cube interviews. What was announced on stage? >> For me, this is kind of what I've been echoing all week. It's all about building the components of this ecosystem. We're trying to, literally, re-imagine Wall Street, and to do that it requires new forms of structure formation of capital. So we have private equity, we have mergers and acquisitions, we have venture capital, and with Polymath we're just trying to be the base layer that other exciting projects like Lexit can build on top of. >> What are some of the most important things in the platform, Amir, that you like? Just get under the hood a little bit. What's, what about Polymath is going to be a good deal for you guys? What's the key? Is it saving time, is it the certain things on the platform? What specifically about these guys- >> Free t-shirts? >> Free t-shirts definitely. And after that, the free t-shirt contest. What contest? I'm kidding. No, to me it's like, look, you want to have a security token, right? And then there are multiple jurisdictions, and there's a lot of legal compliance. It's a mountain of work in front of you. Those guys figured out how to do this simple and reliable for all of us. >> Kind of like what you're doing on the M&A side, except they do it for the security token. >> Sort of. >> Always breaking down barriers, that's the name of the game. That's the definition of an entrepreneur. >> Removing the blockers in front of you is the key, and not to waste time on management cycles, on things that someone else's doing. That, to me, it good partnership. Sounds like that's what you guys are offering, right? >> Absolutely. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, guys, well thank you for sharing the news. A final word, >> John, thank you. >> What do you see as the outlook, partnerships, you guys going to make some money together, you've got to build the product out first? How's the sequence, the order of operations of the partnership? Share the quick overview, then we'll end the segment. >> So we have a lot of work ahead of us. And right now it's about getting Polymath, the demo is out, the alpha is out, it's live, you can use it. And my biggest party right now is getting the application layer to the market, and that simply means a user interface, drag and drop, point and click, and that is my life right now. So once we get that out the door, these guys are ready. >> The thing is we are launching globally, full developed, since two years away in develop, in June. And soon after that, we will hopefully be ready for their platform. But, speaking of that, it's public now, but we will work closely right away to figure out how to optimize everything in between our systems. So it's going to be an ongoing process where we to be careful with resources, of course, but it's going to happen during this year, I hope. >> Amen. >> Well congratulations on the building blocks of success, you've got to start with the core. This is The Cube bringing a live coverage from the Bahamas. Big news here on the partnerships of the two companies, Polymath and Lexit. Look for more coverage. We'll be right back with more coverage after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau. (electronic music) Live from Nassau in The Bahamas, it's The Cube, covering Polygon '18, brought to you by Polymath. >> Welcome back, everyone. It's The Cube's exclusive coverage live in The Bahamas for Polycon '18. This is where all the action is, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, blockchain, you name it, token economics, a paradigm shift of epic proportions. This is a decentralized internet. It's impacting the world. Missions, technology, applications, and all sectors. Our next guest, Shawn Owen, CEO of SALT Lending, serial entrepreneur, killer idea, so simple, so stupid simple. No one's doing it, he's doing it, lending cash for Bitcoin and currency. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, it's good to be here. >> You know, there's two things that I love, the crazy ideas that everyone says is the dumbest idea on the planet that becomes billion-dollar opportunities, then something that's so simple and obvious that no one does because either a bag at your dogma or other interests. You're in kind of both. You got the simple idea, lending. Take a minute to talk about SALT Lending and your innovation that you guys do on the business side. >> Yeah, you got it. Everybody here at these conferences, or hopefully, people that are watching, have some interest in cryptocurrencies or blockchain, and probably accumulate some value in that currency, or the asset class. Once you do, then you have options, that you can either continue to hold that, or you can sell it. We're opening up a new market for the ability to see that as property and borrow against it. In fact, the technology makes a perfect form of collateral. We have all this ability to program in smart contracts. You can write in the rules. You can make it highly secure, yet nobody is doing it, so it's one of these simple things that, as this market emerges, became kind of obvious as a pain point, which is, I go to the bank, and I show them my personal financial statement, and they look at Bitcoin, and scratch their head. Somebody's got to bridge that gap, so we're building technology that ultimately should be used by banks or financial institutions to bring this together to where you have that ability like you would with any other type of property. If you look at any other type of property, you can lend against it, somebody's figured out how to, whether it's minerals, whether it's land, whether it's cars. Really now, we're doing that for cryptocurrency. SALT Lending stands for secured automated lending technology, so it's very much a technology-driven company, yet it's foundational in lending. It's just very simple to understand because it's the oldest business known to man. >> We covered cloud computing from day one. It's interesting, automation wins the day. We're seeing a lot of things where automating M&A process, we talked to those guys at LEXIT. You're doing something here with lending. You're just so simple. Here's the question, if I have Bitcoin, and there's a lot of whales walking around here, people, billionaires, millionaires, a lot of people have made money over the past couple of years. Certainly, if you were in it 2011 after, you're a whale. They got value. I put it up, and I get cash? Is that how it works? >> That's right. Everybody has assets that they want to hold onto, that are precious to them, whether it be gold, heirlooms, art, Bitcoin. Then they have currencies that are things that they want to spend quickly and/or just don't even think twice about it, I'll pay for a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, whatever. As the world moves into the blockchain era, as all value can be recorded on distributed ledgers in blockchains, you have this new way of thinking about everything. You can imagine a wallet where you have all the things you really care about, and you can dynamically decide what your currency is based off where you're traveling, where you want to spend, what you think is happening with inflation, depending on what your interest is. Maybe it's video game points you want to spend in the future. However, having that scale, and saying, at any point in time, I want to hold onto this, and I want to spend more of that, there's a partnership, right? A really easy way to think about that is, how can I leverage what I have, which is portfolio lending, or any type of lending, into more of the currencies I need, whether it's, I need to go buy a house, I need to buy a car, I want to buy more investments? We see it as a very powerful tool, and almost a necessity, but then, on top of that, just extremely cool in how you could imagine the future of finance in this world. >> Yeah, it's a total game-changer. I love what you're doing. I think, getting the fiat conversion really gets immediate liquidity in a currency that people can spend. If someone says, "Hey, I don't want Bitcoin," great, I want to buy a boat, or start a business, I need to get some fiat, I pledge up my coin. >> That's right. >> Now, you go valuation issues, so I'm assuming you have math behind this that says, "Hmm, but if Bitcoin drops..." >> Yep, that's the thing. We really solve a couple fundamental pieces of the blockchain that, at its core, are difficult for people to do well. One is security, and the other is user interface. When you wrap that into a product, and you build out the user interface and the security, suddenly, it becomes a lot easier. When it comes to the risk mitigation, it's simply over-collatoralized. We're going to pitch you as a borrower, and say, "You're already probably storing all this "somewhere anyway, in a wallet. "Why not put it in a secure wallet, "drive the loan to value ratio way down "so you're only borrowing what you need "when you need it, you don't bring out "these giant loans for no good reason, "you just borrow what you need, "the interest rate becomes a lot lower, "and then you have extra collateral for the volatility?" Ideally, that's the scenario. If, in a world where it's very volatile, and you're at a higher loan value rate, then that's where we give you options. We say, "Hey, would you like to sell some of this, "or would you like to add more? "Would you like to prepay your loan if not?" There's always the option for somebody to correct the loan instrument, but that's the other really cool part about a smart contract, or a smart written language around the instrument itself, is that you can get a little more creative. Instead of just having legal paperwork, you can say, "Let's put this into the code." It becomes very dynamic in the ability for it to cure, the instrument itself, to stay course. >> Software money, I love this. Let's go down, talk about the token that you have, SALT Token, and that's for the borrower, or the lender? >> It's, right now, the borrower, although it will expand into all uses. It's effectively, as people say, it's powering the network, or it's the gasoline behind it. It's our internal currency. It acts as a store value in the regards of how you would think about a serial number. If I have Microsoft Office, and you buy a serial number, that's the key that lets you in, and it tells you how much of the product you have. If you have 20 or 30 of them, you can give them to your employees, or you could redeem it for some other value. We just think that tokens actually do a better job of that recording 'cause it's now put on a permanent ledger. You have the permanent auditability of it, than just a serial number in a private database. >> I think you got a great solution because the alternative to not having it is essentially, get a liquid on an exchange, which some people might not want to do. Then also, where do you do it, right? There's all kinds of dynamics on the exchange side. Here, I'm saying, I'm long on Bitcoin, but I need to get some working capital for whatever the project is, so you're there. Is there any competition? Is anyone else doing this? >> There's no competition yet. There's definitely some people that are out there saying that they are, and I would be careful. Some of them may be legitimate. We've seen a few that are scams, so always be protected, and be wary. >> John: Give an example of what a scam would look like for the people. >> A scam would be somebody who says, "Hey, we're doing an ICO," and you start looking at it, and it looks exactly like what we've built, except for they're, maybe, in Russia, and you can't actually contact the people, and they don't have any banks behind them, or any kind of regulatory framework. >> They're spoofing your brand. >> Yeah, we've seen a lot of that. We've had a lot of phishing attempts, and people trying to spoof the idea or the site, and that's a little worrisome, but there probably will be competitors. It's a big market. >> Yeah, that's going to happen more and more, more of those spear phishing attacks too. Great, and outlook for you guys. Where are you guys at with the company? Talk about what your needs are. You hiring? What's going on with the operation? >> Yeah, we're constantly hiring, looking for anybody who's got great financial background and wants to be in the blockchain space, and/or developers, constantly looking for blockchain-focused developers, people that either want to learn the space, or already know the space, either way is fine. We'd love to talk to you. We've issued $30 million in loans in the states we're approved. We're rapidly expanding that genre of where we can lend. We're working to partner with banks, so if you're a bank, or you're a financial institution, there's a lot of capital money at this conference, we'd love to talk to all you guys because there's an opportunity for us to give you an indirect exposure into the market. >> It's good for the big whales who have a lot of currency, a lot of value, to pay it forward in the mission, in the community. They could be lenders too, right? >> Very much so, yes. >> Wow, so what states aren't you in? 30 million, that's a good number. What's your top list? >> The next on the list that we're working towards, we're really close to Texas, we're really close to California, really close to New York, really close to Utah. Those are some big ones. Lots of interest in Puerto Rico, so we're heavily focused on getting there, and it's just a road map, a heat map. There's a lot of interest in Europe, so we're going over into Europe, lots in Canada. >> Shawn, thanks for coming on, sharing the project, your success. Love your idea, again. Disruption continues. The stampede is coming behind us at Polycon. That's their logo. Polymath is the company behind this event. Of course, we're The Cube, we're independent, we're bringing you all the action here at Polycon '18. More live coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE! Covering Polygon '18, brought to you by Polyman. >> Welcome back everyone, we're live here at theCUBE in the Bahamas, this is the live coverage in the Bahamas for Polycon '18, I'm John Furrier, this is a wrap up of our day two. We're going to do show wrap up, brought in special analyst guest, Dave Vellante, they had to jump on a plane, head back to Boston, get out before the snow storm, to head to California. Al Burgio and I are going to wrap it up. Al, serial entrepreneur, founder of FuseChain, and CEO of FuseChain and DigitalBits, an open source project, had you on yesterday, we also were out scouring last night and getting all the data. You were the only Cube alumni at this event, now we add in another 20, good success, good to add more, thought leaders into the family, with Polycon, but big story here is the security token. I mean, I was talking to the founder of Polymath, and Genevieve with Grit Capital, and just my take is, looking at the ecosystem, it's been a sigh of relief on one hand, oh my god, finally, documents we understand accredited investors, no scams, a feel for a good, solid foundation to get funding, no rush to do a utility token, because although utility is super important, people were using utility tokens to get funding, using that money and running as fast as they can to build a product, sub-optimized kind of role there, so again, big news there. >> No, absolutely, it's been, it's the natural evolution and companies like Polymath and Secure Ties and others are helping with this natural progression and birth of the security token. There's clearly a lot of people here interested in that, lot of action, lot of new announcements at the event as well. >> John: What jumped out at you for news announcements? >> The news, I guess. >> John: Ecosystem news is big. >> If we go with the latest today, announcement with Barbados Stock Exchange, folks at Polymath, it's interesting. These emerging markets embracing new technology, it's the next wave and a lot of capital is going to be raised this way. >> What did you learn last night, I mean, first of all this event just for the folks watching, was a real interesting event, it was a 400 plus attendees, really an industry conference about, what the thought was, you had whales, billion dollars of whales here, called whales, which they have a net worth in billions and millions, hundreds of millions, then you have investors, variety of investor types and then entrepreneurs, all coming together. I heard a lot of different things last night, what did you hear? >> You know, it's interesting, I mean a lot of people were sharing their perspectives. Some are presenting different perspectives of the future, (laughing) >> Come on, spit it out! >> Others are, you know, really, in some cases, stating the obvious. But there's definitely a strong ecosystem that's coming together here, strong alignment on a number of things, irrespective of where everybody's sort of come from or the industry that they're in. A lot of people want to see this new ASA class, come and grow and be very successful. So, you had YouTuber influencers here, you had CEOs of well-established organizations, and up-and-coming CEOs of a lot of these blockchain emerging companies. There's definitely tremendous synergy amongst some of them as well, in terms of how they're sharing perspective, and how they're, in some cases, working together. >> Liquidity has been a big option, I heard people talk about liquidity. What's your take on that? What's your observation of how that's evolving? >> Well, I think there's a huge opportunity with areas where traditionally, they've lacked liquidity. Or there's been minimal liquidity, tremendous friction and challenges in terms of being able to leverage what one possesses. Blockchain really presents a huge opportunity to change the game there, as it relates to DigitalBits and what we're focused on, we see a huge opportunity in all things loyalty rewards. There's in a lot of cases, these centralized organizations, you can kind of think of them like a central bank, and people have had these difficulties in earning points, if it's a pair of golf clubs you want, you maybe have to earn points for maybe three years and you get tired after a year. >> That's your venture. >> Yeah. >> I mean FuseChain and DigitalBits specifically is solving a big problem. >> Big problem, there's tremendous lack of liquidity in all things loyalty rewards. >> What's your angle of attack there? Obviously disrupting the pre-existing and somewhat fragmented loyalty programs. I mean, I'm in so many, I don't even use the airlines things anymore. I get so many points, I never use them, I try to use the good ones that I use a lot, like Southwest or whatever, as an example, I use because my kids need to fly to an event or soccer or whatever. But other ones, I've lost all my points. I don't even know the number. I mean, where the hell is it? >> Well it's. >> What email address did I use? >> It's about perceived value, right, maybe you started off with some degree of enthusiasm and had a higher perceived value, but then towards the end it goes to nil. 'Cause it's really. >> John: But I can't get (mumbles) with my points. This is the problem I want to ask you. >> Traditionally, what you see now, a few weeks ago we saw announcement by Singapore Airlines, announcing by August their existing loyalty programs and we place them into a blockchain. We're seeing examples of this almost every week now, companies are embracing blockchain technology and what this allows for now is a more frictionless transfer of points. So, for those companies that are embracing blockchain technology, if you have points, and yeah you could potentially, after you have X number of points, go and redeem them for something you like, but in the meantime, you get discouraged, maybe you love Southwest, but maybe some of these other programs, you could trade them and hand them over to someone that actually could take advantage of it and get an alternative asset that you have a higher perceived value for. >> Digital currencies and gaming has been around for a while. We've seen the young guns get that, that's like a fish to water. Obviously loyalty has different assets than old school techniques, old stacks, technology, if that. So anyway, I ask you the question, how is blockchain disrupting the loyalty program that is the massive billions of dollars being spent and earned in that market? >> A third of points never get redeemed. There's a huge problem with many corporations, they have, as they're issuing points, it's a liability on their balance sheet. More points get issued, it's a hemorrhaging issue. It could potentially create solvency issues for companies. There's actually been professors from some reputable organizations that have really done a tremendous research in this area, it really evolves nicely into what blockchain can do. >> Like, give me an example, I mean what is the disruptive nature of it? Is it storing of the value? Is it trading on that value? Is it, I mean what is the real one thing that blockchain does to the loyalty program? >> The fact that it allows for a more frictionless transfer of points, so for the programs that are tokenizing their points on a block chain, it empowers the user to be able to directly transfer those points. >> So you guys of FuseChain and DigitalBits, you're tokenizing loyalty. >> We're supporting organizations, our big mission is to support organizations that have either existing loyalty programs or wishing to create new loyalty programs to be able to tokenize those on chain, and the ability to then allow the consumers, the users of these points programs, to, in addition to the traditional uses, redeeming them perhaps in a rewards store or what have you, the ability to transfer them for other assets that they like. >> John: So if I understand this correctly. >> Other points that they like. >> The trend that you like, or would like to see continue or happen, is retailers or loyalty programs would tokenize themselves. So, there'd be, literally, thousands and thousands of loyalty tokens and you would be the platform to support that? >> That's correct, absolutely. So, I've used the sort of red hat analogy, we have FuseChain as well that's really focused on helping support enterprises that maybe are struggling to spell blockchain. But they see all the value. >> That's everybody. >> Well from a technology perspective. Similar to Linux being born, enterprises needed to go to companies like a red hat, to support them with the integration, maintenance, so on and so forth of such technology. We're focused on having an evolving ecosystem of other organizations that can support enterprises that have loyalty programs, consume blockchain technology. >> You're a tech entrepreneur, I'm a tech entrepreneur. I have a media business, you're building another business, you sold your last business, you're very successful. You and I always talk about this, but I want to ask you here live on theCUBE, as a tech entreprenur, what is the opportunity that this ecosystem of tokenizing your business, using blockchain, how do you look at it and how would a solid tech entrepreneur look at this opportunity to integrate it, a new enabling technology, what's the orientation, what's your view on how tech entrepreneurs should look at it, and how do you look at it? >> Well, so, if we just, as it relates to the liquidity issue, this is a very powerful thing. Right now, perceived value for many points programs is very low. So, if the perceived value, you solve the liquidity issue or you create technology that can help solve the liquidity issue, the opportunity for the perceived value to be perceived in a more optimal light, everybody kind of wins. The merchant, the business that is issuing these points, they now have a more desirable asset that they're issuing, and as a result of that, consumers have an ever-growing desire to want to be part of these programs and earn points. So this is, it's fascinating when you start to think of it, in terms of. >> Technology is applying, 'cause it's the application of societal impact, whether it's a retailer or a non-profit, tokenization is happening. >> Absolutely, and it's happening obviously, not just in loyalty rewards, we've seen it happen, starting to happen now in other spaces, and with different. >> John: Your big takeaway, obviously. >> ASA classes. >> You've done a lot of work, and I know you can't talk about it 'cause you're in start-up mode and you're doing some financing right now, but just generally speaking, and I'm totally, the landscape of this ecosystem, health-wise, feels like the security token has been a good thing, utility token is still evolving, under observation, obviously SEC and other regulatory challenges, good, bad, ugly, I mean still scams out there? We're hearing the community loud and clear, we're going to stamp out the scams and flush that through the system, as fast as possible. Your take on this ecosystem? >> I think those that are taking their time to build great technology and doing it at the right pace will build great products and ideally do it at such a rate and in such an order that they'll stay out of trouble. (laughs) We're seeing a lot of great entrepreneurs come together, surround themselves with their own ecosystems and building great platforms. I think where we see others that are moving a little too quickly, they might trip on their shoelaces. >> Yeah and people don't, I mean the general consensus is "You're going to move fast, but you don't want to be in jail." Literally, I heard that quote here on theCUBE. (laughs) Investors we've been meeting, we've had on theCUBE but also we've chatted, I know I've seen you chatting, sidebars, I've had a lot of sidebars, Dave has as well, conversation among investors, not necessarily with you, I know you can't talk about it, 'cause that's, it's a hot deal, but I mean, in general, generally speaking, what's the conversations in the investor landscape that you're seeing and hearing here? >> Its interesting, everyone is trying to find their own point of view or speculating in terms of what's going to happen next. I've heard comments in terms of arbitrage as a result of income tax, people realizing that transferring between alt coins is actually likely taxable, and accountants making new investors in the space aware of these things, and having to potentially sell to be able to pay that bill. Then there's others where a lot of us are seeing this as an emerging technology, the actual use of certain, let's say, utility coins, it has not yet been demonstrated. That doesn't necessarily suggest that a particular project is bad, things do take time, I mean, we saw in the 90's with the internet, I mean, remember starting in that space, I call it the dial-up modem era, (laughs) You know, but we had these big visions of video, and theCUBE could not be possible at that time. But the vision of a Cube could be, you know, a wonderful thing, people could've bought into that. You kind of ride the trend, evolve your technology, and then you disrupt and you help change the game. >> Final question, obviously your business is, you're doing some things here, how did the show go for you here? You feel good about it? >> Absolutely. Obviously this is not like an Amazon, some of the other events we've been at but. >> It's more intimate. >> But. >> John: But there's money here, there's billionaires here. >> Absolutely, and look at any of those type of events, I mean they start with thousands, and tens of thousands, and the next year it's twenty thousand, we're going to see that kind of growth in this space as well. It's great to be involved in it early, but there's definitely quality, high-profiled individuals here, high net worth individuals, and they're investing their money in this space and they're going to help drive it forward. >> I remember the first show we did with Amazon and meeting Andy Jassy for the first time, first of all, really like him a lot, sports fan like me, but he's also really smart, a great operator, he made a comment that some of the best companies are ones that are misunderstood in the beginning, obviously we run a different kind of media business, people don't really understand us, cryptocurrency and blockchain is funny because everyone understands it, but doesn't understand it. (laughing) They understand how big it's going to be, and there's money involved, so that's the key learning that I had this week, was, yeah, we see the big opportunity, we can see money being made, but people still don't truly understand what it is. If you talk to all the smartest people, whether it's Jeremy, that came on at 26 years old, to Bill Tie, they say, "We're learning, everyday." The women in tech, the CryptoChicks came on and said, "This is learning environment, "this is still not understood." >> Absolutely. >> "And this is the big opportunity." >> It is a huge opportunity. In the early 90's, people didn't understand the internet, and there's a classic program episode of The Today Show, and I think it was Bryant Gumbel trying to understand what is the internet, you know, and so forth. Fast forward, here we are. Fascinating things, there's smart individuals that can see and embrace the vision right away, others were scratching their head but eventually, we'll all get there. (laughs) >> Al, great to see you and great to see a Cube alumni here too, I'm glad you were here, 'cause I get to know at least one person that I know intimately of Cube alumni. We added 20 more new Cube alumnis, the sun is setting here in theCUBE, day two of wall-to-wall coverage, I'm John Furrier, really excited to have been part of this event, it begins, kicks off our 2018 cryptocurrency tokenizing the world, blockchain, top events, theCUBE will be there, theCUBE is there, it's relevant, we're going to be tracking all the signal, and extracting it from the noise and sharing it with you. It's a wrap up of the cryptocurrency token economics decentralized internet at Polycon 18, here in the Bahamas, thanks for watching. I want to thank all the crew here, great job, and you guys watching. More to come! Stay tuned, check out siliconangle.com, thecube.net, and wikibon.com, of course, CubeCoin coming soon, stay tuned for what we're doing love to tokenize that business, everyone's doing it, it's really relevant and thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

(Electronic ambient music) >> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's The Cube! Covering Polycon 18, brought to you by PolyMath. >> We are live here with The Cube's exclusive coverage at Polycon 18. It's a securitized token conference, but really, it's about cryptography, cryptocurrency, blockchain, token economics. The whole community's here, investors, entrepreneurs, and startups. We have two great guests here from CryptoChicks, Nataliya Hearn and Natalia Ameline. Pioneers in the industry doing something really compelling, the first ever blockchain hackathon coming up in April. It's historic, it's the first. Welcome to the Cube, thanks for joining me. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for having us. >> So I love the t-shirts, CryptoChicks, I want one, a few. Can I buy them on the website? Can I get them made? >> Yeah, you can, absolutely >> I want my daughters to have those immediately, so. People in our community know that the Cube's really been... we love women in tech because there are so many smart women out there and it's awesome to showcase. But beyond that, it's this real technology being innovated. Talk about what you guys are doing. You have a really important mission, had great success, with CryptoChicks. This is like a movement inside this community, but it's also happening all around the world. You guys have big plans. Take a minute to explain the group, how you guys are operating, how it's going, and talk about this big event. >> We started this group because we realized that women are underrepresented in the space, and you don't need to go far; look at what's going on at this conference, right? Even though we are pleased towards the increase in turnaround of women, in events like this, but we still have ways to improve. So we started this group CryptoChicks with the sole mission to increase, improve gender balance, and increase participation of women in the community. And we're doing it in a variety of ways, but largely what we try to do is we try to create an environment where women feels safe to learn. It's small classes. Where women come in, they can ask questions, they can feel at ease, and I think it's very important because not every woman feels comfortable getting up in a big crowd and asking questions. And I think what we do is really helpful for a lot of women this way. >> It's very inspiring. Also you guys as co-founders Nataliya we were talking about you were a professor, and education's a big part of it, but also human nature right? So talk about the dynamic and how you guys approached that because there's different styles, both men and women and we got to kind of get it going together, I mean, you guys have got to get critical mass. Now the good news is, people are talking about it, and it's happening, and... >> Absolutely, I think, kind of knowledge. People hear stuff. You know I had kind of interesting... I was talking to a woman who was in tech but her English wasn't great, and all this kind of stuff. So she called it BigCoin, which I love it. (laughs) Because it is kind of a BigCoin you know? Out of all the coins it's the biggest coin. So stuff like this. If you go to meet ups you would have in a room of a hundred, maybe one or two women. And then they'll go, well what's a wallet? What is all this about? Just even the basic, baby-stepping, through the system. And then I think well we're focusing on only one part of it. The other part of it is that we're creating a really new level of democracy. And that element, I think, that's why we need the education. An education probably, while women is great, but we've got to start a little earlier. The interests should come at least in high school level, where you go well, What is debt? What is value? How do you define currency? Actually all the stuff we're doing at the conference here, in terms of securities. Is it a security? Or is it not a security? How do you define? So all of that starts early on. >> I've been having conversations at many levels about this, at Sundance Film Festival we talk about the role of technology. So it used to be, you know, the Boys Club. That's now changing, which is great, but also there's a trend of multidisciplinary things. You mentioned economics and all these things. So the world now is becoming integrated. So math for instance, there's a lot of math geeks out there, male and female. You don't have to be a coder per say, right? There's certainly more coding opportunities, for women, but it's not just one thing. You can do anything. Fifty percent of the population is women. If this is going to change the world, which it is. Fifty percent of it is going to be impacted too. So they have to have a role in what's going on in the community. So it's natural it should happen, I mean... >> Absolutely. And actually one of the reasons the Hackathon, the reason it's first all women Hackathon in Blockchain, and we actually have two streams. And one stream is for hackers, who are into the nitty-gritty of, sort of, the coding part, and we actually have support for them as well, in terms of learning. And then we also have the business track, where if you have an idea, and you think that Blockchain would be a really good avenue to take that idea, so you could pitch your idea during the Hackathon as well. >> And just to clarify, this is the up and coming Hackathon that you guys are doing. All women. What's the date? Share the details. Share the details. >> So it's going to be actually a conference and Hackathon, we're going to run it parallel. Conference will start on the 6th of April and going through the 8th of April, and the Hackathon will happen at the same time. >> And where is the conference going to be attended? >> So the conference is taking place in Toronto, we're partnering with our venue partner MaRS Discovery District. So it's an absolutely amazing venue in Toronto. And also our partner MaRS has a history of, you know, promoting the women in technology. So it's a good partnership for us. And it's going to be, the Hackathon is going to run about thirty hours and hopefully it's going to be a lot of good connections coming out of it. I think one of the things that we want to accomplish in this Hackathon for women is to make it easy for them to get opportunities. So most importantly we want to connect them with employers. And that's a great venue for that, because when we travel, we have a lot of the times owners of the companies will approach us and say you know, we're really looking to diversify our team. Can you help us? Because women just don't apply. I think that's another way we're trying to really infuse more women into the community. >> Open up channels of opportunity, it's not just having it be like a job interview. >> Exactly. >> So networking, demonstrating skills, style. Are you guys seeing the formula that works with people, with women? Because we see different conversations around this, you know. Take a certain approach, posture this way, be different. Eventually, I interview a lot of women that are saying, I'm going to be hardcore and some say, I just want to wear high heels and I'm a fashion person, that's who I am and why would I want to change that just because I'm a woman? So there's different views on this. Is there any pattern, or formula that you would suggest or observe? >> You know I think we live in a really fortunate part of the globe where we can actually do what we want to do. There aren't too many places like that in the world. And I think that we've got to be really thankful for that, and then it really is, you know, we are empowered to create opportunities. And in this space, it's a really young space. I mean it's really fundamental. Some people say well we've been in it for ten years. Really, most of the people have been in it for, you know, couple years. So don't think, women shouldn't think that well, there's all these guy and they know what they're doing. They also don't know what they're doing, everything's changing. Every wallet and every structure that is being created today is going to be a little different tomorrow, it's a process. >> If you say you're an expert about something here, then you're really a pretender because everyone's always learning. And the real pros are humble about that. So that's one observation. But the other one is, and I want to get your reaction on this because I go to a lot of events. Especially in tech. Where a lot of male-dominated, you know, enterprise here and there. This community's very mission oriented and I don't see any signs of lack of inclusion. So I think the door is open at least my perspective, and certainly we've been covering a lot in the space, Bitcoins in 2010 and crypto and everything else. But being here I see open doors. I can say the other verticals, not so much. Here, it seems open. Do you guys agree with that? What's good about that if you do agree, how do people walk through those doors? And if it's not, what needs to happen? What's your observation? >> I think it depends on the personalities a lot. I find that some personalities, the door is open, and will just walk in. Some personalities are, you know, I want someone to bring me and introduce me, I think it's like this everywhere. I think in this space I mostly see that it's friendly space, pretty happy with it, but I also think there could be some improvements, because quite frankly sometimes the culture is not necessarily that welcoming. For example, you go to the chatrooms on Facebook as an example. A woman makes a comment and after that you'll see lines of guys responding, what are you doing here? And why did you say that? >> Really? >> Yeah it's very common >> It's IRC culture, really. >> Yeah, so it's you know, some women are perfectly fine with it, right? And for me, it's like okay, you know, everybody's entitled to opinions. But some next time would not comment, right? And I don't know, maybe guys have a little bit thicker skin, and they take some ridicule better, I don't know, but I think there's still ways to make the culture a little bit more open and I guess comforted. >> Nataliya, do you agree with that? What's your take on that? >> I think it really starts with upbringing, again, and how we raise our children. I have 3 sons, so I raise them in the way I'd want to be treated, in an environment. I'm an engineer, so I've worked with men all my life, and this is not unusual for me. I've gone to conferences all my life, thousands of people, twenty women. >> Yeah you've got a thick skin, you guys have thick skin. >> And you know, in a way yeah, it takes guts, like you said before, to wear high heels and a skirt and really stand out when you're already standing out. So you've got to put your head up you know? And you walk into that room. >> Be yourself! Right? But don't be afraid. I guess what you're saying is, you could have whatever posture you want to have, just be proud, keep your chin up, as they say. Alright, so let's talk about, you mentioned, you guys are moms. So like, I have four kids too. Two daughters, David Vellante has four as well, the same. These kids that are born now are growing with digital natives, some are kind of pre, post Facebook, pre Instagram, Snapchat, it ranges in the spectrum. Certainly gaming has been a big part of the culture of the youth. So people who are digital natives, and or have come on with the connected social world that is, they are doing things differently. So I wanted to get your thoughts as parents, I get asked the question a lot: should I let him game? Should I let him code? What should I do? What's good? What's bad? There's no data other than kind of anecdotal or vision. I personally believe in gaming as a good future of work scenario, as long as you don't OD on it, and overdose on too much gaming. I think coding is the same. So I think this is going to be the tooling of the future, what do you guys think as parents about the exposure of technology? How do you do it? Is there a diet? Is there a recipe? I mean, what do you guys think? >> I think personally it's great. I think the younger kids get exposed to technology, the more comfortable they feel with it, and the more likely they are to become the next, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates etcetera. And I think our society, whether some people like it or not, it's moving in a direction where we're becoming more and more technology addicted and dependent on it. Technology is everywhere, we don't even realize, that it's there. You know, you wake up in the morning and you look at the internet. You may like it or not, but that's the lifestyle these days. So I think for me, with kids, we need to give them freedom, and we need to observe. Because at the end of the day, I think kids are intuitive, they know what they're interested in, and we need to help them nurture their interests, so that they grow up, and they don't need to go to a job that they hate. Instead they do what they love. And that's how we're becoming a more productive society. >> And the learning online too is an opportunity to go nonlinear. Learn things at the scale you don't have to wait for the next class or semester. Your thoughts on this, Nataliya? >> Absolutely, I think every child has a gift, and I think it's parents responsibility to discover that gift. Instead of shoving your ideas, or things you didn't achieve in life into your children. >> That's called snowplow parent or helicopter parenting. >> So absolutely, and we are a technology-driven society, and you know, I'm an engineer so I'm a techie, so I've introduced my sons to a lot of things, but you know what? They've introduced me, and actually they kept me in this sector. >> I think the observational thing is really important. Freedom with observation. That's not monitoring, and surveillance, or helicoptering. It's really like, let him play, let him explore, let them have a good time. Understand it, but be mindful of what you're observing. And that's key. >> And yeah, too much of anything is not good. You know, you have to balance your sleep patterns, and all this kind of stuff, all of that has to come into a child's life. >> Yeah, intervention is required at some point, you know, when you see that the kid is shaking. (laughing) >> I always say to women in tech who are moms like, man, you have it so easy now, because you know how hard it is to raise children. Being a parent is super hard, and a lot of people look at that, need to understand that's how hard it is. It's really a wonderful thing. So thanks for sharing. Looking forward to following the CryptoChicks and covering the Hackathon, so let us know how it goes. Are there going to be any live feeds, or twitter handles, or hashtag, what's going on? >> There will be, and we'll let you know. Thank you for the opportunity >> Thank you very much >> Thank you very much for sharing, CryptoChicks here on The Cube, I'm John Furrier. Live coverage continuing, day two, of SiliconANGLE Media's Cube exclusive coverage at Polycon 18. We'll be right back. (Electronic music).

(upbeat music) >> Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE Covering Polycon '18. Brought to you by Polymath >> Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in the Bahamas for Polycon '18, put on by Polymath and Grit Capital. I'm here with the CEO of both of those companies, who have been gracious enough to let us come in and tap into the bandwidth, tap into the guests, and host us here at theCUBE's two days of exclusive coverage. We have great guests, Trevor Koverko, CEO of Polymath, really changing the game. Security tokens are really kind of driving great, fast, accelerated innovation. And we have Genevieve Roch-Decter who's a CEO of Grit Capital, funding it, being part of it. You guys created a great community. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Great, thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, live coverage, thank you very much. We really appreciate the collaboration with you guys, great guests. But there's something magical going on here. You've got a big even, couple hundred, 400 people. But it feels like the early days of, when I was in my 20s, the computer revolution, PC, and then the internet came. People are doing deals. This is a very intimate conference, you've got whales, billionaires, you've got entrepreneurs, you've got folks from investment banking companies coming into the sector, young guns, all dudes and gals. I mean, This is a melting pot! >> We have professional athletes, too, yeah, no we've really brought together a cluster of different zones, if you will. I come from the world of the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street, Bay Street, and so we've got institutional investors here who don't have wallets don't have coins, and are learning about it from the top Crypto minds in the world, so it's quite magical. I don't think Trevor and I have slept in 60 days. We literally came up with this idea, it's supposed to be a very intimate setting of 20 or 30 people and it's ballooned into 600, mostly because Trevor has so many friends and is partnering up with a lot of them on his projects, so yeah it's been a great time so far. >> And Trevor you, by the way, you're not sleeping 'cause everyone's staying out til two in the morning. It's been a great intimate gathering, people are mingling. But they're players, they're not pretenders here. This is a really interesting group, people who are investing their time, it's mission-driven here. We talk about societal change, but there's money-making going on, too, you're powering that, I mean you've got to be exhausted, how do you feel? >> I call it the eye of the hurricane, this was like if you weren't here this week, in crypto, you're just not relevant, this is where you wanted to be. And it's all about the attendees, the caliber of the people that came just blew me away, very humbled by the quality of people that we had here, it's no surprise, we have a beautiful venue like here in the Bahamas, and at Baha Mar, and amazing people. Good things are going to happen. >> Community is a very important formula for success in this world, we've seen this movie before, in open-source software It started out as a tier-2 citizen, now it runs softwares tier-1 class capabilities, cloud computing has been amazing growth, crypto, same model, you know, it's emerged as the money, the value store, technology-enablement. What are you guys seeing as the pattern, 'cause honestly, people recognize that certainly in the in industry. If you don't you're going to miss the boat on this one. Most people who don't get it will probably miss the boat. But a lot of people are getting in, what is the pattern that's happening, why is this moving so fast? Is it the wealth creation, is it the money-making? Is it the technology enablement, what's you guys' reaction to the why? What's the why, here? >> I think it's a convergence of a lot of mega-trends going on right now, both of the technology and on the regulatory side. If you look at, you know, the exciting sexiness of having this liquid tokens that kind of feel like stocks, but are also utilities in the sense that you can use them to do certain things with, that's a big component of it. But I think another reason is just, there's a lot of strangling going on in the capital markets, where you have a lot less companies going public, you have a lot more barriers to raise capital, in a lot of ways. And this is kind of like, light peeking through the hole. Where you have new ways re-imagined ways to raise capital. So we're seeing just a convergence of a lot of mega-trends, I think. >> And a lot of pros are coming in, and they're either young pros that are learning and growing with this trend, the young guns, I call them, and then you've got pros coming in from other industries, whether it's banking, and other sectors, this is interesting. So the question I have for you, is the security token. This has been a big deal, a lot of companies have seen the ICOs on the utility side, certainly the SEC in the US has been really sending signals pretty radically, like hey, don't pump and dump, I don't want to see any, watch that advisor stuff, and oh by the way, show me the utility, how we test et cetera, et cetera. That the startups who have to build the future are trying to rush a utility token out, now have a safe harbor in the security token, and existing companies can raise money with the security token that are tokenizing a real business, this is a pretty important point. Can you guys share some color commentary on that? Do you agree with it, and then, if you do, share some color around this whole trend. >> Yeah, I mean, right now if you look today, there's two major categories of tokens as you alluded to, you have utilities on the one hand, and securities on the other hand. And the distribution right now is extremely one-sided. Security tokens are dominated by utilities. Utilities like Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, they make up 99% of the total market cap of alt coins, so, where does that leave us? Well it depends, today it means all the action is in utilities, there's more upside, they're faster, they're simpler, I'm very bullish on utilities. But what's even more exciting to me, is the mega-trend the tsunami of real-world financial assets migrating to the blockchain. And that's what I see as the next sort of part two, second-wave of crypto, is real-world, tangible assets tokenizing and migrating to the blockchain. >> And you know what I think, you know the SEC kind of gets a bad rap in all this, but the rules are there for a certain reason: to protect investors, and I think that this industry is in the beginning it's a nascent, and you know, with Trevor's company Polymath introducing the securities token. Literally, I think you coined the word. It's growing up, it's an industry that has to, you know, it's going to have some red tape, too, right, and I think working with the regulators, and Trevor's company has done that, you know, befriend them, and be open-source about it, and communal. And, you know there's certain aspects about the regulations that are not good, and we don't want communication and the communities that have formed, Telegram's a great example of this, so there's a lot of these chat rooms that I'm in and literally people are sharing information about companies and teaching each other, and learning and that's great. But there is an assymetry of information sharing, that at some point, you know, we have to rein that in. But we don't want to lose the positive aspects. >> You could choke the innovation, if you put too much regulatory on it, the innovation won't grow, so you have to have a balance, I mean, that's what you're saying, right? You got to get through it, but redefine a new era. And the SEC in the US has not been too bad, I think they're just sending a signal, and I think they're not, And they can be hardcore. They could be harder core, I think, than they are. But thank God they're not, you want to let these startups figure out what to do. Alright so I got to talk about liquidity and funding. So, Grit Capital, you guys are involved in investments also, you're enabling partnerships at Polymath. A lot of people you're connecting into your system, we had one on earlier. The funding environment, certainly a lot of investors are here I talked to probably at least a dozen actively investing, different profile make-ups some go hardcore protocol under the hood, some are more business we're going to decentralize apps. Make-up, Persona, trends, can you share? >> Yeah! >> You know that world. Eight months ago, so, I'm from Toronto, I'm from Canada. Eight months ago, there was literally no publicly-traded blockchain company in Canada. And now there's probably, I think, 70, you know, new one every day, name change. But yeah, there's been a lot of equity raised. There's two companies about to go public actually, in Canada Hut 8 Mining, who's our sponsor here at the conference, and Galaxy Digital Michael Novogratz's company, and I think between the two of them, they've raised almost half a billion dollars in capital. Or, like market capitalization when they go public. Probably about 250 million in actual capital. But that's huge, those checks were written not by just by high net worth people, but actual institutions. And those people that are here today, they're good with writing equity checks, ICO checks and that is going to come. And I think the securities token aspect of it will give them a lot of comfort that they can write checks in those kinds of-- >> And how does Grit Capital, talk about Grit Capital. >> Yeah so very simply, we introduce companies to capital holders, investors. So I was a portfolio manager for nine years, and I like to say I was in the no game for nine years, 'cause when you're portfolio managing-- >> Now you're in the yes game! >> Yeah, your goal-tending, you're like trying not to let bad deals in, and that wasn't really conducive to my personality and now I'm in the yes game, I'm you know, I like this company, I'm going to invest in it, but I'm going to introduce them to these other capital holders. And it's a positive experience. >> How much is community involved in what you do? 'cause we're seeing obviously the pattern of kind of paying it forward, which is great culture, but also people are, you know help scratch my back, I'll scratch your back on deal flow, and also on participation, it seems to be a big part of the current rules of engagement, or implied protocol. Is that going on? >> Yeah, you know, look I think this is a very collaborative ecosystem, and It's has to be because by definition, open-source communities are powered by the people that make it up, and it's all about volunteering, about helping, about giving back, and it's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this space. >> I think you should probably talk about your fund that you just announced that you're launching. And it probably plays into, so Trevor's network is global, it's extensive he has deal-flow coming at him all the time. >> Alright, so what's in the news? >> Yeah what are going to do with that deal flow? You holding news back? >> Yeah, I've got a bit of a brain freeze, I have so many announcements out there, uh, yeah we're doing a lot of exciting initiatives right now, and part of what I'm excited about, and also slightly intimidated by, is that there's just so much opportunity, there's so many key components of this new infrastructure that need to get build, that aren't in existence yet, that is easy to get, you know, carried away. But for me it's about prioritizing and finding out the real kind of high-leverage initiatives that are going to help us achieve our goals. >> And so you're putting a fund together to invest in the ecosystem, or is this for financial investment, is it a crypto fund, or what are you, what's going on? >> One of those initiatives is a securities token focused venture fund, this will be the first one that I know of that exists, and it would be to help our ecosystem get financed, and that's a big component of this marketplace is capital, is investors, is demand. And we just want to channel all of that to the best deals. So Polymath capital-- >> Ecosystem is important to you guys, Polymath your ecosystem is strategic, right? >> Yes. >> How do you see that playing out, what's your vision? What do you hope to unfold in your ecosystem? Obviously, people connect in the variety of things that you can help people with, and vice versa. How do you see your ecosystem rolling out? >> Well, part of it is I want an arms length organization that has its own kind of mandate, its own charter. And the way I look at it is, if you look at Ethereum, which I am very familiar with being from Toronto and knowing those guys kind of since day one. They opted not to do a venture fund, but if they had, it would have been literally the most, >> John: high performance fund ever in history? >> Of all time, yeah, just mathematically-speaking, so we don't want to lose out on an opportunity like that. And in the process of building another potentially profitable entity we want to also seed the ecosystem and help projects that we're excited about. Get the first check. >> Who are you looking for in your ecosystem? Is it developers, 'cause obviously Ethereum, we're Ethereum developed we're a ERC20 token, we love it. It's easy to work with, smart contracts are easy to work with, so it's clearly a developer market on that side, are you guys looking for the same? Is it a different kind of partner, what is some of the partner makeup that you hope to attract, in case they're watching now, why should they work with you, who are they? Describe the persona of your ideal ecosystem partners, or partner. >> For better or worse we have a lot of verticals that we have to build communities within, so those are the business community, we want leaders, we want action-takers we want people that can structure deals, we want legal professionals, that's a big component of the security token landscape, is the regulation is the exemptions, and the offerings, and the memorandums, and all the legal stuff, so we need a legal community. And then finally, most importantly, we need a developer for community, we need the best technical minds just like any other decentralized project, so that's what my full-time job is, when people ask me, is building communities with our broader community. >> Well I can totally give you props, one, because I know you're super busy, and you're drinking from the fire hose at all levels, and certainly the event's been great. I think a breath of fresh air, a sigh of relief from the world when see entrepreneurs, at least from the perspective of the entrepreneurs and the markets is that security tokens, finally someone just made a decision let's just use this security token as a way to get the funding and get set up, and not foreclose the option for, say, a utility token. Why rush and force a utility, needs to be built out. And lot of these utilities have really missed out because they had to run so fast to write code funded by a utility, that has a test. So I think you guys are doing a great service, I want to give you props for that. >> Thank you, yeah I would whole-heartedly agree, I think a lot of these so-called utility coins are actually securities masquerading as utilities, and you know, >> I think that's the game everyone kind of is realizing like, okay great, now you have the platform, so what's the update on the platform, the company? Take a quick minute to explain to the folks about Polymath. >> We are inundated and overwhelmed with demand right now. And we have thousands, tens of thousands of sign-ups on both the investor and issuer side. And kind of my goal right now on a day-to-day basis is to scale our on-boarding process so we can take all these issuers and give them a secure and robust token that they can fundraise on top of. And we are in the process of unveiling our application layer that's going to make that kind of self-serve process exciting and scalable. >> Well congratulations, and Grit Capital, genevieve, thanks for connecting, great to connect with you. Shout out to Bill Tai who made it happen. If it wasn't for Bill Tai and Genevieve, theCUBE would not be here, and of course Polymath supporting us as well. It's been great, so thank you very much! >> Thank you! >> Great event, and we'll keep on following you guys and thanks for coming on, sharing success. Final question: The craziest thing that's happened here this week, one, two, three, things that might have won? Craziest thing that's happened, could be good, bad, or ugly. Did someone fall in the pool? Was someone found on the beach? Share a funny story or two. >> We found a mermaid. >> there was a mermaid, yeah. >> A real, live mermaid, we actually found a mermaid. And we put her in the pool for the cocktail event. >> And we almost put Trevor in the pool as a merman. Just to balance it out. >> Merman, We're a mermaid-neutral company we have mermen as well, oh geez, what else? We had uh, a friend of our decided to get the jacuzzi suite at the top floor and uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Scarface? But there was a lot of uh, opulence going on, which was a little more than I bargained for. And then Genevieve being the celebrity that she is. Umm, what do you think? >> Umm, I mean there's been so much, like, we've had literally 13 side-events within the conference. So drinking from a fire hose is an understatement, I would say, there's still more to do, we're going to Cabana pool party now so maybe, I think there's going to be a bull there, a stampede security bull there? >> Trevor: Oh geez, is there? >> And maybe the SEC, no! (laughs) >> Well, hey congratulations, you guys are doing a great service in the industry and I love how you brought together the inner-circle major players, really the community really admires that so appreciate your help. Okay this is theCUBE, live coverage in the Bahamas. More interviews after this short break, stay with us. (upbeat music)

(bubbly electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE, covering Polycon 18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here in the Bahamas. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of the token economics world cryptocurrency blockchain, the new innovation that's changing the world. And of course, word on the ground floor, day two of coverage our next guest Amir Kaltak, CEO and founder of L-exit, L-exit, Lexit, called legalized exit, legit exit. He's automating the M&A process in a decentralized way. This is exactly the kind of value we see with cloud computing, and when you see automation and efficiencies, that's disruptive. Amir, congratulations on your awesome venture. Love your model. Let's get into details, because I think-- >> Thank you. >> You're demonstrating, in my opinion, where value is being created and then ultimately captured faster, more efficiently, because you're automating the M&A process. For people to get exit in a highly volatile, value creation, value capture world. Take a minute to explain your company. This is fantastic. Thank you for this kind intro. Hello, world. Lexit, in a nutshell, is M&A on blockchain, and I hope you guys will love it. What we do is we give you access to the world of M&A, which is currently a big boys club, and we want you guys to be all participating in it, from the small entrepreneur who just started out, who crashed his startup but created a great tac. He can sell it on it. The whole world's going to see it. Or to the seasoned entrepreneur, to the big entity, to the big enterprise, you can sell it on there too. You will be seen by all acquirers in the world, and at a penny of the cost, at multitudes of speed, you will be able to liquidize and asset your business. >> So we, Dave and I, predict that there's going to be a lot of liquidity going on at many levels, obviously. Token economics drives that, but in the startup world, you either make it or you sell it, or you put it out of business. In this world, as people start developing technology, the difference between a company and a feature might not be the same. So I might build the best app for social entrepreneurship, for solving world hunger or tracking the water supply through blockchain. And someone says, "Damn, I love that. I'm going to buy that." Now I got to go to a banker, I got to get legal fees. My choices are-- >> Yes, limited. >> Limited, hassle, costs cash. >> As a guy who just crashed a startup, let's take this example, because the majority does fail: over 90%, as matter of fact 96%. Now, you just failed, but you have this great technology you created, right? What are you going to do? You check your address book. Who might buy it? But it's limited too, because you just started out. You don't know nobody, so what you do is you go to a consultancy: M&A consultancy, the lawyers who are connected to this sphere. >> John: The gatekeepers. >> Yes, the gatekeepers. Big boys. >> John: And they take a big cut of it. >> They will tell you, it's an amazing technology. We'll help you sell it, but you make a down payment of $10,000 right now, and we'll look into it. But you don't have $10,000 right now, for instance. So what are you going to do? And even if you pay them, the likeability of them getting back to you is not that high, so what you do is on Lexit is, you get to Lexit, you open up your account, get KYC'd. We're very strict on that. It's fully legit platform, and you list it. You get assessed by our professional M&A network, given a value to it. It's not the value it will be sold for, but it's a value the professional assessor thinks you're worth, and why. He's going to say these reasons. Now, the buyers are going to see it, make the bids, and there you are. Access. >> So you guys automate that entire end-to-end process. >> Absolutely. So, Lexit is, from the listing, down to the final due diligence and drafting of agreements. Everything is in it. The final signature and the transfer of ownership. It's a full solution. >> Yes. The future of work, obviously, is about automation. I mentioned cloud computing, because we look at that market heavily. On the tech side, automation drives it, but managing processes, automating processes away is threatening to a lot of people. You're basically putting people out of business, potentially. >> Yes, I keep doing that. >> If you're successful, a cadre of ecosystem partners, service providers, traditionally go out of business, so I like that. >> Potentially. >> Well, they're going to have to adapt or change. I see this in global service integrators, like Accenture. These guys are getting eaten up by machine learning automated coding, because they can do it faster and better. >> You know my business better than I do! (both laugh) >> What we do at theCUBE, we know our stuff. So, this is disruptive, and at the end of the day, the other thing I want to get your reaction to is open-source. A lot of people in the ethos of the mission based open-source world is, I wrote coding as an open-source. If my company fails, and my VC's make it proprietary, it's like an owned asset in bankruptcy, or whatever, dying, you can't put it back, but with open-source code, there's always going to be value there, to some level. It might not be great. So, I might say "Hey, you had a failed venture, I'll buy your code." >> Exactly. >> Transfer your GitHub over. Done. >> That's how it works. >> So this is kind of like the dynamic that... Do you see that? >> This is the direction that we're heading to. We want to connect the dots, because we started Lexit out of a community approach. We figured out two years ago, when we started it... So we're two years into that right now, that this is direly needed. We don't have access, but if I got this problem right now as a startupper, so do many. And out of this thinking, we claim ourselves to be the startups for startups and empower the community. I believe that in terms of leadership, for instance, you're only a good leader if you empower everyone around you to become a good leader, based on respect and mutual purpose. >> So I got to ask you a question. >> Please. >> Cause everyone's going to ask this question of all startups. You got to know where you are. Are you a startup? Are you a growing company? Where's the product? How far along are you? When is it going to be released? Talk about the momentum of the offering that you have. Is it available in Beta? What's the status of the product itself? Because I'm sure it'll be used a lot. >> As I said, we started two years ago. The first year we didn't even write a single line of code. It was just like how do you put this huge M&A process into a usable yet powerful but simple to use platform. How do you do that? Just scalable from the small, small asset you want to sell, a line of code, an algorithm up to a large enterprise. The first year was finding out a process. What is necessary? How do we cover all aspects on different jurisdictions, and all this stuff, right? How to make it work on the legal side too. And we figured it out, and then we started doing it. And right now I can tell you guys we are scheduling the launch of Lexit, this year, in June. So we'll not just-- >> The product will be ready for production, shipping product. >> Absolutely. Available worldwide, completely worldwide ready to operate. Ready to make your deals, to put your listings, to make your bids, to get the best technology out there, but not just technology. Letters M&A, it means any kind of of business from a pizza chain, to a high tech company, to a biotech company, to food, supplies you can sell. >> Usually when I do legal documents, you see an exhibits in there, and say oh, exhibit A is all the IP, or whatever the seller's selling and the buyer's buying. When you deal with decentralized asset creation and capture, use that blockchain involved, how much is the tech involved in your process? Obviously, the legal stuff, I can really see automating away. That's like check one. But when you start dealing with assets that are either code or something durable, like property, that's maybe stored in blockchain, how do you guys look at that? Is that part of the automation? Is that a factor? Where does that impact? Is that an exhibit? Do I just say "Here's my key"? How do you deal with that? >> Alright, let's put it this way. We do want to connect existing M&A space to Lexit. The exits, they're huge structures. We do want to disrupt them, that's true, but to do that you can't just create entirely everything new. You have to kind of find a way for the big boys old club, the big banks, and all those folks around there to participate, right? To give them a familiar way to work. What we did is the token model economics in a way that people get rewarded, people pay for stuff inside of it, and such, right? Everything is triggered with smart contracts, obviously, to know did you do the down payment, did the signature happen. The smart contracts are automating the whole thing down to the final transaction. When the final transaction happens we get our commissions paid out from the Astro we have. The Lexit Crypto Astro. Everything is transferred and secure. Everybody involved into a deal knows exactly what's happening. >> John: And they have a shared incentive too. >> Absolutely >> They're tokenizing the process so there's a reward element. Right? >> Yes. >> Am I getting this right? >> Yes, the access. There are three parties in Lexit. Buyer, seller, obviously and the assessors. Professional M&A guys. They get rewarded in tokens, and that greatly. Pretty much in the magnitude of what they do in billables at the Big Four, PWC and so on. There's a high incentive there to do this in this assessment, and they get rewarded from the community pool which gets feed with all those listing fees, unlocking futures and everything that's happening within Lexit itself. The kicker is that we at Lexit believe that much in token that the commission you have to pay us is between 8 and 2%. 2% of about 35 million dollars in volume, and it gets a bit higher down to the lower ones. We take this commission only in our own token. I don't want dollars, not even Bitcoin. >> So you have your own token? >> Yes. >> Utility token or security token? >> It's a utility token strictly, and it's called LXT. >> LXT. Great. And is it available now, or are you going to launch it in June? >> Right now we are in the private pre-sale. I'll put through, and it looks like we'll keep it in the presale. It looks like the page was selling out LXT right now to the private backers. It's that high that we think in two weeks from now on, speaking mid-March, it's sold out >> What's the numbers? Hard cap, soft cap? Do you have the numbers? >> I told my team "Listen, everybody tells me: 'you're doing M&A on blockchain, you can raise hundreds of millions,'" and everybody will say "That's okay." I said "We don't need that money." I just want to raise what we do need to finalize the last mile of the dev and launch it this year. The hard cap is 10,000 ETH. 10K ETH only, roughly $9 million right now, and that's it. >> And you're going to reserve the other tokens for the community to do the work and be part of this new future of work equation? >> 50% of the total supply, which is 18 million, it's zero, goes to sale, to the market. Just 10% to us founders. You don't need more. >> So you're not greedy? >> No. >> You guys are playing it right to create-- >> I want the community to be empowered, this whole-- >> You need the community. You need the community. >> I need the community. >> So that is a different dynamic... Well, not different. That is the dynamic that everyone is agreeing on in the community in the ecosystem here, is that if you have bogarting or hoarding coins, or people taking down allocations, you miss the dynamic of the human capital, which is what the future of work is doing. You are an example-- >> Free promotion, you know what I mean? >> You're engaging. The future of work requires human capital. So if one institutional buyer buys the token out, there's no people. >> I interrupted you. You said "We are an example for what"? >> The future of work. >> I love that. >> You are executing, potentially, disruptive M&A, but you're not going after the banks directly. They can play, too. >> Right. >> So you guys are a service. You're like an Amazon.com website cloud service for... >> You could say that. >> M&A. Well, not like, but automated. Automating away things is the way to go. Do you see other examples that are like you guys, that are emerging in use cases? Obviously you're taking a known process, M&A, automating it away, making it tokenized. What other things do you see out there that's ripe for disruption? >> I do think that if somebody out there... Lexit, what we do, let's put it aside for a moment. I think supply, the supply chains of the world are ripe for disruption. I think they're inefficient. I think even food production, down to the basic needs of a human being, this is ripe for disruption. >> When I got my MBA back in the 90s, after I got my Computer Science degree in the 80s, I remember the word that always stick in my head from the books that they teach you is the "Value Chain." >> Value Chain. >> The Value Chain is a concept of anything, of value creation. This notion of chaining, blockchain, you see it... Anything that has value creation process. >> Let's take food production for a moment. Rice, okay? Rice. So now there is this farmer, somewhere in Asia, or in elsewhere, and he's producing, and he's selling it to somebody, who's picking it up, and he sells to the next distributor. He sells to an international distributor. He sold it for probably... I don't know, maybe 20 cents a pound tops? Probably just five. I don't know the prices. What happens if we could chain that supply chain, that we have a decentralized nature of how all these people can directly feed into the system and just jump those middlemen entirely. So this is what I'm speaking about. It's going to disrupt everything. Somebody's going to figure out that one. >> So you guys have a good formula, just to recap. You're automating the M&A process, you're creating a huge supply of tokens available to the community, that will help you change the game on M&A, which is also part of the process of your value chain, now tokenized, and you're taking a small cut that's a tiered commission, if you will, on the M&A transaction. >> It's like six times cheaper. >> Higher for the lower numbers and as you go higher, which you want more deals, you take a smaller cut, so it's not greedy, you're not taking a grotesque-- >> Nope. We go even beyond. Around Lexit we created a partner program. This partner program is fueling directly deals onto Lexit, and we give them 50% off the commission. People tell me "You're crazy." No I'm not. You need to incentify. So if you get thousands of these partners one day... Think of that. 50% is still a lot. I believe in sharing everything except my girlfriend. Everything is fine, so we share. You can have my beer, that's fine. (both laugh) Speaking of that, I believe in this-- >> Well, the Network Effect, too. Sharing is an ethos of distribution, so distribution is sharing. Sharing is also a social thing, but social gamification really is about distribution. You're essentially creating a network effect, and this is the fundamental pattern in token economics, is the networks. >> Totally true. >> You see that? >> That's how it happens. >> What's your situation now? You've got a deal going on. Are you with Polymath? >> That's amazing, I-- >> Talk about that. You're announcing it on stage in about an hour. >> It's true, yeah. The stage is about to come. Trevor and his team do a great job. Boarding startups with the tokens to become a security token. I believe there is a huge business for them in the future. And now we want to work with them together, so we partner up, and what we do is... One of the models is that we will help their clients to liquidize these tokens, then, over Lexit. So this is one of the thoughts we have. We're just figuring out a few things, but we're very excited. >> John: And it's all API-based, I'm assuming, right? >> All API-based. It's been highly automated, of course. Automation. It's all about automation. You have to lower the cost to make it efficient, to make it cheap for everybody involved, so you have to automate everything you can, and smart contracts are, per se, an automation tool. >> Well, Amir, good luck with your venture, Lexit. I love the idea, I love what you're doing. I think this is what we look for in theCUBE, this kind of innovation. We think it's awesome. Good luck on your team. Product's almost pre-launch. >> And the pre-sale is almost through, so if you guys want in before ETH (mumbles), let me just drop that one in two weeks. It's closing and we distro in between four to six weeks, we're going to distro the token. So it's everything happening right now, and soon after that the exchanges are waiting, and you'll be surprised. They're going to be the good ones. >> This is innovations theCUBE are covering: the blockchain, the cryptocurrency. We're at Polycon 18. Polymath is the folks putting on the event with Grit Capital, a Canadian contingency, but they know their cryptography. If you know Canada, you know what the deal is there. It's theCUBE covering it live. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break. >> Thank you. (reverb-heavy electronic music) (moody ambient electronic) (moody ambient electronic) >> Hi, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of theCUBE. I've been in the tech business since I was 19, first programming on minicomputers in a large enterprise, and then worked at IBM and Hewlett Packard, a total of nine years in the enterprise. Various jobs from programming, training, consulting and, ultimately as an executive salesperson, and then started my first company, it was in 1997, and moved to Silicon Valley in 1999. I've been here ever since. I've always loved technology, and I love covering emerging technology. I was trained as a software developer, and loved business. I loved the impact of software technology to business. To me, creating technology that starts a company and creates value and jobs is probably one of the most rewarding things I've ever been involved in. And I bring that energy to theCUBE because theCUBE is where all the ideas are and where the experts are, where the people are and I think what's most exciting about theCUBE is that we get to talk to people who are making things happen. Entrepreneurs, CEO of companies, Venture Capitalists. People who are really, on a day in and day out basis, building great companies. In the technology business, there's just not a lot of real-time live TV coverage, and theCUBE is a non-linear TV operation. We do everything that the TV guys on cable don't do. We do longer interviews. We ask tougher questions. We ask sometimes some light questions. We talk about the person and what they feel about. It's not prompted and scripted. It's a conversation. It's authentic. And for shows that have theCUBE coverage, it makes the show buzz, it creates excitement, and more importantly, it creates great content, great digital assets that can be shared instantaneously to the world. Over 31 million people have viewed theCUBE and that is the result of great content, great conversations, and I'm so proud to be part of theCUBE, a great team. Hi, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (emotive electronic music) >> Narrator: Robert Herjavec!

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau, in the Bahamas, it's The Cube. Covering Polycon '18. Brought to you by PolyMath. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. This is The Cube's live coverage in the Bahamas of Polycon '18, put on by PolyMath and Grit Capital. And a special guest who just did a walk-by, fly-by, The Cube wanted to bring him in, Jeremy Gardner. We've chatted with him all week, influencer, entrepreneur, venture capitalist now, been involved in crypto, dropped out of college, luminary in the industry, young gun, great to have you on The Cube. Thanks for coming on. >> That is the most honorific title I've ever received. >> We like to shoot the shit around here on The Cube. Seriously, though, you have a big following in the community, well respected, I mean, a lot of cool things going on. A lot of young people working on projects, you're one of them. A lot of old people coming in, that have skills, whether it's cryptography or the other ecosystems, interesting blend. You've also worked on the Augur project, which has been highly successful. It's been a great case, and I hear people point to it all the time, say, "Love that concept", but a lot of cool tech. And you're at Ausum Ventures right now, that you're running. What's your take right now? I want to get into some specifics on some tech questions, but, you know, you're out there, you've done some things, you're in the middle of it, you get a fresh perspective. What's going on? What's your view and how do you see it playing out in this business? >> What we see occurring in 2018 is an incredible maturation of the industry. We've gone from Bitcoin to cryptocurrencies to blockchain technology, to this concept of smart contracts and de-centralized applications, to this ICO fad, to now what we're seeing here at this conference, which is the emergence of security tokens. And this evolution represents the broadening of the blockchain economy as a whole. From something that once was this niche little kind of ideological technology to something that is totally global, and perhaps as big as the internet, if not bigger. And that maturation is really important, because as the market matures, a lot of the scams that we've seen in years past will begin to fade away. That being said, I think we're going to need to see a real shake-out in the industry, a bloodbath in the markets where a lot of these poorly formulated tokens, crypto assets, disappear before we see a really blossoming crypto economy. >> It's like you got to clear the digestive tract of all the bad food you ate. I mean, you got to kind of get it out. >> Exactly, it's a purge. There's so much toxic crap in this industry today, it has to disappear before we can really evolve into something that rivals Wall Street. >> Yeah, and it's early on, too. I got to say, we've seen many waves in our day, Cube, we cover it. What I like about what's happening now is you've got an ecosystem forming, you've got people like yourself who are putting out statements like that, which is, quite frankly, a signal. And people need to speak up right now, because we've got to identify the bad stuff. So the ecosystem's forming. >> Well, it can be hard to do that when you're making a lot of money on crap. I mean, I've missed out on a lot of money-making opportunities 'cause I've been ideologically pure. I've only invested in projects that I truly believe will change the world. That can be limiting. And I don't blame people that kind of set aside ethics or quality projects for a greater profit mode, I'm a big believer in capitalism, but fundamentally, that mentality has to go in order for us to take this technology to the next stage. >> Okay, money making's going to happen, there's going to be some high flyers, and some are going to be legitimately good intentions that may turn out to be crap, and then there's going to be total crap, which starts out to be a scam, anyway. >> Right. >> How do you look at those signals? I mean, obviously you want to look for trajectory and community and tokens. How do you look at it? Is it underpinnings of the tech? Is there a business model? What's your view on how to look for those potential trajectories? >> In my view, it's just like venture capital. It starts with the team every single time. Team, team, team, then concept, then market, then tech. I mean, the tech changes, the code's constantly being updated. I'm not a coder; it's something that can evolve, it's something that, once you raise capital, you can have better technologists building out your tech stack. That doesn't really concern me. It's, is this team going to execute, are they going to be able to iterate in a fast-moving business environment in which the tides are always turning, regulators are always doing different things? Are you going to be able to adapt and evolve, and are you going to work together as a team? I take teams out to dinner, I see how they interact with one another. Do they have symbiosis, or are they kind of antagonistic? If they have an antagonistic relationship, it doesn't matter how good the concept is, how great the tech is, because the team won't stay together. And I don't want to have to make those sorts of bets on who's going to be the winning player. I'll stay in touch with the team, but I'll rarely make that investment. >> Yeah, they got to be ready for battle together. They've got to get down and dirty. >> So I hold teams paramount in early-stage investing, which is all I do. >> Awesome. So what are you excited about today, right now? What are you looking at, what's floating your boat, what's getting you excited, what's the specific-- >> So, Augur's about to go on the mainnet, so it's going to be the first truly de-centralized, consumer facing, de-centralized application. Very exciting. I think it could change the world of finance forever, and the way we predict the future. So it's mainnet going live, and then three months after that, hopefully the actual platform going fully live. It's still the most exciting project in the crypto-space, in my view. Even though I've been involved for a couple of years. I am an advisor to Basecoin, which is wrapping up its presale right now. Basecoin is an algorithmic stable coin that today maintains parity with the dollar, and it, I think, is going to be one of the most necessary components. It, or another stable coin, will be one of the most necessary components of creating a true crypto-economy. 'Cause if you look at most of the blockchain applications today, most of them are using these volatile crypto-assets as forms of payments and transactions, and that doesn't work for your average consumer, or even for large enterprises. People do not like volatility. It's a compounding risk factor for almost any sort of transaction. And so for us to have a real robust crypto-economy, we need a stable coin. My bets are on Basecoin, but I'm rooting for all the teams. Because whoever does this, and it may be multiple teams, will have unlocked one of the biggest problems that effects crypto-assets today, which is volatility. >> And liquidity is also a concern, people want to get liquid. That's also a dynamic of why token economics works, is you don't have the process of going public. You can do a little bit of funding and liquidity. Talk about the liquidity impact. >> Yeah, I mean, look. ICOs and token sales are this fabulous way to democratize finance and raise capital, especially for de-centralized applications and new protocols. They really can't take a traditional fundraising mechanism. That being said, if you are trying to create any sort of payment token, which I would never encourage anyone to do, but if you are, like a lot of these utility tokens, their point is for the purpose of payments. And that's idiotic to me, 'cause you're going to do what? Raise $30 million, maybe $100 million? Let's say $200 million. What's the volatility on that going to be daily, or annualized? It's insane, it will never be adopted by consumers. And furthermore, anyone that tries to create a payment token for their specific application, what they're not recognizing is someone's going to have to go to Coinbase, buy Bitcoin, send it to Poloniex, buy their token, send it to the application, just to make a payment? No way! >> Yeah, too complex. Credit cards are always going to beat that out, or Bitcoin and ether. >> Alright, so I've heard on The Cube here, and I've also heard in the hallway, a consistent theme I want to get your reaction to. This marketplace of having de-centralized apps, and blockchain, and cryptocurrency kind of dynamic really disrupts areas that have a lot of slack, or lag, or unused resource. It could be a physical asset, could be computers in the data center doing P2P stuff, and that this market busts down those inefficiencies, creates efficiency, that's the arbitrage. >> It can. >> Your reaction to that. >> It can, but like I say, how do you get access to those tokens? So the rise in security exchanges, security token exchanges, and more robust crypto-asset exchanges, will potentially enable that right now. But unless you have an easy way to buy and store those tokens that are freeing up illiquid assets in a dynamic manner, tokenizing assets isn't very useful. You know, with Blockchain Capital, my last venture fund, we created the first liquid venture fund. It was actually the first security token ever. And the problem that we ran into was everyone was excited, we created this liquid, limited-partner interest in a venture fund, but the problem was there was no place to trade it or sell it. And so, despite the nav of the fund going up, the price of the token remained the same, 'cause there was no liquid exchange. So you need a liquid place for the exchange of value in order for the liquidization of these assets to occur. Furthermore, I think more important than that point is that blockchains are fundamentally the largest technological disintermediator that has ever existed in human history. Even, since the beginning of time, pretty much, we have always relied on middlemen, whether they're banks or governments or tribal councilmen, to mitigate any sort of transaction. With blockchains, we can now have truly trustless transactions, and disintermediate trillions of dollars' worth of middlemen and trolls under the bridge. And that's the most revolutionary component of this technology. >> That's awesome. I want to get one quick question in, we're tagged for time. This rise of the security token has been a great innovation. We've seen great traction because of the security token, we're seeing PolyMath doing a lot of people looking at this as a stabilization. What does it do to the utility token? Does it change the nature of the utility token? Will utility token have a life that's not a monetizable thing? Will it still trade? What's your view and vision on the role of the utility token now that the security token has been established as a viable mechanism? >> So look, when we were building Augur, we did not want to issue a token. ICOs were really scary back then, but we realized, in order to have a truly de-centralized prediction market platform, we had to have a second token. One that wasn't used for payments, but that created a de-centralized consensus in our network. And so we created the first utility token ever. And back then, I was like, oh, this is novel, this is cool. We tried selling it to people; No one really got it. But then, it seems like we went and opened up Pandora's Box. All of a sudden, utility tokens flourished in the past two years, as this means to raise capital. The problem was, nobody was thinking beyond that capital raise. And so most of those utility tokens would have been much better as security tokens. They didn't actually provide much utility. And so I think those tokens, that 99%, 98% of utility tokens that have come out in the past two years, that didn't actually have true utility, those will go, you know. >> Yeah, I think it's some interesting conversation. I want to follow that up when we get back to the Bay Area. This is super important, I really love the idea that you're kind of teasing out. I see utility tokens having an instrumental role in governance consensus, other community dynamics, which might have its own value. I don't know yet what it looks like, but we'll certainly follow up. >> Absolutely, and security tokens will be the largest crypto-asset in the next two to three years. >> Jeremy Gardner, great conversation. Love the young guns, man. They're so smart, great to have you on, us old guys, we're just trying to keep up with these young guns. Back with more live coverage after this short break. Good job, man. >> My pleasure, man. >> You're awesome, dude. Alright. Hey, when we get back, I really want to get, I think the utility, I think the dual-token model is the way to go. Security, and >> I didn't think it would, but right now, the problem is most utility tokens-- (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's the Cube. Covering Polycon '18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's exclusive coverage. We're live in the Bahamas, here for day two of our wall to wall coverage of Polycon '18. It's a security token conference, securitizing, you know, token economics, cryptography, cryptocurrency. All this is in play. Token economics powering the world. New investors are here. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Nithin Eapen Who's the Chief Investment Officer for Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you very much gentlemen. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for coming out. >> Excited to have you on for a couple reasons. One, we've been talking since day one, lot of hallway conversations. Small, intimate conference, so we've had a chance to talk. Folks haven't heard that yet, so let's kind of get some of the key things we discussed. You are very bullish and long on cryptocurrency and Blockchain. You guys are doing a variety of deals. You're also advising companies and you guys are rolling your sleeves up. So kind of interesting dynamics. So take a minute to explain what you guys are doing, your model. >> Okay. >> And we're going to try to get some of your partners on later. You have a great team. >> Yep. >> Experienced pros in investing. And you got wales, you got pros. So you got a nice balance. >> Yes we do. >> So take a minute to explain Arcadia, your approach and philosophy. >> Okay. Okay. So Arcadia Crypto Ventures primarily we are a private fund. We invest other money. We believe in the whole crypto space. We believe this market is expanding and it is growing and it's going to be the biggest thing that ever happened. It's going to be this fusion of internet and PC and mobile. And everything is going to go batshit, okay. We believe in the whole tokenization world. Everything is going to be tokenized. So as a whole, we believe this space is going to go very big. Okay, so that's one piece and because of that, we invest in the space, the whole space. Not one bitcoin or Ethereum, but everything in the space that makes sense. People who have a use case. Now the second piece of it is we advised great founders. We want to get founders to come out and build these new things because this is the new internet of the new era and people have to come out and build these things. And so many of them are traditional businesses and we have to explain to them why this matters, why you should come to this space and be decentralized and reach the whole world. Because initially, the internet came. The idea of the internet was everybody gets information. Now information did get everywhere. You don't have to worry that the mailman is there to deliver your email anymore. Even if it's a Sunday, your mail will get delivered. So that part was good. But now you have these few companies that's holding all your data. It's okay for most people, but they do censor a lot of people. So that is one point. That censorship. We want a censorship-resistant world where everybody's ideas get out. So that way, we believe that's how this whole internet space itself is going to change because of that. See this is if I explained in one word, this is the greatest sociopolitical economic experimental revolution ever that has happened in humankind. >> In the history of the world. I mean this is important. I'd said that on my opening today. >> Uh-huh. >> Dave and I were riffing and Dave and I have always been studying. We've been entre-- We are entrepreneurs. We live in Silken Valleys in Boston and so you seeing structural change going on. So it's not just make money. >> Nope. >> There's mission-based, younger demographics. So you starting to see really great stuff. So I want to ask you specifically, 'cause you guys are unique in the sense that you're investing in a lot of things. But startups, pure-playing startups? >> Which had only one path before, or two paths. >> Right, yeah. >> Cashflow financing and venture capital. >> Okay. >> So that's a startup model. The growing companies that are transform their growth business with token economics, those would have long odds. Those are the best deals. >> Okay. Then there's like the third deal. Well we're out of business, throw the Hail Mary, repivot. (laughs) Right, so categorically, you're starting to see the shape of the kinds of swim lanes of deals. >> Okay. >> Okay, pivoting, that Hail Mary. Okay, you can evaluate that pretty much straight up on that. Startups need nurturing, right? >> Yeah. >> So the VC1 al-oc-chew works really well for startups because of the product market fits going to be developed. You got cloud computing so you can go faster. So you guys are nurturing startups. At the same time, you're also doing growth deals. >> We do. >> Explain the dynamic between those kinds of deals, how you guys approach them. What's the dynamic? What are the key things that you're bringing? Is it just packaging? Is it tech? So on, so forth. >> So with a lot of people, when they are on the advisory side. Primarily we look at the founder and the tech. What are they trying to solve? That is key. If it's a turd, you can't package it. No matter how you package it, that's not going to work. >> You can't package dog you-know-what. >> Yeah, exactly, okay. >> So that's one thing that we look at. The founders and their idea. Now their idea, can it be decentralized? Some models are meant to be centralized maybe so it doesn't work, okay. Like, see it all boils down to-- Let me break it down. We look at it. Okay, do you have an asset? Behind the scenes, is there an asset? Is that asset being transferred among parties? If you have an asset and it's being transferred, is there some central mechanism in between? Because if there is a central mechanism in between, that means you're going to be paying rent to that. Okay, all right. You have these things. Okay, great. Now you have your asset. Do you have that in between party? But in some of them, let's say you have money in your pocket. You walk, it falls down. Somebody else pick ups the money. It's his. It's a bearer asset, okay? So that's where bitcoin solved a very big problem. It was bearer asset. >> Unless they hack your wallet, then they take your money. >> Right. That happens in real life too, right? Somebody can take money from your wallet. So it can happen in bitcoin. They can hack your wallet. All right. So bitcoin was solving that problem. Now the second piece is a registered asset. And I mean by registered asset is take your car. You buy your car, you go to the DMV, stand in line, register. There's a record of data at the DMV in their central database. If somebody steals your car, the car is still not his. It's only if they can change the record over there in DMV. Then it becomes his. Now there maybe you do want the DMV to be there. Or maybe we can-- But the DMV being there, now you have a problem. They're going to charge you rent and they can decide, oh you know what? John, I'm not going to give him a license or a car in the state of California. They can decide, right? So that is where now you decide do you want to go the centralized route or the decentralized route? So we break it down to the asset. >> So there could be a fit for decentralized. I get that. >> Yeah. >> Let me ask you a tactical question, because I know a lot of entrepreneurs out there. They're watching and they'll hear this. A big strategic decision up front is, obviously, token selection. >> So it's pretty clear that security token works really well for funding and whatnot. Then there's a role for security tokens. I mean utility tokens. >> Yes. >> So do people, should they start from a risk management standpoint, a new company. So let's just say we had an existing business. Entrepreneur says, "Hey, you know what? We're doing well. We're doing 10 million dollars in revenue and I want to do tokenize 'cause we're a decentralized business. That's a perfect fit." Do they start a new company or do they just use the security token with their existing stable company? >> I would suggest, usually at that time, that's more of a legal question at that time. I don't know if I'm a lawyer to answer that. I tell them, you have a business. The business model is going well. If you're happy with it, let that be there. Make a new company. If your business model was not doing good, you might as well start from there because you figure out it's not working. But again, at that time, we tried to come up with this question. Are you trying to put the old wine in a new bottle kind of thing? If the wine is old, it ain't going to work. You have to get to that realization. So, here. >> People are being sued. So mainly the legal question is do I want to risk being. >> All right, let me hop in here. I wanted to ask, go back to something you said about censorship. I had this conversation with my kid the other day. I was explaining Google essentially censors your search results based on what they think you're going to click on. >> They do that. >> He's like no and then he thought about it and he's like okay, yeah they kind of do that. Okay, so that's an underpinning of we're going to take back the internet, right? >> Yeah. >> Okay, I just wanted to sort of clarify that. From an investment philosophy standpoint, you're technical, yet you don't exclusively vet or invest in infrastructure protocols and dig deep into what-- You read the white papers, but there are some folks out there hedge funds, et cetera. All they do is just invest in utility tokens. They're trying to invest in stuff that's going to be infrastructure for the next internet. Your philosophy is different. You're saying, we talked about this, we don't really know what's going to win, but we make prudent investments in areas that we think will win. We like to spread it around a little bit. Why that philosophy? May reduce your return, but it also reduces your risk. Maybe you could describe that a little bit. >> Sure. See, in general, picking winners in the long run has been-- It's a proved fact that nobody could pick winners. Like if you take active hedge fund managers. Active hedge fund managers, in the long run, if you take 10 to 20 years, they lag the S and P. So if you had money, if you give it to an active hedge fund manager, and so that you just had to buy the S and P, you will have beaten 93%. >> That's Buffet's advice. Buy an S and P 500. >> Buffet made a bet for a billion dollars or something where, you know. So take Warren Buffet for that matter, his fund is lagging too. In reality, all his stock investments are down. He put it in IBM at $200 after eight years, it's at the 143 or something, right? So realistically,-- There's a lot of luck element, okay. You can do all of the analysis and you could still end up buying Enron, Lehman, and Bear Stearns, right? >> Right, yeah. >> And at that time, see they were using some models that they knew 'til then. Most people, investment comes from, you have this background that you know, okay this is what I look at. Cash flow, discounted cash flow. Great. If that is there, price to earnings, I'm going to buy. But then an Amazon came, most of the traditional investors never invested in Amazon. They were like, it's a loss- making company. They never going to survive. But they forgot the fact that companies like that there's this network effect and once the people are there, at any point, Jeff Bezos can just turn off the switch and take off the discount. You're not going to change your shopping from Amazon at that point because this month I lost my 15%. We're so used to it so people missed that. Nowadays they see that, but when it came to Blockchain they're like, oh, no, no, this is a fad. That's what most people said. >> So we talked about discounted cashflow as a classic valuation method. I see guys trying to do DCF on these investments. I mean, we were joking about that. (laughs) How do you-- What's your reaction to that? >> If anybody's saying that if they come to me and I'm like you-- I don't know what Kool-Aid do you drink at that point because what cashflow are they discounting? There's no cashflow. It's not like you're going to get dividends from these tokens. There's no dividends. It's like can you find out how many people are going to use it. What is the network effect? And again, for that, a lot of people are coming with a lot of these matrices or matrix right now. But I think even that, they're trying to retrofit into it. They're like, oh I can use this matrix. But, really we don't know. >> So people tend to want metrics. Dave and I talk about this all the time. When people part with their money, they need to know what they're betting on. So the question is when you look at investments, when you spend cash, when you write checks, what is your valuation technique? Do you look for the l-- How do you play that long game? What's the criteria? Besides like the normal stuff like founders, disruptive, like you got to write the check, let's say. Okay, buying a token. It's got to be worth something in the future, obviously. >> So we look at that space, where invariably they are trying to disrupt. Is there a big market? And even if it's a niche market, okay? So we're doing an error chain token. It's a very niche market. It's just the pilot, the maintenance folks, and the charter people, or the plain charter guys. It's a very small market, but that's good enough. It's very niche. They can have an ecosystem between themselves rather than being incentivized to long game miles and stuff like that, right? It doesn't have to be a very big market. We just look at it, okay. Founder is good, he has an idea, it is a space that can be decentralized and people can come in and they feel that they're part of the ecosystem. See the whole thing with the token economy and a traditional economy like let's say I'm spending money to buy a stock. So I buy stock. As an investor, what do I want? I want maximum returns. The employee, he wants to get maximum pay. And the consumer who's buying the product, he wants to get it at the cheapest price. So there's a-- It start aligned, okay? The moment you give 'em the cheapest price, my profits go down. If I increase the employees' salary, my profits go down. So we are all three of us are totally misaligned. >> If I for an important point, do you favor certain asset classes, you know, token, security tokens, or utility tokens, or you looking for equity? I mean, maybe just ... >> Right now, we've moved away from the whole equity bonds, or any of those things. We are totally concentrated on the utility or security tokens. We don't mind if it's a security token or utility token. >> And if it's a security token, are you looking for dividends, are you looking for >> At that point it's some kind of dividend. >> So you're not expecting equity as part of that security token? >> No, I like to expect equity, but if they are saying okay my token, if people buy and if they pay me $10, and out of that you're going to get $1 back, okay that's fine. We don't mind that as long as it's legal and all those things we're fine because it just makes the process easier. Earlier you invest and you didn't know when you could get out of your investment. At this point, it's become so liquid, at any point of time within two or three months, the token is less to people are either buying and selling. We know, otherwise, earlier when we used to do Ren Chain investments, we would get into our product, have it it's time seven to 10 years to get out. And in the meanwhile, they say great stories. Oh we're doing great. Who do I check with that we are doing great? I'm not getting any dividends. Nobody's buying this from me. How do I know? Where am I? I really don't know. I can make these values up and on my Excel sheet and say okay we valuing this company at a billion. >> So your technique is to say okay look at the equity plays the long game. You need an exit on liquidity, either M and A or IPO. >> Yes. >> Now you have a new liquidity market, so you play the game differently. I won't say spray and pray, but you have multiple bets going on so you can monitor liquidity opportunity. So that's a new calculation. >> And it's a great calculation, also. Because see we're in the market and now we know at any point of time, we don't have things on our books that are like we don't know what the value is. We know what that price is because the market is there, the exchange is there. What other people are willing to pay for us doesn't surprise. It's like saying my house is worth a million dollars. Actually it might be worth to me. It depends on what people are willing to pay me. >> Right exactly. >> If I have to synthesize this, you're taking high frequency trading techniques with classic venture investing, handling token from those two perspectives. >> Yes. >> High frequency trading meaning I'm looking at volatility and then option to abandon and get rid of whatever or whatever. >> The only thing is, we're not exiting our positions. We are in the long game. We believe the score market is supposed to at least reach eight trillion. When we started this whole investing, at that time, the whole market was at six billion and we said okay this market, based on our thesis, is supposed to reach eight trillion. Until then, we keep buying, okay? >> But to your HFT, you're not really arbitraging. >> No, no, we're not doing any of those. Because see >> They're applying real time techniques to token evaluations so they're game is try to get into a winner. >> Yes. >> With some tokens. >> A lot of the funds, they're doing this arbitrage more. They're trying to do arbitrage. But the problem is they're missing the big picture that way. So, arbitrage works in a very tight market. So S and P, let's say, somebody's doing 5% return on S and P. The guy with a arbitrage is coming and saying I made five point three, 5.5% or 6%. That's great in the equity world. Now, I want returns last year are 10 x or 30 x or 50 x. And somebody comes and tells me I made an extra 0.2%, doesn't really matter to me. I'm like instead of wasting that time doing arbitrage and paying taxes, I might just hold it. >> You believe in the fundamentals. >> You guys are in New York. Obviously, Arcadia Crypto Ventures, that's how they get ahold of you guys. Final question for you to end the segment. As new real pros come in, and let's take New York as a since you're in New York. The New York crowd comes in or the Silken Valley comes crowd existing market players other markets come in here. How important is optics packaging and compatibility with the sector, meaning I just can't throw my weight around on the hedge fund scene. We do it this way, I got money. Because people here have money. So what's the dynamic of pros coming in, we're seeing institutional folks come in, we're seeing real pros come in. They've never been to Burning Man. So, you know, they get that Burning Man culture exists, but this is not a Burning Man industry. >> Right, right. >> Business doesn't run like Burning Man. Maybe it should, that's a debate we'll have. Your take. >> So the new funds that are coming in, so they have a fear that they have missed out. They are missing the picture that this is just the beginning. So they've seen that this industry has gone from six billion to 500 billion in a year or year and a half. They're like, oh my god, I missed it. >> It's got to be over. >> So I have to write these big checks to get this. We don't write big checks. We write much smaller checks because we believe that if a founder is raising money, he has to raise it through small checks from everybody. That means all those people are really interested in this. And they're all of them really want the token to go up. Whether it's the investor, the user, and the employee who is working there because all of them they're interests are aligned. The moment you give a big check, so let's say you could raise 10 million from 10,000 people or you could raise it from one person. So when the big check is there, let's say I go to raise my money. There's this fund who's missed it and he says here's 10 million dollars. Okay, now I've got me and the fund and my tokens. Nobody else knows about my tokens. My tokens are as good as valueless. Now the funders looking okay, I need to exit. Nobody knows about my tokens. The fund is the only guy who has my tokens, he's trying to exit. Obviously the market is going to crash. There's no market. And he's like why did I get into this. So he missed that point that you need people around you. It's not just you alone. See, earlier days when ... >> This is your point about understanding how token economics works. >> Yes. >> So having more people in actually creates a game mechanic for trading. >> Because then you know that you're not the only guy interested in this. And earlier venture capital space there were these bunch of few venture capitals who wanted to capture that whole thing and tried to sell it to the next guy. Here, I'm what I'm saying is, we all have to come in together. We all can be together at the same price, which is good because the small person has, the common man has a chance to be a VC right now. Earlier you could never be a VC. I could only see Google, after IPO. I could never get it at what KPCB or Sequoia got it at. I had to wait 'til they got through CDA, CDB, which they bought at five cents. I would get at about $40 maybe. In this case, the big fund has a lot more money than me, but I can have my small 5,000 or 10,000. I can invest in the ICO. >> If you picked the right spot and you were there at the right place, the right time. 'Cause you are seeing guys come in and try to buy up all the tokens early on. >> They're trying to do that. They don't get it, but they will understand. So it is a learning (mumbles). Even they will evolve. They're like okay this is not how it works. And you have to make mistakes. >> Sorry, got to ask you one final, final since you brought it up. More people the better. So we're hearing rumors inside the hallways here that big wales are buying full allocations and then sharing them with all their friends. >> Possible, it is possible. >> We see some of that behavior. Dave calls it steel on steel, you know. Groups, you know. I'm going to take this whole deal down. We see that in venture capital. Used to be syndicates. Now you seeing Andreessen Horowitz doing the whole deals. That kind of creates some alienation, my opinion, but what's your take on that? I'm a big wale. I'm taking down the whole allocation. >> It's okay. Some of those things are going to happen, okay. It is fine. The only problem is usually when that happens the big wale who takes it he will realize very quickly. >> He's got to get more people. >> He needs more people otherwise he might be able to exit to his five buddies who were always taking it from him. Now those guys, they also have to exit at some point. Nobody knows about the product. Might as well just take a small piece, even the founders in this case typically in a token model. Founders who've taken 20% or 10% have done better than founders who took 60% of the whole tokens. >> Right. Nithin, great to have you on. Love your business model. Arcadia Crypto Ventures. They got real pros, they got a wale, they got people who know what they're doing, and they're active. They understand the ethos. I think you guys are well-aligned and you're not trying to come in and saying this is how we did it in New York before. You get the culture. You're aligned and you're making investments. Great perspective. Thanks for sharing. >> Thank you so much. >> This is the Cube, bringing the investor perspective live here in the Bahamas. More exclusive Cube coverage. Token economics, huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors to create value and capture it. That's Blockchain, that's crypto, that's token economics. I'm John with Dave Vallante. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. (futuristic digital music)

>> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's The Cube! Covering PolyCon 18. Brought to you by PolyMath. >> Welcome back everyone, we're live here in the Bahamas with The Cube's exclusive coverage of PolyCon 18, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, both co-founders of SiliconANGLE. We start our coverage of the crypto-currency ICO, blockchain, decentralized world internet that it is becoming. It's the beginning of our tour, 2018. Our next guest is Hartej Sawhney who's the advisor at Pink Sky Capital, but also the co-founder of Hosho.io. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much. >> Hey thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks guys. >> We had a great chat last night, and you do some real good work. You're one of the smartest guys in the business. Got a great reputation. A lot of good stuff going on. So, take a minute to talk about who you are, what you're working on, what you're doing, and the projects you're involved in. >> So first of all, thank you so much for having me, it's really exciting to see the progress of high-quality content being created in the space. So my name is Hartej Sawhney. We have a team based in Las Vegas. I've been based in Las Vegas for about five years. But I was born and raised in central New Jersey, in Princeton. And my co-founder is Yo Sup Quan. We started this company about seven months ago and my co-founder's background was he's the co-founder of Coin Sighter in Exchange out of New York, which exited to Kraken. After that he started Launch Key which exited to Iovation. And prior to this company, my previous company was Zuldi, Z-U-L-D-I .com where we had a mobile point of sale system specifically for high volume food and beverage companies and businesses. So we were focused on Fintech and mobile point of sale and payment processing. So both of us have a unique background in both Fintech and cyber-security and my co-founder Yo, he's a managing partner of a crypto hedge fund named Pink Sky Capital. And he was doing diligence for Pink Sky, and he realized that the quality of the smart contracts he was seeing for deals that he wanted to participate as an investor in, and I'm an advisor in that hedge fund, we both realized that essentially the quality of these smart contracts is extremely low. And that there was nobody in this space that we saw laser focused on just blockchain security. And all the solutions that would be entailed in there. And so we began focusing on just auditing smart contracts, doing a line-by-line code review of each smart contract that's written, conducting a GAS analysis, and conducting a static analysis, making sure that the smart contract does what the white paper says, and then putting a seal of approval on that smart contract to mitigate risk. So that the code has not been changed once we've done an analysis of it, that there's no security vulnerabilities in this code, and that we can mitigate the risks for exchanges and for investors that someone has done a thorough code analysis of this. That there's no chance that this is going to be hacked, that money won't be stolen, money won't be lost, and that there's no chance of a security vulnerability on this. And we put our company's name and reputation on this. >> And what was the problem that is the alternative to that? Was there just poorly written code? Was it updated code? Was it gas was too expensive? They were doing off-chain transactions. I mean what are some of the dynamics that lead you guys down this path? I mean this makes sense. You're kind of underwriting the code, or you're ensuring it or I don't know what you call it, but essentially verifying it. What was the problem? And what were some of the use cases of problems? >> I would say that the underlying problem today in this whole industry, of the blockchain space, is that the most commonly found blockchain is Ethereum. The language behind Ethereum is called Solidity. Solidity is a brand new software language that very few people in the world are sufficient programmers in Solidity. On top of that, Solidity is updated, as a language on a weekly basis. So there are a very limited number of engineers in the world who are full-stack engineers, that have studied and understand Solidity, that have a security background, and have a QA mindset. Everything that I just said does exist on this Earth today and if it does, there's a chance that that person has made too much money to want to get out of bed. Because Ethereum's price has gone up. So the quality of smart contracts that we're seeing being written by even development shops, the developers building them are actually not full-stack engineers, they're web developers who have learned the language Solidity and so thus we believe that the quality of the code has been significantly low. We're finding lots of critical vulnerabilities. In fact, 100% of the time that Hosho has audited code for a smart contract, we have found at least a couple of vulnerabilities. Even as a second or the third auditor after other companies conduct an audit, we always find a vulnerability. >> And is it correct that Solidity is much more easy to work with than say, Bitcoin scripting language, so you can do a lot more with it, so you're getting a lot more, I don't want to say rogue code, but maybe that's what it is. Is that right? Is that the nature of the theory? >> Compared to Bitcoin script, yes. But compared to JavaScript, no. Because Fortune 500 companies have rooms full of Java engineers, Java developers. And now the newer blockchains are being written, are being written on in block JavaScript, right? So you have IBM's Hyperledger program, you have EOS, you have ICX, Cardano, Stellar, Waves, Neo, there's so many new projects that are coming, that all of them are flexing about the same thing. Including Rootstock, RSK. RSK is a project where they're allowing smart contracts to be tied to the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time ever. Right, so Fortune 500 companies may take advantage of the fact that they have Java developers to take advantage of already, that already work for them, who could easily write to a new blockchain, and possibly these new blockchains are more enterprise grade and able to take more institutional capital. But only time will tell. And us as the auditor, we want to see more code from these newer blockchains, and we want to see more developers actually put in commits. Because it's what matters the most, is where are the developers putting in commits and right now maximum developers are on the Ethereum blockchain. >> Is that, the numbers I mean. Just take a step there. So the theory of blockchain. Percentage of developers vis-a-vis other platforms percentages-- >> By far the most is on developed on Ethereum. >> And in terms of code, obviously the efficiencies that are not yet realized, 'cause there's not enough cycles of coding going on, it's evolution, right? >> Yes. >> Seems to be the problem, wouldn't you say? So a combination of full-stack developer requirements, >> Yes. >> To people who aren't proficient in all levels of the stack. >> Yes. >> Just are inefficient in the coding. It's not a ding on the developers, it's just they're writing code and they miss something, right? Or maybe they're not sufficient in the language-- >> It's a new language. The functions are being updated on a weekly basis, so sometimes you copied and pasted a part of another contract, that came from a very sophisticated project, so they'll say to us, well we copied and pasted this portion from EOS, so it should be great. But what that's leading to is either A, they're using a function that's now outdated, or B, by copying and pasting someone else's code from their smart contract, this smart contract is no longer doing what you intended it to do. >> So now Hartej, how much of your capability is human versus machine? >> Yeah I was going to ask that. >> ML, AI type stuff? >> So we're increasingly becoming automated, but because of the over, there's so much demand in the space. And we've had so much demand to consistently conduct audits, it's tough to pull my engineers away from conducting an audit to work on the tooling to automate the audit, right? And so we are building a lot of proprietary tooling to speed up the process, to automate conducting a GAS analysis, where we make sure you're not clogging up the blockchain by using too much GAS. Static analysis, we're trying to automate that as fast as possible. But what's a bit more difficult to automate, at least right now, is when we have a qualified full-stack engineer read the white paper or the source of truth and make sure the smart contract actually does it, that is, it's a bit longer tail where you're leveraging machine learning and AI to make that fully automated. (talking over each other) >> But maybe is that, I'm sorry John. Is that the long term model or do you think you can actually, I mean there's people that say augmented intelligence is going to be a combination of humans and machines, what do you think? >> I think it's going to be a combination for a long time. Every single day that we audit code, our process gets faster and faster and faster because once we find a vulnerability, finding that same vulnerability next time will be faster and easier and faster and easier. And so as time goes on, we see it as, since the bundle of our work today is ICOs, token generation events, there are ERC 20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. And we don't know how long this party will last. Like maybe in a couple years or a couple months, we have a big twist in the ICO space that the numbers will drastically go down. The long tail of Hosho's business for us, is to keep track of people writing smart contracts, period. But we think they are going to become more functional smart contracts where the entire business is on a smart contract and they've cut out sophisticated middle men. Right and it may be less ICOs, and in those cases I mean, if you're a publicly traded company, and you're going from R&D phase where you wrote a smart contract and now actually going to deploy it, I think the publicly traded company's going to do three to five audits. They're going to do multiple audits and take security as a very major concern. And in the space today, security is not being discussed nearly as much as it should. We have the best hedge funds cutting checks into companies, before the smart contract is even written, let alone audited. And so we're trying to partner with all the biggest hedge funds and tell the hedge funds to mandate that if you cut a check into a company that is going to do a token generation event, that they need to guarantee that they're going to at least value security, both in-house for the company and for the smart contract that's going to be written. >> How much do you charge for this? I mean just ballpark. Is it a range of purchase price, sales price? What's the average engagement go for, is it on a scope of work? Statement of work? Or is it license? I mean how does it work? >> So first it depends is it a penetration test of the website or the exchange? Penetration testing of exchanges are far more complex than just a website. Or if it's a smart contract audit, is it an ICO or is it a functional smart contract? In either case for the smart contract audit, we have to build a long set of custom tooling to attack each and every smart contract. So it's definitely very case-by-case. But a ballpark that we could maybe give is somewhere around the lines of 10 to 15 thousand dollars per 100 lines of functional code. And we ask for about three weeks of lead time for both a smart contract audit and a penetration test. And surprisingly in this space, some of the highest caliber companies and high caliber projects with the best teams, are coming to us far too late to get a security audit and a penetration test. So after months of fundraising and a private pre-sale and another pre-sale, and going and throwing parties and events and conferences to increase the excitement for participating in their token sale, what we think is the most important part, the security audit for a smart contract is left to the last week before your ICO. And a ridiculous number of companies are coming to us within seven days of the token sale, >> John: Scrambling. >> Scrambling, and we're saying but we've seen you at seven conferences, I think that we need to delay your ICO by two or three weeks. We can assure you that all of your investors will say thank you for valuing security, because this is irreversible. Once this goes live and the smart contract is deployed. >> Horse is out of the barn. >> It's irreversible. >> Right right. >> And once we seal the code, no one should touch it. >> It's always the case with security, it's bolted on at the last minute. >> It's like back road recovery too, oh we'll just back it up. It's an architectural decision we should have made that months ago. So question for you, the smart contract, because again I'm just getting my wires crossed, 'cause there's levels of smart contracts. So if we, hypothetical ICO or we're doing smart contracts for our audience that's going to come out soon. But see that's more transactional. There's security token sales, >> Yes. >> That are essentially, can be ERC 20 tokens, and that's not huge numbers. It could be big, but not massive. Not a lot transaction costs. That's a contract, right? That's a smart contract? >> People are writing smart contracts to conduct a token generational event, most commonly for an ERC 20 token, that's correct. >> Okay so that's the big, I call that the big enchilada. That's the big-- >> Right now that is the most important, the most common. >> Okay so as you go in the future, I can envision a day where in our community, people going to be doing smart contracts peer-to-peer. >> Sure. >> How does that work? Is that a boiler plate? Is is audited, then it's going to be audited every time? Do the smart contracts get smaller? I mean what's your vision on that? Because we are envisioning a day where people in our audience will say hey Hartej, let's do a white paper together, let's write it together, have a handshake, do a smart contract click, click. Lock it in. And charge a dollar a download, get a million downloads, we split it. >> I envision a day where you can have a more drag and drop smart contract and not need a technical developer to be a full-stack engineer to have to write your smart contract. Yes I totally envision that day. >> John: But that's not today. >> We are very far from that today. >> Dave, kill that project. >> We're so far, we're very far from that. We're light years far from that. >> Okay well look. If we can't eliminate the full-stack engineers, I'm okay with that. Can we eliminate the lawyers? At least minimize them. >> We can minimize them possibly, but we have five stacks of lawyers for our company, I don't see them going anywhere. We need lawyers all the time. >> I see that in the press sometimes, yeah it's going to get disrupted. I don't see it happening. Okay we were having a great conversation off-camera about what makes a good ICO. You see, you have a huge observation space. And you were very opinionated. A lot of companies are out there just floating a token because they're trying to raise money. And they could do the same thing with Ethereum or Bitcoin. >> That's correct. >> Your thoughts? >> My thoughts are that it's very important for companies who are sophisticated, I think, to start by giving away a little bit of equity in the business. And that if you want to be in the blockchain space, and you really firmly believe you have a model to have a token within a decentralized application, I would still start by finding quality investors in the space, in the world. They might be still in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley didn't just disappear overnight now that the blockchain is out. I am all for the fact that Silicon Valley no longer has as much of a grip on tech because of their blockchain world. And they're not seeing as much deal flow, and there's not as much reliance on venture capitalists, that's exciting to me. But let's not forget the value, that top-tier VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Vinod Khosla. and Fintech VCs like Commerce Ventures and Nyca Partners in New York, Propel VC, these are good Fintech VC arms that continue to time and time again add immense value to companies. >> And they have networks. They add value. >> They have strong-valued networks, but they're just not going to disappear. And those VCs, if they've invested into a company, took a board seat, fostered their growth, taught them what it means to actually be a real business that's growing at 7-15% week over week, maybe two years down the line, after they've given away a board seat to someone like Nyca Partners, I would be interested in understanding what your token economics look like. Now that you have a revenue generating business, how you've placed a token model into this already running business that makes 25 to 50 grand a month and you have a team of 10, self-sustaining themselves off of revenue. Much more intriguing of a conversation. What's happening today in the space is, hey my buddy Jim and Steve and I came up with an idea for this business. There's going to be a token, and we're starting a private pre-sale tomorrow. I'm going to give you 300% bonus and will you be my advisor? And they're going to start raising capital because of an idea. You know what we used to say in the Silicon Valley startup world, you can raise on just a PowerPoint. I think in the blockchain world, you could raise on just an idea? And then maybe a white paper? And the white paper is one page? And so you've raised a bunch of capital, you have a white paper. >> Now you got to build it. >> Now you got to build, you got to write a smart contract, you got to build it, you got to do it, and then everyone loses excitement and it goes back to our previous conversation the development talent. So, another thing not being discussed in the space is company employee retention, right? So if you have a growing number of ICOs, that have very large budgets because investors have found a way to sink millions of dollars into a company early, you've got $5 million in the hands of a company to start, well this company can afford to pay someone a very ridiculous salary to come join them to write the smart contract now. So they could offer an engineer 500 Eth a month to come join them for three months. So you have good engineers just bouncing from one ICO to the next and as soon as the ICO goes live, they quit. This is a problem to companies who are-- >> It's migration, out migration. >> How do you retain, even capital? >> Companies like Hosho, ShapeShift, companies that are selling picks and shovels of the industry, that want to be household names in the space, we have to really think about how we're going to retain our employees in the space. >> So the recruitment and bringing on the new generation, we were also talking off camera about Bill Tye and the younger generation and kind of riffing on the notion that, because there is a new set of mission-driven developers and builders, on the business side as well. Your thoughts and reaction to what you see and what you see that's good and what you see that we need more of? >> So the most powerful thing in the blockchain space that I think is so exciting is that you have a lot of people between the age of 25 and 35 that don't come from money, that didn't go to Stanford, didn't go to Y Combinator, they're probably not white, from-- >> John: Ivy League schools. >> Ivy League schools. I'm not trying to make it about race, but if you're a white male and went to Stanford and went to Y Combinator, chances of you raising VC money on sand hill are a lot higher, right? And you have a guy looking like me who didn't go to Stanford, doesn't come from money, running up and down sand hill, I have personally faced that battle and it wasn't easy. And we were based in Vegas and so being based in Vegas, I'd also have to deal with so why do you live in Vegas? When are you going to move to Silicon Valley? And if we invest in you, you're going to open an office in sand hill right? And now in the blockchain world, what's exciting is you have so many heavy-hitters running as founders, some of the most successful companies in the space, who don't come from money and a big prestigious background, but they're honest, they're hard-working, they're putting in 12 to 15 hours of work every single day, seven days a week. And to space, six weeks is like six years. And we all have a level of trust that goes back to times when we were all running struggling startups. And so our bond is, to me, even more significant than what must have been between Keith Rabois and Peter Thiel in the PayPal Mafia. We have our own mafias being formed of much stronger bonds of younger people who will be able to share much more significant deal flow so if the PayPal Mafia was able to join forces to punch out companies like eBay and Square, wait 'til companies in this space, we have young, heavy-hitters right now who are non-reliant on some of the more traditional older folks. Wait 'til you see what happens in the next couple years. >> Hartej, great conversation. And I want to get one more question in. We've seen Keiretsu Forum, mafias, teams more than ever as community becomes an integral part of vetting and by the way trust, you have unwritten rules. I mean baseball, Dave and I used to do sports analogies. >> Self-governance. >> Reggie Jackson talked about unwritten rules and it works. If you beam the batter, the other guy, your best star, your side's going to get beamed. That's an unwritten rule. These are what keeps things going, balanced through the course of a season. What are the unwritten rules in the Ethos right now? >> Honesty, transparency, and that's the key. We need self-governance. This is a very unregulated market. There's rules being broken by people who are ignorant to the rules. The most common rule I've seen being broken is by people who are not broker dealers, running around fundraising capital, they don't even know what an institutional advisor license is. They don't know what a Series 7 and a Series 63 is. I asked a guy just last night, he said I'm pooling capital, I'm syndicating, let me know if you want in on the deal. And I said when did you take your Series 7? He goes what's that? Get away from me. You're an American, you need to look up what US securities laws are and make sure that you're playing by the rules and if someone who doesn't know the rules has entered our inner circle of investors, of advisors, of people sharing deal flow, we have a good network of people that are closing the loop for companies, whether it's lawyers, investors, exchanges, security auditors, people who write smart contracts, dev shops, people who write white papers, PR marketing, people who do the road show, there's a full circle-- >> So people are actually doing work to put into the community, to know your neighbor if you will, know the deals that are going down, to identify potential trip wires that are being established by either bad actors or-- >> KYC, AML, this is a new space that's also attracting people that have a criminal background. Right? And that's just a harsh reality of the space. That in the United States if you have a felony on your record, maybe getting a job has become really difficult and you figured let's do an ICO, no one's going to check my record. That is a reality of the space. Another reality is the money that was invested into this entire ICO clean. Right, that's a massive issue for the US government right now. It's been less than 15 hours since the SEC has issued actually subpoenas to people on this exact topic, today. >> This is a great topic, we'd like to do more on. >> Dozens of them. >> We'd like to continue to keep in touch with you on The Cube. Obviously you're welcome anytime, loved your insight. Certainly we'd love to have you be an advisor on our mission, you're welcome anytime. >> For sure, let's talk about it. Come out to Las Vegas. Hosho's always happy to host you. >> John And Dave: We're there all the time. >> The Cube lives at the sands. >> It's our second home. >> Come by Hosho's office and let us know. Vegas is our home. We are hosting a conference in Vegas after DEFCON. So DEFCON is the biggest security conference in the world. You have the best black hats and white hats show up as security experts in Vegas and right on the tail end of it, Hosho's going to host a very exclusive invite-only conference. >> What's it called? Just Hosho Conference? >> Just Blockchain. It'll be called the just, it'll be by the Just Blockchain Group and Hosho's the main backer behind it. >> Well we appreciate your integrity and your sharing here on The Cube, and again you're paying it forward in the community, that's great. Ethos we love that. That's our mission here, paying it forward content. Here in the Bahamas. Live coverage here at PolyCon 18. We're talking about securitized token, a decentralized future for awesome things happening. I'm Jeff Furrier, Dave Vellante. We'll be back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's the Cube! Covering Polycon 18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Hello everyone. Welcome to a special exclusive cube conversation here in the Bahamas for Polycon 18. It's a cryptography, cryptocurrency I should say, show with blockchain. It's a great event. It's brought securities tokens and token economics, the value economy that's changing the world is certainly in play. It's the beginning of a massive wave that's coming. We've reported on the Cube and SiliconANGLE before. We're here with the co-founder of Ethereum and the CEO of Decentral and also maker of Jaxx. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> So we've been covering a lot of emerging waves and I got to say that I've seen some waves in my days but this one's a tsunami. You can see the water pulling out and you see the exposed clams and crabs out there. A complete shift of value, data, users, decentralized impacts of business models to industries. I mean it's just mind-blowing and it's intoxicating. But a new community is evolving. I mean it reminds me of the early days of the personal computer combined with all the inter-networking and the internet kind of rolled up into one massive shift. How do you see it from your perspective being on the inner core of this community? What's your take? >> Definitely the biggest thing of those things that you mentioned is yeah the tsunami. We started with information, when the internet was started, ways to be able to move information globally. Disrupting everything to do with publishing companies, with postal service, anything to do with information transfer. And I've been around since the BBS days, way back there before the internet even came about. So when the internet came about it was my first instinct and I'm like, "Wow. This is going to just change the way information moves." And then when I got into this in 2012 into the crypto-space, into bitcoin at the time, I'm like, "Wow this is beyond the internet. This is value transfer now without needing intermediaries and the disruption that's going to happen is going to just completely change finance, the way that currencies are handled." It's going to touch every single sector. So this is much bigger and it's bigger because the everyday person can get involved with it. >> You know one of the things that we were just commenting this show, Polycon 18 put on by Polymath which makes a securities token model for companies to use, sets up kind of a growth and funding model. We're going to talk more about that in our live feed. But I noticed a lot of Canadians are here. Besides having ice hockey, one of my favorite sports being from the east coast in the U.S., I remember in the 80s a lot of PKI stuff being done in Canada. A lot of really important cryptography work was done in Canada. There's a lot of amazing computer science programs in Canada. There's a lot of progressive things going on in Canada. Can you share your thoughts on that? >> Sure. >> Because I think you're starting to see that wave coming down. I won't call it a cold spell, I'll call it like innovation spell coming from the north and into the U.S. and then all around the world. >> Yeah it's a real disproportionate amount of Canadians in this whole scene which is really interesting. I was at an event called the Satoshi Roundtable about a month ago in Cancun. And it was about 20% were actually from Canada and this was a global event. And what I think it is is a community basis. In 2012 I showed the Toronto Bitcoin Meetup Group. And that was like what are we like six years ago. And the amount of people that have come through Decentral and come through the meetup group that we started, started just sparking so many different things. That's where Ethereum came from. Polymath from Toronto here. Trevor and I go back, way back to 2012. So I think it's a matter of the community being built that really early on in Toronto and Canada that have led to the spark of what's going on. And now with things like the public markets and the way Canada is is kind of being a good fertile ground for companies actually going live on different-- the TSX in Canada. And that's helping to facilitate things. So ton of talent, ton of amazing things that I think hopefully Canada can prove itself to be the global headquarters. However, there's also regulatory things. Since you have a lot of Canadian companies that are saying we're going to set up offshore because we don't know how Canada is treating things. That's also a counterbalance. But in general there's tons of good things coming out from Canada and from Toronto. >> You know we were early on the cloud wave going back to 2000, you know late 2000s. And now you're starting to see with cloud computing some visibility. I'll see Amazon web services kicking ass and they're just blowing away their numbers. But you're seeing kind of a clear visibility between infrastructure as a service and sass. And just to kind of use a metaphor for kind of what's going on here is the whole platform as a service never happened. So you got infrastructure and you got application. So this community is emerging. It's still small, it's growing, it's dynamic, it's robust. Very intimate. But there's some things going on at the infrastructure level that are super important. And there's certainly a tsunami of new kinds of software developers coming in. So comment on those two things because you know it's kind of moving train is happening in parallel at the same time. >> Definitely. >> Can you share some color on the dynamics between the infrastructure progress and innovation and speed scale, tech, and then the tsunami of these decentralized application developers which are coming in from 13-year-olds to 65 and older. I mean across the gamut. >> We're building infrastructure. That's what it's about. I've always had a very long-term thing with everything whether I invest in things or-- I'm super long-term in the whole space. So 2012 everything was bitcoin for me. 2013, started developing wallets. I realized that the wallets is the browser for value transfer. You got the internet browser, that's what moves information. Now we're in the age of value and then the wallets is what enables people to manage and move digital assets. So I started building wallets for bitcoin. When we started Ethereum I'm like, "Okay there's beyond bitcoin now." Started Ethereum. Did that for about a year and then went back to building the interface, the actual platform for all these technologies to be able to utilize to manage and move digital assets. So that's what I focus on is the infrastructure play of connecting to all these blockchains and providing the user experience to be able that the masses like my dad to be able to actually have the browser moment. Like, "Oh, now I know what I can do with this." And that's what's been missing and that's what I've been focusing on. And then in there is where you have the apps start getting built on to stuff. So that's always been my play is to build the single interface for every blockchain, support the entire ecosystem, not focus on one technology because who know what's going to actually live now for a long time. And that's what I'm doing is building that single interface that my dad can use to understand how to move and manage his digital assets, and then partner with companies projects. The Polymaths, the Eons, all these companies from the space that are offering value in different areas and we want to be that single interface that brings it all together. So definitely infrastructure play, but also applications that can be built on top of that infrastructure. >> Yeah I mean infrastructure needs to be enable and you think about the browser, right? I mean the browser created the internet to be usable. And the web was born because of it. And of course HTP protocol. But interesting on the infrastructure side. I fought the wars back in the days you know SNA, Decknet, TCPIP was emerging into the OSI models. I remember you know TCPIP was one those moments-- and people use that as an example. I hear it all the time and you know I even use it here and there. But that created a galvanizing moment where hey we can inter-operate together with the standard stack and not fill all seven layers. But you know it made things happen. The question that people are asking is it's kind of a TCPIP moment in this industry but is there 40 versions of it? Is that an issue? Is that reality? >> I think it's actually-- I always equate it to there being websites. And what I'm doing is I'm building the browser so that actually the websites can actually interact with the technology. So they're focusing on different sectors and they're making different plays in all these different areas that are going to touch with value transfers. And value transfer is amazing. That's what's going to disrupt things beyond information. And then with smart contracts and this thing we did with Ethereum it's like okay this all coming together to touch law, insurance, gaming, all the different sectors are going to be actually changed. I don't want to say disrupted, I don't like that word. But changed and evolved into great amazing things. But these protocols that are being developed are choice and the ones that actually are the ones that are going to create the most amount of value and great user experience were the ones that actually we're going to carry on. So it's amazing to see the amount of competition, the amount of new projects. And the ones that are creating the value is what's going to actually survive. >> And that dog will hunt, basically. >> Yeah. >> Okay the wallet question. Love this simplicity model. What's your vision on the wallet because you could say okay there's multiple wallets, there's a diversity of wallets. I could have a brown wallet, black wallet, leather wallet, all kinds of different wallets. Are you looking at it as a technology enabler that you're doing or is it an actual wallet? Because again what we learned in open source is why build something when someone else already has it? So that's the ethos of most developers. So are you looking at the wallet as saying I'm going to provide a wallet capability end to end or is it base code? >> It's interface. The wallet's the engine. The wallet is what's needed in order to connect with all the different block chains. That's what we've been building over the last two years is actually the infrastructure to connect to all the different blockchains. It's the interface that we built on eight platforms. So you can have a single interface on all the platforms that ties yourself in a with a 12 word key that enables you to derive keys for all the blockchains. So the key system that we offer, the interface to all the connections which is the browser, and then the back end AWS almost like structures to all the different blockchains is our value add to all of our partners. And we're all about driving partner interaction. >> So simplicity's a big part of it. >> Super-- yeah definitely. >> And ease of use. Ease of integration. >> Yeah we need the interface. You can't be using 10 different wallets for all the different things you're trying to manage. So we're trying to create that single interface across all the things it supports and drives the whole community forward. >> Dave Alanta who you just met and I always talk about this all the time. You know it's like you built-- if people want to sell a certain technology a certain way but it reminds me of the gaming industry. There became a market for game engines but that only because someone built a successful game and someone said, "Hey I want a game engine!" You have an engine and I don't want to have to build an engine I'll just use a game engine because someone did it and that became an industry. You can't sell a game engine if there's no gaming. So you have to have an application that might have some core technology. Is that what's happening in the wallet world right now? Are you kind of doing that? >> So for us that's exactly the same way. We build the infrastructure and now we have partners that create apps and tap into our back end. So they don't have to worry about all that stuff. An example is Coinbase. So Coinbase and us came to an agreement last year where we'll start helping them to-- they have a service where you can use your credit card to buy litecoin, bitcoin, and Ethereum. Well inside of Jaxx you'll be able to add that integration, connect them to all the chains. So their users can actually still buy that, but we can flip it using another partner and give them Polymath. That's the thing. It's about creating value with the different apps and we want to be the store that connects all these different apps to the blockchain so they don't have to worry about that. Bitpay is another example. They enable you to pay invoices in bitcoin. But they only want to deal with bitcoin. Well in Jaxx you can pay with any currency. We flip the bitcoin with one of our partners, send them bitcoin, they don't have to worry about all the back end. >> So you're creating inter-operability of money and value. >> And value. Yeah definitely. >> Or-- buy yeah money. Well bit-- you know. Crypto money. >> And the experience that my dad's going to use to understand this whole space. >> They don't have to write code to integrate. The user can just use it. Alright talk about the developer community. What's your advise to developers that are onboard and looking for guidance in navigating through. And people are learning really fast. You're seeing people come into the industry literally with some background that might not be related to tech but have natural math skills, natural coding skills. They're coming in and actually making a difference joining communities. What's your advice to these developers who want to build decentralized applications? >> So there's two separate kind of devs. There's ones that can be really good devs that can be onboarded into the space. They're not working on protocol level stuff. And then there's the devs that actually are working on the protocol stuff. And they're hard to find. They're hard to secure because you need the experience of number of years in order to do that. For us we actually look for good devs that we can bring in and onboard into what we do which not necessarily solving major problems. It's working with protocols that are solving it and integrating those protocols in. So the protocol level is very difficult to find developers right now. So I would suggest as much experience on that is going to be what you can do to get ahead. But in general if you're a good dev don't be scared of the space. And if you're going to align yourself with a company that can help teach you how to get in, that's what we want. We don't actually target blockchain devs. We target good devs, and we let them know-- we don't even advertise blockchain. Because sometimes they go, "Blockchain? I don't have that." But if you get good devs, we can actually teach them on our end. So it's actually-- we did a job fair about a week ago. We had 100 devs come out, pre-qualified devs, that we spent about a month trying to pre-qualify them. They came in, already had the experience. And we had 100 of them come in because they're interested in the space and we marketed as you don't need to know blockchain. Good devs, we'll get you into it. >> You know we was talking last night, we were having some cocktails with some crypto guys and gals and it was funny we talked about two things. And I want to get your thoughts and reaction to both of them. One was latency kills and the other one was women in the ecosystem. This event here has a lot of women on the agenda and so you're seeing a lot of great diversity going on. So what's your reaction? Latency kills and the roll of latency is something to watch and design against. And then the diversity angle. >> Can you first clarify what you mean about latency kills? I'm not sure what you mean by that. >> Yeah in terms of networking. So like for round-trip times, where you have a decentralized network. You're writing to the blockchain. >> Oh you just mean the slowness with decentralized network and how that's been impacting? >> Yeah decentralized networks and people throwing-- >> That's definitely a major issue with just scalability. There's a major issue which will be solved. And that will be solved. I don't really think too much about it except the problem solvers are dealing with that and they will get past to the point where we can use it and scale these technologies globally. And because of the competition with the systems-- >> You're not worried about it. You see it as just a problem space. >> No I try not to worry about anything. This will happen. It's coming. The second thing, I like to look at individuals. So I don't really look at the gender thing with it. It's more about individuals. I don't want to say I'm going to start now focus on encouraging women in the space. It's hopefully they will start taking initiative just like everybody else does. So I tend not to look at the two types of the things. >> Well I bring it up because The New York Times wrote a really negative story about women not being in the space. And I was just pilot lighting that this event, Polycon, that Polymath-- >> But it's just the way it is. And why even think about it. It's just it is what it is. >> I hope we won't have to have these conversations anymore. >> We want the best of the best people and I've got a number of girls that work for me and they're fantastic. But I don't necessarily head a job and say, "Well we got to bring in more women to do this." That doesn't make any sense. >> And that conversation should be just assumed. Alright so I want to get your thoughts on what you're working on. What are you working on right now? You got your company, you've done some great things. We know the Ethereum story and that's continued to evolve in a great way. Attractive to developers. And I saw Charlie up on a panel in with Bill Tye in Dubai and really commenting on he's long on Ethereum. He thinks he said it's going to be more valuable than bitcoin. Little haymaker for the young gun there on stage. Really important for developers. And you're pioneering with the wallet. What's the key things that you're working on both on the technical product side and on the business front for Decentral. >> So the technical side has been for the last year and a half building the back end infrastructure to be able to support 10 million, 50 million users. We haven't been advertising. We haven't been marketing what we've been doing because we think it's the wrong approach to actually go and try to just look for user growth when your infrastructure's not ready to grow. So our focus has been fully on being able to support 15, 20 million users. We're at about one million right now. All organic without advertising. So if you can't support that why do you want to be advertising? So we've been focusing the last year and a half to ensure that we are scalable and that we can grow when we hit the go button. So this year is all about hitting that go button. It's infrastructure's now in place. We are set to support 10 million users. And now it's the announcement which we did just recently about Jaxx Liberty, which is our new platform Jaxx 2.0. Which is everything you need for the blockchain space. It's your explorer, it's your charts, your graphs, your portfolio, your news directed on what your portfolio is. It's the one browser. You won't be using 10 different browsers to go to different websites. We've always had the goal to create the engine which is the wallet, and then the interface which is the single thing that the masses can use to understand the technology. So our focus is on partnerships into the app store of our products that connects to all the back ends. And basically supporting every company, creating wins for everybody, helping to push every product that actually has value, incentivizing people to create better valuable projects because then you'll get more support from us, and creating wins for everybody. I'm not about Ethereum, I'm not about bitcoin, I'm about the whole ecosystem. >> Yeah. You're about the growth. Rising tide floats all boats. But what's the value proposition that you're offering to partners on the integration? Is it speed to deployment, speed to value, all those things? >> So getting your token inside of Jaxx now gets you on eight platforms. And you don't want to worry about having a wallet for your separate platform. It doesn't make any sense. So what we do is we charge for integrations to come inside of our product, and then we have separate things. That's integration partners, or token partners. Then we have service partners. That's the Bitpays, the Coinbase, the-- all those guys that have apps or have integrations inside where we can expose our users to their services and they pay us. So our proposition to them is more users and more service on a single interface so that we can direct their users. And we don't charge users any more. We get paid through our integration. So think about us being paid for every website visit. >> Yeah. That's good value Okay so now you're going to give a keynote on stage here at the Polymath event called "Polycon 18." What are you going to be talking about? What's the vibe? What's the script? Are you going to wing it? Do you have an agenda? You're laid back, you're cool. Is there a talk format? What are you going to do? >> I never plan anything before I walk up on stage. Literally I like to look at the audience. Any preparation stuff for me doesn't make any sense. So I literally go up on stage and I always wing it from there. So it could be a little bit about just people working together. There's a lot of this versus that mentality. There's the whole thing of if you're not this then you're that. >> It's the if you're not Trump then you're-- I don't like that. I think there's a lot of in between. There's a lot of things that-- it's about working together. It's creating great synergies. Creating things that help the whole thing grow. And we've seen that. Especially a lot of companies in Toronto. There's so many synergistic relationships of gaps being filled in from companies just in Toronto that add value. So Polymath, securities tokens. It was needed. It was something I talked with Trevor about a year ago and he's taken it and flown with it. We support Polymath. But I also invest in other securities platforms as well. tZERO is something that I'm looking to get in. I've got about 45 different projects right now. It's spreading the love. It's saying let's all work together. As long as there's no scamming going on, I'm good. Let's work together, let's all come together. >> You know Anthony I did some checking around on you before the interview and I got to say, you know community. You know open source. You've been around and you've seen the formulas that work. I mean you talk about an open source ethos that's now going totally mainstream. It's not a second (mumbles) by a long shot. That's an old story. This cryptocurrency and blockchain and this new decentralized community has a mission. I've noticed a pattern, right. And you're seeing folks like yourself doing amazing work and pioneering and also the hard work. You're putting the work in. There's a mission. Take a minute to explain what the mission is. Because there are a lot of people that are aligning with this mission globally. Not just on the technical front. You mentioned this diversity and that's a good thing. What is the mission that really brings everyone together? Because that seems to be the magic that's going on here. >> Well I can't speak for other people but for me the mission is to improve life, reduce suffering, create value, create wealth in both knowledge and other things that can enable you to carry out those things. So my end game is improving life. Haven't fully baked out what that's going to be but my step now is to create wealth of value, wealth of knowledge, wealth of resources to be able to then tackle that afterwards. So it's all about-- I don't accept money. I don't take people's money. It's all self-funded. We're about creating value. The fact that I don't have any partners, I can move really quickly and I don't like to take people's money or hold people's money. I want to empower people with a tool. Or at least give them the tools so they can decide whether they want to be empowered or not. And I want to be able to just create stuff that's just going to create amazing value, user experiences, mind-blowing experiences, and just help improve things and drive technology forward. >> You know we align with that. We love that culture. We believe it's a pay it forward world. We've made our business at the Cube on paying it forward. Really appreciate you taking the time to pay it forward with us and share your content here. And I want to say congratulations for all the amazing work you've done. You've worked hard. You've made a great dent in the universe. And it's just getting started so congratulations. >> One of the best interviews I've ever done. Thank you so much. >> Thanks. Appreciate it. Take care. >> Appreciate it.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live, from Nassau, in the Bahamas. It's theCUBE, covering Polycon '18, brought to you by Polymath. >> Hello everyone, welcome. We're live here in the Bahamas. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of the crypto-world, blockchain, bitcoin, all kinds of tokens, token economics. I'm John Furrier, with my co-host and co-founder of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, Dave Vellante. We're here to cover the securitization of tokens, as well as all the action in the ecosystem. What's going on with token economics? What's going on in the ICO world? Who's investing in what? Who are the players? That's our job this week. We're going to get it done in two days. Our first guest to help us kick it off is Bradley Rotter. Crypto investor for five years, been in the securities, hedge funds, financing business, over the years great perspective to kick off, from an investor point of view, what's going on. Bradley, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for being a guest analyst to help us break down what's going on, obviously, you've got a lot of investments. You've got portfolio companies, one which you wear on your shirt on Rivetz, they've done token sale around cyber security, but as an investor in general, you're long on this game. Are you long on crypto, are you doing deals? What's going on? >> I've been very long in crypto from a very early, early time, five years ago. I heard about crypto from a 15 year old, which got my interest. I had been one of the pioneers in an Aztec class that reminds a lot of bitcoin, and that was financial futures. Remember when those came out? It was controversial, people were saying, it'll never work. I was thrown out of some of the finest banks in Chicago and New York, trying to explain to those institutions how they could use financial futures to hedge interest rate risk. It kind of reminds me now of bitcoin, but you can see the tide turning now, and it's in all the headlines. >> Yeah, I mean, we, Dave and I talk all the time about this, and that is, is that, and I'll get your thoughts on this, and get your reaction. You're seeing startups, really startups, doing token raises, and ICOs, initial coin offerings, and they need to grow. They got to build their product, then there's a roadmap. Then you got the companies that are pivoting, hey, let's just reboot with crypto, and raise a bunch of cash, and hope for the best. And then you got businesses that are growing, that really are aligned with token economics, most of the investors we talk to say that's where the action is, that okay, if they're going to be startup, then go with a hedge fund, and that's more nurturing, a lot more of a classic, you know, venture, capital-backed investment, but it's the growth companies that they're looking for. >> Yes. >> Do you see it that way, too, and what's your reaction to that? >> I think the issuance of tokens as securities is going to be a pretty big deal. And it's primarily, what I'm extremely interested in is using tokenization for infrastructure, for gigantic projects. It hasn't happened, yet, but I think I have ideas on how very large projects could be tokenized, and that gives some real advantages to the individual investor. >> Dave: You mean, like, what big projects, smart cities? Give me some examples. >> Well, this is my favorite example is that someday you'll be able to buy, you'll be able to buy a three mile stretch of a toll road in Texas. And as the owner of that three mile stretch, you'll get 25 cents a car credited every minute of the cars that are going down your stretch of toll road. You see what I'm saying. If you tokenize that infrastructure, you can then, it makes it more available to individual investors, but if you tokenize it, you can borrow against your token, your shares, if you will, you could hypothecate it, borrow against it. The tax credits for your infrastructure investment, could be tied to the token itself, and vary depending on, on the need for that particular infrastructure project and I think this administration, more than any I've ever seen, you know, is going to be very open to those kinds of ideas, and I think it's transformational. >> So that is transformational, being able to address our infrastructure problems with blockchain, (laughs) right? That's your vision. >> Exactly. >> So I want to get, Dave, your reaction. You were just in the keynote. We're here at the Polycon '18, it's put on by Polymath and Grit Capital. Two Canadian organizations, but bringing kind of the world together. You were in the keynote, they're selling a security token platform, so people can raise money with security tokens, which is really good, because SEC regulation in the US, it's a lot cleaner than the utility token, and for folks who want to learn more, go to YouTube, watch some of the videos that we've done on ICO 101. But Dave, what did you see in there? And then, Bradley you're going to get your thoughts on how you see it. >> Well a couple things. One is, and now it's biased, but the consensus in that audience, was that security tokens are going to dwarf the value of utility tokens, over time. Like massive dwarfing, number one. Number two is you're seeing a real mix of companies that are tokenizing their business. New companies, companies trying to solve problems, you know, this new internet we're building out, existing companies that are looking to transform, and have a logical reason to tokenize their business, so there's a lot of diversity going on. >> Your perspective as an investor. Security tokenization as opportunity for businesses to use and raise money and use capital. I mean, you got to secure something, I mean, security token is (laughs) >> Well this market has been so hot that investors have swayed a little bit from their typical diligence, and so forth. I think they'll soon start to realize by buying these utility tokens. In many cases, there's not much utility. In fact, you know, I ask everybody I see, have you used a utility token today? No one's really using utility tokens now. And so, we've got to keep that in mind. The carts a little bit in front of the horse. Will we use them? You know, I believe so, but we're going to have to make it really easy to use. Do we need 2000 tokens? I don't think so, it's going to be complicated. >> Dave: So what do you look for as an investor? As a reasonable profile, or an attractive profile, is it equity in the company, is it a rev share, or is it the utility of the function? >> I have done both. My first utility token was a company called MaidSafe. And I heard about MaidSafe from a 14 year old bitcoin miner, I always listen to 14 year olds, also. (all laugh) This young man said, this young man had approached me after I was giving a speech on cryptocurrency. We went out for a drink, in this case Diet Coke, and he told me about this company called MaidSafe. I went home and started looking at it, I was up til 4:30 in the morning, and a week later I was climbing on a plane to Troon, Scotland to go meet the developers. What was MaidSafe, what caught my eye? MaidSafe was a distributed, decentralized, peer-to-peer, self-authenticating, self-managed network that runs on math and logic, all the data's encrypted, shard-ed, sent around to the nodes around the world, and then the map of where those shards go is then encrypted again. It's NSA-proof. >> Beautiful. Dave you brought this up the other day, and we talked about it at the pool, we did a segment on a kick off about this event. We've been talking about digital transformation, vis-a-vis some of the old guard companies, the either central authorities, and/or incumbent laggards, or leaders. This token economics is part of the digital transformation that a lot of people aren't seeing. Right, so, you know, you said you'd been kicked out of many banks, you've still got these crazy ideas that are actually the ones that might actually be the best. And we think they are. Your thoughts, Dave, as you look at, you know, the digital transformation. Oh you got to have a digital business. You need to use the power of data. Data's the new oil, you know, cloud computing. Now you got this new variable coming in, decentralized, distributed data, what's your thoughts? >> I mean, I see, you know, we talk on theCUBE, we talk about SAAS, and cloud, and mobile, and social, and big data, that's yesterday. That's yesterday's news. To me, the future is, you know, machine intelligence, it certainly starts with data, and it starts with, And crypto, launching it plays a key part of building out that next wave of technology. And I see every industry being disrupted at different paces, as a function of, maybe, the risk within that industry. You've certainly seen it publishing, media, music. You really haven't seen it yet in banking, healthcare, but these are the industries that need the most transformation. What are your thoughts, Bradley? >> Well the banks better be paying attention to this. I think, if we're right about cryptocurrency, banks will become as plentiful and as useful as Blockbuster Video stores. >> I mean, I got to tell you, in my experience, the old guard, the disruption is going to come really fast. I think, and my prediction is that, and again, this is based on my history in the computer industry, is if you look at the billion dollar ideas, they're the dumbest ideas, at first. >> Yeah (laughs) >> I mean you go down the line. Google, we don't need another search engine, we want portals. Keyword navigation, the one I did, no, who would ever pay for a link on a search result? That's the dumbest idea. Airbnb, you're going to sell out your home? That's the dumbest idea I ever heard of. The dumbest ideas actually might be the best if you look at them. And when I say dumbest, it might be ones that don't make sense. Like you mentioned that one about Scotland, that technically makes sense, I get that. But someone in the mainstream would be like, huh, what? I got to do all this stuff? It's just. So it's kind of what's going on right now, isn't it? >> And if there's any fabric that connects all of those different ecospheres that you were talking about, I think it's going to be cybersecurity is extremely important. It's not generally discussed at these kind of events, but I view this just as much as a cybersecurity play, as I do a digital currency play. And let me expand on that. The most valuable data in the world used to be in the Pentagon. No longer. Two reasons basically, one-- [John] They've been hacked (laughs) >> All the data's already gone. But, two, if you steal the plans for the next generation F-39 joint strike force fighter, good for you, there's only two buyers for that. I believe the most valuable data in the world right now is a bitcoin private key. And people are coming for them. Members of the bitcoin community are being hunted, singled out and hunted to try to get their bitcoins. It's a real distinct phenomena. >> I like that term you used, fabric, because we kind of envision this fabric emerging where you've got industries which are sort of vertical-sliced, and then you've got these horizontal technologies, whether it's cloud, security, there's a data layer, and people are building businesses on top of them, and obviously tokenizing those businesses. We talked last night a little bit, and you guys are networking guys. You understand the challenges of distributed apps, distributed database, the latency challenges. You're a little bit bearish on the market right now. Is it because of those technical challenges, is it because there's so much Bubbalicious, you know, attitude going on? What are your thoughts? >> I've been a little bit bearish on bitcoin for the very short run, and of course it's, it's been in the headlines. At year end, it was the front headline in every journal you read. The reason I've been a little bit negative is purely for a tax perspective. And these, Let me explain why, these millennials that I collect, and I keep them around me just to guide me and, and give me a glimpse of the future. Most of the people at this conference, believe that when they buy bitcoin and sell it, and buy Ethereum and sell Ethereum and buy Cardano, that those are all like kind exchanges and no tax will be due, until they ever come back into Fiat dollars. They're absolutely incorrect. Absolutely incorrect. And so-- >> So they're exposed? >> They're really exposed, that's why I believe cryptocurrencies in general, bitcoin specifically have been very weak this year and probably will remain weak until April 16th. People are getting their tax bill which is difficult to calculate with thousands of transactions, in some cases. They're getting their tax bill, and they're going to have to sell some of their crypto holdings to pay Uncle Sam. It's a US phenomena, but-- >> But it's like people who exercised their options in, you know, 2000-- >> Exactly. >> And held on to the shares and then got crushed. >> The tax liability is fixed at December 31, but now the value of their collateral has gone down. It's a problem. >> Bradley, thanks for coming on, kicking off the show with us, getting your vision on investing. Dave good to hear about the keynote. More live coverage coming here from Polycon '18. The stampede is on, this is the show around security tokens in the Bahamas, theCUBE. We'll be right back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE! Covering Polycon 18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Hello, and welcome back, we're live here in the Bahamas for Polycon 18. This is a cryptocurrency tokenization event. It's really about the future of work, future of infrastructure, and all of the top entrepreneurs and investors are here, I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, this is CUBE coverage, our next guest is Mike Bucella who's a partner at BlockTower. Progressive, a hedge fund, doing amazing work. Really putting the stake in the ground. Making investments, and taking a new model of finance, taking some old school techniques, applying to the new school. Mike, welcome, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> We were just talking before we came on that you're from Goldman, your team has some expertise, what is the, what's the philosophy of the landscape now? As the young guns look at this landscape, it reminds me that the old days, the PC generation, everyone was poo-pooing the PC generation. Oh, they're just toys, you'd hear that from DAC guys. This shit's working, >> Yeah. >> I mean, isn't it? >> Yeah, so it's interesting. You know, when I first delved into cryptocurrencies I would say probably 90 plus percent of market participants didn't exist that do today. And when you go from old-world finance to new-world, you kind of get this little skeptical look from people. And that was last year, and now simply, six months later, you know, its obviously taken a massive leap forward both from adoption from the broad investment community, institutions, some of the large old-world players in the broker dealer community who are all kind of dipping their toes in this space as well. So, it's certainly grown quite a bit in the last year. >> I mean, there's two reactions to crypto, and one is, in token economics, it's, that's the future, I'm all in, I'm long on the game, and then the other half is, man there's a bunch of scams out there. I mean, I get two reactions from really smart people. The risk-conservative ones, or risk-management oriented it's all about scams in there, it's going to implode, to go take that hill, I'm long on bitcoin and blockchaining. >> Yeah, I mean, as with any new technology and new industry there are going to be bad actors in the space, but you kind of try and, try and bifurcate the community and understand who is actually driving the technology forward, right? Because, you know, I very much appreciate what the technology represents, I am part idealist but I am also part capitalist and realist where I understand the reality of the situation where I am right now. There are, there is a lot of inflated valuation on the market, there are a lot of players in the space who shouldn't necessarily be operating in this particular area, but see the allure of capital markets. But I think, you know, as the investment management area grows, you're going to continue to see a bit more, I guess diligence on the behalf of the investors looking at particular projects and understanding the risks associated with those. >> I was talking with Dave last night, I heard your, some of your hallway conversation when we were bantering last night at the VideoCoin event, and throughout the evening. You have a philosophy, and most successful investors have a risk-management view. Can you share your thoughts on that? Because I think, there's a way to do it, and there's a way to be a pro. >> Yeah. >> You've got your pros. What's the pro tip for you guys? As you talk to investors and say, "Hey young people coming up or seasoned investors, "here's the pro-tip on risk." >> Sure, and as we sit in a conference like this, an amazing regulated token conference, registered token conference, and anchor capital, and you know, any other conference you sit in, if you take a step back, and kind of put yourself in the broad community again, you have to understand that this market is not without its risks. You have to understand that investing in cryptocurrencies takes on an enormous amount of volatility and risk that you need to solve for. Right? So, as you're investing across your entire portfolio, you have to think of crypto as this sleeve as an allocation of your risk capital. And within that, it's going to be one of the most volatile, most cyclical asset classes you're going to invest in. So, you need to, I guess, you want to gingerly approach it, and you want to account for that risk in some way. And as, as fund managers, you should also be accounting for that risk as well. We can talk a bit more about, you know, looking at ICOs versus looking at the broad publicly-listed cryptocurrencies but there are very different risks associated with each one of those underlying investments. >> What's the risk that scares you the most? >> That's a good question. I continuously ask myself, what could crater this market? What could completely degrade network value, and cause the downside, which is absolute zero in this space. I had said for a long time, globally-regulated coordination of market participants, they can't regulate the tokens, or the technology, they can regulate participants, which could degrade valid network. I would have to say, that continues to be the biggest risk although, I think we're seeing, with Clayton and Giancarlo's recent testimony that, you know, the U.S. is looking to be helpful. They want, they're looking to stop a lot of the bad actors in this space, but they're looking to be helpful for the broader community. >> There was a competitive imperative. I mean, I would think. But there's got to be, presumably, there's an investment premise, that's not just, you know, short-term, I'm going to buy low sell high. What is that fundamental investment premise which presumably, you're optimistic about? >> I think you got to approach it from many different angles. Right? When you think about investing in cryptocurrencies more broadly, you should think about it in different types of exposures. Passive exposure, right? So where you have, you know, a small piece of your portfolio with the highest expected return in tokens that you think will generate the most value over time. Store of value, privacy coins, base-level protocols, like, you know, obviously a big Canadian network here, Ethereum, was created out of a group in Toronto. Then you think about the next level, which is more B.C. oriented. So, you know, folks who are investing in early-stage products. The next Ethereum, the next Bitcoin. Something that will displace the leaders, the incumbents of the current market. You can think about more risk-managed approach. Folks who are actively managing this space. To both take advantage of an inefficient mason market, which the likes of which many of us have never seen in a long time, from the traditional asset world. And then you think about private investments and things like exchanges, mining operations, the entire ecosystem. There's a lot of private equity opportunity as well. So you kind of want to diversify your exposures amongst those levels of the ecosystem. >> So those inefficient markets are the ones that are most likely to get disrupted, right? Everybody talks about, you know, banking, >> Yep. >> As, as one of the potential areas where blockchain, I'm just going to drive through, but generally speaking the banking industry hasn't been radically disrupted, as we all talk about it. >> Yeah. >> People are kind of expecting it. What are the inefficiencies you see, and what makes banking sort of right for disruption, and why hasn't it been more disruptive? Is it 'cause of the regulations, the risks associated with that? >> Sure, so, you know, banks do have large working groups looking at blockchain and how it can be implanted into their business. I think as large banks do, they're taking their time and doing a lot of diligence before implementing anything. That's not to say they haven't been investing in the space. You can look at, you know, Goldman Sachs, invested in Circle in its early days. Circle's one of the largest OTC dealers in cryptocurrencies. Circle recently purchased Poloniex, one of the larger exchanges in the U.S. And so, they have their toehold position in this space, and they'll be gathering information and data to understand exactly how it could potentially disrupt their existing businesses, and how they can evolve and become more, I guess, more disruptive in the ecosystem as well. >> I want to get your reaction to some feedback we've been hearing. And we've been commenting on it, on theCUBE here, and on the shows, you see a pattern emerging in ICOs. Certainly, we have enough data to see kind of what people have been doing. Certainly, the FCC has been helping. The FCC has been with the utility, kind of poo-pooing the utility. >> Sure. >> This shift, to security-ized tokens is a great thing. >> Yep. >> Makes the paperwork go faster, it's all about board, these vehicles that people are used to. But now you start to see companies are basically startups doing a big land grab, raising obscene amounts of capitals by startup standards, I mean, you go to venture capital, you raise a series A, and you don't have a product, you get five. >> Yeah. >> Maybe 10 if you got a rockstar team. >> Sure. >> Here, you're raising 50 to 100 million with no product. >> Mhm. >> So you got startups. >> Mhm. >> And then you got the other end of the spectrum, complete pivots. I mean, we're all running out of business, throw the hail Mary! Let's raise 50 million! And then you got the growing companies that are right for token economics. >> Yes. >> So, to me, everyone is focusing on those growth areas versus the pivots and the startups, because those got to be nurtured, board meetings, have to make decisions. >> Right. >> That's like a nightmare! >> Yep. >> I mean, not a nightmare, it's hard, it's hard as hell. >> Yep. >> So what's your thought, your reactions? Do you agree with that? Any commentary and reaction to that? >> I think cryptocurrencies, or digital assets, represent an opportunity for the very early stage projects, who have very smart technology teams, right? And guys just want to focus on the code and development but aren't the types of folks who can go out and raise capital and have the dozen, two dozen, three dozen VC meetings where they have board presentations, and they have to, you know, present their, the full-scope of what their project is going to be. These are guys who, who really are, their time is much better well-spent coding. >> Coding! >> And developing their project. And, I think cryptocurrencies, and what we're seeing here at the conference and the ecosystem are surrounding it helps smart individuals with good projects tap into the funding markets, right? >> So you're saying community is the new benchmark for operation, operating the startup, because that makes sense. Why spend my time going through all these hurdles and hoops, when I can just go to the community for feedback? >> Exactly. >> And governance. >> Right. >> Okay. >> Mike, can you talk about, just from the company's perspective, you always hear, well, that's a bad route because the FCC's going to regulate that, or it falls under some umbrella of regulation, so here's how to get around that, but. At the end of the day, I mean, why not? Why not absorb those, you know, adhere to those regulations? I mean, is it just the cost of doing business? Pay 100 grand a year for an audit? What are you seeing as the logical alternatives for companies? >> Sure. So there is a very lengthy process to doing a traditional listing in an IPO. Or, you know, for some folks, it's a matter of selling equity on their cap table, >> Dave: Right. >> Versus selling a token that's unassociated with any of the capital structure. >> Sure. >> You know, I think, I think regulated, or regulated tokens, right? So, what the future of this business will be are necessary, because-- >> Dave: Sure, it's inevitable, right? >> It's inevitable, right, and I think, for this market to achieve the scale that it needs to, you need to have a framework in place for a large institutional participation. And I don't think you're going to be able to get there without some sort of regulatory framework. >> You need guardrails, but you can't over, overtax the institutional investors. >> Yeah. >> You got to let, I mean the FCC is doing that. They're not, they're not clamping down, they're just kind of sending signals. >> Right, right. And the FCC is doing it, I think, in the right way. >> Yeah. >> Where they're saying, listen, we're going to, we're going to do our diligence in the space. We're going to understand exactly what the token economics are, why you decided to list the utility token, and why you went through an ICO process versus an airdrop. There- >> Airdrops are interesting. >> Right. >> Talk about that, I mean how does that view? >> Well, I mean now, obviously, that's come into play quite a bit, and people are debating whether or not they want to be doing the traditional ICO process or the airdrop. The airdrop, obviously there's a lot less economics associated with that, in terms of the capital raise. But, you know, I would say, again, I think what the regulatory indicis are trying to focus on is, for those, like we just said-- >> What to look at. >> Why exactly have you gone through a token process versus going the traditional route? >> That's interesting. So, I mean, I mentioned tax. Tax consequences is a big thing that's slowing things down a bit, and I won't say it's coming to a screeching halt, but, it's causing people to take pause, because, you know, I'm slinging APIs around, I got Bitcoin over here, I got Integrative Wallet selling Litecoin, and cross over the top is another currency, and all taxable. >> Yep. >> So like, you guys have done hedge funds before as pros. Coming into this new market, how cautious are you of that, and is the industry doing its thing? Are people going to go out of business because they misfired on their allocations? Or, I mean, there's a lot of nuances of being a fund. >> Yeah, I think, I think the biggest mistake you can make as a fund manager in this space, is not taking the most conservative approach to regulatory issues, taxation issues, and operational issues, like security. I think you want to take a hard line, you want to have both your outsourced service providers, and you also want to be in touch with some of the largest accounting firms in the world who have large working groups in this space, right? The big four accounting firms are obviously doing a ton of work here. And you want to constantly take in new information, and be prepared for what the next iteration of tax policy could be. >> Frame what you look for in an investment, and what you say, you don't walk, you run from that investment. What are the parameters? >> So I mean, I'd say broadly speaking, I don't want to touch on BlockTower-specific, but broadly speaking, you know, there's many different ways you can attack the markets, right? There's, you know I said, you can kind of squeeze the orange in eight different ways. And like I said earlier about the different types of underlying exposures, right? Passive, PC, active. Those are the ways you think about it from an investor's standpoint. As a fund manager, it's much different, right? You are managing assets on behalf of an individual, and you are their exposure to the market. Hopefully, you are one of their exposures to the market, as I think any responsible investor in this space should think about it in a sort of cross-list of risk. >> Come March 16th, Bitcoin will go up! That's the prediction. Pay taxes, and then back on the saddle. (mumbling) Mike, BlockTower Capital, congratulations, great firm. Really put the stake in the ground, you're seeing institutional money coming in, that is a great sign for a healthy ecosystem. A lot more work to do, thanks for sharing your insights here in theCUBE. Be back with more live coverage after this short break. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's the Cube, covering Polycon 18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here, live in the Bahamas for Polycon 18. It's the Cube's exclusive coverage for day one, wrapping up the segment here. I'm John Furrier with my coach Dave Vellante, co-founder with me at SiliconANGLE media at the Cube. Our guest wrap-up, old co-host. Anthony Di Iorio, co-founder of Ethereum also CEO of Jaxx and Decentral. We had a great chat yesterday. Welcome to joining our wrap-up for day one. >> Thanks for having me on again. >> Yeah, we do live this time. >> Alright that's a lot better. >> Kay, got it, genies out of the bottle on everything so we had bloopers on the last segment, little water break but on serious note, Dave and I want to wrap up the show. We do this every time. Day one, a lot of excitement from the panels. People in the hallway were buzzing, people doing deals. A lot of intimate conversations, Dave we see this early on at these shows. Anthony you've been out hallways, in sessions, talking to people in meetings, getting things done. What's the day one wrap-up for you like? What's happened here? >> So I'm a little bit different at events, I don't attend many of the sessions, I never have. This is more of a way for me to connect with people that I haven't seen for a while. I try not to do too many conferences anymore. I've been doing this for six years now, in the Blockchain space and I realized a couple years ago, it's really about focusing on what I need to do. So this was a little bit different. I did the keynote here yesterday and I'd asked if I could send my hologram instead but they're like, no, you got to come. We can't do that. So generally at my conferences, I don't really do many of the sessions. I'm, you know, just chilling out and kind of use them as vacation times too but it has been pretty busy. It has been good, I've had a number of meetings and yeah it's quite a good buzz. >> What are some of the things you're talking with your friends and colleagues and partners in the business and the industry? Is it tech? You talking tech, you talking personal? What are some of the things going on here? Because these events have a mishmash of all that. >> Yeah, I try to keep them both ways. There's business and personal stuff. I think, business I'm just going to get drained too much and it's nice to make things a little bit lighter. A lot of my meetings have been with people that are, they're looking to know what's going on. People, you know think about security tokens now and it's a change from the traditional utility tokens and it's a lot of just trying to pick my brain about what's happening, what am I seeing, what am I investigating, what are the different things that I'm looking for. It's that. Meeting people that I haven't been able to connect with for a while which is always good. Aligning other events and things coming up and then also spending quite a bit of day by the pool and catching up on emails. You got to make sure you do that stuff. >> Good, I wish I could have been there. We're doing interviews all day but we're doing whatever it takes get the videos out there. We had some interesting guests on, We'll get your reaction to. We had Hartej Sawhney who's, Oshi.io, co-founder, they do audits on smart contracts. >> Yeah. >> And some other folks. But the general observation, I don't think he said this but he was kind of validating and other things that Ethereum is by far the most developer-oriented chain. It has a lot more traction and smart contracts are getting better and better. We've been trying to get, kind of an answer, just kind of order-of-magnitude relevant to developer communities, what is a ballpark order-of-magnitude percentage in your mind of developers on the platforms? Is it is the Ethereum the largest? >> Yeah I'd say so, it was really interesting. We were really good at setting up the communities and we really were focused on devs. There was a lot of setup in the initial structures that was more business oriented but after the crowd sale, everything was down to developers building up communities because that's what we needed. People to actually develop on the platform. >> John: Yeah, of course. >> And Ethereum just had a way, I think it's mostly because of Italic, because of Gavin. They just was a developer project and I think that's what attracted a lot of the people to start building smart contracts, building things on it. And yeah, it's tough to raise the community with developers and I think a Ethereum has done a super job of that and it really is is that developer focus. I mean their event is DevCon right? Or the event is for developers. That's what they're focused on, on their massive conferences that they do. It's all for the developers. So that's definitely been the focus for them. >> It's still tons of upside right? I mean, you said yesterday, that you really don't look for Blockchain developers, you look for good devs >> Mm-hmm and I said to you afterwards, it's probably 'cause there aren't enough of Blockchain devs. >> That's not it really, for us it's that, I didn't... We've already solved a lot of our problems. We've created a platform that goes across many platforms. It syncs very easily, it integrates many platforms in. We don't work on the protocol level of the platforms. Like we're not actually trying to solve problems and create those, creating a platform from scratch that maybe will be valuable a few years. We're letting all of our partners and platforms do that. We're an app that is a... It's something that's not necessarily requiring Blockchain devs to integrate. We do connect to Blockchains, that's fine but we're looking for more traditional stuff that we're doing that actually going to monetize right now and it's based on stuff and technology that doesn't have to be created yet. So we're not looking for those massive problem solvers to develop protocols that need to solve major problems. So we can have good JavaScript developers that's what we require and we need and we can teach them internally what the skills they need on Blockchain. So actually we don't necessarily need Blockchain or we'd be looking for Blockchain devs. We're looking for good JavaScript developers. >> So guys like in traditional enterprise is that right? >> Yeah that's right. That's why it's easy for us to get those in but if you're looking to solve a problem, you're looking to do this core stuff, working on protocol level stuff then you need someone who's been in the Blockchain space for a number of years that can actually help you with that stuff and they're very hard to find right now. >> Yeah and they're also full-stack developers. It's really a unique skill set. New language, full-stack, they've got jobs. >> Yeah they're working tons of projects. They're demanding tons of money. Guys that have been developing on protocol stuff for five years. There's very, very few. There's so much more and they're so high in demand and also they want a lot more, you know, a lot more freedom in the work they're doing because they're so high in demand and I have one guy that's that's it that's a rock star. He works just a few hours a week and when we do have critical issues or critical problems, he's our like consultant that can help us 'cause he's been in the space for a while. He teaches, he's got an Ethereum developer meetup that he runs in Toronto. So he's our go-to guy but we're also just not about Ethereum. We develop, we work with 75 different projects. It's a wide range of things and we can also tap their communities, when we have problems. We go directly to you know the Dash community, hey, there's something going on here. Can you make sure that we're in the loop with this and we'll go right with them and find the >> You should run your, Dave's got a, we always talked about digital transformation. Dave talks about a unique perspective. Share your digital transformation, the role of the developer because that in the impact and get his reaction because we think that the developer on the district line applications is probably the most important trend that I don't think mainstream is talking about. Because it also doesn't really conflict with any other developer movement. It just adds more headroom but we see it from a transformation standpoint. >> Our scenario is that you know, you talk with Cloud, SAS, big data, mobile, social, Web 2.0. That stuff's yesterday's news right and in Blockchain and the developments going on in conferences like these really underscore that momentum and we see that organizations that are succeeding today and taking advantage of that momentum, they have data as their foundational, it's at their core. And there's so many traditional companies where human expertise is the core and data sort of bolted on and that's a big gap so we see Blockchain and this digital transformation converging and developers building this, new web, whatever you want to call it but this matrix of digital services which they tap to build new companies and so the role of the developer is, it's always been critical but now it's >> They got to build it up. >> Their stakeholders and in ways that we've never seen before globally. >> Yeah and they're also, I look at it as these technologies are still very new. They're going to take a long time to displace and disrupt other sectors and I think some people are thinking that they're doing, you know we're going to go from A to Z right away. I've taken the approach that we're going to use a lot of traditional stuff right now and we're going to build and make sure that we can monetize and make sure it's growing. We're going to slowly be adding things in. Where I think if you take a too long approach, you're not be able to actually last. So a lot of stuff is doing what, you're actually building traditional stuff right now too. That's what we do, like we use AWS quite a bit in the stuff that we do. We're not going to centralized storage for how we're storing it's just not proven yet, it's not scalable yet. It's good take a long time to let stuff is and until then you have to make sure that you're actually staying in business, you make sure you doing well. So it's a using a mixture of both things and not going right to the end game. >> You have to de-risk that yeah and take advantage of cloud economics that are that are there today. >> Yeah I mean, if you think about in the space right now. What sector has been disrupted by Blockchain? What has been made faster, better, cheaper? Right now in Blockchain. I can't think of anything. >> Crypto kitties (laughs) >> Yes that's a really important point. >> There hasn't been much value. >> But that's why I bring it back to digital transformation because you think about what's been transformed by you know, digital. Obviously you know publishing, books, you know, ads and I thought well is it bits versus atoms? >> Well is it digital or is it information transfer? >> Well its information transfer that has disrupted that. Now it's value transfer, that's what is coming right? >> Yes and so, but then you'd assume that Blockchain, banking but banking hasn't been disrupted yet? >> Not yet, it's going to take a lot of time. >> And so insurance, healthcare and these industries. >> Well I would say VCs have been disrupted. >> But that's >> I get it. >> Here's my premise, is that risk is the factor that will determine disruption. Maybe it's a little bit of bits versus atoms but it's the risk factors associated with banking, healthcare, insurance, defense, government stuff. The high risk, highly entrenched businesses, organizations but eventually they will be disruptive. >> There'll be signals. >> Yeah but it' a lot of, when we first started Ethereum, there was, we had shirts, at the back would say, Dropbox in five lines and that's just not true. You know at the time this was the goal but when you realize when you try to do it, this isn't scalable this, isn't going to be a done-it, it's going to be too expensive to actually do it if you're actually paying for Ether' to do it. It doesn't make any sense, so that was actually, even I was thinking that's what we're going to be able to do. We're a ways off for that. A problem need to be solved, scalability, biggest problem. Interoperability between all the different chains and how they're all going to work together that needs to be solved. How you going to stop these forking operations that happen at split communities when it went actually a coin forked or something happens you get these battles. Those are problems need to be solved now. So we solved the problem with smart contracts. Now that's the second generation. Now we're looking for other things like Cardan says they're looking at the third generation stuff. It's solving those problems and we're a ways off. So that's why until then you got to still do things with tradition and don't be afraid to use things that are that are proven and work right now in order to get there, yeah. Aright Anthony, well great to have you on the wrap-up. That's day one,we're seeing a lot of great stuff. We had Halsey Minor on, another industry pro. You seeing pros come into this business, you see you know the old dogs, the new dogs, the young guns. I mean, it's a really an amazing community. I got to say reminds me of a lot of trends kind of coming together and that's awesome work that you guys have done. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you of having me on again. >> We appreciate it. That's the wrap-up a day one, here at the Polycon 18. Token Economics, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain. All the players are here, doing deals, making making it all happen. It's the Cube, it's a wrap up. Thanks for watching. (techno music)