(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation with Unstoppable Domains. It's a showcase we're featuring all the best content in Web 3 and with unstoppable showcase, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great guest here, Matt Mickiewicz who's the Chief Revenue Officer of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, welcome to the showcase, appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me. >> So the theme of this segment is the potential of the Web 3 marketplace with Unstoppable Domains. You're the Chief Revenue Officer, you guys have a very interesting concept that's going extremely well, congratulations. But you're using NFTs for access and domains, Of course through the metaverse is huge. People want their own domains, but it's not just like real estate in the sense of a website. It's bigger than that it's a lot going on. So take us through what is the value proposition and what is the product? >> Absolutely, so for the past 20 years, most of us have been interacting on the internet using usernames issued to us by big corporations like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, et cetera. Whenever we get these usernames for free it's because we and our data are the product. As some of the recent leaks in the media have shown incentive individual in companies are not always aligned. And most importantly individuals are not in control of their own digital identity and the data, which means they can economically benefit from the value they create online. Think of Twitter as a two-sided marketplace with 0% revenue share back to its creators. We're now having in the creator economy and we believe that individuals should see the economic rewards of what they do and create online. That's what we are trying to do in** support of domains is provide user own and control identity to four and a half billion internet users. >> It's interesting to see change that's happening with Web3 and just in cultural terms, users are expecting to be part of the creator the personality of the company, there's this almost this intermediation of the middle man whether it's an ad network or a gatekeeper of any kind people going direct, right? So if I'm an artist, I can go direct to my fans. >> Exactly, so Web3 really shifts the power away from a aggregators. Aggregators and marketplaces have been some of the best business models for the last 20 years onto the internet. But Web3 is going to dramatically change all over the next decade. Bring more power back in the hands of consumers. >> What type of companies do you guys work with and partner with that we see out there? Give us some examples of the kinds of companies you're doing business with end partnering with. >> Yeah, so let's talk about use cases first actually. Was the big use case that we identified initially for NFT domain names was around cryptocurrency transfers. Anyone who's ever bought cryptocurrency and tried to transfer it between accounts or wallets is familiar with these awkwardly long hexa decimal strings of random numbers and letters, or even if you make a single type of money is lost forever. That's a pretty scary experience that exists today. That 2 trillion asset dollar as a class with 250 million users. So the first set of partners that we worked on integrating with, we're actually crypto wallets and exchanges. So we will allow users to do is replace all their long hexa decimal wallet addresses with a single human readable name, like John.NFT or MattMickiewicz.crypto to allow for simple crypto transfers. >> And how do the exchange work with you guys on that is it a plugin, is it co-locating code together? What's the relationship between exchanges and Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, absolutely great question. So exchanges actually have to do a little bit of engineering list to work with us and they can do that by either using our resolution libraries or using one of our APIs in order to look up an Unstoppable Domain and figure out all the wallet addresses that's associated with that name. So today we work with dozens of the world's top exchanges and wallets ranging from OKX to Coinbase wallet, to Trust wallet, to bread wallet, and many many others. >> I got to ask you on the wallet side, is that a requirement in terms of having specific code and are the wallets that you work well with? Explain the wallet dynamic between Unstoppable Domains and wallets. >> Yeah, so wallets all have this huge usability problem for their users because every single cryptocurrency held by every single one of their users has a different hexadecimal wallet address. And once again every user is subject to the same human fallacies and errors where if they make a single type their money can be lost forever. So what we enable these wallets to do is to make crypto transfer simple and less scary than the current status quo by giving the users an Unstoppable name that they can use to attach to all the wallet addresses on the back end. So companies like Trust Wallet for example, which has 10 million user or Coinbase Wallet. When you go to the crypto transfer fields, there you can just type in an unstoppable name It'll correctly route the currency to the right person, to the right wallet, without any chance for human error. >> When these big waves coming out I got to ask this question, 'cause a lot of people in the mainstream are getting into it now. It reminds me of the web wave that hit the big thing was how many people are coming online, was one of the key metrics and how many web pages are being developed was another metric, which meant that people were building out webpages. And it's hard to look back and think, wow, that was actually a KPI. So internet users and webpages where the two proxies 'cause then search engines came out and everything else happened. So I got to ask you, there are people watching, they're seeing it on commercials on TV, they're seeing it everywhere stadiums are named after crypto companies. So, the bottom line is people want to know how NFT domains take the fear out of working with crypto and sending crypto. >> Yeah, absolutely, so imagine we had to navigate the web using IP addresses rather than typing in Google.com. You'd have to type in a random string of numbers that you'd had to memorize. That would be super painful for users and internet wouldn't have gotten to where it is today with almost 5 billion people online. The history of computer networks we have human readable naming systems built on top in every single instance, it's almost crazy that we got to a $2 trillion asset class with 250 million users worldwide. 13 years after the Satoshi white paper, without a human readable naming system other Unstoppable Domains in a few of our competitors, that's a fundamental problem that we need to solve in order to go from 250 million crypto users in 2022 to 5 billion crypto users a decade from now. >> And just to point out, not to look back and maybe make a correlation but I will, if you look at the naming system of DNS, what it did to IP addresses, that's one major innovation that enabled the web. Then you look at what keyword navigation has done on top of DNS, what that did for the industry, and that basically birthed Google keywords basically ads. So that's trillions and trillions of dollars. Again, now shifting to you guys, is that how you see it? Obviously it's decentralized, so what's different? Okay, I get, so if you compare here Google was successful, keyword advertising industry for the last of 25 years or 20 years. >> What's different now is? >> yeah >> Yeah, what's different now is the technology inflection points. So Blockchains have evolved to a point where they enable high throughput high transaction volume and true decentralized ownership. The NFTs standard, which is only a couple years old, has taken off massively around trading of profile pictures like CryptoPunks and the Bored Apes Yacht Club where the use cases extend much more than just a cool JPEG that goes up in value two or three X year over year. There is a true use case here around ownership of identity ownership over data, a decentralized login authentication and permission data sharing. One of the sad things that happened on the internet the last decade really was, that the platforms built out have now allowed developers to build on top of them in a trustless comissionless way. Developers who built applications on top of them, the early monopolies in the last decade, got the rules changed on them. APIs cut off, new fees instituted. That's not going to happen in Web3 because all permission list. Once an NFT is minted, it's custody in a user's own wallet, we cannot take the way it will continue to exist in eternity, regardless of what happens to Unstoppable Domains, which gives developers a lot more confidence in building new products for the Web3 identity standard that we're building out. >> You know what's amazing is that's a whole another generational shift. I've always been a big fan of abstractions when innovation is needed when there are problems that need to be solved, messes to be cleaned up, a good abstraction layer on top of new architecture is really, really phenomenal. I guess the key question for I have for you is, theCUBE we have all this video where's our NFT how should we implement NFTs? >> There's a couple different ways you could think about it, you could do proof of attendance protocol NFTs, which are really interesting way for users to show that they were at particular event. So just in the same way that people collect T-shirts from conferences, people will be collecting NFTs to show they were attending in person cultural moments or that they were part of an event online or offline. You could do NFTs for our employees to show that they were at your company during certain periods of the company's growth. So think of replacing their resume with a cryptographically secure resume like this on the Blockchain and perpetuity. Now more than half of all resumes contain lies, which is a pretty gnarly problem as a hiring manager that we constantly have to sort through. There's where that this can impact that side of the market as well. >> That's awesome, and I think this is a use case for everything we appreciate that. And of course we can have the most favorite cube moments, it can be a cube host NFT at Board Apes out there. Why not have a board cube host going on and then.. >> We're an auction for charity and OpenSea. >> All right, great stuff, now let's get into some of the cool tech nerd stuff, which is really the login piece which I think is fascinating. The having NFTs be a login mechanism is another great innovation, okay. So this is cool, 'cause it's like think of it as one click NFTs, if you will. What's the response been on this login with Unstoppable for that product? What's some of the use cases, can you get some examples of the momentum intraction? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we launched a product less than 90 days ago and we already have 90 committed or integrated partners live today with a login product. And this replaces login with Google, login with Facebook with a way that it's user owned and user controlled. And over time people will be attaching additional information back to their NFT domain name, such as their reputation, their history, things they've done online and be able to permission to share that with applications that they interact with in order to gain rewards. Once you own all of your data, and you can choose who you shared with . Companies will incentivize you to share data. For example, imagine you just buy a new house and you have 3000 square feet to furnish. If you could tell that fact and prove it, to a company like Wayfair, would they be incentivized to give you discounts? We're spending 10, 20, $30,000 and you'll do all of your purchasing there rather than spread across other e-commerce retailers. For sure they would, but right now when you go to that website, you're just another random email address. They have no idea who you are, what you've done, what your credit score is, whether you're a new house buyer or not. But if you could permission to share that using a log and installable product, I mean the web would just be much much different. >> And I think one of the things too, as these, I call them analog old school companies, old guard companies as referred to in theCUBE talk here. But we always call that old guard as the people who aren't innovating. You could think about companies having more community too, because if you have more sharing and you have this marketplace concept and you have these new dynamics of how people are working together, sharing will provide more or transparency but yet security on identity. Therefore things are going to be happening organically. That's a community dynamic what's your view on that? And what's your reaction. >> Communities are such an important part of Web3 and the cryptos ecosystem in general. People are very tightly knit, they all support each other. There there's a huge amount of collaboration in this space because we're all trying to onboard the next billion users into the ecosystem. And we know we have some fundamental challenges and problems to solve, whether it's complex wallet addresses, whether it's the lack of portable data sharing, whether it's just simple education, right? I'm sure, tens of million of people have gone to crypto for the first time during this year's Super Bowl based on some of those awesome ads they ran. >> Yeah, love the QR code, that's a direct response. I remember when the QR codes been around for a long time. I remember in the late 90's, it was a device at red QR code that did navigation to a webpage. So I mean, QR codes are super cool, great way to get, and we all using it too with the pandemic to ordering food. So I think QR codes are here to stay, in fact, we should have a QR code on all of our images here on the screen too. So we'll work on that, but I got to ask you on the project side, now let's get into the devs and kind of the applications, the users that are adopting unstoppable and this new way of things. Why are they gravitating towards this login concept? Can you give some examples and give some color commentary to why are these D-application, distributed application, dApps guys and gals programming with you guys? >> Yeah, they all believe that the potential for what we're trying to create around user own controlled identity. Where the only company in the market right now with a product that's live and working today. There's been a lot of promises made, and we're the first ones to actually delivered. So companies like Cook Finance for example, are seeing the benefit of being able to have their users, go through a simple process to check in and authenticate into the application using your NFT domain name rather than having to create an email address and password combination as a login, which inevitably leads to problems such as lost passwords, password resets, all those fun things that we used to deal with on a daily basis. >> Okay, so now I got to ask you the kind of partnerships you guys are looking at doing. I can only imagine the old school days you had a registry and you had registrars, you had a sales mechanism. I noticed you guys are selling NFT kind of like domain names on your website. Is that a kind of a current situation, is that going to be ongoing? How do you envision your business model evolving and what kind of partnerships do you see coming along? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're working with a lot of different companies from browsers to exchanges, to wallets, to individual NFT projects, to more recently even exploring partnership opportunities with fashion brands for example. Monetarily, market is moving so so fast. And what we're trying to essentially do here is create the standard naming system for Web3. So a big part of that for us will be working with partners like blockchain.com and with Circle, who's behind the USDC coin on creating registry such as .blockchain and .coin and making those available to tens of millions and ultimately hundreds of millions and billions of users worldwide. We want an Unstoppable domain name to be the first asset that every user in crypto gets even before they buy their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin. >> It makes a lot of sense to abstract the way the long hexa desal stream we all know, that we all write down, put in a safe, hopefully we don't forget about it. I always say, make sure you tell someone where your address is. So in case something happens, you don't lose all that crypto. All good stuff. I got to ask this the question around the ecosystem. Okay, can you share your view and vision of either yourself or the company when you have this kind of new market, you have all kinds of, we meant the web was a good example, right? Web pages, you need to web develop and tools. You had HTML by hand, then you had all these tools. So you had tools and platforms and things kind of came well grew together. How is the Web3 stakeholder ecosystem space evolving? What are some of the white spaces? What are some of the clearly defined areas that are developing? >> Yeah, I mean, we've seen explosion in new smart contract blockchains in the past couple of years, actually going live, which is really interesting because they support a huge number of different use cases, different trade offs on each. We recently partnered and moved over a primary infrastructure to Polygon, which is a leading EVM compatible smart chain, which allows us to provide free gas fees to users for minting and managing their domain name. So we're trying to move all obstacles around user adoption. Here you'll need to have Ethereum in your wallet in order to be an Unstoppable Domains customer or user, you don't have to worry about paying transaction fees every time you want to update the wallet addresses associated with your domain name. We want to make this really big and accessible for everybody. And that means driving down costs as much as possible. >> Yeah, it's a whole nother wave. It's a wave that's built on the shoulders of others. It's a shift in infrastructure, new capabilities, new applications. I think it's a great thing you guys do in the naming system, makes a lot of sense. It abstraction layer creates that ease of use, it simplifies things, makes things easier. I mean was the promise of these abstraction layer. Final question, if I want to get involved, say we want to do a CUBE NFT with Unstoppable, how do we work with you? How do we engage? Can you give a quick plug on what companies can do to engage with you guys on a business level? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're looking to partner with wallet exchanges, browsers and companies who are in the crypto space already and realize they have a huge problem around usability with crypto transfers and wallet addresses. Additionally, we're looking to partner with decentralized applications as well as Web2 companies who perhaps want to offer logging with Unstoppable domain functionality. In addition to, or in replacement of the login with Google and login with Facebook buttons that we all know and love. And we're looking to work with fashion brands and companies in the sports sector who perhaps want to claim their Unstoppable name, free of charge from us. I might add in order to use that on Twitter or in other marketing materials that they may have out there in the world to signal that they're not only forward looking, but that they're supportive of this huge waves that we're all riding at the moment. >> Matt, great insight, chief revenue officer, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for coming on the showcase, theCUBE and Unstoppable Domains share in the insights. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Okay, this CUBE's coverage here with the Unstoppable Domain showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This segment in this session is about expansion into Asia Pacific and Europe for Unstoppable Domains. It's a hot startup in the Web3 area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs, crypto, single sign-on, and digital identity, giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, Sajjad Rehman, Head of Europe, and Nilkanth, known as Nil, Iyer, head of Asia. Sajjad, Nil, welcome to this CUBE, and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really an expansion, the global economy is global, but showcase here about Unstoppables going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for inviting us. >> Thanks John, for inviting us. >> So we're living in a global world, obviously, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming, and it means more infrastructure, and things got to get easier, right? So, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff, makes the wallets better, give people more secure access and control of their data. This is what Unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it, you're on this wave. What is the potential of Web3 with Unstoppable, and in general, in Asia and in Europe? >> I can go first. So, now, let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically, we see the US market, the Europe markets, for typical Web 2.0 software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets, with US typically accounting for about 60%, and Europe about 20 to 30%, and Asia has always been small. But we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto, Web 3.0, Asia already has about 160 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries, in terms of the rate of adoption, many of the Asian countries, which probably you'd have never even heard of, like Vietnam, actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening, again, if you go through the Asian Development Bank's latest report, you have these Gen Zs and millennials, of that's 50% of the Asian population. And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion Gen Z and millennials that you have have in the world. And these folks are digitally native, they're people, in fact, the Gen Zs are mobile first, and millennials, many of us, like myself, at least, are people who are digital, and 20% of the world's economy is currently digital, and the rest, 40 to 50%, which is going to happen in the Web 3.0 world, and that's going to be driven by millennials and Gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting, because it's being driven by the users, by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this whole thing. >> Before we get get this started, I want to just comment, Asia, also, in other areas where mobile first came, you had the younger demographics absolutely driving the change, because they're like, "Well, I don't want the old way." They go right from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies. That has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say, in Europe, for instance, and even North America, I think Europe's more advanced than North America, in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. Sajjad, take us through your thoughts on... As head of Europe, for our audience. >> Absolutely, so, Nil's right. I think Asia is way ahead in terms of Gen Z user adopting crypto, Europe is actually a distant second, but it's surprising to note that Europe actually has the highest transactional activity in crypto over the last year and a half. And if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, for Europe, I think the opportunity in Web3 is perhaps the largest. And then perhaps it can mean the most for Europe. Europe, for the last decade, has been trailing behind Asia and North America, when it comes to birthing unicorns, and I think Web3 can provide a StepChain opportunity. This belief, for me, stems from the fact that Europe's policy, right, like, for example, GDPR, is focused on enabling your data ownership. And I think I recently read a very good paper out of Stanford, by Patrick Henson. He speaks about Web3 being the best part, here, for Europe enabling patient sovereignty. So what that means is users control the data, they're paying to enter it, and they harness the value from it. And on one hand, while Europe is enabling that regulation, that's entered in that code, Web3 actually brings it into action. So I think with more enablement, better regulation, and we'll see more hubs, like the Crypto Valley in Switzerland pop up, that will bring, I think, I'd rather be careful, better to say, not over-regulation, the right regulation. We can expect more in prop capital, more builder talent, that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders, are quite bright. >> Yeah, and I think, also, you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia, the demographics, even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture-backed startups, and the young generation building companies! And again, cloud computing is a big part of that, obviously. But look at, compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders. And it kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational... It's like the digital hippies changing the world. The Web3, it's kind of, "I don't want to be Web2, Web2 is so old, I don't want to do that." And then it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things inadequate with Web2, on the naming system. Also the arbitrage around fake information, bots, users being manipulated, and also merchandised and monetized through these portals. Okay, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of Web2, 3, at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies, who build applications. They're going to shift and be forced, in our opinion, and I want to get your reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be Web3, or users will reject them? >> Yeah, I think that I'll jump in and add to there in Nil's part. I think the Web3 is built on three principles, right? They're decentralization, ownership, and composability. And I think these are not binary. So if I look further on in the future, I don't see a future where you have just Web3. I think there's going to be coexistence or cooperation between Web2 companies, Web3, building bridges. I think there's going to be... There's a sliding scale to decentralization, versus centralization. Similarly, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what Unstoppable is doing is essentially providing the identity system for Web3, and that's way more powerful when it comes to being built on blockchains, than with the naming system we had for Web2, right? The identity system can serve the purpose of taking a user's personal identifier, password, blockchain, domain name, and attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, both in the physical and digital world, and filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think the users would, as we go to a no-code and low-code future, right, where in Web2, more of the users were essentially consumers, or readers of the internet. And in Web3, with more low-code and no-code technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation, you would see more users being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they would value owning their data, and to harness the most amount of value from it. So I think that's the power concept, and I think that's the future I see, where Web3 will dominate. Nil, what do you think? >> Well, I think you put it very, very nicely, Sajjad. I think you covered most of the points, I think. But I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening at the ground. I think a lot of the governments, a lot of the Web 2.0 players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There are a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I mean, I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest examples is in my home state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is. They actually partnered with Polygon (MATIC), right? Actually built a private blockchain-based capability to kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code, right? And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that short a time, with the kind of user control, the user control the user has on the data. That could only be possible because of blockchain. Of course, it's still private, because it's healthcare data, they still want to keep it, something that's not fully on a blockchain. But that is something. Similarly, there is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional, Web 2.0 world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time-taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain-based capability, again, in a pilot stage, to kind of reduce the transaction costs. For example, if you just look at the trade finance days where there are 14 million traders, who do 2.4, 5 trillion dollars, of transaction, they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days, to about two to three days. And so, to add on to what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet, and meet very soon. And when they meet, what they need is a single digital identity, a human-readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see Unstoppable Domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds, so that's my thought on all the logistics. >> That was a great point. I was going to get into which industries, and kind of what areas, you see in your geographies. But it's a good point about saving time. I like how you brought that up, because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps it takes to do something, or save time, make it easy. And this is the successful formula, in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And what about Unstoppable are they attracted to? Is it because of the identity? Is it because of the apps? Is it because of the single sign-on? What is the reason that they're leaning in, and unpacking this further into their pilots? >> Sajjad, do you want to take that? >> Yeah, absolutely, man. >> Because. >> Yeah, I'm happy. Please jump in if you want. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John, you're talking about Web2 companies, looking to partner in software, or potential partnerships, right? >> Yeah, what are they seeing, and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Nilkanth around the financial industry? And obviously, gaming's one, it's obvious. Huge: financial, healthcare, I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. What are they seeing as value? What's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why are they jumping in, with both feet, if you will, on these projects? Is it because it's saving money, is it time, or both, is it ease of use, is it the user's expectations? Trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving. >> Yeah, yeah, I think... This is still, the space is, the movement is going very fast, but I think the space is still young. And right now, a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that Web3 offers. And I think the key, key dimensions, right, composability, decentralization, and ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in EU is these Web2 companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that by enabling bridges to Web3. One of the key trends in Europe has been Fintech, I think over the last five to six years, we have the Revolut, N26, e-TOTAL creating platforms, new banks and super finance, super apps rising to the forefront. And they are all enabling, or also connecting a bridge with Web3 in some shape and form, either enabling creating of crypto, some are launching their own native wallets, and these are, essentially, ways that they can, one, attract users. So the Gen Z who are looking for more friction in finance, to get them on board, but also to look to enable more adoption by their own users, who are not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams, and create allocation of capital that they could not access, to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one trend I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is, in Europe, at least, has been games. And again, dead links or damaged, web creators would call the metaverse. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into Game Fire, which is, again, a completely different business model to what traditional game companies used to use. Similarly, metaverse is where again, ownership creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future would want to engage with that, versus just being monetized on the basis of subscription or ads. And I think that's something that they're becoming aware of, and moving quickly in the space, launching their own metaverses, or game by applications. Or creating interoperability with these decentralized applications. >> You know, I wanted to get into this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation, 'cause digital identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web3 is very community-centric. But you mentioned gaming, I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world, like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, over 15 years. Community, games, currency, in-game activity, has been out there, right, but siloed within the games themselves. So now, it seems that that paradigm's coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? How are communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >> Yeah, I can maybe take that, Sajjad. So, I mean, I must have heard of Axie Infinity, I mean, 40% of their user base is in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month, out of playing this game, is more than the national, daily or minimum wage that is there, right? So that's the kind of potential. Actually, going back, as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, and I think over and above what Sajjad said, what's very unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion, and 24% of that is in Asia, so almost 375 million people are in Asia. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is, how do we get these people on to a banking system, onto peer-to-peer lending, or peer-to-peer finance kind of capabilities. I think, again, Unstoppable Domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look at the pure Web 3.0 world, and the complex, technical way in which money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an unbanked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, to actually be able to do it. But something that's very human-readable, something that's very easy for him to understand, something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile. With 2G network, we are not talking of... The world is talking about 5G, but there are parts of Asia, which are still using 2G and 2.5G kind of network, right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. And, sorry, I actually went back a little bit, to your earlier question, but coming to this whole community-building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called this Women of Web3, or, oh, that is WoW3, right? This is basically to, again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, women need a lot of training, they need a lot of enablement, for them to be able to leverage the power of Web 3.0. I can talk about India, of course, being from India. A lot of the women do not... They do all the small businesses, but the money is taken by middlemen, or taken by their husbands. With Web 3.0, fundamentally, the money comes to them, because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities, communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably will take 10 more years, if we go through the normal Web1 to Web 2.0 progression, where the power is with corporations, and not with the individuals. >> And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for... This is democratization, it's what it's all about. Again, this is a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing. So great stuff, more education, more learning. And going to get the banks up and running, get those people banking, 'cause once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallets. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges, 'cause that's... They're not in the United States. There's a few of them there, but most of them outside the United States. And you've got a lot of dApps developing, decentralized applications, okay? So you got all this coming together in your territory. What's the strategy, how you going to attack that? You got the wallets, you got the exchanges, and you got D applications. DApps. >> Yeah, I'm happy to (indistinct). So I think, and just quickly there, I think one point is, and Nil really expressed it beautifully, is finding inclusion. That is something that has inspired me, how Web3 can make the internet more inclusive. That inspired my move here. Yeah, I think, for us, I think we are at the base start when it comes to Europe, right? And the key focus, in terms of our approach in Europe would be that, we want to do two things. One, we want to increase the utility of these domain names. And the second thing is, we will invite proliferation with our partners. So when I speak about utility, I think utility is when you have a universal identifier, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What then defines your identity. So in the context, in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. And that adds value for users, in terms of acquiring these domains and new clients. And on the other end, when it comes to proliferation, I think it's about working with all those crypto, and crypto and Web3, Web3 participants as well as Web3-adjacent companies, brands, and services, who can help us educate current and future, and upcoming Web3 users about the utility of domain names, and help us onboard them to the decentralized internet. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that, as, oh, and hopefully, we'll be having one, overarching regulation, EU, that allowed us to do this at a vision level. But I would say I think it's going to be tackling it country by country, identifying countries where there's deeper penetration for Web3, and then making sure that we are partnered with local, trusted partners that are already developing for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view and Nil, I believe those are wants in, for Asia. >> Oh, I think, yeah, so again, in Asia, one is you have a significant part of humanity living in Asia, right? So obviously, all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time governments, regulations, large banking, financial companies move, but if you can get the larger population into this whole space, it's good for them, so they are first movers in that space. I think we are doing a lot of things on this, worldwide. I think we've done more than 100 past podcasts, just educating people on what is Web 3.0, what are NFT domains? What is DeFi, and so on and so forth. I think it would need some bit of localization, customization, in Asia, given that India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which, each of them with their own local languages and syntax, semantics and all those things, right? So I think that that is very important, to be able to disseminate the knowledge, although it's global, but I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work there. I think also building communities, I think, John, you talked about communities, so did Sajjad talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities, because communities create ideation. It talks about... People share their challenges, so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. So I think it's very important to build communities based on interest. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities around Elegram, Telegram, Discord, Twitter spaces, and all those things. But, again, when you're talking of financial inclusion, you're talking of a different kind of community-building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will kind of, primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us. Just as an example, MATIC. They had, until September of last year, about 3,500 apps. In just one quarter, it doubled to 7,000 dApps on their platform. But that is the pace, or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole 3.0 space. I think it's very important to get those key partners, Who are developing those dApps. See the power of single sign-on, having a human-readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer all your assets, digital assets, across multiple cryptos, across multiple NFT marketplaces, and so on and so forth. >> Yeah, and I think the whole community thing, too, is also you seeing the communities being part of, certainly in the entertainment area, and the artistry, creator world, the users are art of the community, they own it, too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace, too, as well, because you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy, versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with... And no one knows what the tagalong has been around. So the whole inadequacy of Web2, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it evolution looks like, next abstraction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is, where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is, 'cause that's... This is like the nerd problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What's your guys' reaction to that? The killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable? >> Yeah, I think it's a nerd problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move. Again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked, those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see... You will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disrupters. I think that would be the people, Fintechs, I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >> Sajjad, you heard. >> Yeah, I think- >> Go ahead. >> I mean, absolutely. I think, I mean, I touched on creators, right? So, like I said earlier, right, we are heading to a future where more people will be creators on the internet. Whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content, and that means that they have data they own, but that's their data, they bring it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be able to transact on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that, and they will increasingly look to do so. And as they do that, they would want these systems that enable them to hold permission to their data. They will want to be able to control what their permission and what they want to provide, dApp. And at the end of the day, these applications have to work backwards from customers, and the customer's looking for that. That's where... That's what they will build. >> The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected, and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume, and not feel arbitraged. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. >> They don't want to be the product, right, so. >> They don't want to be the product. Gentlemen, great to have you on, great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift, and this big wave that's coming. It's here, it's mainstream. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Thanks, John, Thanks for the opportunity, have a good day. >> Okay, okay, great conversation. All the action's moving and happening real fast. This is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (contemplative 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)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE, covering Polygon 18, brought to you by Polyman. >> Welcome back everyone, we're here live with theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Polycon '18. We're in the Bahamas, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, co-founders and co-hosts of theCUBE. We're here with special guest Halsey Minor, entrepreneur, serious serial entrepreneur here on theCUBE. Halsey, great to have you. You're the founder and CEO of VideoCoin, a successful ICO. You had an event last night, kind of an investor thank you event out in the Bahamas Country Club, there, you're here. Man, you're a pro, you're back in the game with this crypto. This is the wave, I mean, I want to get your perspective 'cause you see waves. You've seen CNET, you started that from scratch before online news was anything, you were the pioneer in that. First investor, first operator in salesforce.com, a variety of other successful entrepreneurial adventures. You've got a nose for the waves. So just put it in perspective, what is this wave? >> Yeah, so I actually have an interesting story because I've actually started around 2012, and I launched my first business in 2013. So, the first problem that I saw was, how do you get your money from your bank account and buy Bitcoin? Still a problem, hasn't been fixed, right? So I tried to fix that. Oh well, I did to a certain extent, I did fix the problem. So what I did was created effectively a coin-based converter, and I started out and was going to make it very easy for you to take your bank account, connect it up, seemed logical, and then buy, you know, the currency. The company was called Bit Reserve at the time. So, no bank would touch anybody named Bit in their name. And it was even worse than that, all of us who put our company name into our bank account, we had our bank accounts basically shut down, right? So, I started getting an idea how difficult this was going to be, you know, Coinbase getting a Silicon Valley bank account early on to become a conduit, was very fortuitous. It ultimately took two and a half years and buying a big chunk of New Jersey Bank before we were able to allow you to connect your US bank and your European bank into Uphold to buy currency. So it's really Uphold, Coinbase, maybe like Gitbit, very, very few who've been able to crack that problem. We literally had to buy part of a bank to do it. So that's where I started. So I really looked at it very much as money, as a new monetary system. And I still see unlimited opportunities in that area. It wasn't until really a couple years later that I saw the block chain as the new architecture for the computer, and what I mean by that, is what Bitcoin proved was that if you gave people software and they ran it on their computer and they got paid in some funny kind of digital money, they would convert that money back into fee hock, you know, dollars, and they go buy more computers. And nobody asks anybody to be a Bitcoin miner, they just come and showed up the more, the bigger it got, the bigger the opportunity. And what's most interesting is when you make money or lose money, depends on your cost of power. So for most of these Bitcoin miners, they're near hydroelectric dams. So what I realized, and VideoCoin is in the area of video. It's a direct competitor with Amazon web services, everything they do in video. So there's, it's called encoding which is compress it, there's storage and there's streaming, three basic pieces. So what I realized was, two things: first of all, 20% of servers and data centers are not used at all. They're called zombies, right? So all of these people, the Airbnb, Uber model, they can all of a sudden start earning on assets that are doing nothing. But even if you look out into the future, if video mining, which is what we call it, ends up being like bitcoin mining, then what happens is that the whole thing works on the cost of power. It's not good for Amazon, if they have to be competitive solely based on the cost of power. >> Dave, so he's got an ICO going on, we looked Filecoin, right? So Filecoin was storage and that's infrastructure. You go to VideoCoin, we're streaming right now, we've got video. This is kind of like an interesting digital media infrastructure ... >> Well ... >> What's your take compared to Filecoin? >> What's interesting to me is that I'd love to get Halsey's input on, because you've got the full spectrum here. You started in publishing and now-- >> With five TV shows. >> Dave: Okay. >> Yeah, CNET had five TV shows. >> So right, and so very digital from the beginning and relatively ripe for disruption and then now into banking, which really hasn't been disrupted, but we all think it's coming. So that's an interesting spectrum. It's not Negroponte, I don't think, bits versus atoms, because you've seen, you know tax season get disrupted. That's atoms. So what are the factors that make an industry ripe for disruption? >> Well, I mean the obvious thing is really disruptive technologies, right? And so for the Internet, for me, it was, I started the company in '93 to be on commercial online services like AOL and I saw, I guess, the first browser in '93 and, actually at Sun, and it made me believe the Internet was going to be this incredible thing. And it was really seeing information coming in, and, you know, the Internet wasn't that big back then but I watched a gif of a storm, you know, from one of the weather centers, and so I realized that this information thing was incredibly interesting. And so what all of us did, the way I thought about it and seen it, is we're cracking open databases and we're just letting people have the information. And it was silly things like the ability for me to live in San Francisco but know what the weather was in New York and pack appropriately. This was the magic, I mean, we take all of this for granted. This was magic, right, at the time. You had to go out and buy a USA Today-- >> Check the stock price. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Call your friends in New York. >> Yeah, that was magic. So at a very high level, it was just access to information. At a very high level, what this is is combining information and money into a packet. Right? So now what we can do is, I can gather information from servers about what they're really doing and I can also be paying them at the same time. So you know, it would have actually solved a lot of problems around the Internet, because on the Internet getting paid was hard. And there were so many times we'd go into a meeting and we'd agree on the partnership but we didn't know who was paying who. You know? (laughing) Am I paying you for traffic or are you paying me for content or you know, how is that going? So this kind of comes with a built-in payment system, which I think is what makes it so incredible as a system. >> So we're-- >> And more stable, I am inferring, long-term anyway. Because that whole system that you just described on the Internet all blew up when the funding dried up. >> It blew up and I think, you know, I think there are certainly a lot of risks. The number one thing I would tell everybody in this area is, you know, be very cautious about what in you invest in. There were a lot of companies that, uh-- so my whole description was sort of the Internet bubble was that people say that, well, you know, nine trillion dollars was lost in investing. >> With everything that happened though. >> And when I-- >> The plus.com happened, everything happened. >> And what I said to the people is that it would be great if people had just invested in the survivors, but who knew what they were? The only reason the United States emerged, with, you know, with Salesforce and Ebay and Amazon, etc., the only reason that we emerged dominating the world was 'cause we invested in them all. Right? And so-- >> Even all those things that were called silly ideas actually happened. >> And they ended up happening. It was all a matter of timing, yeah. So you know, what's happening now is very much the same thing. You know, a lot of people are going to invest in a lot of bad ideas, right? But this is all necessary for the good ideas to get funding and for something big to come out of this. >> So I want to get your take on with the VideoCoin and in comparison, you mentioned Amazon, right? So our observation, obviously we're recording all these shows, Amazon web service, among others, the big guys are sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Look at the big whales, Google, Facebook, Amazon, I mean, we can't even run any ads on our site. We actually prefer to just push the content all over the world because it's hard to build a destination site. I mean, people going out of business in the media business. Video, your choices are Ustream now owned by IBM, Twitch TV became Amazon which was Ustream before that. Build your own custom player, set up a CDN, which is actually hard and expensive. Okay, so do I do Facebook live, again controlled by Facebook? So there's an opportunity that you're pursuing. Did you have that in mind? I mean, we see it every day and we know this, but luckily we have a good deal with Ustream, but the point is that is going to be up too. What's the alternative producers, content producers who have streaming, whether it's a pro set like this or someone who's going to have unlimited access to video streaming? >> So the real issues are cost and innovation, okay? And so Hanno Basse, who's the CTO of 20th Century Fox and one of our advisors, right? And all these media companies have the same problem. Nobody is watching broadcast anymore that'll cost them nothing and everybody's now streaming in, which is one-to-one and has a cost associated with it. So that's why, and even worse, videos going to 4k, 8k, VR, data that's going up like this-- >> Data isn't growing as fast either. >> So all these companies are confronted with all these costs and they can't monetize them. Google can monetize it, Amazon can monetize it. >> Tel cos ... >> Netflix, yeah. >> Ouch. >> But they can't monetize it, so it's all cost effectively and no revenue. So the one thing that we offered to VideoCoin by using all this research is we cut the cost 60 to 80%, so that's huge. The other thing is, in the early days, everybody bought Salesforce because it was cheaper. It was 1/10th of the cost. And I used to say to people, in the long run, it's going to be way more innovation, right? Because they're constantly, every quarter, rolling out a new version, right? And they're going to have the ability to connect, an API effectively, and the ability to connect, and the whole ecosystem can arise around that. And that's why their conference has 140,000 people, Dreamforce, because there's a whole ecosystem. >> It's sticky as hell too. >> That's right. >> Hard to get out. >> That's right. So while we are 60 to 80% lower cost, we're also effectively open source at the same time. So the ability to have a community arise and develop software. And so right now, you've seen this huge consolidation because it's actually kind of hard to build new kinds of apps on top of Amazon web services, right? But if you have this open system, and you have all these people are contributing code to it, all of a sudden, there are apps, video apps, that they'll be literally a whole new-- >> So you're going to have an open source contribution piece to your ... ? >> Yeah, I mean basically, everything we build is open source, right, so you know, all the way through to the network. So it creates a palate for people to start innovating in video. Because really what's happening is a lot of innovation is getting hurt by the fact these big guys totally dominate it, right? They don't want to see any innovation outside of the funds they bring you, right? >> Right, so you've heard my rap on this. I'd love to get Halsey's thoughts. So the big guys, you're right, have won. It's like centralization and victory. People here are saying, "No, we want to take it back." The premise that I hear a lot is there's been no innovation in protocols in, you know ... Google built gmail on SMPT, HTTP, DNS, it's all government-funded or academia. >> Yeah. >> And it's just a lack of innovation. >> That's right. >> And now, this is why I counter Warren Buffet and Charlie Monger, is no, we're building out a new set of infrastructure. >> That's right. >> Okay, so where do you guys fit into that? What are your thoughts, first of all, on that premise? And where do you guys fit? >> Yeah, I mean, look, you've got these huge companies that are totally dominant and even though they are, in fact, you know, innovative Silicon Valley companies by label, okay, they have all the same issues-- like I say to people, nobody today believes that anybody can put Amazon web services at risk. If I went to somebody and said, "You know Amazon web services which are worth 3/4 "of the value of the company, or 5/6, "depending on who you talk to, "there's going to be something after that." It would literally be a new concept because everybody's convinced this is Amazon's-- >> John: The winner. >> Yeah, this is their big, this is the way they make all their money-- >> Alright it's over-- >> Right, and if you say to somebody there is going to be a next thing, they would look at you like, you know, like you're foolish. But the reality is when you start changing some basic, underlying infrastructure in the Internet and you start doing things, decentralization, this is the word we're going to be using, you know, we're going to see it in solar power. And solar power is, you know, on a cost to benefit like this so, you know, it isn't going to be long before we're going to have power in our house legitimately, not like, you know, some science-fiction thing, we'll be legitimately powering most of our needs with solar that we connect because the cost is coming down so much. So we're going to see all of this decentralization happening. And in the world of computing, decentralization means that this is going to be the most efficient that computing can ever be. Because just compare using the Uber and Airbnb model of saying anything that's excess, let's turn into value. And I've heard that for every Uber driver, 15 cars go away, right? So the decentralization is going to have a profound effect on the economy and it's going to have a profound effect on these big guys. >> Oh, even those guys are going to get disrupted. >> They're going to get disrupted. And they're 20 years old, it's time for them to get disrupted, I mean, you know ... >> E-commerce is a 20, 30-year-old stack, some say 20, 20-year-old stack on e-commerce, all these things are ready, even what we would consider modern, you know, the miracle of saying oh the weather in New York. I mean that magic is here now in a new way. So I got to ask you the question-- >> Taken for granted. >> I got to ask you a question because you brought up that point. In your history of your career as an entrepreneur because you're doing stuff that's always new and cool, and probably before anyone else sees it, can you talk about some of the ideas that you've seen, not necessarily your ideas, as well others, where the investor said, "That's the dumbest idea "I ever heard"? What billion dollar opportunities have you seen emerge that investors have said, "That's the dumbest idea "I've ever heard"? >> Well, actually, the one that is Salesforce. No VC would put money in. It was really kind of backed by Larry Ellison and me early on. And what's so-- >> John: Google was a dumb idea. We want portals, not search. >> Yeah, so the bet that nobody would take in 2000 was that companies would take their sales information and they would put it in the cloud. Nobody would believe that. Not anyone. And so I used to joke, I used to say the only way it's going to happen is if the sales guy's been waiting two years to get his sales management system in place actually runs over the head of security in the parking lot. That's what it's going to take because it's outsourcing and, you know, the security guys say, "Oh, no, no, no, "we're going to lose all of our data", right? It didn't matter that Salesforce had way more security guys, you know, than these guys had and better, you know, working internally. Nobody believed in it. Literally nobody believed in it. >> This is your point about the decentralization, no one's going to believe, "Wait a minute, "that could never happen." So, in a way, the investor thesis should be, "I want to invest in the dumbest ideas," because that might be the best idea. >> It is. I mean the big, obvious ones that attract billions and billions of dollars, I mean, how many of those end up actually not turning into anything? Right? A lot of them, right? So CDAT was profitable on nine million dollars. I believe that Yahoo was profitable on three million dollars. I think Google was somewhere around 12 to 15 million dollars, right? So there are a lot of these business-- Amazon's obviously the outlier. >> John: It's still not profitable. >> Yeah, it's the outlier. But you know, a lot of these businesses were started by people who used a relatively small amount of money and were very creative. You know, you're going to hear this over and over again. Microsoft never needed any money. They accepted five million dollars from-- >> John: (mumbles) >> Yeah, so this happens a lot. And in fact, I think it's very dangerous when in year five, you're losing three hundred million dollars, right? I mean, five hundred, or whatever it is. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. >> What's the role of community? Because we heard the guy from Locktower Capital say something I thought was really profound, "I don't need VC because, if you're a startup, "you don't have to waste your energy on board meetings "and other things, you can build your business "and use the community as your benchmark." So this plays to your whole picking up the slack kind of thing in efficiency. So entrepreneurs can be more efficient in these communities. This is where the cryptocurrency Blockchain is thriving. What's your thoughts to that and how do you see that community interaction progressing? >> In my career, there's been a sea change in sort of the culture of technology and really everything, right? You know, when I started out, everything was very hierarchical. You know, it's like how far up the chain you got that measured how successful you were. Now it's how big is your network, right? And you know, I was talking to somebody the other day who said VCs are going in and they're measuring these companies' success by how many Instagram and Twitter accounts they have and there's massive fraud going on because people are buying these accounts to pump up their numbers, right? So people are starting to value by the breadth of your network. >> John: Reputable network. >> Reputable, yeah. >> John: Not fake network. >> Yeah, but what I heard is there's actually a Twitter application which I haven't seen that'll go in and tell how many of 'em are real and how many of 'em are not now. So really the community becomes almost the measuring stick for your value. You know, before I'd seen it, I had users. Today, everybody has community members. And so, it becomes sort of, kind of like everything I guess. >> And our media model is all community-based which is, we just naturally go there because that's where the data is. >> That's right. >> That's where the feedback is. >> That's right. >> I mean, I can't get feedback from Facebook and Google, they own the data, right? There's no letters to the editor on Facebook. There's only hate comments. >> But you know before Microsoft and all these came, you know, IBM dominated the world. Nobody ever thought they would go away. AT&T dominated the world and nobody ever thought that they would go away, you know. >> Alright, personal question for you, I got to wrap because I know you got to go. Appreciate your time, by the way. Great story, we could go on for another hour. Personal note, what is the most compelling thing that's moved you, as an entrepreneur, in the crypto market? Like, something that, it could be an anecdote, it could be a situation. When you look at this opportunity, as the world's going to eventually be re-instrumented with data, with new open source and community, what's something that's surprised you or moves you as an entrepreneur saying, "This is freakin' awesome"? >> So this hasn't been done yet but it will be done. So this is what actually motivated me to start Uphold was the ability to turn your phone into your bank and to be able to exchange money and primarily really solving the ability for the poor to be able to move money around without having 10 to 20 to 30% of it taken away. Everybody's talked about this, remittance, and so far, nobody has actually solved that problem. That problem is going to get solved. I mean it's inevitable that the phone becomes the bank. There are so many regulations that are designed to stop that and it's extraordinary. Once you get into it and you see all the ways that have been set up-- >> Byzantine system. >> this problem should have been solved long ago, right? And every phone should be a bank. I mean, it can be connected to a bank, but every phone should have my money in it. I should be able to send it to you instantaneously. >> It shouldn't be like getting into Fort Knox. >> Yeah. I mean, computers, banks have computers, they could make this happen today. They just don't want to. So I think the most profound thing for me is the problem is still not solved, that the problem I set out to solve, which is really creating a more equitable financial system. And we live in a country where the banks make about 37 billion dollars a year in bounced check fees. Think about that. Thirty-seven billion dollars in bounced check fees. So if you just take that out, you just take out, 'cause it all affects people in the lower socioeconomic scale, you create a revolution. Just getting rid of the bank fees that you'll pay for bouncing checks. >> Well, I mean the narratives, like the narrative of taking down gatekeepers or central authorities, is the premise of this ecosystem and you could take that example and apply it to thousands of use cases. >> And banks are rapacious, flat out. American banks are the most rapacious 'cause no other country would allow 37 billion dollars to be taken away in bounced check fees. >> Halsey, congratulations on your success again and great to see you on theCUBE. You're now a Cube alumni, so ... >> Congratulations. >> We hope you'll come back again. >> Yeah, thank you guys. >> We're going to get you in our telegram group, now you'll be 42 members, we just turned on last night. (everyone laughs) We appreciate it and congratulations. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for your insight and experience and commentary. Halsey Minor, experienced entrepreneur, pro, here in the trenches, establishing a great new venture. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE, covering Polygon 18, brought to you by Polymax. >> Hello, welcome back to our live coverage of this exclusive Cube coverage in the Bahamas for PolyCon 18. It's cryptocurrency, it's token economics, its de-centralized world, it's all about the future of the Internet, Dave. I'm with Dave Vellante here, our next guest is Margaux Avedisian, EVP of Transform Group, and partner and co-founder of Cool Pool Fund. Great to have you on. Thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> So you're on the Women's Panel. I saw you up there: Women in Crypto one of our big focus areas this year, as well as Crypto for Good. So super excited to have a conversation with you, but first take a step back. Introduce yourself, what are you workin' on? What's cool? What's gettin' you excited in the space, in life? What is the crypto thing? What does it mean to you? >> Sure, so I lived in San Francisco in 2011, so I had a bunch of nerd friends, and you know, I heard about this crazy crypto currency called Bitcoin. I had free office space for my startup, so that meant free electricity, so I was like, oh, let's start mining, 'cause we have free electricity. You know, we're not really raisin' money with this thing. (laughter) And I ended up not doing that. I thought that'd be a jerk thing, but I'd be retired by now, so kind of regretting that decision. So 2012, I met the people who were re-launching the first American bitcoin exchange, Trade Hill. I ended up joining that, and at that time, I used to say, oh, I'm the leading woman in bitcoin, but I was also the only woman in bitcoin. (laughter) And then after that, I ended up co-founding another bitcoin exchange called Alpha Coin, which pivoted still around, and then I co-founded another exchange called Magnetico, pivoted also still around, and then I joined Transform Group as EVP, and we're the leading PR firm in the bitcoin and blockchain ICO space. So we've done most of the big ICOs. We did Ethereum, Auger, Made Safe, Gollum, Nosis, Quantum, Unicoin, Wax, Bancor, et cetera. We've done over 70, 60 at this point, so I have a lot of experience seeing ICOs, how they've kind of changed and evolved. Then I started a pre-ICO syndicate, so getting in before the public sale, getting a super discount, which then turned into a fund, because people were like, can I just give you money? This is really complicated, like I don't know what I'm doing, so I was like forced. My hand was forced. (chuckling) >> Yeah, I'll take your cash. Just send it to me. No contract. >> Well no no no, actually the space, you really have to have a team of lawyers. It, you know, they're not too big to fail. >> Just take the cash and say you were hacked, and then disappear, right? >> Yeah you know, that's getting a little more difficult to do that. It looks like they're tracking now. >> Margaux wouldn't steal electricity. (laughter) She's not going to do that. >> That's actually true. >> Of course, I'm being facetious. I'm a comedian, for crying out loud. I'm trying to get her on a roll, here. Okay, funniest story in crypto for you right now that you've seen, could be back in history in time. >> Yeah. >> What's the funniest thing you've seen? Or the most outrageous thing? >> Is this PG? Or like, what can I? >> It's Internet, it's unrated. It's NC-17 or unrated. >> Alright, you mean the time when one of the crypto, hedge fund people took a ton of liquid acid and then I had to take care of him, and he ended up eating all of my birth control pills, and I had to take him to the hospital because I thought he was going to die. (laughter) So that was pretty crazy. >> Anchor: OD'd on birth control pills. That's a first. >> That would be a first. >> 'Cause the only person that was awake at the time that I could ask who was a chemist and who was an EMT said his body temperature, but when I took him to the hospital, the nurses, I thought he was going to die, and then the nurses are all like, well, he's not going to get his period. (laughter) >> That's for sure. >> I'm like, is he going to die? They're like, bring him back if he's spotting. (laughter) I'm like, so he's okay? He's alright? And so, yeah, it was fun, they were like, we're more worried about the acid. So, yeah that's I guess maybe up there in the top five. >> So you've seen 60, 70, you've seen a lot. You've got a good observation space. Tell us what that's like, I mean, public relations for me is hard, like messaging, I don't have that gene, as you know, John. So, how have you been able to shape it. Do you get a lot of 'em and just go oh no, these guys really need tons of help, or take us through some of the examples, maybe not specifically but just generally how you would approach that problem. >> Sure, so first of all, we don't just take anyone. We do vetting and it has to have a story we can sell. Luckily at our firm, we have a lot of people, including the founder Michael Turpin and myself, who have a background in this space, so we understand really what they're saying. And our job, really, is to break it down so regular people understand what the heck we're talking about and why it's important. So I think a lot of, part of the problem with people not getting into crypto currency is that they get too hung up on the technical details. You know, I don't know how my television turns on. I don't know how my debit card works. There's so many things we do without knowing the technical backgrounds of it, and we don't get hung up on that. And for some reason, this industry, people get really hung up on the technology instead of understanding the uses and the purpose of it, and so that's what we really do. We talk about what is the purpose of this? How is this important? How is this changing an industry? And relating it, maybe, to news that's going on right then. So it's really just making it understandable to regular people. >> Yeah, some of the women in crypto conversation, women in tech >> Sure. >> Dave and I have a passion for this because we have a lot of women friends that are either executives and or in good positions, and we interview them, like they were a guy. So we never really got into that whole thing. Turns out we got a big library of women in tech, and it's been so politicized and it's so important. And certainly we agree that, you got to do all that, but if we're even having the conversation, that makes it a problem. So at what point, then, do we need to do kind of keep the vibe going to saying, okay, let's focus on positive, and what's your just view of how to make it engaging, 'cause women make up 50% of the population. >> Yeah. >> And so, what do we do? >> First, I want to say, there are actually some badass women in crypto. Two of the biggest ICOs had female founders. They're Bancor and Tezos. I would say more than you would expect, but they're not as loud and brash as I am, so it might be harder for you to see them. Conferences definitely need to be putting more women on these panels. >> This conference here has a lot of representation, by far, really strong. >> Yeah, well, to be honest, like putting me on a Women in Blockchain panel. I love talking to women, and it's inspiring them, and telling them you can do it, 'cause part of the thing is, nobody's a blockchain expert, alright? There's no such thing because it's just changing so fast. There's too much information out there. And I think sometimes women get hung up on needing to know everything before they do something, and I like to say, you know, probably 80% of the men here have no idea what they're talking about. So, you don't have to >> John: I mean, always be learning in this space. This is an evolution. >> Yeah, and in doing, when I first got into this space and started the first American bitcoin exchange, I didn't even know what an exchange was, you know? But I met one of the co-founders of YouTube, who was into bitcoin, who had a fund, and I ended up leveraging that to get into this, and I learned as I went, and what's so exciting right now about blockchain is that it's really integrated in pretty much every industry you can imagine. I mean, people are doing ICOs in health care, in fashion, in anything you can think of. So if you have experience and skills in one industry, you can then leverage that in another. So if you're a woman in finance, guess what? If you join someone's ICO, and they have someone from a traditional finance world, you're lending credibility, and that's valuable. And that kind of experience, and we need to bring more mature industries into blockchain. >> This is what I think, I mean, you've heard me say this, like never before, you could see, because it's digital, because it's data, as blockchain is, people can traverse industries like never before. >> Yeah. >> It used to be, if you're in health care, you're in health care for life, that's it. >> Yeah. >> But some of the digital skills that people are learning are applicable to other industries. Do you feel like, I think you just said it, that that will promote more woman involvement. You're saying it's disproportionately high here. I don't know. >> I thought it was a little interesting that they put me on a Women in Blockchain panel instead of putting me on a panel that I could talk about my experience, since I have a lot. >> Dave: That's my point. >> Instead of that. >> Winning Women, or whatever, I mean. >> Well, I wouldn't segregate all the women into one panel. I would want to put them on other panels, I mean. >> Yeah, I mean you want to put them on panels where there are pros, and they can do the job independently. >> Exactly. >> Just being a player. >> Alright, Margaux. >> A lot of women say that though. They say, let's not make this about women in tech or you know Lara Logan, and that crew, Naomi Tutu. It all depends >> And so their social justice gene >> but I'm curious how do you feel about that? It was shining a light on whether it's women in tech or women in crypto, does that, is that offensive to you? Do you welcome that? Some welcome it, others? >> I think it's weird because I've been in this industry for so long, and now I think it's good that it's becoming a topic, but it was never anything that I even paid attention to. In fact, I'd rather focus on the positives, 'cause being a woman in this industry is great because, guess what, I can just say whatever I want. I can get away with saying things and calling out the elephant in the room where most men can't. But it's, I think part of the problem is these guys here want to hire women, but how do they find them? And I just had someone come up to me from Zedd saying, we want to hire a female CMO, like how do we find that? And the jobs are out there, it's about being able to get these women who want to do this and connecting them to opportunities. bUt on the other hand, women really need to be more assertive and be like hey, I don't know anything about blockchain, but I want to learn. So I'm going to go to a conference instead of being like I don't know anything, and I'm scared, so I don't want to go to a conference, you know? Like I said, most men don't know what they're talking about here. >> Well I mean, everyone's learning. We're trying to figure it out. Margaux, thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. >> We're looking for the stand-up comedian act. We'll get that on our next episode Thanks for comin' on. >> Yeah! And check out my videos, too, if you want. >> Alright, what's your YouTube address? >> It's youtube.com/margauxwithanx. Thank you. >> Alright, we'll put it on the blog. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break. (electronic music)