(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)