>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound. This is where global event from Silicon Valley, New York, all around the world, investors, entrepreneurs, all coming together to build this industry. A lot of great conversations, a lot of conversations around Puerto Rico as a place to domicile all these great investments and companies. Obviously post-hurricane, lot of action here, lot of interest. Blockchain for good, crypto for good, also for money making. Our next guest is Scott Mize, who's with Network Society Labs. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Scott: Thank you. >> John: Good to see you again. >> You, too. >> You have a knack for being in real inflection-point markets. When we first met, almost 15 years ago in Silicon Valley, nanotech was a field that was a great track, it's doing great work, has great impact. We see each other around. Hey birds of a feather flock together. You're doing crypto, doing some work. Take a minute to talk about what you're doing Scott. What's the work? Network Society Lab, what's that about? >> Right. I guess we're both living on the bleeding edge. I'm the C.E.O. of Network Society Lab, and we're a venture development firm, so we provide the same services as an incubator or accelerator, but primarily for the portfolio companies of Network Society Ventures, which is another company that's in the Network Society keiretsu, which is headed by David Orban, who's speaking here today. >> Is that a investment group? Or is that more of an advisory service? >> The fund is a seed stage venture capital fund. >> John: The deploy capital. >> Yeah, that focuses on exponential technologies in decentralized networks, companies that are driven by that. We work with those companies to help them be successful. >> Great, so two different groups. >> Scott: Two different-- >> The lab team is get down and dirty help advisory, accelerate the mission? >> Right. And in that same keiretsu there's also Network Society Research, which is a think tank, and Network Society Media, which is a media company. >> All right so what are the things you're working on? Give us a taste of the kind of ventures and projects you're working on right now. Most of the work we're doing right now is what we call token sale management, and that's basically taking responsibility for executing a token sale from beginning to end, all of the activities, and bringing together service providers that are world-class in each one of the responsibilities that you need to be executed, in order to have a successful token event. We manage them the same way a general contractor in a construction environment manages subcontractors. >> Is that because there's too many moving parts? There's a lot of lawyerly going on, you got tax advice. Is that the reason? Or-- >> Why we structure it that way? >> Well we want to keep a lean internal staff, so we don't want to have a huge head count, and also this allows us to work with world-class people, like for instance, on two of the projects we're doing now, Michael Turpin's the P.R. guy, so that automatically means that among the team, there's over 50 ICO's under the belt, and it's the same for every service provider. They've done some significant number of these, and the combined experience, the combined capability, is really the best team you could get together in the world. >> So talk about the global impact of this, cause we were talking last night, we were saying, "Hey, you know, killer app is money." And that's what Blockchain, cryptocurrency, essentially decentralized apps are all going to have flowing through them. >> Scott: Right. >> Value creation, value capture with money is the killer app. What kind of projects you working on that go outside the U.S? And is it a global phenomenon? And what's your take on that? >> I'll give you a specific example, one example, which is called Wealth Migrate, and they have a coin called the WealthE coin, wealth with a capital E on the end, and what they are is a fractional real estate ownership company. So if you're someone who's in the emerging developing world, and you want to begin to build wealth, and you'd like to own a piece of first-world real estate in the U.S. or Australia or UK, you can go to this website, and today the minimum is about $1,000, but by implementing the Blockchain further, they want to eventually get down to $1, you can buy a piece of real estate and enjoy the returns on that. So this is closing the wealth gap, it's giving people who are just getting into the middle class the ability to own real estate and build wealth. >> What's going on in Puerto Rico here? If folks couldn't make it here, what's the dynamic here? Obviously the hurricane pretty much crushed the island. It's well documented, but the entrepreneurial culture here is coming together with outside ecosystem communities. What are you seeing here in Puerto Rico? What's your observation? >> Well it's actually a pretty fascinating experiment. Michael Turpin of the Transform Group has been living in Puerto Rico for quite some time, and he was kind of the Pied Piper, evangelizing this place, and saying, "Hey, this is a great place to come live, it's got a favorable tax structure, etcetera." And I think it's fantastic that the crypto community is essentially adopting Puerto Rico, and also moving here. All this activity is really going to give a shot in the arm to the Puerto Rican economy, and people are doing that very intentionally, as a way to give back and help to rebuild the island. >> So what do you say to the folks out there that say, "Well it's not just Puerto Rico, there's other domicile digital nations out there." I mean today the U.K. announced, or yesterday announced, that they are going to convert to Fiat currency, with a faster payment system, with Coinbase. It's a significant, radical move. So can Puerto Rico maintain a position, and countries like Bahrain which Amazon works with, you got Armenia, you got China, you got all these, Estonia. You have people who are jockeying for similar positions. Is it going to be a new digital nation sovereignty structure? >> I think Puerto Rico has a particular advantage in this part of the United States, so if you're a U.S. citizen, then this is the only place where you can go and stay in the U.S. and get this special treatment. So I think it's always going to have a little bit of a niche there, but this is truly a competitive environment. It's global, it's very competitive. There are certain nations that are very anti-crypto, like the United States for instance, and there are certain nations that embrace it. The one that we like best, and we're doing a couple of token sale events or ICO's, is Malta. And Malta has a history of creating a regulatory environment that's very favorable to things like financial services and iGaming, so doing digital currency is something that's a natural for them, and the government and the regulatory agencies are all in. So they're a competitor, and there are many others as you said, but I think that's all good because competition will bring down prices, spur innovation, etcetera, and that's fantastic. >> John: But regulatory posture and policy will be the gating factor for competitiveness for nations. >> Yeah, that's one of the major factors, It wouldn't be the only one, but absolutely. When you've got a situation where the regulators are saying, "Our mission in life is to have a light touch. We want it to be regulated, we don't want a lot of fraud going on, but we want to make it easy for you guys to be doing these things." It makes a huge difference. >> So what do you say to the folks out there that would say, "Okay you know, Michael Turpin, he's got so many ICO's, he's just pumping and dumping these things, he's got so many ICO's." He's a promoter, basically. He's not really-- >> Yeah I mean he started out as a P.R. firm. >> Yes. >> John: He's a P.R. firm. You got a P.R. firm as a leader in the industry. Some people will say, "Hey, I want to see Goldman Sachs come in. I want to see real players come in, I want to see more validation." The P.R. messaging is not going well, look at Brock Pierce, he got taken down by John Oliver. New York Times wrapped it up-- >> Scott: Bad timing. >> So you have a lot of kind of thud out there. >> Yeah, yes. >> So what do you say to that? What do people say to that? I have my own opinion, but I'll share it after you share yours. >> I mean just one observation is, you can tell a lot about a person's personality type by what their initial reaction is to cryptocurrency. It's almost like a Meyers-Briggs, right? >> Explain that. >> Well just in my experience, I've introduced the idea of crypto, or now that I'm in the field, a lot of people have approached me, friends. >> John: Who want to learn. >> Who want to learn but they come into it with certain biases, and for some reason, crypto really pokes at people's biases, and some people can't get over the fact that well, "Why does it have any value?" And I go, "Well, why does the United States dollar have any value?" I mean you've got full faith in credit of the government that's in debt by 20 trillion dollars, is that a good idea? But they don't understand-- >> What are some of the reactions you get? across the board what's the spectrum of reactions? You've got the one end which is fraud, it's bad-- >> Scott: It's got to be a scam. >> John: The next revolution is here. >> It's the entire spectrum. Again like I said, it has a lot to do with what people's personalities, If people are very conservative and skeptical, they're going to be conservative and skeptical about it, and look for the negative. If they're very innovative and cutting-edge and open to new ideas, they're going to think it's cool and interesting, and is an agent for change. >> Well a lot of people I talk to, and here's my opinion, I personally believe that you can't P.R. your way to industry momentum. That's the old way, so I'm down on the whole press release model, just pump and dump, and you're seeing a lot of that, and it's not just the Transform Group, it's just P.R. in general. There's also people misrepresentation. So to me that's a communication vehicle, not primary. The key is value creation. Which companies are creating value? Which one's communities are endorsing? Who has real communities? Who doesn't? So I think as investors come in, the thing that I'm hearing is, smart money saying, "I want quality deals, and I got to peel away the promotional layer, and look at the core data." >> Scott: Right. >> That seems to be a flight-to-quality right now in this market. >> There's a major flight-to-quality. We're probably in the third or fourth era of ICO's, and there is a flight-to-quality because people realize, what I call these deals are vaporware or field of dreams. These are the ones where there's really nothing there and it's, "give me $30 million, and I'll build this, I'll boil the ocean for you." That's why we like to work with companies like Wealth Migrate, because what they've done is, on relatively small capital, proven a business model and started a business, and now what they need is money to scale that model, and those are the ones that we prefer, and that's when people can look and say, "I can see that this business model's working, and that's where a lot of the risk is factored out, and now it's just about making that a bigger business." >> The thing I tell people is when you look at selecting service providers or partners, whether it's P.R., strategy, advisory, it's not so much the function. I'm against a P.R. angle, but let's take Transform Group, They have a great social network, so the signaling is, if they are involved, so it's about the network you're choosing, right? So to me it's not so much the functional P.R., or the functional advisory, it's really who's bringing the network effect, investors to the table, partners to the table? >> And that's good and bad actually, because you're talking about hype. There's no more fertile hype environment than social media. One of the things I find to be really scary, is that a proxy for the quality of the ICO is how many telegram followers does the chat group have, which I think is just insane. >> John: You can game that. >> Yeah. >> Well Scott, what are you working on now? What's next for you? What's some of the things that you see happening in the next year? >> Well we're just staying heads down, executing several of these token sales or ICO's, and that's what we're going to do. We're also going to get back to the original knitting, which was our mission, which is expand our venture-development services, so have a full palette of things that the startups from Network Society Ventures can choose from, so that we can help them make successful. >> Token economics is a critical decision every company has to make, >> Scott: Yes. >> And having advisory help is great. Thanks for sharing your opinion here on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. Puerto Rico, for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of BlockChain Unbound. Back with more coverage after the short break. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)