(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's extended coverage. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We are here in Monaco at the Yacht Club, part of the VIP Gala with Prince Albert, DigitalBits, theCUBE. theCUBE and Prince Albert celebrating Monaco leaning into crypto. I'm here with Natasha Mahfar, who's our guest. She just came on theCUBE. Great story. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Tell the folks what you do real quick. >> Sure. So I actually started my career in Silicon Valley, like you have. And I had the idea of creating a startup in mental health that was voice based only. So it was peer to peer support groups via voice. So I created this startup, pretended to be a student at Stanford and built out a whole team, and unfortunately, at that time, no one was in the space of mental health and voice. Now, as you know, it's a $30 billion industry that's one of the biggest in Silicon Valley. So my career really started from there. And due to that startup, I got involved in the World XR Forum. Now, the World XR Forum is kind of like a mini Davos, but a little bit more exclusive, where we host entrepreneurs, people in blockchain, crypto, and we have a five day event covering all sorts of topics. So- >> When you host them, you mean like host them and they hang out and sleep over? It's a hotel? Is it an event? A workshop? >> There's workshops. We arrange hotels. We pretty much arrange everything that there is. >> It's a group get together. >> It's a group get together. Pretty much like Davos. >> And so Natasha, I wanted to talk to you about what we're passionate about which is theCUBE is bringing people up to have a voice and give them a voice. Give people a platform. You don't have to be famous. If you have something to say and share, we found that right now in this environment with media, we go out to an event, we stream as many stories, but we also have the virtual version of our studio. And I could tell you, I've found that internationally now as we bring people together, there are so many great stories. >> Absolutely. >> Out there that need to be told. And the bottleneck isn't the media, it's the fact that it's open now. >> Yes. >> So why aren't the stories coming out? So our mission is to get the stories. >> Wow. >> Scale stories. The more stories that are scaled, the more people can feel it. More people are impacted by it, and it changes the world. It gets people serendipity with data 'cause we're, you know, you shared some data about what you're working on. >> Yeah, of course. It's all about data these days. And the fact that you're doing it so openly is great because there is a need for that today, so. >> What do you see right now in the market for media? I mean, we got emerging markets, a lot of misinformation. Trust is a big problem. >> Right. >> Bullying, harassing. Smear campaigns. What's news, what's not news. I mean, how do you get your news? I mean, how do people figure out what's going on? >> No, absolutely. And this is such a pure format and a way of doing it. How did you come up with the idea, and how did you start? >> Well, I started... I realized after the Web 2.0, when social media started taking over and ruining the democratization . Blogging, podcasting, which I started in 2004, one of the first podcasts in Silicon Valley. >> Wow. >> I saw the network of that. I saw the value that people had when normal people, they call it user generated content, shared information. And I discovered something amazing that a nobody like me can have a really top podcast. >> Well, you're definitely not a nobody, but... >> Well, I was back then. And nobody knew me back then. But what it is is that even... If you put your voice out there, people will connect to it. And if you have the ability to bring other people in, you start to see a social dynamic. And what social media ruined, Facebook, Twitter, not so much Twitter 'cause Twitter's more smeary, but it's still got to open the API, LinkedIn, they're all terrible. They're all gardens. They don't really bring people together, so I think that stalled for about almost eight years or nine years. Now, with crypto and decentralization, you start to see the same thing come back. Democratization, level the playing field, remove the middle man and person, intermediate the middle bottlenecks. So with media, we found that live streaming and going to events was what the community wants. And then interviewing people, and getting their ideas out there. Not promotional, not getting paid to say stuff. Yeah, they get the plug in for the company that they're working on, that's good for everybody. But more share something that you're passionate about, data. And it works. And people like it. And we've been doing it for 12 years, and it creates a great brand of openness, community, and network effect. So we scaled up the brand to be- >> And it seems like you're international now. I mean, we're sitting in Monte Carlo, so I don't think it gets better than that. >> Well, in 2016, we started going international. 2017, we started doing stuff in Europe. 2018, we did the crypto, Middle East. And we also did London, a lot of different events. We had B2B Enterprise and Crypto Blooming. 2019, we were like, "Let's go global with staff and whatnot." >> Wow. >> And the pandemic hits. >> I know. >> And that really kind of allowed us to pivot and turn us into a virtual hybrid. And that's why we're into the metaverse, as we see the value of a physical face to face event where intimacy's there, but why aren't my friends connected first party? >> Right. How much would you say the company has grown from the time that you kind of pivoted? >> Well, we've grown in a different direction with new capabilities because the old way is over. >> Right. >> Every event right now, this event here, is in person. People are talking. They get connections. But every person that's connecting has a social graph behind them that's online too, and immediately available. And with Instagram, direct messaging, Telegram, Signal, all there. >> It's brilliant. Honestly, it was brilliant idea and a brilliant pivot. >> Thank you for interviewing me. >> Yeah, of course. (Natasha and John laugh) >> Any other questions? >> That should do it. >> Okay. Are you going to have fun tonight? >> Absolutely. >> What is your take of the Monaco scene here? What's it like? >> You know, I think it's a really interesting scene. I think there's a lot of potential because this is such an international place so it draws a very eclectic crowd, and I think there's a lot that could be done here. And you have a lot of people from Europe that are starting to get into this whole crypto, leaving kind of the traditional banks and finance behind. So I think the potential is very strong. >> Very progressive. Well, Natasha, thank you for sharing. >> Thank you so much. >> Here on theCUBE. We're the extended edition CUBE here in Monaco with Prince Albert, theCUBE, and Prince Albert, DigitalBits Al Burgio, a great market here for them. And just an amazing time. And thanks for watching. Natasha, thanks for coming on. Thanks for watching theCUBE. We'll be back with more after this break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE special presentation of Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got a great conversation talking about the future of the infrastructure of Web3, all around domains, non fungible tokens and more. Two great guests, Charlie Brooks with Business Development of Unstoppable Domains, and Michael Williams, Product Leader and Advisor with Unstoppable Domains. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on theCUBE, Partner Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks John, excited to be here. >> So I love what you guys are doing. Congratulations on all your success. You guys are on the leading edge of what is a major infrastructure. Shift to Web3 is being called, but people who have been doing this for a while know that you see the blockchain, you see decentralization, you see immutability all these future smart contracts. All the decentralized applications are now hitting the scene and NFTs are super hot as you can imagine, you guys in the middle of it. So you guys are in the sweet spot of what I call the Pragmatic pioneers. You guys are the building solutions that are making a difference, like single sign-on you have the login product, let's get into it. What is the path to a digital identity beyond the web? 'Cause we know what web identity is. But now that the web is being abstracted a away by this new Web3 layer, what is digital identity? >> I can take that one. So I think what we're really seeing is this transition away from a purely physical identity. Where your online identity is really just a reflection of the parts of your physical identity. Where you live, where you go to school, all of these things. And we're really seeing this world emerge where your online identity becomes much more of a primary. So if you have a way that you represent yourself in the online world, whether that's an Instagram account, or TikTok, or email address or username, all of these things together make up your digital identity. So congrats, if you have any of those things, you already have one. >> We see that all the time with Linktree, people put their Linktree out there and it's got the zillion handles. We all get up to Instagram. Everyone's got like zillion identities. Is that a problem or an opportunity? >> I think it's just a reality. The fact is our identities are spread across all of these different services and platforms that we use. The problem with something like Linktree is that it is owned by Linktree. If I won the lottery, purchased Linktree and decided I wanted to change your personal website, John, I could easily do that. Moving to the architecture that we have and NFT architecture, changes that significantly. It puts a lot of power back in the hands of the people who actually own those identities. I do a lot of CUBE showcases with folks around talking about machine learning and AI, and the number one conversation that they bring up, the number one issue, is data. And they say, when data's siloed and protected and owned, it is not optimized for machine learning. So I can almost imagine, as you bring NFTs to the digital identity, you mentioned you don't own your identity if someone else is managing the service like Linktree. This is a cultural shift, and infrastructure software shift at the same time. Can you guys expand more about what you guys are doing with the NFT and unstoppable domains with respect to that digital identity, because is that power shifting to the users now? And how does that compare to what's out there today? >> Sure, I think so. Our domains are NFTs, so they are ERC 721 tokens. And if you think about in the past Web2 identities are controlled by the platforms that we use. Twitter, Facebook, whatnot. There's really a lack of data portability there. Our accounts and data live on their servers, they can be deleted any time. So using an NFT to anchor your data identity, really gives you full control over your identity. It can't be deleted, it can't be revoked or edited, or changed without your permission. And really even better, the information you store on your entity domain can be plugged into the services you use, so that you never have to enter the same data twice. So when you go from platform to platform, everything can be tied to your existing domain. You're not going to a new site, entering their ecosystem and providing all this information time and time again, and not really having a clear understanding of how your data's being used and where it's being stored. >> So the innovation here is the NFT is your identity. And a non fungible token NFT is different than say a fungible token. So for the folks out there that's trying to follow the bouncing ball, Michael, what's the difference between an NFT and a fungible token? And why is that important for identity? >> My favorite metaphor here is baseball cards versus dollar bills. So a dollar bill is fungible. If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, we can trade dollars and none of us is richer or poorer. If I have a Babe Ruth and you have a Hank Aaron, and we swap baseball cards, we have changed something fundamental. So the important thing about NFTs is that they are non fungible. So if I have a domain and you have a domain, like I have that identity and you have that identity, they are unique, they're independent, they're owned by each one of us, and then we can't swap them interchangeably. >> And that's why you're seeing NFTs hot with art and artists, because it's like a property. It's a property issue, not so much- >> Absolutely >> Interchangeable or divisible kind of asset. >> Yep, it is ownership rights in digital form, yes. >> All right, so now let's get into what the identity piece. I think find that interesting because if I have something that's an NFT, it's non fungible, it's unique to me, it's property, my property my login, this sounds compelling. So how does login work with the NFT? Can you guys take us through that architecture, what does it do? How does it work? And what's the benefit? >> Good, so the way our login product works is it effectively uses your NFT domain. So Michael.crypto, for example, as the authentication piece of a login session. So basically when I go and I try to log in with my domain, I type in Michael.crypto, I sign it with my wallet which cryptographically proves that I am this human, this is me, I have the rights to log in. And then when I do so, I have the ability to share certain parts of my identity information with the applications that I use. So it really blends the ease of use from Web2 of just a standard like login with Gmail, SSO experience, with all of the security and privacy benefits of Web3. >> How important is single sign-on? Because right now people are used to seeing things like log with your GitHub handle or LinkedIn, or Google, Apple. You seeing people offering login. What's the difference here from those solutions and why does it make sense for the user? >> Sure, the big difference is what we're building is really user first. So if you think about traditional SSOs, you are the product. When you use their product, they're selling your data, they're tracking everything you do. Login with unstoppable handles not only authentication, but data sharing as well. So when you log in a domain owner can choose to share aspects of their online identities, such as first name, preferred language, profile picture, location. So this is a user controlled way of using a sign-on where their permissioning these different of their identity. And really apps can use this information to enable new experiences, such as, for example, website might automatically enable high contrast mode for someone visually impaired. It could pre-populate your friends from a decentralized social graph. So, what we're doing is taking the best parts of Web2 SSO and combining them with the best of Web3. So, no more losing your password, entering in the same data hundreds of times depending on other services to keep your information safe. Login with unstoppable really puts you in complete control of your data. And a big part of that is you're not going to have 80 plus usernames and passwords anymore. We have these tools like password managers that exist to put a bandaid on this issue, but it's not really a long term solution. So what we're building is really seamless onboarding where everything can be tied to your domains so that you can navigate to different apps in a much more seamless way. >> Michael, I got to get your thoughts on this because in the product side, it's interesting, my mind's connecting some dots. If I have first of all, great convenience to reduce all those logins. So, check their little pain reduction. But when you just think about what's different, I can now broker my data as well as login. So let's just say, hypothetically, I'm cruising around some dApps and I'm doing things in earning reputation, or attention, or points, or whatever utility tokens. There could be a way for me to control what I own. I'm the product, I own the data. Is that where this is going? >> I think it's definitely a direction it could go, say, for example, if I'm a e-commerce platform and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to place a new billboard. One of the things that I could request from a user, is their address. I can figure out where they live, what city they're in, that will help inform me the decision that I need to make as a business. And in return, maybe I give that person a dollar off their purchase. We can start to build a stronger relationship between the applications that people use, and the people that use them. And try to optimize that whole experience, and try to just transfer information back and forth to make everyone's lives better. >> What's the roadmap on the business side Charlie, when you see companies adopting it, they're probably taking babies steps they're crawling before they walk, they're walking before they run. I can see decentralized applications in the future where there's FinTech or whatever, having new kinds of marketplaces that take advantage of the paradigm where the script flips to the user first. Okay, so I see that. How do people get started now? What are some of the success momentum points that you're seeing companies do now with unstoppable? >> Sure, so a lot of Web3 apps are very sensitive about respecting the information that their users are providing. So, what we're doing is offering different ways for apps can touch with their users in a way that is user controlled. So, an example there is that a lot of Web3 companies will use WalletConnect to allow users to log in using a wallet address. An issue there is that one person can have hundreds of wallet addresses, and it's impossible for the app to understand that. So, what we do is we use login, we attach an email address, some other pieces to a wallet address so that we can identify who our unique user is. And the app is able to collect that information, they don't have to deal with passwords or PII storage. They have access to a huge amount of new data for an improved UX. It's really simple to maintain as well. So one example there is if you are a DeFi platform and you want to reward your users for coming to their site for the first time, now that they can identify unique user, they can drop a token into that user's wallet. All because they're able to identify that user as unique. So they have a better way of understanding their customers. They enable their customers to share data. A lot of these companies will ask users to follow them on Twitter or Discord when they need to provide updates or bug bounties, all these different things. And login if unstoppable lets them permission email addresses so they can collect emails if they want to do a newsletter. And instead of harvesting data from elsewhere and forcing people to join this newsletter program, it's all user controlled. So each user saying, yes, you can use my email for your newsletter. I'm supporting your project, I want to be kept up to date with bugs or bounties or rewards programs. So really it's just a better way for users to share the data that they're willing to with dAPPs, and dAPPs can use it to create all sorts of incentives and really just understand their users on a different level. >> How is the development Michael, going on the smart contract side of the business? Ethereum has always been heralded as being very developer focused. There's been created innovations, you still got gas fees out there. You still got to do some things. How is the development environment? How are the applications coming? 'Cause I can see the flywheel kicking in as the developer front gets more streamlined, more efficient. And now you got the identity piece nailed down. I just see a lot of dominoes falling at the same time. What's the status on the DEV side. What you're doing. >> Good. The fascinating thing about crypto is how quickly it changes. When I joined Ethereum there was pretty reasonable still for transactions. It was very cheap to get things done very fast. With a look at last summer that things went completely out of control. This is a big reason that unstoppable for a long time has been working on a layer two. And we've moved over to the polygon as our primary source of record, which is built on top of Ethereum. Of course, I think saved well over a hundred million in gas fees for our users. We're constantly keeping an eye on new technologies that are emerging, weighing how we can incorporate those things. And really where of this industry is going to take us. In many ways we are just as much passengers as the other people floating around the ecosystem as well. >> It's certainly getting faster every day, I'm seeing a huge uptake on Ethereum. I heard a stat that most people at the university of California, Berkeley, 30% of the computer science students are dropping out to join Web3 companies. This goes to show you this cultural shift and you're going to see a lot more companies getting involved. So I got to ask you Charlie, on the BizDev front, how are companies getting started? What's the playbook? Are they putting their toe in the water? They jumping in full throttle? What's the roadmap? What's the best practice for people to get started with unstoppable? >> Absolutely. We're lucky that we get a lot of inbound interest from companies Web2 and Web3, because they first want to secure their domains. And we do a ton of work on the back end to protect trademark domains. We want to avoid squatting as much as possible. We don't think that's the spirit of Web3 at all. And certainly not what the original tension of the internet was. So, fair amount of companies will reach out to us to get their domain. And then we can have a longer conversation about some of the other integrations and ways we can collaborate. So certainly visiting our website, unstoppabledomains.com is a great starting point. We have an app submission page where apps can reach out to us, even request a grant. We have a grant program to help developers get started, provide them some resources to work with us and integrate some of our technology. We have great documentation as well on the site. So you can read all about what it takes to resolve domains, if you're a wallet and an exchange, as well as what it takes to integrate login with unstoppable, which is actually a super easy integration as well, which we're really excited about. So yeah, I'd say check out the website, apply for a grant if you think you're a fit there, then of course, people can always reach out to me directly on Twitter, on Telegram, email. We're very reachable and we're always happy to chat with projects and learn more about what they're doing. >> What's the coolest thing you see going on Charlie, with your partners right now? What's the number one use case that's cool that people are jumping on right now to get in and get some success out of the gate? >> Maybe GameFi play to earn is huge. It's blowing up and the gaming community is really passionate, vibrant, just expanding like crazy. Same with DeFi, there's all this cool new stuff you can do with DeFi where no matter how big your portfolio is, you're able to stake and use all these interesting tools to grow your book. So it's super exciting to see and talk to all these projects. And, there's certainly an energy in the community where everyone wants to onboard the general public to Web3. So we're all working on these school projects, but we need everyone to come over from Web2, understand the advantages of DeFi, of GameFi of having an entity domain. So, I'm lucky that I'm one of the first layers there of meeting new projects and helping get access to more users so that they can grow along with us. >> I remember the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we were giving it away. The community mantra was, give a Bitcoin to someone. That was like, >> Right. >> When you can actually give a Bitcoin to someone. What's the word of mouth or organic viral? I won't say growth hack 'cause that's got negative connotations. But what's the community's way of putting forth the mission for unstoppable? Is it just more domains? You guys have any programs got going on? Is it give it away? Obviously you can get domains on your site, but what's the way to get people ingratiated in and getting comfortable? >> So much of what we do is really to solve that question, answer that question. We spend a ton of time and energy just on education and whether that's specifically around domains or just general Web3. We have a podcast which is pretty exceptional, which talks to Web3 leaders from across the space and makes the project that they're working on more accessible. I think we passed over a hundred episodes, not too long ago. There's a ton of stuff that we do that other people do. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to talk about our resources, of course. >> The pod, I think you guys are up to 117, but that's a deep dive. You guys go deep on the podcast. So that's where you go in. What else is new on digital identity? Where do you guys see the future going? Now that you get the baseline identity with the NFT. Makes a lot of sense, create innovation. Good logic, makes sense. Solid technically, what's next? >> I think this really boils down to the way that the internet has grown. Doesn't really feel like the way that the internet should be. Like our data shouldn't live in these wild gardens, controlled by these large companies. Ultimately people should be responsible for their own identities. They should have control over of things that they do online. The data that's shared, the benefit of that data. It's about the world that we are working towards, is very much that. Where we are giving people the ability to be paid for sharing their data with companies. We're giving applications the ability to request information from the people that use those applications to improve their experience. We're really just trying to make connections across the ecosystem through these products, to enable a better experience for everyone. So whether that's the use cases that I mentioned already, or maybe viewing reviews on something like Yelp or Amazon, that just confirm that the person that you are you're looking at is actually a real person, not some bot that's been paid to load a review. The interesting thing about these products is they're so universally applicable. There are so many different ways that we can try to plug them in. So we are- >> A bots is a great example, double-edged sword. You can have a metaverse image and have pre-programmed conversations with liquid audio and the video application. Or it's a real person. How do you know the difference? These are going to be questions around who solves that problem. Now there's time for bots and there's a time not for bots. We all know what happens when you get into the game of manipulation, but also it can be helpful. This is where you got to be smart. And identity's critical in this future. Charlie, what's your reaction to the future of digital identity? So much to look at here on the trajectory. >> I think a big part of it is data portability. If you go to a site like Instagram, you're giving them all this content that's very personal to you, and you can't just pack up and leave Instagram. So we want a future where most of these apps are just a front end and you can navigate from one to the other and bring your data with you. And not be beholden to the companies that operate centralized servers. So, I think data portability is huge and it's going to open up a lot of doors. And just going back to that thought on cleaning up Web2 for a better web three. When I think about the Amazons, the Yelps of the world, there are all these bots, there are all these awful fake reviews. There's a lot of gamification happening that is really just creating a lot of noise. And I want to bring transparency back to the internet where when you see a review, you should know that that's a real human. And blockchain technology is enabling us to do that. And certainly FT domains are going to play a huge part of that. So I think that having an experience where you know and trust the people that you're interacting with is going to be really powerful and just a better experience for everyone. And there's a lot of ramifications with that. politically speaking, we've all seen all the issues with attacking communities and using bots and fake accounts to hit people's pain points, it's sad and certainly not something that we want to see continue happening. So, whatever we can do to give people their digital identity and help people understand that this is a real person on the other end, I think is huge for the future of the internet and really for society as well. >> That's a great call out there Charlie. Cleaning up the mess of Web 2.0, Web2, actually it was 2.0 technically, now Web3 is no point zero in it. But I saw on or listened to the podcast with Matt. This recent one, he had a great metaphor that went back to when I was growing up in the internet, you had IP addresses. And the mess there was, you couldn't find what you want to look. And no one could remember what to type in, 'cause you could type in IP address in the browser back then. And then DNS came out and then keywords that's web. Now that mess, now is fraud, misinformation, bot manipulation, deep fakes, many other kind of unwanted time to innovate. And every year, every time you had these inflection points, there'd be an abstraction on top of it. So, similar thing happening here, is that how you guys see it too? >> I think we're going back to some of the foundational architecture of the internet, DNS. And really bringing that forward about 30, 40 years in terms of technology. So loading in some more cryptography and some other fancy things to help patch some of those issues from the previous versions of the web. >> Awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for coming on and the spirit of TikTok, Emily summarizes asking, can you guys give us a quick TikTok moment, short comment on where this is all going, where is login, single sign-on mean and what should people do to steps to secure their digital identity? >> Sure, I'll jump in here. So, it's time for people to secure their digital identity. The great first step is going to sample domains and getting an NFT domain. You can control your data. You can do a lot of cool different things with your domain, including posting your own website that you will own forever, no one can take it away from you. I would certainly recommend that people join our Discord, Telegram communities, check out our podcasts. It's really great especially if you're new to crypto Web3. We do a great job of explaining all the basic concepts and expanding on them. So yeah, I would say, the time is now to get your digital identity and start embracing Web3 because it's really exploding right now. And there's just so many incredible advantages, especially for the user. >> Michael, what's your take? >> But not, have said it better myself. >> Like we always say, if you're not on the next wave, you're driftwood. And this is a big wave that's happening. It's pretty clear guys, it's there, it's happening now. And again, very pragmatic implementations of solving problems. The sign-on, the app integration. Congratulations and we got our CUBE domain too, by the way. So I think we're good. >> Excellent. >> So, we got to put it to use. Appreciate it, Charlie, Michael, thanks for coming on and sharing the update. >> It's pleasure. >> Welcome. >> Okay, this is theCUBE, with Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase I'm John for your host, got a lot of other great interviews. Check them out. We're going to continue our coverage and continue on with this great showcase. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE, "Unstoppable Domains Showcase." I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great discussion here called the influencers around what's going on Web 3.0. And also this new sea change, cultural change around this next generation, internet, web, cloud, all happening, Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Founding Part of Kaleido Insights. Jeremiah, great to see you thanks for coming on I appreciate it. Ren Besnard, Vice President of Marketing and Unstoppable Domains in the middle of all the action. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on on theCUBE for this showcase. >> Wow, my pleasure. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Jeremiah, I want to start with you. You've seen many ways refer in all of your work for over a decade now. You've seen the Web 2.0 wave now the Web 3.0 is here. And it's not, I wouldn't say hyped up it's really just ramping up. And you're seeing real practical examples. You're in the middle of all the action. What is this Web 3.0, can you frame for us? I mean, you've seen many webs. What is Web 3.0 mean, what is it all about? >> Well John, you and I worked in the Web 2.0 space and essentially that enabled peer-to-peer media where people could upload their thoughts and ideas and videos without having to rely on centralized media. Unfortunately, that distributed and decentralized movement actually became centralized on the platform which are the big social networks and big tech companies. And this has caused an uproar because the people who are creating the content did not have control, could not control their identities, and could not really monetize or make decisions. So Web 3.0 which is a moniker of a lot of different trends, including crypto, blockchain and sometimes the metaverse. Is to undo the controlling that has become centralized. And the power is now shifting back into the hands of the participants again. And in this movement, they want to have more control over their identities, their governance, the content that they're creating, how they're actually building it, and then how they're monetizing it. So in many ways it's changing the power and it's a new economic model. So that's Web 3.0. Without really even mentioning the technologies. Is that helpful? >> Yeah, it's great. And Ren, we're talking about on theCUBE many times and one notable stat I don't think it's been reported, but it's been more kind of a rumor. I hear that 30% of the Berkeley computer science students are dropping out and going into to crypto or blockchain or decentralized startups. Which means that there's a big wave coming in of talent. You're seeing startups, you're seeing a lot more formation, you're seeing a lot more, I would say it's kind of ramping up of real people, not just people with dream is actual builders out here doing stuff. What's your take on the Web 3.0 movement with all this kind of change happening from people and also the new ideas being refactored? >> I think that the competition for talent is extremely real. And we start looking at the stats, we see that there is an enormous draft of people that are moving into this space. People that are fascinated by technology and are embracing the ethos of Web 3.0. And at this stage I think it's not only engineers and developers, but we have moved into a second phase where we see that a lot of supporting functions, you know, marketing being one of them, sales, business development are being built up quite rapidly. It's not without actually reminding me of the mid 2000s, you know. When I started working with Google, at that point in time the walled gardens rightly absorbing vast, vast cohorts of young graduates and more experienced professionals that were passionate and moving into the web environment. And I think we are seeing a movement right now, which is not entirely similar except faster. >> Yeah, Jeremiah, you've seen the conversations of the cloud, I call the cloud kind of revolution. You had mobile in 2007. But you got Amazon Web Services changed the application space on how people developed in the cloud. And again, that created a lot of value. Now you're seeing the role of data as a huge part of how people are scaling and the decentralized movements. So you've got cloud which is kind of classic today, state of the art enterprise and or app developers. And you've got now decentralized wave coming, okay. You're seeing apps being developed on that architecture. Data is central in all this, right. So how, how do you view this as someone who's watching the landscape, you know, these walled gardens are hoarding all the data I mean, LinkedIn, Facebook. They're not sharing that data with anyone they're using it for themselves. So as- >> That's right. >> They can control back comes to the forefront. How do you see this market with the applications and what comes out of that? >> So the thing that we seen out of the five things that I had mentioned that are decentralizing. (Jeremiah coughing) Are the ones that have been easier to move across. Have been the ability to monetize and to build. But the data aspect has actually stayed pretty much central, frankly. What has decentralized is that the contracts, the blockchain ledgers, those have decentralized. But the funny thing is often a big portion of these blockchain networks are on Amazon 63 to 70%, same thing with (indistinct). So they're still using the Web 2.0 architectures. However, we're also seeing other forms like IPFS where the data could be spread across a wider range of folks. But right now we're still dependent on what Web 2.0. So the vision and the promise Web 3.0 when it to full decentralization is not here by any means. I'd say we're at a Web 2.25. >> Pre-Web 3.0 no, but actions there. How do you guys see the dangers, 'cause there's a lot of negative press but also there's a lot of positive press. You're seeing a lot of fraud, we've seen a lot of the crypto fraud over the past years. You've seen a lot of now positive. It's almost a self-governance thing and environment, the way the culture is. But what are the dangers, how do you guys educate people, what should people pay attention to, what should people look for to understand, you know, where to position themselves? >> Yes, so we've learned a lot from Web 1.0, Web 2.0, the sharing economy. And we are walking into Web 3.0 with eyes wide open. So people have rightfully put forth a number of challenges, the sustainability issues with excess using of computing and mining the excessive amount of scams that are happening in part due to unknown identities. Also the architecture breaks DAOn in some periods and there's a lack of regulation. This is something different though. In the last periods that we've gone through, we didn't really know what was going to happen. And we walked and think this is going to be great. The sharing economy, the gig economy, the social media's going to change the world around. It's very different now. People are a little bit jaded. So I think that's a change. And so I think we're going to see that sorted out in suss out just like we've seen with other trends. It's still very much in the early years. >> Ren, I got to get your take on this whole should influencers and should people be anonymous or should they be docs out there? You saw the board, eight guys that did that were kind of docs a little bit there. And that went viral. This is an issue, right? Because we just had a problem of fake news, fake people, fake information. And now you have a much more secure environment imutability is a wonderful thing. It's a feature, not a bug, right? So how is this all coming down? And I know you guys are in the middle of it with NFTs as authentication. Take us, what's your take on this because this is a big issue. >> Look, I think first I am extremely optimistic about technology in general. So I'm super, super bullish about this. And yet, you know, I think that while crypto has so many upsides, it's important to be super conscious and aware of the downsides that come with it to, you know. If you think about every Fortune 500 company there is always training required by all employees on internet safety, reporting of potential attacks and so on. In Web 3.0, we don't have that kind of standard reporting mechanisms yet for bad actors in that space. And so when you think about influencers in particular, they do have a responsibility to educate people about the potential, but also the dangers of the technology of Web 3.0 of crypto basically. Whether you're talking about hacks or online safety, the need for hardware, wallet, impersonators on discord, you know, security storing your seed phrase. So every actor influencer or else has got a role to play. I think that in that context to your point, it's very hard to tell whether influencers should be anonymous, oxydemous or fully docked. The decentralized nature of Web 3.0 will probably lead us to see a combination of those anonymity levels so to speak. And the movements that we've seen around some influencers identities become public are particularly interesting. I think there's probably a convergence of Web 2.O and Web 3.0 at play here, you know. Maybe occurring on the notion of 2.5. But for now I think in Web 2.0, all business founders and employees are known and they held accountable for their public comments and their actions. If Web 3.0 enables us to be anonymous, if DAOs have voting control, you know. What happens if people make comments and there is no way to know who they are, basically. What if the DAO doesn't take appropriate action? I think eventually there will be an element of community self-regulation where influencers will be acting in the best interest of their reputation. And I believe that the communities will self-regulate themselves and will create natural boundaries around what can be said or not said. >> I think that's a really good point about influencers and reputation because. Jeremiah, does it matter that you're anonymous have an icon that could be a NFT or a picture. But if I have an ongoing reputation I have trust, to this trust there. It's not like just a bot that was created just to spam someone. You know I'm starting to getting into this new way. >> You're right, and that word you said trust, that's what really this is about. But we've seen that public docs, people with their full identities have made mistakes. They have pulled the hood over people's faces and really scammed them out of a lot of money. We've seen that in the, that doesn't change anything in human behavior. So I think over time that we will see a new form of a reputation system emerge even for pseudonym and perhaps for people that are just anonymous that only show their potential wallet, address a series of numbers and letters. That form might take a new form of a Web 3.0 FICO Score. And you could look at their behaviors. Did they transact, you know, how did they behave? Were they involved in projects that were not healthy? And because all of that information is public on the chain and you can go back in time and see that. We might see a new form of a scoring emerge, of course. Who controls that scoring? That's a whole nother topic gone on controling and trust. So right now, John we do see that there's a number of projects, new NFT projects, where the founders will claim and use this as a point of differentiation that they are fully docs. So you know who they are and in their names. Secondly, we're seeing a number of products or platforms that require KYC, you know, your customers. So that's self-identification often with a government ID or credit card in order to bridge out your coins and turn that into fiat. In some cases that's required in some of these marketplaces. So we're seeing a collision here between our full names and pseudonyms and being anonymous. >> That's awesome. And I think this is the new, again, a whole new form of governance. Ren, you mentioned some comments about DAO. I want to get your thoughts again. You know, Jeremiah we've become historians over the years. We're getting old I'm a little bit older than you. (Jeremiah laughs) But we've seen the- >> You're young men. You know, I remember breaking in the business when the computer standards bodies were built to be more organic and then they became much more of a, kind of an anti-innovation environment where people, the companies would get involved, the standards organization just to slow things DAO and mark things up a little bit. So, you know, you look at DAOs like, hmm, is DAO a good thing or a bad thing. The answer is from people I talk to is, it depends. So I'd love to get your thoughts on getting momentum and becoming defacto with value, a value proposition, vis-a-vis just a DAO for the sake of having a DAO. This has been a conversation that's been kind of in the inside the baseball here, inside the ropes of the industry, but there's trade offs. Can you guys share your thoughts on when to do a DAO and when not to do a DAO and the benefits and trade offs of that? >> Sure, maybe I'll start off with a definition and then we'll go to, Ren. So a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, the best way to think about this It's a digital cooperative. and we've heard of worker cooperatives before. The difference is that they're using blockchain technologies in order to do three things, identity, governance, and rewards and mechanisms. They're relying on Web 2.0 tools and technologies like discord and Telegram and social networks to communicate. And as a cooperative they're trying to come up with a common goal. Ren, what's your take, that's the setup. >> So, you know for me when I started my journey into crypto and Web 3.0, I had no idea about what DAO actually meant. And an easy way for me to think of it and to grasp the nature of it was about the comparison between a DAO and perhaps a more traditional company structure, you know. In the traditional company structure, you have (indistinct), the company's led by a CEO and other executives. The DAO is a flat structure, and it's very much led by a group of core contributors. So to Jeremiah's point, you know, you get that notion of a cooperative type of structure. The decision making is very different, you know. We're talking about a super high level of transparency proposals getting submitted and voting systems using (indistinct) as opposed to, you know, management, making decisions behind closed doors. I think that speaks to a totally new form of governance. And I think we have hardly, hardly scratched the surface. We have seen recently very interesting moments in Web 3.0 culture. And we have seen how DAO suddenly have to make certain decisions and come to moments of claiming responsibility in order to police behavior of some of the members. I think that's important. I think it's going to redefine how we're thinking about that particularly new governance models. And I think it's going to pave the way for a lot of super interesting structure in the near future. >> Yeah and that's a great point. >> Go ahead, Jeremiah. >> That's a great point, Ren. Around the transparency for governance. So, John you post the question, does this make things faster or slower? And right now in the most doubts are actually pretty slow because they're set up as a flat organization. So as a response to that they're actually shifting to become representative democracies. Does that sound familiar? Or you can appoint delegates and use tokens to vote for them and they have a decision power. Almost like a committee and they can function. And so we've seen actually there sometimes are hierarchy except the person at the top is voted by those that have the tokens. In some cases, the people at the top had the most tokens. But that's a whole nother topic. So we're seeing a wide variety of governance structures. >> You know, Ren I was talking with Matt G, the Founder of Unstoppable. And I was telling him about the Domain Name System. And one little trivia note that many people don't know about is that the US government 'cause the internet was started by the US. The Department of Commerce kept that on tight leash because the international telecommunications wanted to get their hands on it because of ccTLDs and other things. So at that time, 'cause the innovation yet was isn't yet baked out. It was organically growing the governance, the rules of the road, keeping it very stable versus melding with it. So there's certain technologies that require, Jeremiah that let's keep an eye on as a community let's not formalize anything. Like the government did with the Domain Name System. Let's keep it tight and then finally released it. I think multiple years after 2004, I think it went over to the ITU. But this is a big point. I mean, if you get too structured, organic innovation can't go. What's you guys reaction to that? >> So I think, you know to take the stab at it. We have as a business, you know, thinking of Unstoppable Domains, a strong incentive to innovate. And this is what is going to be determining long-term value growth for the organization, for partners, for users, for customers. So you know the degree of formalization actually gives us a sense of purpose and a sense of action. And if you compare that to DAO, for instance, you can see how some of the upsides and downsides can pan out either way. It's not to say that there is a perfect solution. I think one of the advantages of the DAO is that you can let more people contribute. You can probably remove buyers quite effectively and you can have a high level of participation and involvement in decisions and own the upside in many ways. You know as a company, it's a slightly different setup. We have the opportunity to coordinate a very diverse and part-time workforce in a very you a different way. And we do not have to deal with the inefficiencies that might be inherent to some form of extreme decentralization. So there is a balance from an organizational structure that comes either side. >> Awesome. Jeremiah, I want to get your thoughts on a trend that you've been involved in, we've both been involved in. And you're seeing it now with the kind of social media world, the world of the role of an influencer. It's kind of moved from what was open source and influencer was a connect to someone who shared, created content enabled things to much more of a vanity. You update the photo on Instagram and having a large audience. So is there a new influencer model with Web 3.0 or is it, I control the audience I'm making money that way. Is there a shift in the influencer role or ideas that you see that should be in place for what is the role of an influencer? 'Cause as Web 3.0 comes you're going to see that role become instrumental. We've seen it in open source projects. Influencers, you know, the people who write code or ship code. So what's your take on that? Because this has been a conversation. People have been having the word influencer and redefining and reframing it. >> Sure, the influence model really hasn't changed that much, but the way that they're behaving has when it comes to Web 3.0. In this market, I mean there's a couple of things. Some of the influencers are investors. And so when you see their name on a project or a new startup, that's an indicator there's a higher level of success. You might want to pay more attention to it or not. Secondly, influencers themselves are launching their own NFT projects. So, Gary Vaynerchuk, a number of celebrities, Paris Hilton is involved. They are also doing theirs as well. Steve Aok, famous DJ launched his as well. So they're going head first and participating in building in this model. And their communities are coming around them and they're building economy. Now the difference is it's not I speak as an influencer to the fans. The difference is that the fans are now part of the community and they literally hold and own some of the economic value, whether it's tokens or the NFTs. So it's a collaborative economy, if you will, where they're all benefiting together. And that's a big difference as well. >> Can you see- >> Lastly, there's one little tactic we're seeing where marketers are air dropping NFTs, branded NFTs influencers wallet. So you can see it in there. So there's new tactics that are forming as well. Back to you. >> That's super exciting. Ren, what's your reaction to that? Because he just hit on a whole new way of how engagement's happening, how people are closed looping their votes, their votes of confidence or votes with their wallet. And the brands which are artists now influencers. I mean, this is a whole game changing instrumentation level. >> I think that what we are seeing right now is super reinvigorating as a marketeer who's been around for a few years, basically. I think that the shift in the way brands are going to communicate and engage with their audiences is profound. It's probably as revolutionary and even more revolutionary than the movement for brands in getting into digital. And you have that sentiment of a gold rush right now with a lot of brands that are trying to understand NFTs and how to actually engage with those communities and those audiences. There are many levels in which brands and influencers are going to engage. There are many influencers that actually advance the message and the mission because the explosion of content on Web 3.0 has been crazy. Part of that is due to the network effect nature of crypto. Because as Jaremiah mentioned, people are incentivized to promote projects. Holders of an NFT are also incentivized to promote it. So you end up with a fly wheel which is pretty unique of people that are hyping their project and that are educating other people about it and commenting on the ecosystem with IP right being given to NFT holders. You're going to see people promote brands instead of the brands actually having to. And so the notion of brands are gaining and delivering elements of the value to their fans is something that's super attractive, extremely interesting. And I think again, we have hardly scratched the surface of all that is possible in that particular space. >> That's interesting. You guys are bringing some great insight here. Jeremiah, the old days the word authentic was a kind of a cliche and brands like tried to be authentic. And they didn't really know what to do they called it organic, right? And now you have the trust concept with authenticity and environment like Web 3.0 where you can actually measure it and monetize it and capture it if you're actually authentic and trustworthy. >> That's right, and be because it's on blockchain, you can see how somebody's behaved with their economic behavior in the past. Of course, big corporations aren't going to have that type of trail on blockchain just yet. But individuals and executives who participate in this market might be. And we'll also see new types of affinity. Do executives do they participate in these NFT communities, do they purchase them or numerous brands like Adidas to acquire, you know, different NFT projects to participate. And of course the big brands are grabbing their domains. Of course you could talk to, Ren about that because it's owning your own name is a part of this trust and being found. >> That's awesome. Great insight guys. Closing comments, takeaways for the audience here. Each of you take a minute to share your thoughts on what you think is happening now where it goes, all right, where's it going to go? Jeremiah, we'll start with you. >> Sure, I think the vision of Web 3.0 where full decentralization happens, where the power is completely shifted to the edges. I don't think it's going to happen. I think we will reach Web 2.5. And I've been through so many tech trends where we said that the power's going to shift completely to of the end, it just doesn't. In part there's two reasons. One is the venture capital are the ones who tend to own the programs in the first place. And secondly, the startups themselves end up becoming the one-percenter. We see Airbnb and Uber are one-percenter now. So that trend happens over and over and over. Now with that said, the world will be in a better place. We will have more transparency. We will see economic power shifted to the people, the participants. And so they will have more control over the internet that they are building. >> Awesome, Ren final comments. >> I'm fully aligned with Jeremiah on the notion of control being returned to users, the notion of ownership and the notion of redistribution of the economic value that is created across all the different chains that we are going to see and all those ecosystems. I believe that we are going to witness two parallel movements of expansion. One that is going to be very lateral. When you think of crypto and Web 3.0 essentially you think of a few 100 tribes. And I think that more projects are going to be a more coalitions of individuals and entities, and those are going to exist around those projects. So you're going to see, you know, an increase in the number of tribes that one might join. And I also think that we're going to progress rapidly from the low 100 millions of crypto and NFT holders into the big hands basically. And that's going to be extreme interesting. I think that the next waves of crypto users, NFT fans are going to look very different from the early adopters that we had witnessed in the very early days. So it's not going to be your traditional model of technology adoption curves. I think the demographics are going to shift and the motivations are going to be different as well, which is going to be a wonderful time to educate and engage with new community members. >> All right, Ren and Jeremiah, thank you both for that great insight great segment breaking down Web 3.0 or Web 2.5 as Jeremiah says but we're in a better place. This is a segment with the influencers. As part of theCUBE and the Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrie, your host. Thanks for watching. (bright 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)

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCube and ETR, this is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> When a piece of digital art sells for $69.3 million, more than has ever been paid for works, by Gauguin or Salvador Dali, making it created the third most expensive living artists in the world. One can't help but take notice and ask, what is going on? The latest craze around NFTs may feel a bit bubblicious, but it's yet another sign, that the digital age is now fully upon us. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon's CUBE insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we want to take a look at some of the trends, that may be difficult for observers and investors to understand, but we think offer significant insights to the future and possibly some opportunities for young investors many of whom are fans of this program. And how the trends may relate to enterprise tech. Okay, so this guy Beeple is now the hottest artist on the planet. That's his Twitter profile. That picture on the inset. His name is Mike Winkelmann. He is actually a normal looking dude, but that's the picture he chose for his Twitter. This collage reminds me of the Million Dollar Homepage. You may already know the story, but many of you may not. Back in 2005 a college kid from England named Alex Tew, T-E-W created The Million Dollar Homepage to fund his education. And his idea was to create a website with a million pixels, and sell ads at a dollar for each pixel. Guess how much money he raised. A million bucks, right? No, wrong. He raised $1,037,100. How so you ask? Well, he auctioned off the last 1000 pixels on eBay, which fetched an additional $38,000. Crazy, right? Well, maybe not. Pretty creative in a way, way early sign of things to come. Now, I'm not going to go deep into NFTs, and explain the justification behind them. There's a lot of material that's been published that can do justice to the topic better than I can. But here are the basics, NFTs stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. They are digital representations of assets that exist in a blockchain. Now, each token as a unique and immutable identifier, and it uses cryptography to ensure its authenticity. NFTs by the name, they're not fungible. So, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies, which can be traded on a like-for-like basis, in other words, if you and I each own one bitcoin we know exactly how much each of our bitcoins is worth at any point of time. Non-Fungible Tokens each have their own unique values. So, they're not comparable on a like-to-like basis. But what's the point of this? Well, NFTs can be applied to any property, identities tweets, videos, we're seeing collectables, digital art, pretty much anything. And it's really. The use cases are unlimited. And NFTs can streamline transactions, and they can be bought and sold very efficiently without the need for a trusted third party involved. Now, the other benefit is the probability of fraud, is greatly reduced. So where do NFTs fit as an asset class? Well, they're definitely a new type of asset. And again, I'm not going to try to justify their existence, but I want to talk about the choices, that investors have in the market today. The other day, I was on a call with Jay Po. He is a VC and a Principal at a company called Stage 2 Capital. He's a former Bessemer VC and one of the sharper investors around. And he was talking about the choices that investors have and he gave a nice example that I want to share with you and try to apply here. Now, as an investor, you have alternatives, of course we're showing here a few with their year to date charts. Now, as an example, you can buy Amazon stock. Now, if you bought just about exactly a year ago you did really well, you probably saw around an 80% return or more. But if you want to jump in today, your mindset might be, hmm, well, okay. Amazon, they're going to be around for a long time, so it's kind of low risk and I like the stock, but you're probably going to get, well let's say, maybe a 10% annual return over the longterm, 15% or maybe less maybe single digits, but, maybe more than that but it's unlikely that any kind of reasonable timeframe within any reasonable timeframe you're going to get a 10X return. In order to get that type of return on invested capital, Amazon would have to become a $16 trillion valued company. So, you sit there, you asked yourself, what's the probability that Amazon goes out of business? Well, that's pretty low, right? And what are the chances it becomes a $16 trillion company over the next several years? Well, it's probably more likely that it continues to grow at that more stable rate that I talked about. Okay, now let's talk about Snowflake. Now, as you know, we've covered the company quite extensively. We watched this company grow from an early stage startup and then saw its valuation increase steadily as a private company, but you know, even early last year it was valued around $12 billion, I think in February, and as late as mid September right before the IPO news hit that Marc Benioff and Warren Buffett were going to put in $250 million each at the IPO or just after the IPO and it was projected that Snowflake's valuation could go over $20 billion at that point. And on day one after the IPO Snowflake, closed worth more than $50 billion, the stock opened at 120, but unless you knew a guy, you had to hold your nose and buy on day one. And you know, maybe got it at 240, maybe you got it at 250, you might have got it at higher and at the time you might recall, I said, You're likely going to get a better price than on day one, which is usually the case with most IPOs, stock today's around 230. But you look at Snowflake today and if you want to buy in, you look at it and say, Okay, well I like the company, it's probably still overvalued, but I can see the company's value growing substantially over the next several years, maybe doubling in the near to midterm [mumbles] hit more than a hundred billion dollar valuation back as recently as December, so that's certainly feasible. The company is not likely to flame out because it's highly valued, I have to probably be patient for a couple of years. But you know, let's say I liked the management, I liked the company, maybe the company gets into the $200 billion range over time and I can make a decent return, but to get a 10X return on Snowflake you have to get to a valuation of over a half a trillion. Now, to get there, if it gets there it's going to become one of the next great software companies of our time. And you know, frankly if it gets there I think it's going to go to a trillion. So, if that's what your bet is then you know, you would be happy with that of course. But what's the likelihood? As an investor you have to evaluate that, what's the probability? So, it's a lower risk investment in Snowflake but maybe more likely that Snowflake, you know, they run into competition or the market shifts, maybe they get into the $200 billion range, but it really has to transform the industry execute for you to get in to that 10 bagger territory. Okay, now let's look at a different asset that is cryptocurrency called Compound, way more risky. But Compound is a decentralized protocol that allows you to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies. Now, I'm not saying go out and buy compound but just as a thought exercise is it's got an asset here with a lower valuation, probably much higher upside, but much higher risk. But so for Compound to get to 10X return it's got to get to $20 billion valuation. Now, maybe compound isn't the right asset for your cup of tea, but there are many cryptos that have made it that far and if you do your research and your homework you could find a project that's much, much earlier stage that yes, is higher risk but has a much higher upside that you can participate in. So, this is how investors, all investors really look at their choices and make decisions. And the more sophisticated investors, they're going to use detailed metrics and analyze things like MOIC, Multiple on Invested Capital and IRR, which is Internal Rate of Return, do TAM analysis, Total Available Market. They're going to look at competition. They're going to look at detailed company models in ARR and Churn rates and so forth. But one of the things we really want to talk about today and we brought this up at the snowflake IPO is if you were Buffet or Benioff and you had to, you know, quarter of a dollars to put in you could get an almost guaranteed return with your late in the game, but pre IPO money or a look if you were Mike Speiser or one of the earlier VCs or even someone like Jeremy Burton who was part of the inside network you could get stock or options, much cheaper. You get a 5X, 10X, 50X or even North of a hundred X return like the early VCs who took a big risk. But chances are, you're not one of these in one of these categories. So how can you as a little guy participate in something big and you might remember at the time of the snowflake IPO we showed you this picture, who are these people, Olaf Carlson-Wee, Chris Dixon, this girl Sono. And of course Tim Berners-Lee, you know, that these are some of the folks that inspired me personally to pay attention to crypto. And I want to share the premise that caught my attention. It was this. Think about the early days of the internet. If you saw what Berners-Lee was working on or Linus Torvalds, in one to invest in the internet, you really couldn't. I mean, you couldn't invest in Linux or TCP/IP or HTTP. Suppose you could have invested in Cisco after its IPO that would have paid off pretty big time, for sure. You know, he could have waited for the Netscape IPO but the core infrastructure of the internet was fundamentally not directly a candidate for investment by you or really, you know, by anybody. And Satya Nadella said the other day we have reached maximum centralization. The main protocols of the internet were largely funded by the government and they've been co-opted by the giants. But with crypto, you actually can invest in core infrastructure technologies that are building out a decentralized internet, a new internet, you know call it web three Datto. It's a big part of the investment thesis behind what Carlson-wee is doing. And Andreessen Horowitz they have two crypto funds. They've raised more than $800 million to invest and you should read the firm's crypto investment thesis and maybe even take their crypto startup classes and some great content there. Now, one of the people that I haven't mentioned in this picture is Camila Russo. She's a journalist she's turned into hardcore crypto author is doing great job explaining the white hot defining space or decentralized finance. If you're just at read her work and educate yourself and learn more about the future and be happy perhaps you'll find some 10X or even hundred X opportunities. So look, there's so much innovation going around going on around blockchain and crypto. I mean, you could listen to Warren Buffet and Janet Yellen who implied this is all going to end badly. But while look, these individuals they're smart people. I don't think they would be my go-to source on understanding the potential of the technology and the future of what it could bring. Now, we've talked earlier at the, at the start here about NFTs. DeFi is one of the most interesting and disruptive trends to FinTech, names like Celsius, Nexo, BlockFi. BlockFi let's actually the average person participate in liquidity pools is actually quite interesting. Crypto is going mainstream Tesla, micro strategy putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets. We have a 2017 Jamie diamond. He called Bitcoin a tulip bulb like fraud, yet just the other day JPM announced a structured investment vehicle to give its clients a basket of stocks that have exposure to crypto, PayPal allowing customers to buy, sell, and Hodl crypto. You can trade crypto on Robin Hood. Central banks are talking about launching digital currencies. I talked about the Fedcoin for a number of years and why not? Coinbase is doing an IPO will give it a value of over a hundred billion. Wow, that sounds frothy, but still big names like Mark Cuban and Jamaat palliate Patiala have been active in crypto for a while. Gronk is getting into NFTs. So it goes to have a little bit of that bubble feel to it. But look often when tech bubbles burst they shake out the pretenders but if there's real tech involved, some contenders emerge. So, and they often do so as dominant players. And I really believe that the innovation around crypto is going to be sustained. Now, there is a new web being built out. So if you want to participate, you got to do some research figure out things like how PolkaWorks, make a call on whether you think avalanche is an Ethereum killer dig in and find out about new projects and form a thesis. And you may, as a small player be able to find some big winners, but look you do have to be careful. There was a lot of fraud during the ICO. Craze is your risk. So understand the Tokenomics and maybe as importantly the Pump-a-nomics, because they certainly loom as dangers. This is not for the faint of heart but because I believe it involves real tech. I like it way better than Reddit stocks like GameStop for example, now not to diss Reddit. There's some good information on Reddit. If you're patient, you can find it. And there's lots of good information flowing on Discord. There's people flocking to Telegram as a hedge against big tech. Maybe there's all sounds crazy. And you know what, if you've grown up in a privileged household and you have a US Education you know, maybe it is nuts and a bit too risky for you. But if you're one of the many people who haven't been able to participate in these elite circles there are things going on, especially outside of the US that are democratizing investment opportunities. And I think that's pretty cool. You just got to be careful. So, this is a bit off topic from our typical focus and ETR survey analysis. So let's bring this back to the enterprise because there's a lot going on there as well with blockchain. Now let me first share some quotes on blockchain from a few ETR Venn Roundtables. First comment is from a CIO to diversified holdings company who says correctly, blockchain will hit the finance industry first but there are use cases in healthcare given the privacy and security concerns and logistics to ensure provenance and reduce fraud. And to that individual's point about finance. This is from the CTO of a major financial platform. We're really taking a look at payments. Yeah. Do you think traditional banks are going to lose control of the payment systems? Well, not without a fight, I guess, but look there's some real disruption possibilities here. And just last comment from a government CIO says, we're going to wait until the big platform players they get into their software. And so that is happening Oracle, IBM, VMware, Microsoft, AWS Cisco, they all have blockchain initiatives going on, now by the way, none of these tech companies wants to talk about crypto. They try to distance themselves from that topic which is understandable, I guess, but I'll tell you there's far more innovation going on in crypto than there is in enterprise tech companies at this point. But I predict that the crypto innovations will absolutely be seeping into enterprise tech players over time. But for now the cloud players, they want to support developers who are building out this new internet. The database is certainly a logical place to support a mutable transactions which allow people to do business one-on-one and have total confidence that the source hasn't been hacked or changed and infrastructure to support smart contracts. We've seen that. The use cases in the enterprise are endless asset tracking data access, food, tracking, maintenance, KYC or know your customer, there's applications in different industries, telecoms, oil and gas on and on and on. So look, think of NFTs as a signal crypto craziness is a signal. It's a signal as to how IT in other parts of companies and their data might be organized, managed and tracked and protected, and very importantly, valued. Look today. There's a lot of memes. Crypto kitties, art, of course money as well. Money is the killer app for blockchain, but in the future the underlying technology of blockchain and the many percolating innovations around it could become I think will become a fundamental component of a new digital economy. So get on board, do some research and learn for yourself. Okay, that's it for today. Remember all of these episodes they're available as podcasts, wherever you listen. I publish weekly on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. Please feel free to comment on my LinkedIn post or tweet me @dvellante or email me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com. Don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey action and data science. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Be well, be careful out there in crypto land. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>with me are and Crystal Graham, a k a a C. She's the C R O of talent, and Chris Degnan is the C R. O of Snowflake. We have to go to market heavies on this section, folks. Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you. >>Thanks for having us. >>That's our pleasure. And so let's let's talk about digital transformation, right? Everybody loves to talk about it. It zone overused term. I know, but what does it mean? Let's talk about the vision of the data cloud for snowflake and digital transformation. A. C. We've been hearing a lot about digital transformation over the past few years. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. What are you hearing from customers? How are they thinking about when I come, sometimes called DX and what's important to them? Maybe address some of the challenges even that they're facing >>Dave. That's a great question to our customers. Digital transformation literally means staying in business or not. Um, it's that simple. Um, the reality is most agree on the opportunity to modernize data management infrastructure that they need to do that to create the speed and efficiency and cost savings that digital transformation promises. But but now it's beyond that. What's become front and center for our customers is the need for trusted data, supported by an agile infrastructure that and allow a company to pivot operations as they need. Um, let me give you an example of that. One of our customers, a medical device company, was on their digital journey when Cove it hit. They started last year in 2019, and as the pandemic hit at the earlier part of this year, they really needed to take a closer look at their supply chain. On went through an entire supply chain optimization, having been completely disrupted in the you think about the logistics, the transportation, the location of where they needed to get parts, all those things when they were actually facing a need to increase production by about 20 times. In order to meet the demand on DSO, you can imagine what that required them to do and how reliant they were on clean, compliant, accurate data that they could use to make extremely critical decisions for their business. And in that situation, not just for their business but decisions. That would be the about saving lives, so the stakes have gotten a lot higher, and that's that's just one industry. It's it's really across all industries. So when you think about that, really, when you talk to any of our customers, digital transformation is really mean. It really means now having the confidence in data to support the business at critical times with accurate, trusted information. >>Chris, I've always said a key part of digital transformation is really putting data at the core of everything you know, Not not the manufacturing plant, that the core in the data around it, but putting data at the center. It seems like that's what Snowflake is bringing to the table. Can you comment? >>Yeah. I mean, I think if if I look across what's happening and especially a Z A. C said, you know, through co vid is customers are bringing more and more data sets. They wanna make smarter business decisions based on data making, data driven decisions. And we're seeing acceleration of of data moving to the cloud because they're just in abundance of data. And it's challenging to actually manage that data on premise and and as we see those those customers move those large data sets. Think what A C said is spot on is that customers don't just want to have their data in the cloud. But they actually want to understand what the data is, understand, who has access to that data, making sure that they're actually making smart business decisions based on that data. And I think that's where the partnership between both talent and stuff like are really tremendous, where you know we're helping our customers bring their data assets to to the cloud, really landing it and allowing them to do multiple, different types of workloads on top of this data cloud platform and snowflake. And then I think again what talent is bringing to the table is really helping the customer make sure that they trust the data that they're actually seeing. And I think that's a really important aspect of digital transformation today. >>Awesome and I want to get into the partnership. But I don't wanna leave the pandemic just yet. A c. I want to ask you how it's affected customer priorities and timelines with regard to modernizing their data operations and what I mean to that they think about the end and life cycle of going from raw data insights and how they're approaching those life cycles. Data quality is a key part of, you know, a good data quality. You're gonna I mean, obviously you want to reiterate, and you wanna move fast. But if if it's garbage out, then you got to start all over again. So what are you seeing in terms of the effect of the pandemic and the urgency of modernizing those data operations? >>Yeah, but like Chris just said it accelerated things for those companies that hadn't quite started their digital journey. Maybe it was something that they had budgeted for but hadn't quite resourced completely many of them. This is what it took to to really get them off the dying from that perspective, because there was no longer the the opportunity to wait. They needed to go and take care of this really critical component within their business. So, um, you know what? What Covic, I think, has taught companies have taught all of us is how vulnerable even the largest. Um, you know, companies on most robust enterprises could be those companies that had already begun Their digital transformation, maybe even years ago, had already started that process and we're in a better. We're in a great position in their journey. They fared a lot better and we're able to be agile. Were able Thio in a shift. Priorities were able to go after what they needed to do toe to run their businesses better and be able to do so with riel clarity and confidence. And I think that's really the second piece of it is, um or the last six months people's lives have really depended on the data people's lives that have really dependent on uncertainty. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of reliable and trustworthy information, not just the proliferation of data. And as Chris mentioned this data being available, it's really about making sure that you can use that data as an asset Ondas and that the greatest weapon we all have, really there is the information and good information to make a great business decisions. >>Of course, Chris, the other thing we've seen is the acceleration toe to the cloud, which is obviously you're born in the cloud. It's been a real tailwind. What are you seeing in that regard from your I was gonna say in the field, but from your zoom >>advantage. Yeah, well, I think you know, a C talked about supply chain, um, analytics in in her previous example. And I think one of the things that that we did is we hosted a data set. The covert data set over 19 data set within snowflakes, data marketplace. And we saw customers that were, you know, initially hesitant to move to the cloud really accelerate there. They're used to just snowflake in the cloud with this cove Cove. A data set on Ben. We had other customers that are, you know, in the retail space, for example, and use the cova data set to do supply chain analytics and and and accelerated. You know, it helped them make smarter business decisions on that. So So I'd say that you know, Cove, it has, you know, made customers that maybe we're may be hesitant to to start their journey in the cloud, move faster. And I've seen that, you know, really go at a blistering pace right now. >>You know, you just talked about, you know, value because it's all about value. But the old days of data quality in the early days of Chief Data, Officer all the focus was on risk avoidance. How do I get rid of data? How long do I have to keep it? And that has flipped dramatically. You know, sometime during the last decade, >>you can't get away too much from the need for quality data and and govern data. I think that's the first step. You can't really get to, um, you know, to trust the data without those components. And but to your point, the chief Data officers role, I would say, has changed pretty significantly. And in the round tables that I've participated in over the last, you know, several months. It's certainly a topic that they bring to the table that they'd like Thio chat with their peers about in terms of how they're navigating through the balance, that they still need toe to manage to the quality they still need to manage to the governance they still need. Thio ensure that that they're delivering that trusted information to the business. But now, on the flip side as well, they're being relied upon to bring new insights. And that's on bit's, um, really requiring them to work more cross functionally than they may have needed to in the past where that's been become a big part of their job is being that evangelist for data the evangelist. For that, those insights and being able to bring in new ideas for how the business can operate and identified, you know, not just not just operational efficiencies, but revenue opportunities, ways that they can shift. All you need to do is take a look at, for example, retail. You know, retail was heavily impacted by the pandemic this year on git shows how easily an industry could be could be just kind of thrown off its course simply by by a just a significant change like that. Andi need to be able to to adjust. And this is where, um when I've talked to some of the CEOs of the retail customers that we work with, they've had to really take a deep look at how they can leverage their the data at their fingertips to identify new in different ways in which they can respond to customer demands. So it's a it's a whole different dynamic. For sure, I it doesn't mean that that you walk away from the other and the original part of the role of the or the areas in which they were maybe more defined a few years ago when the role of the chief data officer became very popular. I do believe it's more of a balance at this point and really being able to deliver great value to the organization with the insights that they could bring >>well, is he stayed on that for a second. So you have this concept of data health, and I guess what kind of getting tad is that In the early days of Big Data Hadoop, it was just a lot of rogue efforts going on. People realize, Wow, there's no governance And what what seems like what snowflake and talent are trying to do is to make that the business doesn't have to worry about it. Build, build that in, don't bolt it on. But what's what's this notion of data health that you talk about? >>Companies can measure and do measure just about everything, every aspect of their business health. Um, except what's interesting is they don't have a great way to measure the health of their data, and this is an asset that they truly rely on. Their future depends on is that health of their data. And so if we take a little bit of a step back, maybe let's take a look at an example of a customer experiences to kind of make a little bit of a delineation between the differences of data, data, quality, data trust in what data health truly is. We work with a lot of health, a lot of hotel chains. And like all companies today, hotels collect a ton of information. There's mountains of information, private information about their customers through the loyalty clubs and all the information that they collect from there, the front desk, the systems that store their data. You can start to imagine the amount of information that a hotel chain has about an individual, and frequently that information has, you know, errors in it, such as duplicate entries, you know. Is it a Seagram, or is it in Chris Telegram? Same person, Slightly different, depending on how I might have looked or how I might have checked in at the time. And sometimes the data is also mismanaged, where because it's in so many different locations, it could be accessed by the wrong person of someone that wasn't necessarily intended to have that kind of visibility. And so these are examples of when you look at something like that. Now you're starting to get into, you know, privacy regulations and other kinds of things that could be really impactful to a business if data is in the wrong hands or the wrong data is in the wrong hands. So, you know, in a world of misinformation and mistrust, which is around us every single day, um, talent has really invented a way for businesses to verify the veracity, the accuracy of their data. And that's where data health really comes in Is being able to use a trust score to measure the data health on. That's what we have recently introduced is this concept of the trust score, something that can actually provide and measure, um, at the accuracy and the health of the data all the way down to an individual report. We believe that that that truly, you know, provides the explainable trust issue resolution, the kinds of things that companies are looking for in that next stage of overall data management. >>Thank you, Chris. Bring us home. So, one of the key aspects of what snowflake is doing is building out the ecosystem is very, very important. Really talk about how how you guys we're partnering and adding value in particular things that you're seeing customers do today within the ecosystem or with the help of the ecosystem and stuff like that they weren't able to do previously. >>Yeah. I mean, I think you know a C mentioned it. You mentioned it. You know, we spent I spent a lot of my zoom days talking Thio, chief data officers and as I'm talking to the chief data officers that they are so concerned their responsibility on making sure that the business users air getting accurate data so that they view that as data governance is one aspect of it. But the other aspect is the circumference of the data of where it sits and who has access to that data and making sure it's super secure. And I think you know, snowflake is a tremendous landing spot being a data warehouse or data cloud data platform as a service, you know, we take care of all the, you know, securing that data. And I think where talent really helps our customer base is helps them exactly What what is he talked about is making sure that you know myself as a business users someone like myself who's looking at data all the time, trying to make decisions on how many sales people I wanna hire house my forecast coming. You know, how's the how's the product working all that stuff? I need to make sure that I'm actually looking at at good data. And I think the combination of all sitting in a single repository like snowflake and then layering it on top or laying a tool like talent on top of it, where I can actually say, Yeah, that is good data. It helps me make smarter decisions faster. And ultimately, I think that's really where the ecosystem plays. An incredibly important, important role for snowflake in our customers, >>guys to great cast. I wish we had more time, but we gotta go on dso Thank you so much for sharing your perspectives. A great conversation

>>Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the data cloud. Summer 2020. We're >>gonna >>dig into the all important ecosystem and focusing a little bit on the intersection of the data Cloud and trust and with Me are and Crystal Graham, aka A C. She's the C R O of talent, and Chris Degnan is the C R. O of Snowflake. We have to go to market heavies on this section, folks. Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you. >>Thanks for having us. >>That's our pleasure. And so let's let's talk about digital transformation, right? Everybody loves to talk about it. It zone overused term. I know, but what does it mean? Let's talk about the vision of the data cloud for snowflake and digital transformation. A. C. We've been hearing a lot about digital transformation over the past few years. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. What are you hearing from customers? How are they thinking about when I come, sometimes called DX and what's important to them? Maybe address some of the challenges even that they're facing where you >>thought. Absolutely. Dave, you know, digital transformation means literally staying in business or not. Um, That's what you hear from customers. Thes days. Eso, you know, most still agree on that. The opportunity Thio modernized data management, bringing efficiencies and scale and cost savings through digital transformation. But now it's really beyond that. What's become front and center is the need for trusted data. Um, and you know, one of the things we could talk a little bit about their Let me give you an example what that means. It's It's really having a agile infrastructure that will allow a company to pivot operations as they need. There's a company that I recently spoke with one of our customers that's in a medical device in the medical device industry, and they had started their digital journey last year. Um, so they were in a really good position when Cove it hit in February. At the time, they needed to take a complete look at their supply chain and optimize it. In fact, they needed to find ways that they could really change their production to a degree of about 20 times more in a given day thing, what they had been doing prior to co vid. And so when you think about what that required them to do. They really needed to rely on trusted, clean, compliant data, um, in an agile, ready to adapt infrastructure. And that's really what digital transformation was to them. And I think that's an example of when you talk to customers today, and they define what digital transformation means to them. You'll find examples like that that demonstrate that in times it's it's really about the difference between, you know, life or death saving lives, staying in business. >>Right? Well, thank you for that. And you're right on. I mean, if you're not a digital business today, you're kind of out of business. And, Chris, I've always said a key part of digital transformation is really putting data at the core of everything. You know, Not not the manufacturing plant, that the core in the data around it, but putting data at the center. It seems like that's what Snowflake is bringing to the table. Can you comment? >>Yeah. I mean, I think if if I look across what's happening and especially a Z A. C said you know, through co vid is customers are bringing more and more data sets. They wanna make smarter business decisions based on data making data driven decisions. And we're seeing acceleration of data moving to the cloud because there's just an abundance of data and it's challenging to actually manage that data on premise and and, as we see those, those customers move those large data sets. Think what A C said is spot on is that customers don't just want to have their data in the cloud. But they actually want to understand what the data is, understand, who has access to that data, making sure that they're actually making smart business decisions based on that data. And I think that's where the partnership between both talent and snowflake are really tremendous, where you know we're helping our customers bring their data assets to to the cloud, really landing it and allowing them to do multiple, different types of workloads on top of this data cloud platform and snowflake. And then I think again what talent is bringing to the table is really helping the customer make sure that they trust the data that they're actually seeing. And I think that's a really, um, important aspect of digital transformation today. >>Awesome and I want to get into the partnership, but I don't wanna leave the pandemic just yet. I wanna ask you how it's affected customer priorities and timelines with regard to modernizing their data operations. And what I mean to that I think about the end and life cycle of going from raw data insights and how they're approaching those life cycles. Data quality is a key part of If you have good data quality, you're gonna I mean, obviously you want to reiterate and you wanna move fast. But if if it's garbage out, then you got to start all over again. So what are you seeing in terms of the effect of the pandemic and the urgency of modernizing those data operations? >>Yeah, but like Chris just said it accelerated things for those companies that hadn't quite started their digital journey. Maybe it was something that they had budgeted for but hadn't quite resourced completely many of them. This is what it took to to really get them off the dying from that perspective, because there was no longer the the opportunity to wait. They needed to go and take care of this really critical component within their their business. So, um, you know what? What cove? In I think has taught cos. Taught all of us is how vulnerable even the largest. Um, you know, companies on most robust enterprises could be, um, those companies that had already begun their digital transformation, maybe even years ago had already started that process. And we're in a better. We're in a great position in their journey. They fared a lot better, and we're able to be agile. Were able Thio in a shift. Priorities were able to go after what they needed to do toe to run their businesses better and be able to do so with riel clarity and confidence. And I think that's really the second piece of it is, um, for the last six months, people's lives have really depended on the data people's lives that have really dependent on uncertainty. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of reliable and trustworthy information, not just the proliferation of data. And as Chris mentioned this data being available, it's really about making sure that you can use that data as an asset Ondas and and that the greatest weapon we all have, really there is the information and good information to make great business decisions. >>Of course, Chris The other thing we've seen is the acceleration toe, the cloud, which is obviously you're born in the cloud. It's been a real tailwind. What are you seeing in that regard from your I was gonna say in the field. But from your zoom vantage >>point? Yeah, well, I think you know, a C talked about supply chain, um, analytics in in her previous example. And I think one of the things that we did is we hosted a data set. The covert data set over 19 data set within snowflakes, data marketplace. And we saw customers that were, you know, initially hesitant to move to the cloud really accelerate. They're used to just snowflake in the cloud with this cove. It covert data set on Ben. We had other customers that are, you know, in the retail space, for example, and use the cova data set to do supply chain analytics and and and accelerated. You know, it helped them make smarter business decisions on that. So So I'd say that you know, Cove, it has, you know, made customers that maybe we're may be hesitant to to start their journey in the cloud, move faster. And I've seen that, you know, really go at a blistering pace right now. >>You know, you just talked about value because it's all about value. But the old days of data quality in the early days of Chief Data officer, all the focus was on risk avoidance. How do I get rid of data? How long do I have to keep it? And that has flipped dramatically. You know, sometime during the last decade, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit because I know you talked to a lot of CDOs out there. And have you seen that that flip, that where the value pieces really dwarfing that risk, peace. And not that you can. You can ignore the risk that. But that's almost table stakes. What are your thoughts? >>Um, you know, that's interesting. Saying it's it's almost table stakes. I think we can't get away too much from the need for quality data and and govern data. I think that's the first step. You can't really get to, um, you know, to trust the data without those components. And but to your point, the chief data officers role, I would say, has changed pretty significantly and in the round tables that I've participated in over the last, you know, several months. It's certainly a topic that they bring to the table that they'd like Thio chat with their peers about in terms of how they're navigating through the balance that they still need. Thio manage to the quality they still need to manage to the governance. They still need toe to ensure that that they're delivering, um, that trusted information to the business. But now, on the flip side as well, they're being relied upon to bring new insights. And that's, um, it Z really require them to work more cross functionally than they may have needed to in the past. Where that's been become a big part of their job is being that evangelist for data the evangelist. For that, those insights and being able to bring in new ideas for how the business can operate and identified, you know, not just not just operational efficiencies, but revenue opportunities, ways that they can shift. All you need to do is take a look at, for example, retail. Um, you know, retail was heavily impacted by the pandemic this year on git shows how easily an industry could be could be just kind of thrown off its course simply by by a just a significant change like that. They need to be able to to adjust. And this is where, um, when I've talked to some of the CEOs of the retail customers that we work with, they've had to really take a deep look at how they can leverage their the data at their fingertips to identify new in different ways in which they can respond to customer demands. So it's a it's a whole different dynamic for sure. It doesn't mean that that you walk away from the other and the original part of the role of the or the areas in which they were maybe more defined a few years ago when the role of the chief data officer became very popular. I do believe it's more of a balance at this point and really being able to deliver great value to the organization with the insights that they could bring >>Well, a C stay on that for a second. So you have this concept of data health, and I guess what kind of getting tad is that the early days of big data Hadoop. It was a lot of rogue efforts going on. People realize, Wow, there's no governance And what what seems like what snowflake and talent are trying to do is to make that the business doesn't have to worry about it. Build that in, don't bolted on. But what's what's this notion of of data health that you talk about? >>Well, the companies you know, it's it's It's interesting Cos can measure and do measure just about everything, every aspect of their business. Health. Um, except what's interesting is they don't have a great way to measure the health of their data. And this is an asset that they truly rely on. Their future depends on is that health of their data? And so if we take a little bit of a step back, maybe let's take a look at an example of a customer experiences to kind of make a little bit of a delineation between the differences of data data, quality data, trust on what data health truly is, We work with a lot of health, a lot of hotel chains, and like all companies today, hotels collect a ton of information. There's mountains of information. Um private information about their customers through the loyalty clubs and all the information that they collect from there the front desk, the systems that store their data. You can start to imagine the amount of information that a hotel chain has about an individual. And, uh, frequently that information has, you know, errors in it, such as duplicate entries, you know. Is it a Seagram or is it in Chris Telegram? Same person, Slightly different, depending on how I might have looked or how I might have checked in at the time. And sometimes the data is also mismanaged, where because it's in so many different locations, it could be accessed by the wrong person of someone that wasn't necessarily intended to have that kind of visibility. And so these are examples of when you look at something like that. Now you're starting to get into, um, you know, privacy regulations and other kinds of things that could be really impactful to a business if data is in the wrong hands or the wrong data is in the wrong hands. So you know, in a world of misinformation and mistrust, which is around us every single day, um, talent has really invented a way for businesses to verify the veracity, the accuracy of their data. And that's where data health really comes in is being able to use a trust score to measure the data health on. That's what we have recently introduced. Is this concept of the trust score, something that can actually provide and measure the accuracy and the health of the data all the way down to an individual report on? We believe that that that truly, you know, provides the explainable trust issue resolution, the kinds of things that companies are looking for in that next stage of overall data management. >>Thank you, Chris. Bring us home. So one of the key aspects of what snowflake is doing is building out the ecosystem is very, very important. Maybe talk about how how you guys air partnering and adding value in particular things that you're seeing customers do today within the ecosystem or with the help of the ecosystem and stuff like that they weren't able to do previously. >>Yeah. I mean, I think you know a C mentioned it. You mentioned it. You know, we spent I spent a lot of my zoom days talking Thio chief data officers and as I'm talking to the chief data officers that they are so concerned their responsibility on making sure that the business users air getting accurate data so that they view that as data governance is one aspect of it. But the other aspect is the circumference of the data of where it sits and who has access to that data and making sure it's super secure. And I think you know, snowflake is a tremendous landing spot, being a data warehouse or data cloud data platform as a service, you know, we take care of all, you know, securing that data. And I think we're talent really helps our customer base is helps them. Exactly what it is he talked about is making sure that you know myself as a business users someone like myself who's looking at data all the time, trying to make decisions on how many sales people I wanna hire. How's my forecast coming? How's the product working all that stuff? I need to make sure that I'm actually looking at at good data, and I think the combination of all sitting in a single repository like snowflake and then layering it on top or laying a tool like talent on top of it, where I can actually say, Yeah, that is good data. It helps me make smarter decisions faster. And ultimately, I think that's really where the ecosystem plays. An incredibly important, important role for snowflake in our customers, >>guys to great guests. I wish we had more time, but we got to go on. DSo Thank you so much for sharing your perspective is a great conversation. >>Thank you for having a Steve. >>All right. Thank you for watching. Keep it right there. We'll be back with more from the data cloud Summit 2020.

>> Narrator: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. It's theCUBE's two day coverage of Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019, here in Miami Beach, at the Fontainebleau Hotel. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're with Katya Fisher, Partner Chief and Chief Privacy Officer at Greenspoon Marder. Legal advice is right here on theCUBE, ask her anything. We're going to do a session here. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, I'm going to have to do the little disclaimer that all lawyers do, which is, nothing here is to be construed as advice. It's just opinions and information only. >> I didn't mean to set you up like that. All kidding aside, you closed for the panel here for Acronis' conference. Obviously, cyber protection's their gig. Data protection, cyber protection. Makes sense, I think that category is evolving from a niche, typical enterprise niche, to a much more holistic view as data becomes you know, critical in the security piece of it. What was on the, what were you guys talking about in the panel? >> Well, so, the first issue that you have to understand is that cyber protection is something that has now become critical for pretty much every individual on the planet, as well as governments. So something that we talked about on the panel today was how governments are actually dealing with incoming cyber threats. Because now, they have to take a look at it from the perspective of, first of all, how they themselves are going to become technologically savvy enough to protect themselves, and to protect their data, but also, in terms of regulation and how to protect citizens. So, that was what the panel discussion was about today. >> On the regulatory front, we've been covering on SiliconANGLE, our journalism site, the innovation balance, is regulatory action helpful or hurtful to innovation? Where is the balance? What is the education needed? What's your thoughts on this, where are we? I mean early stages, where's the progress? What needs to get done? What's your view on the current situation? >> So, I'm an attorney, so my views are perhaps a bit more conservative than some of the technologists you might speak with and some of my clients as well. I think that regulation is, as a general matter, it can be a good thing. And it can be quite necessary. The issues that we see right now, with regard to regulation, I think one of the hottest issues today is with respect to data laws and data privacy laws. And that's obviously something that I think everyone is familiar with. I mean take a look at, in the United States alone. We've seen the city of Baltimore dealing with breaches. We've seen other parts of the government, from the Federal level all the way down to municipalities, dealing with breaches in cyber attacks. We've seen data breaches from banks, Capital One, right? I believe Dunkin' Donuts suffered a breach. Equifax, and then at the same time we've also seen individuals up in arms over companies like 23andMe and Facebook, and how data is used and processed. So data seems to be a very very hot button issue today across the board. So something that we're really thinking about now is, first of all, with respect to the regulatory climate, how to deal with it, not only in the United States, but on a global level, because, when we talk about technology and the internet right, we're in an era of globalization. We're in an era where a lot of these things go across boarders and therefore we have to be mindful of the regulatory regimes in other places. So, I'll give you an example. You might be familiar with the GDPR. So the GDPR is in the European Union. It's been in effect now for the last year and a half, but it affects all my U.S. clients. We still have to take a look at the GDPR because at the end of the day my clients, my firm, might be dealing with foreign companies, foreign individuals, companies that have some sort of nexus in the European Union, et cetera. So because of that, even though the GDPR is a set of regulations specific to the European Union, it becomes extremely important in the context of the United States and globally. At the same time, the GDPR has certain issues that then end up conflicting often times with some of the regulations that we have here in the United States. So, for example, the right to be forgotten is perhaps the most famous clause or part of the GDPR and the right to be forgotten is this concept in the GDPR that an individual can have information erased about him or her in order to protect his or her privacy. The problem is that from a technical's perspective, first of all, it's an issue because it becomes very very difficult to figure out where data is stored, if you're using third-party processors, et cetera. But from a regulatory perspective, the conflict comes in when you take a look at certain U.S. laws. So take a look for example at banking regulations in the United States. Banks have to hold some types of data for seven years and other types of data they can never delete. Right? Lawyers. I am licensed by the New York State Bar Association. Lawyers have their own rules and regulations with regard to how they store data and how they store information. HIPAA, medical records. So, you see these conflicts and there are ways to deal with them appropriately, but it becomes some food for thought. >> So it's complicated. >> It's really complicated >> There's a lot of conflicts. >> Yeah. >> First of all, I talked to a storage guy. He's like data? I don't even know which drive that's on. Storage is not elevated up to the level of state-of-the-art, from a tracking standpoint. So, it's just on the business logic is complicated. I can't imagine that. So, I guess my question to you is that, are you finding that the jurisdictional issue, is it the biggest problem, in terms of crossport and the business side or is the technical underpinnings, that with GDPR's the problem or both? What's your-- >> I mean it's both, right? They're a lot of issues. You're right, it's very complicated. I mean, in the United States we don't have some sort of overarching federal law. There's no cyber protection law in the United States. There's no overarching data protection law. So, even in the U.S. alone, because of federalism, we have HIPAA and we have COPPA which protects children and we have other types of acts, but then we also have state regulations. So, in California you have the California Privacy Act. In New York you have certain regulations with regard to cyber security and you have to deal with this patchwork. So, that becomes something that adds a new layer of complexity and a new layer of issues, as we take a look, even within the U.S. alone, as to how to deal with all of this. And then we start looking at the GDPR and all of this. From a technical perspective. I'm not a technologist, but. >> Katya, let me ask you a question on the (mumbles) and business front. (mumbles) I think one of the things. I'm saying it might or may not be an issue, but I want to get your legal weigh-in on this. >> Katya: Sure. >> It used to be when you started a company, you go to Delaware, very friendly, domicile in Delaware, do some formation there, whether you're a C corp or whatever, that's where we tend to go, raise some money, get some preferred stock, you're in business. >> Is there a shift in where companies with domicile, their entity, or restructure their companies around this complexity? Because, there's two schools of thought. This brute force act, everything coming at you, or you restructure your corporate formation to handle some of the nuances, whether it's I have a Cayman or a Bermuda... whatever's going on in the regulatory regime, whether it's innovative or not. Are people thinking like that? Or, what's your take on it? What's some of the data you're seeing from the field around, restructuring around the problem? >> So, with respect to restructuring, specifically around data laws and data protection laws, I'm not seeing too much of that, simple because of the fact that regulations like the GDPR are just so all-encompassing. With respect to companies setting up in Delaware as opposed to other jurisdictions, those are usually based on two issues, right, two core ones, if I can condense it. One has to do with the court system and how favorable a court system is to the corporation, and the second is taxes. So, a lot of times when you see companies that are doing all of this restructuring, where they're setting up in offshore zones, or et cetera, it's usually because of some sort of a tax benefit. It might be because of the fact that, I don't know, for example, intellectual property. If you have a company that's been licensing IP to the United States, there's a 30% withholding tax when royalties are paid back overseas. So a lot of times when you're looking at an international structuring, you're trying to figure out a jurisdiction that might have a tax treaty with the United States, that will create some sort of an opportunity to get rid of that 30% withholding. So, that's where things usually come into play with regard to taxes and IP. I haven't seen yet, on the side of looking for courts that are more favorable to companies, with respect to data privacy and data protection. I just haven't seen that happen yet because I think that it's too soon. >> How do companies defend themselves against claims that come out of these new relations? I mean GDPR, I've called it the shitstorm when it came out. I never was a big fan of it. It just didn't. I mean, I get the concept, but I kind of understood the technical issues, but let's just say that you're a small growing business and you don't have the army of lawyers or if someone makes a claim on you, I have to defend it. How are companies defending themselves? Do they just shut down? Do they hire you guys? I mean, obviously lawyers need to be involved. But, at some point there's a line of where having a U.S. company and someone consumes my media in Germany and it says, hey I'm a German citizen. You American company, delete my records. How does that work? Do I have to be responsible for that? I mean, what's? >> So, it's really case-by-case basis. First of all, obviously, with regard to what I was talking about earlier, with respect to the fact that there are certain regulations in the U.S. that conflict with GDPR and the right to be forgotten. If you can actually assert a defense and sort of a good reason for why you have to maintain that information, that's step one. Step two is, if it's some complaint that you received, is to delete the person's information. There's an easier way to do it. >> Yeah, just do what they want. >> Just comply with what they want. If somebody wants to be off of a mailing list, take them off the mailing list. The third is, putting in best practices. So, I'm sure a lot of things that people see online, it's always great to go ahead and obtain legal counsel, even if you're consulting with a lawyer just for an hour or two, just to really understand your particular situation. But, take a look at privacy policies online. Take a look at the fact that cookies now have a pop-up whenever you go to a website. I'm sure you've noticed this, right? >> John: Yeah. So, there are little things like this. Think about the fact that there are, what is known as clickwrap agreements. So, usually you have to consent. You have to check a box or uncheck a box with respect to reading privacy policies, being approved for having your email address and contact information somewhere. So, use some common sense. >> So, basically don't ignore the prompt. >> Don't ignore the problem. >> Don't ignore it. Don't stick your head in the sand. It'll bite you. >> Correct. And the thing is, to be honest, for most people, for most small companies, it's not that difficult to comply. When we start talking about mid-size and large businesses, the next level, the next step, obviously beyond hiring attorneys and the like, is try to comply with standards and certifications. For example, there's what is known as ISO standards. Your company can go through the ISO 27001 certification process. I think it costs around approximately $20,000. But, it's an opportunity to go ahead, go through that process, understand how compliant you are, and because you have the certification, you're then able to go to your customers and say, hey, we've been through this, we're certified. >> Yeah. Well, I want to get, Katya, your thoughts, as we wrap up on this segment, around Crypto and Blockchain. Obviously, we're bullish on Blockchain. We think this is a supply chain. (mumbles) Blockchain can be a good force, although some think there's some work needs to be done on the whole energy side of it, which is, we would agree. But, still. I'm not going to make that be a wet blanket of excitement. But cryptocurrency has been fraudulent. It's been. The SCC's been cracking down in the U.S., in the news. Lieber's falling apart, although, I called that separately, but, (laughing) it had nothing to do with that Lieber. It was more of Facebook, but. Telegram. We were talking about that, others. People are getting handcuffed on this stuff. They're really kind of clamping down. But, overseas in Asia, it's still an unregulated, seems to be (mumbles) kind of market. Your advice to clients was to shy away, be careful? >> My advice to clients is as follows. First of all, Blockchain and cryptocurrency are not the same thing. Right? Cryptocurrency is a use case coming out of Blockchain technology. I think that in the United States, the best way to think about it is to understand that the term cryptocurrency, from a regulatory perspective, is actually a misnomer. It's not a currency. It's property. Right? It's an asset. It's digital assets. So, if you think about it the same way that we think of shares in a company, it's actually much easier to become compliant, because, then you can understand that it's going to be subject to U.S. securities laws, just like other securities. It's going to be taxed, just like securities are taxed, which means that it's going to be subject to long and short-term capitol gain, and it's also going to be subject to the other regulatory restrictions that are adherent to securities, both on the federal and state level. >> It's interesting that you mentioned security. The word security. If you look back at the ICO craze, internet coin offerings, crypto offerings, whatever you call it, The people who got whacked the most were the ones that went out as a utility tokens. Not to get nerdy on this, but utility and security are two types of tokens. The ones that went out and raised money as the utility token had no product, raised money using the utility that doesn't exist. That's essentially a security. And, so, no wonder why they're getting slapped. >> They're securities. Look, Bitcoin, different story, because Bitcoin is the closest to being I guess, what we could consider to be truly decentralized, right? And the regulatory climate around Bitcoin is a little bit different from what I'm talking about, with respects to securities laws. Although, from a tax perspective, it's the same. It's taxed as property. It's not taxed the way that foreign currency is taxed. But ultimately, yeah. You had a lot of cowboys who went out, and made a lot of money, and were just breaking the law, and now everyone is shocked when they see what's going on with this cease-and-desist order from the SCC against Telegram, and these other issues. But, none of it is particularly surprising because at the end of the day we have regulations in place, we have a regulatory regime, and most people just chose to ignore it. >> It's interesting how fast the SCC modernized their thinking around this. They really. From a speed standpoint, all government agencies tend to be glacier speed kind of movement. They were pretty fast. I mean, they kind of huddled on this for a couple months and came out with direction. They've been proactive. I got to say. I was usually skeptical of most government organization. I don't think they well inform. In this case, I think the SCC did a good job. >> So, I think that the issue is as follows. You know, Crypto is a very very very small portion of what the SCC deals with, so, they actually paid an inordinate amount of attention to this, and, I think that they did it for a couple of reasons. One is because, you asked me in the beginning of this interview about regulations versus innovation. And, I don't think anyone wants to stifle innovation in America. It's a very interesting technology. It's very interesting ideas, right? No one wants that to go away and no one wants people to stop experimenting and stop dreaming bigger. At the same time, the other issue that we've seen now, especially, not only with the SCC, but with the IRS now getting involved, is the fact that even though this is something very very small, they are very concerned about where the technology could go in the future. The IRS is extremely concerned about erosion of the tax space. So, because of that, it makes a lot of sense for them to pay attention to this very very early on, nip this in the bud, and help guide it back into the right direction. >> I think that's a good balance. Great point. Innovation doesn't want to be stifled at all, absolutely. What's new and exciting for you? Share some personal or business updates in your world. What's going on? What's getting you excited these days, in the field? >> What's getting me excited these days? Well, I have to tell you that one thing that actually has gotten me excited these days is the fact that the Blockchain and cryptocurrency industries have grown up, substantially. And, now we're able to take a look at those industries in tandem with the tech industry at large, because they seem to sort of be going off in a different direction, and now we're taking a look at it, and now you can really see sort of where the areas that things are going to get exciting. I look at my clients and I see the things that they're doing and I'm always excited for them, and I'm always interested to see what new things that they'll innovate, because, again, I'm not a technologist. So, for me, that's a lot of fun. And, in addition to that, I think that other areas are extremely exciting as well. I'm a big fan of Acronis. I'm a big fan of cyber protection issues, data protection, data regulation. I think something that's really interesting in the world of data regulation, that actually has come out of the Blockchain community, in a way, is the notion of data as a personal right, as personal property. So, one of the big things is the idea that now that we've seen these massive data breaches with Facebook and 23andME, and the way that big government, big companies, are using individuals' datas, the idea that if data were to be personal property, it would be used very very differently. And technologists who are using Blockchain technology say that Blockchain technology might actually be able to make that happen. Because if you could have a decentralized Facebook, let's say, people could own their own data and then use that data as they want to and be compensated for it. So, that's really interesting, right-- Yeah, but, if you're just going to use the product, they might as well own their data, right? >> Katya: Exactly. >> Katya, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for the insight. Great, compelling narrative. Thanks for sharing. >> Sure, thank you very much. >> Appreciate it. I'm John Furrier here on theCUBE, Miami Beach, at the Fontainebleau hotel for Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.

(dramatic music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to the special CUBEConversations here in Palo Alto, CA theCUBE Studios. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We are here for some exclusive news around security audits, blockchain smart contracts, and a hot new startup Amber Data we have the Chief Operating Officer Tongtong Gong who's here, Chief Operating Officer of Amber Data, great to see you! You guys, I've interviewed Shawn Douglass, the CEO, founder, before and he was really getting the technology going. Amazing progress, we have some exclusive discoveries here, welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you, thank you, thanks for having me here. It's awesome, we've done so much in the past couple weeks, and really excited to announce that we have taken security audits, automated that to be able to provide automated at scale security audits for all the smart contracts, Ethereum, through our platform. >> This has been a huge problem, we've been covering it for the past year, with video but also in the blogs, Ethereum specifically has been the developer chain of choice, people are using Ethereum, programming on it, and that's where a lot of the DApps, decentralized apps, which we think there's going to be a tsunami of, we're a bit bullish on it, but the problem is that everyone went in and rushed with these ICO's, and they didn't think about, "Hey we better make sure our token generating event works" because they've got to do a smart contract on that, and then ultimately these marketplaces that will be emerging from these apps through the communities will be a lot of smart contracts, as the transaction of choice. This is what is the benefit of token economics. The problem is, security. The security audits have been a pain in the butt, they've been expensive, and there's been a time lag in getting it done. So you've got a time factor, too slow, too expensive, and it was last minute. >> Right. >> This has been a huge problem. Are you saying that you solved that problem? >> Yeah, kind of! So give you some stats. There are about 7.8 million to 8 million smart contracts on the chain today. On average, there's about 500-600 smart contracts get deployed every day into Mainnet Ethereum. What we've done, we talked to a lot of security teams that's in this space, and at the end of the day everybody use the same tools, set of tools, to preform security audits. What we have done, is we have programatically did that so we can run security audits on every smart contract on the chain. So we launched this feature last Friday, what we did is we picked the top 2000 smart contracts, based on transaction values-- >> On the Mainnet? >> On the Mainnet. And we preformed the audits on those, and last night, yeah three days later, we preformed all 8000 smart contracts that's been created and deployed in the past 90 days. So the top 2000 active ones, and the 8000 recently deployed ones, we preformed security audits on those. >> So this is pretty incredible, so I want to make sure I get this right. If this is the case, this is the first ever automation, or devOPS like approach to smart contract audits and security. So let me just kind of slow down if you don't mind. Today, most people will go in and manually look at code reviews or use some tooling to do that, and then they get a report. Businesses have been doing that, OSHO does that, many more do it, and they're bringing tools to the market, they are too, but I don't think anyone's actually automated at volume. So you're saying, you're automating, ingesting data from the chain-- >> Mhm. We analyze the bytecode as well as the source code to identify vulnerabilities and issues, things like integer overflow into the code, and we actually assign custom, we have our own scoring system to score basically the vulnerability exposure of the smart contract. >> Okay so I want to kind of push back on that because I'm skeptical. So, you do byte review-- >> Bytecode >> Bytecode and source code review, and then it's a black box and you type up a report, or you actually flag the code itself? Do you service it automatically? Does that happen automatically? Take me through what you do manually, and what happens with the computers. What is automated? >> Everything's automated. So we integrated the tools that every expert uses in this space today, to run the security audits on the smart contract and the bytecode and then we flag the particular source code and function calls that's flagged with the issue-- >> That's in the code itself? >> That's in the code itself, in that service, through our website, through our console, and you can actually see it. You can search on any smart contract and the console dashboard will show you the real time live streaming events of your smart contract function calls, as well as the vulnerability-- >> This is amazing. So this means that you can save a lot of time, love this feature, this is exciting. This is actually the first news I've ever hear of this, so I want to make sure I get it right. How many contracts can you do? How fast does it take? So you mentioned you've ingested last week, stuff off the chain, how many contracts was that? >> We did last week, 2000 and then up to last night, we finished 8000 smart contract scans. We're continuing to do that for every smart contract on the chain. >> How fast is this, because I remember back when I was learning how to code for the first time, back in the old days, you had to press a button, you'd have a compiler, and you'd get a bug in the line, syntax error, there it is. That's the normal kind of old school computer science. Syntax, compiler, interpreter, whatever you want to call it. It sounds like you're doing something similar, the same kind of speed. It's code review, analysis to the contracts, security through the tools... How fast is it? I mean, how long does it take to do a review of one smart contract, for instance? >> Actually, I don't know that. I would say minutes. >> Not days? >> Not days. No. Minutes. >> So it's not like it goes out, hourglass... Check your email it'll be there? It happens pretty much on the fly? >> It happens pretty much on the fly, real time. >> So how many contracts can you guys do in a day? >> We've done 8000 in three days, so... A lot! (both laughing) And we have ten machines running right now as we're speaking-- >> So you throw some clout at it, scale up-- >> Exactly, scale up. >> Scaling out is easy to do, you just go... >> Our goal is to basically make it very easy for developers to understand the state and health of their smart contract and then they can go find consultants, experts to fix those vulnerabilities and issues. >> Yeah, this is going to be a rising tide. I think, rising tide floats all boats when you have these emerging markets. You move to the next problem, and you do. Jeff Frick always says that in theCUBE and he's right! You take away security, you're now enabling this tool for these consultants to actually add more value. >> Exactly. >> Is that the focus? Do you guys even know who's going to use this tool yet? Obviously, this is a game changer. I mean, if I'm a data scientist I love this. Also I'm a trader, I might want the data, I'm a risk management, audit compliance person? I mean...you guys-- >> Yeah! At Amber Data our mission has always been providing, enabling infrastructure, enabling tool sets to allow developers, to allow operators, to allow the industry, to allow businesses to adopt blockchain, that's always been our mission and we have built the splunk, you know like search, a feature for blockchain, we have built APM, we have built dissimilar Mixpanel... It's all about providing access to data and to information, to allow everyone to have a better understanding, better transparency into the state and health of the blockchain, the state and health of their smart contracts. So that's you know, in line with-- >> So talk about the scoring thing, because okay, I love this automation I think that that's a game changer. So congratulations, this is the first I've heard of it, and I think this might be the first news in the industry out there. How does it work beyond that? What else do you guys do? Are you ingesting, are you adding overlays to it? What is the focus next? I mean, you're ingesting it, you're doing some security audits... Where does it go from there? >> So, we're actually working with the Web3 Data Foundation. So the Web3 Data Foundation is building a decentralized data marketplace to allow everyone in the ecosystem to list, subscribe, consume, distribute, monetize data assets that's generated by the blockchain and data that's on blockchain. >> So what's the URL for that? Web3... >> Web3data.org >> Three the number or three... >> Three the number, yeah. >> So web3 number data dot org? >> Yeah. >> Okay and is that an open community? Is it a foundation? >> Yes it's a nonprofit foundation, and I believe they're launching a token, Web3 Data token, and Amber Data's working with the Web3 Data foundation as a launch partner to utilize the data ingestion pipeline we have built and to serve up all the data for everyone to have access to it. >> Okay so what's your business model at Amber Data? Are you going to have your own token? Are you going to use the foundation as the token holding place? Can you just take us through the relationship of Amber Data with the foundation? I mean, I get the foundation but what you're doing here is essentially you're building IT operations into the blockchain and scaling things with automation, which certainly is only going to get better with more compute and A.I and other cool things, so I love that. How do you make money? Is it a token model? Is it just, classic, you get paid? What's the relationship? Is the foundation issuing tokens, do you have your own token? Take us through that. >> So the Web3 Data Foundation is the one issuing the token. We are the launch partner, so we are using the bulk diagnostic data ingestion pipeline that we can ingest all the data, and we're building together, building the data marketplace using smart contracts, to enable everyone to list, curate, consume, distribute, monetize the data. You think about it, right? Data on blockchain is just a fraction of the data out there. And as staff development, going on, as a trading application going on, there's a lot of data that's going to be generated by blockchain as well, and those datas aren't getting captured, analyzed, and utilized today. I think today, as a trader, investor, or as a developer, people don't have access to this data, to have data driven decisions, to help them continuously improve. Whether it's application or investment decisions. So the data marketplace will enable everyone to be able to have that access. >> And also it might enable more faster solution of decentralized applications-- >> Exactly. >> Which, Fred Kruger and I were talking on Twitter, I mean Facebook, about this, that we think that's the killer app, it's going to be the tsunami of apps coming. But all these chain problems are out there, so it's a little bit of a resetting going on in the industry. Obviously you see that with some of the pricing and funding and everything, but for the most part we see a big market coming. So I've got to ask you, the obvious question from there is, which chains are you supporting? You mentioned Mainnet which is great for Ethereum-- >> Yeah today we're supporting Ethereum Mainnet, and Rinkeby, the test net. We also support Aion's Mainnet and test net. We also support Stellar, we're working on EOS and TRON as well, so we have open sourced our data collector to allow community to contribute to that and we'll use Web3 Data Token to incentivize the community to contribute, to verify, to enrich the data. >> So I've got to ask you the security question, maybe this might be for more the nerds and the geeks, delving down in the product level, but maybe you can get it. Security is huge, so I'm skeptical. You're doing scoring, can you be hacked? What's the security answer to that? Like, whoa if she's controlling the score, I might want to spoof the code and take over and say it's okay, ya know? >> The code we get is actually on the chain, it's the code that you put on the chain, so good luck spoofing the data on the blockchain. >> That's the whole point of block chain, that's already answered. That's a dumb question, I got that. I always ask dumb questions. Alright, so what's next for you guys? How big are you guys, what's the story? I've been following you guys on Twitter and Telegram, you've been traveling a lot. What's the update on the company, what's the status? >> So we are, as a launch partner for Web3 Data Foundation, right now there's a token sale, we're in the middle of closing our presale. It's a soft offering, and we're building and expanding the team as we're speaking. >> How much are you raising on the staff, can you talk about that? >> No. >> No? Okay you don't have to say the number. Just be careful, it gets hard to raise too much. So the foundation, and you guys. Okay, I want to ask you a personal question, we love women in blockchain, I wear the "Satoshi is female" shirt as much as I can... How did you get into this? Because there's a lot of women coming into blockchain, more than people are advertising. I'm seeing a lot more women in tech, certainly a lot more women in crypto. Blockchain and crypto, you guys are doing almost a cloud devOPs serious venture here. How did you get into this, what's your story? >> I've always been a cloud girl. I started my career building Yatuzi computing, enterprise grid computing. I was 23 years old and working for Axiom in a data center in Arkansas, and I'm the only one that wears high heel6s in data center, and get stuck in a vent you know? That's my background, so it's not a far stretch to understand blockchain and the usefulness of it if you talk about distribute computing, distribute storage. So it's very natural for me, from a technology perspective, get into this space. On a personal note, I really believe in decentralization, and I believe the change it's going to make to our lives and to our offspring's lives in the future. >> It's real, you think? >> It's real. It's here to stay. >> So what's your vision of blockchain? What are people not getting? Obviously there's a lot of scams out there that have kind of tainted on the ICO side, but what are people missing? When you talk to people, you have kind of like, "Oh I get it" and people kind of of like "I don't really see that" ? What's the main thing that they're missing, what's missing? >> I think it's missing that killer Dapp to get people to realize "Oh it's actually easy to use". I don't have to think about the inner workings, and it just works. My mom still lives in Beijing, I talk to her on Skype all the time, she's not worrying about TCPIP, she's not worrying about, how is this phone call getting encrypted or not encrypted? What's my network bandwidth? She just use the phone and call me, like I'm right next to her. I think as we develop building the apps, people don't think about that they're using blockchain, they just use it. >> It's like explaining it to a parent or someone who's not technical.. "Hey how does the internet work? Can't I just "type a keyword in to the browser or a search engine?" Instead today, it's more like "Hey, you know how BGP works?" and "You know how packets move around?" It's so hard to explain, so it's got to be easier. >> Way easier, yeah. >> Totally agree, totally agree. Well Tongtong, thank you for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it, great update, exclusive news. Automation, bringing cloud computing and utility computing, real geeky stuff to the table here. This is theCUBE Conversation and I'm John Furrier. Amber Data COO, Tongtong Gong here, inside theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)

(tech music) >> Live, from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our live coverage here in Bahrain for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of AWS Summit here in the Middle East in the region. Our first time here, lots of observations, lots of learnings, and also great people we're meeting. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Our next guest is Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, who is the Chief Executive of the Information E-Government Authority, also known as IGA. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, thank you for hosting me. >> Saw you last night at dinner. We were talking about all the opportunities. So the first question I have to ask you is, as you guys are bringing in the digital transformation, which is happening, you now have Amazon here with the region, how is that changing things? >> Of course, always we try to innovate, and the technology, if you don't innovate, if you don't make sure that you are ready for the changes coming, it is very difficult. When we announced our first strategy in 2007, we delivered it in 2010 becoming the leader in the region, delivering 200 services over four channels. But as you mentioned, usually in the technology, the longest cycle is the infrastructure and servers and configurations, buying things and configuring. And with the leadership vision of transforming the country the vision 2030, transformations happening in the judicial system and to the commercial legislations and to the customs and to health and education, the pace of change required and the ambition is very much, much higher. And particularly, when you develop something and you were successful. So our leaders say, we are a bit slow. We need to fast things up. So then we looked into the Amazon and the cloud. How it can help us. And usually, in Bahrain, we don't have the luxury of trial and error. Trying things and if it works, you know, try multiple things. So we have to study it well. This is why we looked into the cloud, what it can bring to the country, the agility, the time to market. And when we put the strategy forward, it was a comprehensive one. The leaders decided to go cloud-first policy. Everybody should move. Because that's the way forward, that's the way that the Kingdom can deliver its vision-- >> And the cloud-first decision, when was that made? >> That was last year. And, when it was made, it's not a piece of strategy. You have to look at it in a comprehensive way. >> Yeah. >> You have to look into your laws, legislations, compliance, >> Yeah. >> audits, architectures, unit policies, skills sets available, the procurement process, the tendering process, and you have to review all of that-- >> Yeah. >> and make sure that there is no show blockers or barriers for the implementation. Otherwise, it will take a long time. >> Yeah. (chuckles) >> This is why, in a year's time, we managed to migrate huge workloads to the cloud. >> We were talking last night about how hard it is just to figure out the future, never mind provisioning all the gear you got to do, and the training, and so this cloud-first is very interesting. But I also want to just tell you that we talked about, also, how hard it is. So when I say, oh, go cloud-first, it's so easy! Right? No, it isn't. There's a lot of work involved. >> Yes. >> Take us through some of the things that you guys have done, your learnings prior to cloud-first. And the key learnings now that cloud-first has been under your belt for over a year. >> Of course, always with the governments, the biggest challenge will happen about the security. How I am going to move losing the control, putting my processing and storage outside the government. How I'm going to protect it, somebody else is there. That's the biggest challenge. That's number one. Number two, people doesn't understand, they think it's processing. So okay, I have my processing power, I will save some money, that's not much. >> Yeah. >> But they don't think about the ultimate goal. About the time to market. >> Yeah. >> When you have a new vision, when you have a new service to be delivered, you cannot wait for 18, 24 months for the infrastructure-- >> Yeah. >> Getting there, idle for a couple of years until you know the full utilization of them. So this is why the ultimate goal is much, much bigger. >> Yeah. >> And the thing about the issue, of somebody else, looking into-- >> So speed is critical. >> Yeah. >> And you guys have speed under your belt. You did a Formula One racetrack in what, 14 months I heard, very fast construction. The Amazon region is going up in record time. Is this a cultural thing? Just go fast? People like speed? The need for speed? >> We like that, you know the Formula One, of course that's just part of our DNA. Our leaders always push the citizens. And that's the Bahraini culture. >> Yeah, the other thing, too, about the application, now to get back to our serious conversation, to have innovation, you need to have software development go on in a way that's not the 24-month, oh we built it, and you don't know if you tested it or not. But you got to built the dev-ops model infrastructure as code. How far along are you on the infrastructure as code? Because the developer side is going to be very great. >> [Mohammed Ali Al Qaed] Yeah. >> Amazon's proven that developers love it, easy to get going, lower cost to test, agility, time to market, time to value. The setup for you guys is a little bit different. You've got infrastructure as code-- >> Yeah. >> You're not a startup. But you want to act like one, but what are you going to do for the infrastructure? >> Of course, the infrastructure in terms of processing, that's easy because it's been migrated, most of it's been migrated, our ports, our channels, our mobile channels. >> The networks, you have 5G, do you have 5G here yet? >> We are already experimenting, ready for it. The frequency's already freed up for the telco's to utilize them. It's already there for the 5G. Of course, fiber is everywhere, all the government entities are connected to the fiber. High speed, we have 100-meg, we have a gig, we have 10 gig, we have all kinds of speed available. >> No problem for bandwidth in the country. >> I don't think so. We don't have an issue about the bandwidth. And the processing power, once moved, then the optimization, which already happened. But as you mentioned, coming to the development, we started already, developing into the serverless, using the lamdas, using born-in-the-cloud concepts, that was not there once we started. But now we are already educating and training our employees. >> What's the reaction to it? >> The reaction is excellent. I give an example today about the fingerprint authentication. That's a basic service, but it requires a huge demand return from all the telco's, all transactions happen in telco's, private hospitals, the banking are coming. >> Yeah. >> Any authentication happens, it has to happen in a second. >> Yeah. >> So that requires a huge, massive infrastructure. Once we built it, at the beginning, for only a few customers-- >> Yeah. >> we invested about 250,000 dinar at that time. Now, I think, it's being moved completely to serverless-- >> Yeah. >> Concept, a new development. >> Yeah. >> So... >> A simple idea, hard to implement in the old way, but the new way, you got to wire API's around, sling API's, and connect devices, telco's, environments quickly. So this brings up the integration, this is the benefit of the cloud. >> [Mohammed Ali Al Qaed] Exactly. >> The glue layer is, what, microservices? Is it API's? How are you making that lambda function...? >> You know, that API's, and, just, you call the service and it gets you online and you go back to the storage. I mean, a basic thing. >> Yeah. >> Initially, you know, you need a testing environment, a development environment, a lot of infrastructure, and then you have to secure all of that, secure your data. >> Yeah. >> Now, it's a fraction of that cost and much faster to go to market. >> I'm a huge believer in the services model, and this is why microservices is a big deal right now in clouds, if you look at all the cloud-native conversations, it's containers, we're using it, no problem, very good to use containers. They're great. Kubernetes, now, orchestration. But deal with state and stateless applications is now the new challenge because there are so many new services that are spinning up. Soon, you're going to be like, ordering McDonald's, you know, I'll have a microservice over here, so this is the world we're moving to. This is the services. >> Exactly. And we would like to build a center of excellence, you know? Because we get into this journey, we looked into all our legislations and the ecosystem, trained our employees, their skillset is very important, with the program, with Tamkeen. We looked into the training strategy, all the portfolio training, making sure that our Bahrainees have the ability to develop, to operate, databases and all aspects, even the planning of it. Then institutes, partners, to be ready to train the private sector and everybody. >> You know, Mohammed, I'm really impressed with the entrepreneurial people that I've met. They've got a good mojo to them, because they're kind of cocky, which I love about them, but they're not arrogant. They're like, they're smart, and I so I got a... I see a good community there. The question for you is, as you move to cloud-native, how is that transition? The young kids get it. I mean, it's no problem. >> Yeah. >> Where's the progress on the skillset gap? I've heard that conversation. I just don't see it being a problem if the young kids are eating up the cloud stuff like it's nobody's business. >> Yeah. >> Then I don't see a problem. What's your take on this skills gap thing? I mean, the guys I met, and the entrepreneurs, they're like, they want more action. >> Exactly. The point is the current employees that we have already. Hundreds of government employees that have been trained in a different environment with different technologies. I get a couple of questions from some of the professionals in the market, private sector and government sector: how we can benefit out of that? How we can help? We are experts in the field, but cloud for us is a new thing. So as you mentioned, for them it might be a bit more difficult. So what we did, and the IGA, we created a taskforce of the most brilliant team, and told them okay, you have to migrate the workloads, train, we'll give you the training, and you have to migrate. >> Go. >> Next, you have now to optimize. Give the task of migration to somebody else, a new team, and the old team, they have to optimize. Third, now you have to work on, bore on the cloud, develop on the cloud, create the environment of the cloud, a new concept. So that's how we take-- >> So you're spreading the work around through hands-on training? >> Of course. You train, and then you get them into the action, hands, on, and so on, one by one. But, eventually, the university's already working on training their students. So we want to make sure that part of the curriculum, the cloud is there for the new generations to take it from day one. >> You know, you guys are a learning culture, my observation, first time here, very impressed. Very friendly, which is always cool. But, it's a multilingual culture. So, if you add source code to the new lingua, coding is going to be critical. Are you guys getting at the younger generation really when they're young? How young are you going in terms of the new language, software... Thoughts on that? Where do you see that going? >> Starting from school-- >> Elementary school? >> From elementary school, trying to get them in to coding. Universities as well. >> So you are teaching kids to code? >> Of course. And you know, any citizen they can get any certifications free of charge, according to the agreement with Tamkeen Labor Fund. They are willing to train any Bahrainian on any certifications, professional certifications, free of charge. >> That's great. >> To be ready for the next, and making Bahrainians-- >> So there's no excuses. >> Of course. >> There it is. >> We want to give Bahrainians a choice for employment. >> Yeah. >> You know? If that's the future, we have to make them ready for the future. >> That's great. And the cloud's going to give you all that energy. Talk about the relationship with Amazon a bit, Amazon Web Services. Obviously, Teresa Carlson, really behind this, the whole team. I talk about the whole company, I see them getting behind this and partnering with you guys. They're not just coming in here and being Amazon. There's a real co-development ethos. Talk about the relationship you have with... >> Amazon is impressive. I mean, the way that we work, in a partnership way, everybody should think about the long-term, not the short-term part of the partnership. That they should help the economy, the Bahrainis for employment, making sure that the economy will benefit out of this move to Bahrain. And as well, we have to help with the registrations, with the regulations, with any infrastructure connectivity to the international links. Whatever they need, we try to help them because we believe that eventually it will create the ecosystem for the market. >> I know they open up a lot of doors for you guys, and then for us as well. They attracted us to come and cover the territory here, so we're super excited. And I'm so glad we came because I learned a lot. >> Thank you. >> It's been fantastic. Okay, your big idea... Final question. What's your big idea that's going to come out of the cloud? It doesn't have to be the complete... Your idea, in your personal opinion, what is going to happen five years down the road? What is it going to look like? What will this new magic look like? What's the outcome? >> I think it will be a major restructure and reform in the government. So most of the people working into the routine work of buying and configuring, buying and configuring, they can be more focused into the real problem about the innovation, trying to bring solutions to the problems and issues in the country. Trying to develop software that will help the economy to foster, and to look at what is required, what is the vision of the leaders, try to implement those. So most of the people think business. Before, it was isolation. The technical people only, they had their territory, their environment looking at the wires and hardware and configurations, and somebody else looking into the development and a third group of people who are looking strategically, analytics, and how to utilize it. So, I think what we'll have, we'll merge those people, thinking only about the solutions, and how to analyze and how to come with new solutions out of those analytics. >> And that model has been consolidated, those silos have been broken down. With the cloud, it brings it all together. Developers are now on the front lines. >> Of course. And those-- >> And they're driving the business. >> They're driving the business. >> Mohammed, great to have you on, great to see you. Thanks for sharing your insight. And congratulations. Looking forward to tracking all the great coverage. Amazing opportunity here for everyone in the country, and also for Amazon and for us. Great to meet new people. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. You can reach me on Twitter @Furrier, F-U-R-R-I-E-R, or just search, I'm open. All my channels are open, Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, you name it. Say hello, reach out. Stay with us, more all-day coverage after this short break. (tech music)

>> Live from Bahrain. It's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit, Bahrain. Brought to you by, Amazon Web Services. >> Hi everyone, welcome back to our live coverage here Bahrain. It's theCUBE's exclusive coverage, our first time here in the Middle East. This is exclusive coverage of Amazon Web Services Summit. I'm John Furrier your co-host of theCUBE. Our next guest is Dalal Buhejji, who is the Chair Person for the Women in FinTech Initiative, a big growing organization here and the role of technology is about to change in a big way as Amazon Web Services Region comes online in 2019. It should spawn massive amounts of innovation, education, connections, networks. Thanks for joining us, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure. >> So, what a great opportunity you have. FinTech's is a strategic initiative for this country. It's one of their core competencies. They see FinTech. >> Absolutely. I mean, FinTech is definitely growing in Bahrain. There's definitely a shift towards Financial Services moving towards innovation and digitalization. And, you know, we've seen women participate quite heavily when it comes to FinTech in Bahrain. And that's not something that's new to Bahrain. We've seen women that are a part of the Financial Services Sector for many decades. >> Yeah. >> So naturally, if the Financial Services Sector will innovate. >> Yeah. >> Then women will be part of this move. >> And the women movement is phenomenal. We had a breakfast we attended with Teresa Carlson. >> Yeah. >> Yesterday morning. >> Yes. >> It was absolutely a packed house. I even got kicked out of my table because, >> I wanted to participate >> (laughing) but I'm happy to give my chair up. There's so many women there. >> Yeah. >> And some Coders mostly new to tech. But this professionalization of digital >> (agrees) >> is going to impact FinTech more than ever. Take a minute to explain about the group. >> Yeah. >> The mission, what you guys are trying to do. How many people are in? What's your aspiration? >> Sure, it's a very recent and new initiative. It's a Women in FinTech Bahrain. It's a network of Professional women that are in the Financial Services Sector or that have impacted or worked in the FinTech Ecosystem. So, it's anywhere from a woman that work in the Central Bank of Bahrain, Founders of FinTech companies, people such as me, who attract inward investment and try to attract companies to set up in Bahrain. But also accelerators and incubators. >> Yeah. >> And we gather together. >> Yeah. >> And we're like, you know what? There's a lot of women in this FinTech Ecosystem and I'm sure a lot of them want to also be part of it. So, why don't we build awareness, empower more women, invite more women to come and be part of the growth of the FinTech Ecosystem in Bahrain. >> And Teresa Carlson was sharing some of her personal experience yesterday. >> Yeah. >> Unfortunately we didn't have a camera. I got audio, I'm going to put it as a podcast cause I thought it was so compelling. She said you know there's different ways to connect in and the most important thing is to be networked. >> Yes. >> And have each other's back. >> Absolutely. >> And amplify and support each other. This is normal. This is what people do. >> Absolutely. >> This is important as the growth comes. >> Yes. >> There's going to be a massive amount of opportunity coming into Bahrain. >> Absolutely. >> Big time. >> Yes, I mean, you nailed it. Like the network is actually how it's started. So we used to attend a number of events. Like the AWS Summit that we are here in today. And you know it's a bunch of women that just, you know, just happen to be part of the FinTech Ecosystem. >> Yeah. And we're like hang on, we might, there be might more women that are part of this that we're not aware of. >> Yeah. >> So why don't we make it formal in a way and call it a network where we attend more events. >> Yeah. >> Promote it more. >> Try to invite more people to attend and be part of it. So you know, not to shy away as being a women to be part of the FinTech revolution in Bahrain. >> You now one of the thing is wanted to ask you because this is a big trend that we're seeing in the United States. >> Yeah. >> And around the world. And OpenSource Software set the trend for this, is that co-creation, makes you feel part of a shared experience. >> Absolutely. >> And content and creation together makes people feel part of something. >> Yes. >> But is also creates a network effect. >> Yes. >> Network effects are some of the most important dynamics of bringing people together. >> Yes. >> But also extracting value and creating value. >> Yes. I mean, you know, once we initiated this Women in FinTech. It was two months ago, and what we did, we did this amazing picture. We took all this picture of us together and we got so much publicity out of it. So one of my colleagues visited Innovate Finance in UK, which is headed by a woman, and she also have women in FinTech a group. And we're exploring what can we do to collaborate. >> Yeah. >> I got a phone call a week ago from a VC, a Venture Capitalist who happens to be run by a woman and it's all about women entrepreneurs that seed money into FinTech companies or Startup companies that are funded by women. So it's all about the network as you said. >> Yeah and what's beautiful is that when you have this collaboration. >> Yeah. >> The people who create the value are going to shepard the extraction and sharing of that value in a community way. >> Absolutely. >> It's a community. The community is critical. Not over playing the hand or over driving. You know what I'm saying? It's like. >> Yes. >> It's a balance between community formation. >> Which is very crucial for a sector that's in it's initial stages and growing quite significantly. So you know, Bahrain has always been a Financial Services Hub. What we've seen that the sector has been digitalizing and innovating. >> Yeah. >> The last two years. So it's quite new. And you know, you need to gain as much knowledge as you want and the only way to do it is to create a network. >> Well I'm so impressed with what you're doing. >> Thank you. >> I really think Dalal of course our door is always open in Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, we'll amplify your message. >> Thank you. >> It's super important. So what is your goals and objectives? Share to the folks out there who're watching who might want to get involved. What are your goals? What are some of your objectives that you're trying to achieve. >> Right now it's initial stages. We are there just to create more awareness of women involvement in Bahrain, when it comes to FinTech, and to invite more women to participate in the growth of the FinTech Ecosystem in Bahrain. >> But you are also not limiting it to Bahrain, it's also externally. >> Of course not. >> You mentioned UK. >> Correct. Correct. Ultimately we will grow even further and have Bahrain as a FinTech hub for the region so we welcome any collaboration across borders. >> You know we were just talking about John Wood, who's a Senior Entrepreneur. Been around the block, very successful. Partnering with Teresa and Amazon at a high level. And he said, you know, what you read in the paper in the news and the media and then you come to Bahrain it's different. The ground truth here, when you look at, when you're on the ground. >> Yeah. >> Meeting people, and seeing all of this action, it's a different truth. >> Yes. >> What would you say to the folks watching here, who might watch it now live or on demand, what is the ground truth here in Bahrain? What's happening? How are women becoming the power engine? What's in general and the over all ecosystem at large? What's the story? How would you explain the phenomenon that is Bahrain? >> If you look at it beyond FinTech and look at it beyond Financial services. The involvement of women in the Private Sector is quite phenomenal in Bahrain. >> Yeah. And it goes way beyond just a few years ago. It's decades of the women involvement. We have women at Cabinet. We have women in, leading good you know, financial institutions or corporates. So the involvement of women has always been prominent in Bahrain. And we welcome and want to see more of women go towards digitalization now. >> Yeah. >> And give them the right means to be able to achieve that. >> And one of the things that's interesting is that when you're not here on the ground, you might have some old history of what the role of women here. >> Yeah. >> My 21 year old daughter Jacqueline asked me and my 17 year old daughter Caroline said. They were curios, they just don't know. They're like: "What's it like to be a woman there?" What's it like to be a woman in Bahrain? It's a very comfortable and liberal place to live in. You know, education was introduced first for women in the GCC. You see a lot of woman participate in any cross-sectors within the Private Sector. It's a very friendly place to live in. You know, and it's a great to see how knowledgeable those women are. They are hungry for knowledge. >> Yeah. >> And very impressive characters, I must say. So, you know, it's something to be, definitely to monitor and to watch very closely. Tala Fahkro came on earlier. >> Yes. >> She's the Executive Director of the EDB, Economic Development Board here in Bahrain. >> Correct. >> She said it's a learning culture. >> It is, it is. >> And it's always been a learning culture. >> Absolutely. >> And always been open and liberal, if you will. But open minded. >> Exactly. I mean, see Bahrain has always been in a very unique position, that it was a trade-hub for many years. So it's welcomed people of different cultures. >> Yeah. >> Which opened that learning culture. We're very much receptive to understanding what people from India or China or the US have to do. So it's a very as, I totally agree with Tala Fahkro and I think it is definitely a learning culture. >> Well certainly our door's open in Silicon Valley. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for spending the time. >> Thank you. >> And good luck with your opportunity. And how do people engage with you? Just give the plug, talk about. Is there a site? Is there a Facebook page? >> Is there? What are you? How do you guys engage? How should someone engage and join? >> So your main. >> The Women in FinTech network? >> So yeah, we're working on a, you know, a page for people to reach out to us. But in the meantime you can reach out to me on my LinkedIn page or Twitter page. And you know, please watch this space cause it's growing. And I look forward to, you know, showcasing more of the events during. Well co-create, share content with us, we're open to seeing what you do. Thanks for coming on tehCUBE. >> Thank you. >> We are here in Bahrain. This is theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier. You can reach me at on Twitter @Furrier, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram. I'm all over the place. Easy to find. theCUBE of course here for the first time here in Bahrain in the Middle East. Exploring the creativity, the entrepreneurship and the impact of the Amazon Web Services new Region. Coming online in early 2019. Should be a tsunami of innovation activity. New networks. New people. We're meeting new people. Stay with us for more after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello, everyone, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here on the ground in New York City for Consensus 2018, part of Blockchain Week New York. #BlockchainweekNY. We're here, with Judy Gordon with OmniSparx. It' a startup, they just looking for an ICO, getting it going, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> We're in media row here, all the action going on at the Hilton, there's a packed event. What's it like? You're navigating this sea of growth. You guys are a startup, it must be amazing. >> It is amazing. And what's been the best part for us is meeting all these amazing projects that our company is hoping to support. >> Take a minute to explain what you guys do, stage of the company, how many employees, what you guys are doing, looking for some funding partners. Take a minute to explain what's going on. >> Yeah, so we are a community management platform. We are a product for community managers of all kinds of projects to help manage this very difficult problem that they have. With so many community members, so many are anonymous, so many are causing problems, but yet they need community members to really build their projects. We are just finishing up our angels, our friends and family round, and we're starting our seed round. >> Where are you guys located? >> We're located in Chicago. >> Okay, cool, Chi-town. >> Yes, we have about, we have five members of the team in Chicago and we have a development team in Serbia. >> What's your background? How did you get into this role? What's your role in the industry? How did you get here? >> So, I've been in marketing for large corporations and small startups. And one of my old bosses from Motorola started the company and invited me to come on in and do marketing. And it's been, it's an amazing space right now. >> Interesting opportunity for startups here with Blockchain and decentralized applications. But you mentioned community software. When was the last time the technology stack in community software's been modernized. I mean Slack is like a poster child. It's essentially an IRC message group with a user interface with great APIs. I love Slack. We use it, but that's not really modern software. >> Right. >> So how are you applying Blockchain and decentralized applications for a new modern community approach? >> So first of all, we're letting community members and media managers use whichever tool they want. So from our perspective, you can use Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, all the tools that you use today. But right now they have to go from channel to channel and manage all these different channels. So now they'll be able to do it from one space. But the way we're revolutionizing it is, and the challenge with crypto is that there are all these anonymous participants. So there's all these token holders out there, but you don't know who they are. Well, we have an app where people can go in, they sign in for the app, they tell you if they want to that they're your token holder, what their social handles are, and so that you can do direct outrates. >> So you guys actually going to have a token? Is it going to be an ICO, public, private, security token, utility token, can you just share some insight into what the strategy is. >> Yeah, so our plan is to do an ICO. We're following all the US regulations. And we'll have a token. Our token is going to be, it's a security token, and crypto projects will be able to use it as a way to do community outreach and do campaigns. Community campaigns. >> Any good leads here at the show? >> Oh, yeah, every single community manager we talked to has been interested. There's so many great projects out there. They all want to build a community, they all need community to thrive, and they all need a tool like ours. >> Well, since you said as an industry veteran, I want to get your take while you're here on the event. What's your experience here? What's the main content? The people who couldn't make it here, obviously they sold out, what's the show about? What's the core themes? What's resonating from a content thematic standpoint that you've observed? >> Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, there's so much excitement, so much growth, so much opportunity. I think what struck me, as I was waiting to be interviewed here, so many languages. People from all over the world are here to learn, to network. And what I've always found is so wonderful about the crypto community is it's really a community. People want each other to thrive. >> It's a tight-knit community. I got to say, it's very strong. They're very opinionated. They're not afraid to share opinions. We just had Jimmy Song on from Blockchain Capital, and he's really vocal, but it's cordial, it's civil, and there's some civil discourse which moves the needle. >> Yeah, and everyone wants everyone to succeed. >> Right, awesome. One of the things I noticed was a lot of the women in tech panels going on, still it's a sea of men here. You're a woman here. What's it like, we need more women in tech. >> Yes. >> What's your, what are you doing to change that? Obviously you're here. Is there more women coming on board? Is there groups out there within this community? What's the women in tech angle? >> Yeah so, I was surprised and I knew there were very few women in Bitcoin, but looking around at Blockchain, there really aren't that many women here. And so, but I think it's a great space for women. I think there's a lot of opportunity for women. And there are several organizations working to promote women in this space. >> It's really rockin'. >> Hopefully next year it'll be different. >> We need more women. So more women out there. Judy Gordon is here, she's with OmniSparx startup. Changing the game with new infrastructure for communities. I'm John Furrier here on the ground here at Blockchain Week Consensus 2018. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special Cube Conversation here, in the Palo Alto studios, for theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconeANGLE Media and theCUBE, and cohost of theCUBE. My next guest is Adrian Scott, who is the CEO of Soma Capital and Head of Technology of decent.bet. You can get the idea of that going to be all about, but, industry legend-- >> Yeah. >> Star of the big screen, good to see you, thanks for comin' in. >> Thank you John, it's great to see you. >> I'm glad I wanted to talk to you, because I know you've been doing a lot of traveling, you've been living in Panama, and overseas, outside the US, mainly around the work you've been doing on the crypto side, obviously Blockchain and with the start of decent.bet, lot of great stuff, but congratulations on a successful initial coin offering! >> Thank you. >> Great stuff, but you're also notable in the industry, initial investor in Napster, our generation, first P2P, the first renegade, you know, break down the movie business, but the beginning of what we're now seeing as that decentralized revolution. But you've seen many waves of innovation. You've seen 'em come and go. But this one in particular, Blockchain, decentralized internet, decentralized applications, crypto. Pretty awesome, and lot of young guns are coming in, a lot of older, experienced, alpha entrepreneurs are coming in like yourself, and, we're lookin' at it too. What's your take on it? I mean, how do you talk people that are like, "Well, hey, this is just a scam on the ICS site, "is this real, is it a bubble?" Share your vision on what this is all about, this whole mega-trend, crypto, decentralized. >> And I'll also add, in addition to what you mentioned, the other neat thing here is just the global nature of it. Because we're so used to being Silicon Valley-centric, and having to dig around for funding here, and also, looking only at talent that would move here, whereas with this whole new industry, it's very global, there's global teams, international teams, and, some of the Silicon Valley folks are just struggling to stay relevant, and stay in the game, so that's a fascinating aspect to this new revolution as well. >> And also, the thing I love about this market, it's very efficient, it takes away inefficiencies, in venture capital right now, and private equity being disrupted, that's where the arbitrage is, hence the ICO bubble, but, there is real, legit opportunities, you have Soma Capital, you're an investment fund, that you're doing token investments on. The global nature is interesting, I want to just ask here about this, because, my view is, it changes valuation, it changes valuation mechanisms, it changes the makeup of the venture architecture, it makes up on how people recruit teams, the technology used, and with open source, I mean, this is a first-time view at a new landscape. You can't take a pattern match, model, to this, your thoughts. >> Agree completely, and the efficiency you mentioned, applied to teams, and surfacing engineering talent, and the mathematical minds that can handle crypto internationally, the formation of teams internationally online is actually something special as well, so, with Decent Bet, our team, our founding team includes folks from the US, Panama, Australia, as well, who met up, in a Facebook chat group! And that's how they initially connected, and they didn't know each other physically, before this connection online, and that led to this project, Decent Bet, and ICO, and so on. So it's-- >> You created value from essentially a digital workforce, but, I mean, it reminds me of, like in the old days, you'd chat, and it wasn't a lot of face-to-face, but then now there's video gaming culture, you know, you come in, "Hey, you want to play a game," people don't even know each other, and get a visual, and also an immersive experience with each other. This is now the application for entrepreneurial equations, so this kind of gaming, the game is startups! So how are you looking at this, and how are you investing in it, what are some of the things, and what can people learn from what we're seeing in this new game-ified, if you will, you know, world of starting companies? >> I think one of the things you alluded to there has really become visible, which is the importance of video, as a medium, and I'm still, absorbing and adjusting to that myself. For example, we do video communications, we do conversations at Decent Bet, of the founding team, and, it really connects to the community, and it's so important, and I'm still absorbing it, like I mentioned, 'cause I'm just so used to publishing articles that are very clearly written, and detailed, and so on. We just did an AMA video, an Ask Me Anything video, in Las Vegas, with the executive team, and it went for 80 minutes, answering the questions, that the community had all submitted! And I just try and imagine that five years ago, it's new way of relating-- >> 'Cause there was no blogging, link back, the only thing you could do in blogging. >> Yeah. >> And then write a perfect blog post, or white paper. >> Exactly. >> And that was who you were. >> Yeah. >> Not anymore, it's more community driven. >> Exactly, and that video as a piece of it, has become so, so important, as a way of communicating the character of the team, and-- >> Before we get into decent.bet, I want to drill those, I think it's a great use case, and again, congratulations on great work there. I want to ask you about something that I've been fascinated with, because I obviously, our generation, we grew up on open source when it was second-class citizen, now it runs the whole world, as first-tier, first-class citizen in software world. The role of the community was really important in software development, 'cause that kept a, it kept a balance, there was governance, was consensus, these are words that you hear in the crypto world. And now, whether it's content and or ICO, the role of the community, and certainly, areas that's out of control in the ICO site, people are cracking down on certainly, like you see Facebook and Twitter trying to do something, but you can't stop the wisdom of the crowd. The role of the community in this crypto, decentralized market, ICOs and whatnot, is super important. Can you share your thoughts, and color commentary on why the community's so important, how do you deal with it (laughs), any best practices, either through scar tissue, or successes, share your thoughts on this. >> Oh yeah, it's totally become a factor, and it's 24/7, right? So, when you are running a crypto project, you need your community management team to be there, in the community channels, 24/7, you need to have somebody there, and they need to be at a certain level that they can handle the challenging questions! And we've definitely had moments where, we have people who try to create FUD, potentially, you know, and bring up stuff, and bring it up again later and whatnot, and we need to be proactive, so when questions come up, we were there to be able to explain, "Okay, here's where you can see this on the Blockchain. "You can verify it yourself." And sometimes, it happens when the team is just about to get on a plane (laughs), and be out of internet communication for a while, so, it's a real challenge, and there's been the voice of experience, on that. >> So talk about how you guys connect, because obviously, being connected is important with community access, but also, with connection, increases the service area for hacks, are you guys carrying five burner phones each, how do you handle email, how have you guys dealt with the whole, you know, there is a lot of online activity, certainly, people trying to do some spear phishing, or whatever tactics there are. Telegram has been littered with a lot of spoofing, and what not, so, all this is going on, that you got to have access communication. But there's a safety component that could have really big impacts to these businesses, that aren't tokeners, because, hacking can be easy if you don't protect yourself. >> We really like Signal app, as a communications medium, there's a new one, starting to grow now, called Threema, which is pretty interesting. Telegram, is just a real challenge, and it's unfortunate, because it's now become this metric. >> How many people are active on your channels-- >> That investors like to look at the size of the Telegram group, but we don't actually have a Telegram group for Decent Bet. And we've used Slack, we are going to be rolling out a internally hosted Slack replacement soon based on Rocket.Chat, we really like Rocket.Chat. As you mentioned, there are spear phishing, we do see that, and, one of the nice things is, a few years ago, you had trouble convincing a team to take security seriously! But you know, when you have team members who may have lost $10,000 in a hack-- >> Or more! >> Or more, you know, there's no question that this needs to be a priority, and everybody buys in on it. So that is one net positive out of this. >> Well let's talk about Decent Bet, fascinating use case, it's in the gaming area, gaming as in like betting, my friend Paul Martino invested I think in DraftKings, one of those other companies, I forget which one it was. In the US, there was regulatory issues, but, you know, outside the US where I think you guys are, there's not as much issue. Perfect use case for tokens, in my opinion. So, take a minute to explain Decent Bet, what you guys are all about, and talk about the journey of conception, when you guys conceived it, to ICO. >> Yeah. Decent Bet was founded about a year ago, by the CEO Jedidiah Taylor, who developed an interesting idea, and plan, so, the neat thing about Decent Bet is, first of all, you have all the benefits of the Ethereum Blockchain, in terms of verifying, transactions, and verifying the house's take. Additionally, what Decent Bet does is distributes all the profits of the casino back to the token-holders. 95% goes as proportionally, and then 5% is awarded in a lottery, so there's no profit for any Decent Bet entity, it all goes back to the tokenholders. So you use the token to play, by gambling, but you can also use your token to convert into house shares, for a quarter, and participate in-- >> So the house always wins, that a good model, right? >> Yes. >> You could become the house, through the tokens. >> Exactly, so, the motto we use is our house is your house (laughs). >> Don't bet against the house. >> Yeah. >> Alright so, I love the gambling aspect of it, I think that's going to be a winner. Tech-involved, ICO process bumps, learnings, things you could share with folks? >> Yeah, so, on the technology, one of the neat things we are doing is, we do offer a slots game, which is a primary component of online gambling, and casinos, a pretty dominant piece of the action. But, if you are going to do a simple slots game on the Blockchain, and wait around for blocks to be mined, you're not going to have a great experience. 'Cause you're going to be waiting around, more than you're going to be clicking that button. So, what we use is a technology called state channels, which allows us to do a session, kind of on a side channel, so to speak, and through this state channel, at the end of the session, you post back the results. So you get the verifiability of the Blockchain, but without the delay. So that's a major difference. >> That's off chain, right? >> Yeah. >> Or the on chain is off chain. >> It's kind of-- >> So you're managing the league, to see the chain, so you still experience, and then get to preserve it on the chain. >> Exactly-- >> Okay. >> In terms of the ICO experience, we initiated the ICO end of September, ran for a month, raised more than 52,000 Ether, so very productive ICO process, but with actually some interesting details, so, the ICO structure limited the amount that a particular address could purchase, in the first phases, to 10,000 worth, and then 20,000 dollars worth, with the idea of getting the tokens into the hand of, of people who are going to potentially use them for betting, not just-- >> The more the merrier for you, not, no one taking down allocations, big players. >> Exactly. >> Or whales. >> Not just for the whales, take all, kind of thing. So, that was a interesting structure, and-- >> And that worked well? >> Yeah! >> Alright, talk about the dynamic of post-ICO, because now you guys are building, can you give an update on the state of where you guys are at with the product, availability, how that's going, 'cause obviously you raised the capital through the ICO, democratize it if you will through clever mechanism, which is cool, thanks for sharing that, now what happens? Now, what's going on? >> Yeah, I mean, I think we're doing pretty well in terms of hitting milestones, and showing progress compared to a lot of projects, we released our test net, with slots, and then sportsbook, at the beginning of January, and mid-January, for sportsbook. And, we also did some upgrades with our wallet, we released that, for some enhanced usability, and handling during high peaks on the Ether network, Ethereum network. And then, also, our moving to main net. So we did some newer versions of the test net-- >> When did the main net come in? >> Main net is coming out end of April, and we're on track with that. >> Great, awesome. Congratulations, congratulations on a great job, 52,000 Ether, great raise there, and awesome opportunity. Soma Capital. >> Mm-hmm. >> You're investing now, what do you look for for deals, there's more money chasing good deals now, as we can see, has been a flight to quality obviously. Great global landscape still, what are you looking for? And advice to folks who are looking to do a token, sale, what's your-- >> Big thing we look for are real projects, so (laughs), and they're not that many out there, so we do look for a real use case that makes sense, because, there's a lot of folks out there just sticking Blockchain tag onto anything. And it's not just-- >> Like Kodak for instance. >> Yeah. >> Kodak's the prime example. >> Yes. There are projects out there doing interesting things, Guardium is doing some neat things in terms of 911 response, and opening that up, and creating an alternative to government services. There's WorkCoin, which is-- >> Do you invest in Guardium? >> Yeah, in Guardium, yeah. >> I interviewed them in Puerto Rico. >> Okay, great. >> Great project. >> So very interesting, I was recently giving a talk at a university in Guatemala, and, the students there at business school, it really resonated, the message there, to them, about okay, government 911 is maybe not the ultimate solution for getting help when you need it. >> Well I think, there's a lot of this AI for a good concept, going to Blockchain for good, because, you're seeing a lot of these easy, low-hanging fruit applications around these old structural intuitions. And that's where the action is, right, I mean, do you agree? >> Yeah, yes. And the other thing we're looking at is not just Blockchain. So I really like talking about the field more as crypto, and, I have a little video I did on calling it kind of decentralized, crypto-enabled applications, or platforms. So, beyond Blockchain, we have DAGs, Directed Acyclic Graphs, one interesting-- >> Like Hashgraph. >> Yeah, Ha-- >> Hashgraph's a DAG, isn't it? It's kind of a DAG, Hashgraph? >> Yeah, so, I'm not a huge fan of Hashgraph, one that I do like is called Guld, G-U-L-D, which is, again, thinking beyond the Blockchain. 'Cause we get so tied into Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain-- >> What does beyond the Blockchain mean to you? Thinking beyond the Blockchain, what does that mean to you? >> So, the proof of work process, the mining process, the creating new blocks process, is one way of doing things. But we have all these other things going on in crypto, like the signing process, and so on, and so, you can use those in a DAG, a different architecture than just this mining new blocks, you know, mental model. And so, that can be used for different use cases, for publishing, for group consensus, and so on. And so, Guld is an example of a project where it looks like there is something real there, and that's a very interesting product. >> Advice for folks that are looking at tokeneries, because, again, we've said this on theCUBE many times, people know, I'm beating this drum, you got the startups, that see an opportunity, which is fantastic, and then on the end of the spectrum, you got the, "Oh, shit, we're out of business, "let's pivot, throw the Hail Mary, put Blockchain on it, "crypto, and get an ICO, and get some going." And then you've got these growth companies that are, either self funded and or growing, that have decentralized kind of feel to it, it has an architecture that's compatible with tokenization. >> Yeah. >> So we see those three categories. Do you agree, am I missing anything? In terms of the profile? And which ones do you like? >> Well, I think one thing that we need to look at, in each of those cases, is decentralization actually happening, in the project? And are people actually thinking about decentralization. Because, it can be scary for a traditional company! Because, if it truly becomes decentralized, you're not controlling it anymore. And so, that is-- >> If you're based on control, then it's incompatible. >> And that's the real Hail Mary, right? (laughs) When you give up that control, if you give it up, so, we have examples coming out, where, you know, Ripple is running just a few nodes, Neo's running a few more, and you know, things that are not really decentralized, and they're saying, "Well, we're going to be," (laughs) you know? >> Will they ever? >> Is it going to be in the future-- >> Yeah, that's always the question, will they ever be? They've already made their money, well certainly Ripple's done well, but, I mean, what's the incentive to go-- >> Yeah. >> Decentralized. >> Yeah, so if, if you are creating a new project, the benefit from this architecture, beyond the money, is to think about it in that decentralized way, and figure out token economics that work, in that context, in that paradigm! And that's really where the challenge is, but also really where some of the benefits can rise, because, that is what enables truly new ways of doing things. >> Talk about the dynamic, because I actually, I live in Silicon Valley, I've been here 19 years, going on 20, you know, I moved from the east coast, and basically, if you weren't here, this is where the action is. If you're in the sports of tech, this is where all the athletes are. That's now changed, as you mentioned earlier, when we started, it's everywhere. Now, also there's jurisdictional issues, I mean the US, one guy's told me, the US is turning into Europe, all these regulations, it's not as much free capital as you think, and then, we certainly know that. With FCC, and others are putting the clamp down. But, structuring the token, is a concern, right? Or consideration. >> Yes. >> And a concern, so, you know, US entrepreneur, what should they do in your opinion, and if someone's outside the US, what do they do? What's the play book, or, not play book, what's the best path right now? >> Leave the US (laughs). Move out of the US. >> Tell that, wife and four kids. See you later. Yeah, but that's real legit, that's-- >> Come and check out Panama, one of my friends is building a Blockchain incubator, crypto-incubator, I mean I think if you're-- >> What's it like to move out of the United States, I know you just recently went to Panama for this, but, what's it like? Is it scary down there, I mean, is it entrepreneurially friendly? What's the vibe, what's the scene like, take a minute to explain that. >> So I've actually been out there 12 years now, in Panama. One of the neat things, you want a place that has an international outlook, international perspectives, so, you want to think in terms of a Dubai, a Singapore, a Hong Kong. And so, Panama has some aspects of that, it's not perfect, but it does have that international perspective thanks to the Canal! So it has, you know, a hundred years! (laughs) >> It also has the Panama papers, which is a negative blowback for those guys, so it's a safe place to do commerce, in your opinion? >> Um, it is a nice geographic base to do international commerce. >> Got it. >> So, you don't necessarily want to rely on the local jurisdiction, but, in terms of a geographic base, that is US time zone, US dollar, no hurricanes, it's a very interesting place. >> Puerto Rico's got the hurricanes, we know that. >> Yeah. >> Final thoughts, just overall perspective, you've been around the block, we've been around the block, both of us have, I mean, I kind of have these pinch me almost like, "Damn, this is great time, "I wish I was 22," I mean, do you have those? What's it like, how you explain this environment? If people ask you, "Hey, what was it like in the old days?" You know, when you have to provision all your own stack, and do all the stuff, it's pretty interesting right now. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, I mean, I think we're going through an interesting moment right now, where, we are getting to a point where the forces of centralization are coming against the forces of decentralization, and that includes from the regulatory, as well as the business side, and so, I think it is important, as we look where to dedicate our efforts to, to really find ways to increase the decentralization as a factor that encourages creativity, and entrepreneurship. >> Yeah, it really is a personal, I think it's a great environment. Decent.bet, bet, make your bets, any updates on how to get tokens, what people can expect, a quick plug-in for Decent. >> Yeah, check out our website, we've got links to exchanges, the token is currently listed on Cryptotopia, HitBTC, and a couple other exchanges, and, yeah! Please check out the test net, please check out the white paper, and just learn about how this protocol works, this platform works. I think it is very inspiring, as a structure. >> Adrian Scott here, inside theCUBE, Soma Capital, also experienced entrepreneur himself, technologist, and has been through the ICO process, head of technology at decent.net, we'll be checkin' it out, it's theCUBE Conversation, I'm John Furrier, here in Palo Alto, California. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello and welcome to The Cube here in IBM Think 2018, I'm John Furrier. It's The Cube, our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal in the noise. We're the number one live event coverage. We're here with The Cube with IBM Think 2018. Our next guess is Jesse Lund who's the vice president of IBM Blockchain. He's in the financial services side. Into blockchain, into crypto, into token economics, seeing the future, how money flows, Jesse great to have you on The Cube, thanks for joining me. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> We were talking before on camera about blockchain, and we love blockchain, IBM certainly put it out there as part of the innovation sandwich. Blockchain, data, AI, kind of making that innovation, but it's really what it enables, and I want to talk to you about. You are involved in payments. We've been saying on The Cube that the killer app is money in this market. >> I agree, yeah. >> You agree, and you talk about it. This is a new market, so a stack is kind of developing. You got blockchain, then you got crypto which as protocols and you got infrastructure, then you got decentralized applications which you could call ICOs up top, certainly a little bit scammy and bubbly, but that's as arbitraging and optimizing the capital markets, you could argue that. But so this is a really big dynamic. Your thoughts on this trend. >> Sure, well so I joined IBM from 18 years at Wells Fargo. I spent really the majority of my career in financial services and when blockchain came along, I sort of immediately saw the impact, the potential for, I'll call it positive disruption, disruption in the positive sense. Transformational paradigm shift kind of stuff in terms of how money moves around the world and how we classify assets and how we transfer ownership of assets, I mean that's just, it's, the possibilities are limitless. And you're right, IBM is the place where I think blockchain has started as a mainstream focus for enterprises around building private networks, but that's really just the beginning. What we talked about earlier was it gets really interesting when data and money are connected together and they move at high velocities together. >> Let's get into that. I mean first let's just address the IBM thing. They got to put a stake in the ground, blockchain, it's a safe harbor to say supply chain stuff because that's their business, they've been building technologies for supply chains for companies, that's what enterprises do, that's IBM. But the game is where the money is and that's where the businesses are going to be transformed. We're talking about disrupting structural industries. This is where the money power comes in. Money's flowing, I mean if you want to move money from China, go to bitcoin. If you want to move it from anywhere, this is what's happening. >> Yeah, so think about bitcoin. It's kind of what started it all. It's a little bit of a bad word in banks and in regulated financial circles, but let's face it, the only real mainstream blockchain application today is still bitcoin, but you know we're only three years in to the blockchain industry, right? I mean think about when we were three years in to the internet industry, where we were still talking about which browser is going to win and then it went on to which application server's going to win, and it wasn't til a decade later we were really focused on what are the applications, the killer apps that are enabled by an interconnected world and that's exactly what's happening now. Other industries have already been completely disrupted. Look at retail, it's just, it's banking's turn. It's financial services turn. >> One of the founders, the co-founders of Ethereum, Anthony Diiorio, who I interviewed a couple weeks ago at the Bahamas, he said "While it is the new browser," to your points, browser wars, if you think about the payment, wallets are now becoming part of the mechanism for money transfer. If you don't have a wallet, if you want to send me some Ripple, you want to send me some Ethereum, I need a wallet. This is a no brainer, right? I mean if you want to leverage any money, that's one thing. The second thing I want to get your thoughts on besides the wallets, the fiat conversion, right? These are two threshold conversations that are going on. Your thoughts, wallet and conversion to fiat. >> Well I mean I think wallets are really important because this whole thing is based on key management, this whole concept is based on cryptography. It only works on a public, private key notion and you got to keep that private key private, but you got to keep it, right? You got to keep it safe and you got to keep it, it's like your wallet. You've got a wallet, you've got cash in your wallet, you lose your wallet, you lose your cash. It's the same kind of analogy, so wallets are really important and you're going to want to turn to providers who have made their business in encryption, who have made their business in security, I mean-- >> And cold storage, old school is kind of coming back, people are taking their keys and they're spreading them across multiple lock boxes, multiple states. People are getting broken into their house or their PCs are getting broken into. >> Right, yeah. >> I mean security, going old school. >> And why not? I mean, it works. >> Because if someone knows you got 100 million dollars in your house, they're going to get it if you don't lock it. Okay back to the reality of the money transfer. We were talking before you came on, I've been saying on The Cube, token economics really is where the action is, at least in my opinion. I want to get your thoughts because really the business model innovation is on the table because whoever can innovate the business model has more of a chance to disrupt an existing industry. This is where tokenization becomes part of the money piece of it, so how do you convert that value into capture? Is that token? Is that where you see it? What's your thoughts? >> Yeah so well first of all, I mean if you think of tokens as another form of currency, and by the way, I think we have to be careful about what we say, cryptocurrencies, the industry talks about thousands of cryptocurrencies out there where there's really not. There's maybe dozens and they're all derivatives of just a few models, bitcoin being one prominent model and there's a lot of offshoots off of that. But the rest of what we call cryptocurrencies are really tokens that represent primarily securities, which is why the SCC's getting involved. But the really interesting thing about this is these tokens move at high velocity because they're digital and so, but these digital things represent a claim on real world value, and that's where it becomes really interesting. IBM's built and launched as kind of its first foray into the solution space of financial services where IBM is an investor in this technology, a cross-border payment solution that inherently re-engineers this whole correspondent banking, this international wire process, and where FX, foreign exchange, becomes a real time capability in a series of operations that execute as an atomic unit. That's novel today. When you want to send money from here to somewhere else in the world, you go to your bank, your bank sends an instruction to another bank, and they respond and say "Yeah you know it's okay "because the person you're sending it to is not a terrorist, "is not on a some sort of sanctions list," great, now the bank has to actually go settle and it settles through another network, so the novelty is why can't the messages and the data and the value itself, the digital asset, why can't they exist and move together at the same time? That's what we've really built. But as we've built and deployed that and are getting banks and non-bank financial institutions to sign up for it because the cost of moving money goes way, way, way down and the user experience goes way, way, way up because instead of taking two or three days and you don't know how much it's going to cost until it gets there, it takes 10 or 15 seconds and you know before you even press send how much it's going to cost to get there. It all boils down to this notion of digital assets, that's what it all comes down to, is the way to settle value with finality in real time is for one party to exchange a digital asset with another party. Today, initially, the only form of negotiable digital assets are cryptocurrencies which has banks a little scared, but as we start talking through what we've learned in the enterprise blockchain space, we realized that we can tokenize all sorts of other asset classes, commodities, securities, and even fiat currencies where central banks or commercial banks can issue a token that represents a claim on deposits held at some financial institution and that's, that's a-- >> So you see tokenization as a big deal. >> It's a huge deal. I mean it's everything, I think it's-- >> It's the economic value of the ... >> I think it's the tipping point for blockchain. The irony is it goes back to bitcoin kind of started this all. You know we said "Well we like the idea of the technology "underneath bitcoin, but we want to focus on blockchain," I mean forget for a second blockchain is actually terminology that's invented by the bitcoin primer that was published nine years ago by Satoshi, so yeah it's their, whoever they are, it's their terminology, and it's kind of coming back full circle where you're seeing the convergence of all of these cool optimization capabilities, you know, immutability and workflow optimization, supply chain management-- >> And there's a lot of work to be done on performance and whatnot, but the concept of decentralized immutability data is fine, store the data. Now there's, it's got to get fixed, but I think that what that enables and I think you agree that tokenization's critical. So for a company that wants to token their business or raise money via tokens or get involved in this new economic value creation, innovation trend, how do they do it? And by the way are there tools available? You mentioned banking, and the banking business got to where it was because you had to build the picks and shovels to make it happen, you had to do a swift and you had to have this stuff go on. Now developers don't necessarily have the tools, so there's a picks and shovel market and there's also the real innovation. >> Yeah and that's I think the value contribution that IBM brings. I mean we bring 107 years of credibility in developing and operating mission critical, transactional, and financial systems, and I could do just an ad for a second, that's what the IBM blockchain platform is all about and as the industry evolves, as our platform offering evolves, what we want to be able to bring to small business, medium sized businesses, large businesses is the ability to develop solutions using our toolkit. >> So Jesse I want you to put your financial hat on and at the same time put your payments hat on and your token economics hat on, three hats. Hey I want to tokenize my business, I really want to get in. So we have an innovative team, we're seeing new business model formulas and logic that we want to disrupt, what do I do? I got an existing, growing business that I know has assets and I'm not a startup, but I'm not trying to pivot like Kodak, so I'm not dying, throwing the hail Mary, or I'm not a startup and got to build a whole product. I'm a real business, I'm growing, and I see tokenization as a way for me to be successful. What do I do? What's your advice? >> Well I think you look at it from all potential angles. If you look at any business, they're always looking to improve the bottom line by shrinking costs, right? They're also looking to improve the bottom line by increasing the top side, increasing revenue, and I think as a mid-sized business or a growing business, you have the opportunity to use tokenization, to use blockchain and digital currencies to do both of those things. You have the ability to accelerate the adoption of whatever your good or service or product is by if it's tokenizable, and most things are whether it's a utility, access to some service you provide, or whether it's an asset, some widget that you sell, you enable primary and secondary markets by creating a digital asset that can be bought by anybody anywhere around the world. I mean that's one way to do it and so I think getting people to realize the potential there-- >> You got programs, they call up IBM or get some developers, make it happen. Okay so killer apps money, that's going to be a 30 plus year trend and certainly this highlights that, but the other thing that's happened, it's coming out of either, in the open source community as well as cloud, the notion of marketplaces and communities so marketplaces and communities become a very important role in the token economics piece. What's your thoughts and opinion on that narrative? >> Well again for me, it goes back, I always go back to digital assets. We in the U.S. and around the world, when we start talking about financial instruments, we classify assets differently, but when it comes to an ecosystem and a community that becomes inherently peer to peer and inherently democratic, it's about an asset class agnostic distributed exchange where I can sell you my security token in exchange for your fiat token, or I can sell you my commodity token or utility token for the same. I think the ecosystem gets built automatically by way of new assets coming to a common network or interoperable set of networks, and that's what's missing today by the way, same in capital markets, right? The holy grail in the capital market space today is how do I shrink the time between trade and settlement? There's this whole t plus three and we're spending billions of dollars to go to t plus two, we gain a day, so the trade day and the settlement date are two days apart. I mean you just think about kind of the absurdity of that. If you just say well if the security that you're buying is a digital asset, and the money that you're buying it with is a digital asset, and they both exist on either the same network or an interoperable network, the transfer of ownership and the transfer of value happen together as two operations or a single operation in one atomic transaction, you've solved the problem. >> Speed of light can make it happen. >> Right, delivery versus payment, that's what the capital markets industry is trying to optimize for, right? Because it improves the balance sheet of all sorts of finance-- >> You had a phrase you mentioned before we came on camera, something about money, the future of money. What was that phrase? >> Programmable money? >> Programmable money. >> Yeah, right, right. >> I want you to take a minute to explain. Love this concept, Miko Matsumura, thought leader friend of ours, has a vision called open source money which is more of an open source, this hey money's flowing, it's open, it's out there, but you have a different perspective which I like too which is programmable money. What does that mean? Describe the concept and take a minute to unpack that. >> The concept of programmable money comes out of a paper that I jointly authored with Jed McCaleb who is the founder of Stellar and was the co-founder of Ripple and is a really smart guy so I feel like I have a small brain when I'm around him but we really wrote it in the context of central banking and the ultimate issuer of an asset because central banks are the issuers of currencies. Right now the primary dealers, if you will, for currencies are commercial banks and so that whole commercial, central, fractional reserve banking model has been replicated from the western world to everywhere else in the world and you can't get access to central bank money as they say. But if the central banks were to issue digital currencies which is essentially a token of fiat currency, so you own the token, you own a claim of fiat deposits held on the balance sheet of the central bank, now you have the ability to move that around. You can actually program the movement of money because it's a digital thing, it's a digital asset that's as good as cash and if you are working with a central bank who's issuing it, not only is it electronic money, it's actually legal tender because if the central bank issues it, it becomes legal tender which means everybody who accepts it has to accept that form of payment. That's pretty profound if we can get to that point and we're working with-- >> And software's a big driver in that because you need software to manage digital assets. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. >> The software's driving it. Bill Tai is an investor, I interviewed him, and he had an interesting topic and I made a highlight of it. He said after World War II, we talked about the oil situation when the dala was pegged to OPEC, that was essentially tokenizing oil. Then okay that's good, so that was their ICO. >> Right, right, yeah, essentially. >> That's what you're saying, you can actually put fiat to the digital token and take advantage of the efficiencies of digital. >> Right, yeah, okay-- >> Taking down all the structural inefficiencies that were built prior to digital. Is that ... >> It is. You fast forward a little bit and think where that takes us. It's no secret that the U.S. dollar is the trade currency of the world, and I want to be careful what I say because, you know, I'm an American patriot here but there are other large G20 nations who wouldn't mind dethroning the U.S. dollar as the trade currency of the world and so as you see central banks starting to get involved in the issuance of digital currency, you create a situation where all of a sudden well maybe oil could be traded heresy in other currencies besides the U.S. dollar which is all it's traded in today. Goes back to your ecosystem question. >> This is a great point. We could riff on this stuff, let's riff on this. The UK just signed a deal with Coinbase, this is a major signal. >> Sign, yeah. >> You got a legitimate country saying we're going to give a license to Coinbase, now they have Brexit to deal with so they're looking at it as an opportunity. Outside of the UK coming in and doing that deal with Coinbase, it's on the web, look up Coinbase in the UK, you'll see the deal. You have other companies trying to jockey for who's going to be the Wall Street for crypto? Meaning I want to convert crypto to fiat, where do I go? Do I go to Estonia? Do I go to Dubai? Bahrain? Armenia? China? There is no place yet. Your thoughts, what's going to happen? What shoe will drop first? Is there a domino effect? >> Yeah, well there's a couple things as it relates to the UK and kind of the extension to Coinbase of access to the national payment system which is really what enables them to then convert fiat to crypto and back. That's pretty interesting. Going back to the programmable money thing, though. If you have a central bank issued token, you've essentially extended the real time gross settlement system which has been only accessible by commercial banks to anybody that holds that token, right? It's a trend, I think the UK sees it coming, I think the Federal Reserve sees it coming. It's going to happen. >> Is it winner take all or winner take most? >> I think it creates a much more purely efficient market. It's a democratic system so I don't think there is going to be a new Wall Street, I think it's going to be-- >> John: Decentralized. >> Exactly, I mean that's the beauty of it. It's scary though for establishments like Wall Street to look at this and it-- >> I mean are the banks scared? You're dealing with the banks right now. >> Yes, they're scared. I mean I've actually read a recent article that Bank of America, the headline was "Bank of America's afraid of digital currency." You've seen Jamie Dimon who came out with a kind of a hard stance against bitcoin and has since kind of backed away from that. >> Of course you probably bought in when it dropped and now it's back up again. >> Well I think part of the bank was actually facilitating their clients and trading bitcoin so that might've been it. There's a natural reaction to it, especially if you're part of the mainstream establishment. >> There's no proof of that, I'm just saying we're posting on Reddit and whatnot. >> No we're just joking around. Jamie's a, he's a good guy, right? >> Can I get your thoughts on digital nations? We've been talking about this. Just a few years ago, smart cities, IoT was kind of the narrative, oh be a smart city, control the traffic lights, and instrument the physical goods and services. Now with crypto and blockchain front and center conversation is digital nations with sovereignty around their cash. This is kind of your point earlier. How are you seeing that? What's your view? Are you seeing that trend? Are there dots connecting for you? Because again, people are jockeying for a position on the global digital backbone to be a major part of the money flow, the fiat conversion, what is the goods and services? Who's going to clear the values? All digital, it's a perfect storm. >> Well I think there's always going to be the need for trusted entities to be the issuers of these assets because it all comes down to trust at the end of the day. The thing with bitcoin is that it's purely autonomous and people are a little bit skeptical of it because they're like, "Well who's controlling "the monetary policy?" and the answer is the market, you know, the users of the network are controlling it and that's why you see such volatility, right? Because the traders love it, they can go in and trade the up trends and the down trends. As long as there's volatility, traders are making money. I think there is still going to be a place for central authorities to add value, but that's going to be the pressure, is for them to prove that they're adding value not, you know, bureaucracy masquerading as process. >> I was reading an article that Telegram, which is doing a huge ICO, just got shut down by the Russian government, they went to turn over their keys, their private keys of their users. Say goodbye to the-- >> Jesse: I didn't read that, that's crazy. >> It's really crazy, so that's going to put a damper on their ICO but regulatory and then government issues around countries becomes a big deal. In your experience as Wells Fargo, at a bank, looking forward in the new digital world, is it one of those situations where path of least resistance, the countries that go more friendly get around that in a sovereignty where you domicile, where you start your company, where you do your banking. I mean I could start a company in Gibraltar and bank in Switzerland. >> Well transparency is part of the benefit or the downside of this, right? I think there may be advantages that pop up but I think they will equalize over time. I've been around the world now for IBM talking to 20 plus central banks, and I had a really interesting conversation with one of them recently in Asia. We're in the room with deputy director level people who are responsible for things like the NA money laundering policy and the economics and monetary policy and things like that and one person said, "You know, we're really torn "between two equally unacceptable decisions. "One is to ignore cryptocurrencies altogether, "and the other end of the spectrum is "to make them illegal, to ban them." I thought it was poignant that they see those as unacceptable, they have to do something in the middle. >> Do they weigh or ban? I mean look, the banning's happening. >> But okay so you saw that Trump used the executive order to prevent Americans from using or trading in the Venezuelan crypto that was issued on Ethereum, right? I saw that Venezuelan thing as a publicity stunt more than anything, an active of global defiance. So there's precedent now for, and the Russia thing with Telegram-- >> The United States of America has to step up its game because look at it, we have a lot of, I mean I remember back in the crypto days when I was just getting into the business, late 80s, early 90s, you couldn't even do it in the U.S., you go to Canada, that's why Canada's got a lot of innovation up there. We're risking our country, and I had one guy tell me in Puerto Rico, he's from South Africa, and he shouldn't be throwing any stones either but his point was, he says, "America's becoming Europe. "There's a shrinking middle class "while other emerging markets have a growing middle class," so the global impact of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and these applications are significant and have to be factored into policy decision making for governments. The U.S. can't just think about itself anymore in a vacuum. >> Right, not anymore. >> Because there's implications otherwise the U.S. will turn into Europe, regulated, all these rules, byzantine stuff. It's a real problem. Your thoughts on that. >> It is. It's cliche, but we live and work in a global economy. The flow of information globally in real time has been around now for a while and it's about time it came to money. The internet of money is a term I've heard. It's just, it's unavoidable. >> Jesse Lund here inside The Cube. Great guest, great conversation. >> Yeah, thanks. >> How do people get ahold of you on IBM's, you mentioned you got some great stuff going on, you've written a paper, you've got a lot of content, where does someone go to discover some of the stuff that you're working on they could get involved with you guys? >> Yeah well I mean the best place to go is IBM.com/blockchain, that'll tell you a lot about what we're doing and the different industry-- >> And the programmable money paper you wrote, is that there? >> It's out there as well, there's a link to that. >> On IBM.com? >> You can get me directly on LinkedIn, I try to be pretty responsive with that because I really enjoy the dialogue. This is a revolution of the peoples, man, it's all over the world, so it's great, it's great to be a part of it. >> And people tokenizing their business, there's real opportunities to change the game to bring consensus, data driven, new kind of supply chain whatever to the markets you're in, great opp-, and you need banking. >> Yeah of course. >> You need to have money. Money, marketplaces, and communities, that's my mantra. >> I subscribe to it. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Jesse Lund. I'm John Furrier here at IBM Think 2018. Cube coverage continues after this short break. (upbeat music)

(energetic music) >> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE, covering CoinAgenda. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE. >> Hello and welcome to our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We're here covering all the action at Restart, we've got a ton of events, all the thoughts leaders, influencers, decision makers, you name it, in the industry, pioneers making it happen. My next guest is Toni Lane, who's the founder of CoinGraph. She's a true influencer with a lot of impact in this market. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> We're so glad to have you on. Like the little joke at the beginning about being an influencer, you actually are an influencer. You've done such great work in the industry, well regarded in the community. You have publication and you do a lot of great content. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh, for sure, yeah, thanks for having me. >> So being the influencer, what does that mean these days? Because we were just talking before the camera on, we came on camera, influence changes. You can't be an influencer all the time. You can be super or expert at something, but your expertise could change, you move to a new topic, learn something. And there's a lot of people in the digital marketing world saying I'm an influencer. It's kind of half baked, and really, I mean, it's not about the followers, your thoughts? >> Well, I mean, most of those followers are purchased. So there's a big difference between being an influencer and having actual influence. Because if you're, you know, if you have a million followers on Twitter, that's nice. How much engagement do you have? And that's actually what you look for, it's like when you look at someone's, whether it's, you know, social media, their digital presence, it's not about followers, it's all about engagement. You know, I don't even have that many, like I don't spend a lot of time doing that, at least I haven't so far, it's something I'm getting more into. But I have people that are really engaged, and so I look at people that have 15 million followers and I'm like, you have just as many likes on your things as I do, right. Because these people aren't real people. And it's less about, having influence in general is in many ways about having authenticity. And so influence is your ability to get something done. Being an influencer is your ability to hold someone's attention for a fragment of time. But being an influencer is not the same as having influence. >> And this community here, certainly, with decentralization here, you get the decentralized applications coming up blockchain, you got ICOs booming. It's all about the network effect, if you look at network effect, that is a new concept that ad technology does not know because you can't cookie a network connection. The only way to measure someone's true network is through malware today, and that's not good, no one does that. Well, they do, they're-- >> Toni: Unfortunately, yeah. >> But you can't you do it at business price, not sustainable. So the point is, it's not about how many followers you have. It could be that one follower, maybe 200 or 2,000, that opens up more. This is the network effect. This is what this community is all about, so I want to get your thoughts on this community's vibe. A lot of mission-driven, impact-oriented, merged with tech. So you have a fusion of technology, artistry, craftsmanship and mission-driven societal change in one melting pot. This is your wheelhouse. Share your thoughts on this. >> Well, so all of the different digital currencies have different value systems and they attract a different breed. And there are different incentives for each of these based on how the technology is designed, each protocol, right? So if you look at Bitcoin, in Bitcoin, the incentives are, you know, mining is done by computers, so your only incentive is like having social influence? And this is, I think, why we've seen a lot of kind of I would call it a scarcity mentality in terms of the way, why we see even more trolls in Bitcoin is because social influence is a huge way that success is measured, because as a developer, you can't have, you can't achieve a level of status any other way as a developer or as an influencer in Bitcoin, because the Bitcoin network is so far removed from that. And that's actually a perverse incentive in and of itself, and not only that, but early days in Bitcoin, there were major organizations who would hire people to man 100 Reddit and Twitter accounts and go into the Bitcoin community and actually fragment the public opinion using a technique grassroots psychological insurgency. So buying Reddit accounts that had been active for the last 10 years and going through and, you know, essentially just stabbing at people and creating, even having conversations with themselves to empower the voice of trolls. And what happens is you start bringing out what we call, actually, what the former Assad called, after Henry Kissinger, there was a big move that happened in the Middle East, where Kissinger realized the Middle East was becoming too powerful, and he saw it as a threat to American democracy. And so Kissinger organized a deal that fragmented the Middle East. And Assad said to Kissinger that his actions would be, he played Assad, basically. And Assad said to Kissinger, "Your actions "will bring up demons hidden underneath "the surface of the Arab world." And that strategy is actually something used in the Bitcoin community to leverage the incentives that are created, which is why we have seen previously so much, even from our industry leaders, so much fragmentation and so much tension. But the network is the most secure and the least corruptible, hands down, fundamentally. It's real cryptography. >> But let's talk about that, I love this conversation, because with networks, you have the concept of self-heal, and this gets nerdy on the packets, how packets move, at that level, self-healing networks has been a paradigm that's been proven. So that's out there, that's got to go to a societal level. The other one is the incentive system, if you have an immune system, if you will, in a network, this is a cultural thing. So actions, the Reddit's obvious, right. Weaponizing content has been well-documented, it's coming now mainstream, people are getting it that this outcome was actually manufactured by bad behavior. Now, I argue that there's an exact opposite effect. You can actually weaponize for good, 'cause everything has a polar opposite. So what is your view on that, because this is something that we've been teasing out for the first time. How do you weaponize content for good, (mumbles) not the right word, but look for the opposite value? >> Right, yeah, I mean, it is in so many ways, right. So I think it's about, there's a professor at Stanford whose name is BJ Fogg, and he's a behavioral researcher and he talks about essentially, you know, he writes a lot about habits. But something that's even more interesting about his understanding of propaganda is I studied a lot of Edward Bernays, he's responsible, he created the theory of propaganda, right. And he's the nephew of Sigmund Freud, he's responsible for essentially every consumptive theory in like leading up to the last century, he's actually, I would say he's responsible for the state of advertising and the economy today, almost really single handedly. And what's fascinating about this theory is that you can use propaganda to get women to smoke by unearthing what it is unconsciously in men that makes them not want to smoke. You can also use propaganda to get people to invest in health and wellness. You can also use propaganda to get people to stop their bad habits. So it's understanding that a technique works in a cognitive capacity in a way that affects a large amount of people. And it's really about the intention behind why a person who has influence, as we were saying, is leveraging that relationship. So I would say it's more about-- >> So we have to reimagine influence. Because the signalings that are igniting the cognitive brain can be tweaked. So that's what you're getting at here, right, so that's what we have to do. >> And it's an illusion from almost every angle. It's even the idea that, in the United States, the level of influence the president has and who's running, you know, and who, yeah, and who's at the wheel, right. So it's, we live in a world that is built on manufactured consent, and manufactured consent is enabled through thinkers like Bernays and through what I call the illusion of things like our former construct of even American democracy. That these things we've imagined to be so, the foundation and the structure for the way that we live. All of those things have become so far removed from their theory that they're no longer serving the principles under which they were founded, and that disconnect is actually a huge, it's a gap, it's an inertia gap for exploitation or it's an inertia gap for growth, and usually what happens is you have the exploitation first. Someone says oh, here's a big gap of information asymmetry, so I'm going to exploit the information asymmetry. And then once people start realizing that that information asymmetry is being exploited, you experience a huge inversion of that and you have enough kind of, you have enough inertia behind that slingshot to launch it into something totally different. >> Yeah, this is a great concept, I interviewed the founder of the Halcyon HAL in Washington, DC, and she's an amazing woman. And she had a great conscious about this, and what she postulated was, bubbles that burst, exploitation's always, we've seen it in all trends. The underbelly, 'cause it's motivated, no dogma. They don't care about structural incentives, they just want to make cash. But she had an interesting theory, she was talking about you can let the air out of the bubble with community and data. So all the societal entrepreneurship activities now that are mission-driven, now getting back to mission-driven is interesting. There might be a way to actually avoid the pop. Because, depending upon what the backlash might be on the exploitation side, as we saw in the dotcom bubble, you can actually let the air out a little bit through things like data. I mean, how do you see, in your mind, just thinking out loud, how do you see that playing out, because we have community now. We have access to open data. Blockchain is all about immutability. It's all about power to the user's data. This is a mega trend. Your thoughts? >> So interdependence is huge in the blockchain community, and that's actually to touch back on the incentives in Bitcoin, I think that that's actually one of Bitcoin's, it's not that it's a wrong or a right, it just is, right, like sidechains will be launched eventually, but the idea that Ethereum created something that was adaptable and empowered people to be creative, and yet they're creating incentives for her people to launch products that are, I believe, 'causing, in some ways, could cause some serious harm to the ecosystem once the air is let out of that bubble. >> John: The data. >> The data, so data, yes yes yes. >> How do you let the air out of the bubble, because the pop will be massively implosion, it'll leave a crater. >> So data is a non-scarce resource. This is actually how I describe blockchain to people. And this is actually, I think, one of the, the challenge, if you want to look at it from the perspective of challenge, and then I'll talk about for the benefit, just between Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are obviously other blockchains, EOS is like coming out super soon, Holochain. There are tons, Steem has actually its own infrastructure, tons of other blockchains to speak about. But just to take these two main blockchains, which are not competitors. In Bitcoin, you have, it's really cryptography. Cryptography is not about, you know, like let's do some rapid prototyping, cryptography is about let's like put a lot of thought into this thing and have mathematical certainty that this is not exploitatable. And Ethereum is just kind of like, well, let's build a framework and then let people play as much as they can. And so there are challenges and benefits to both of those models, the challenge of Ethereum being that you've let all of this capital into the industry which is not actually, 46% of ICOs have already failed. Already failed. And then if you look at Bitcoin-- >> And a person with your industry (mumbles) at 1,200, so it's a 50% discount. >> Oh yeah, oh yeah. And then if you do the same thing and you're looking at the Bitcoin blockchain, we've seen that the capacity for innovation, Bitcoin could have done what, they could've been the first to market for what Ethereum is doing. And they chose a different route, and I think there are some pros and cons to both of those things, but I think there is an intentionality behind why the world played out in the way that it did. And I think it's the right strategy for both products. So the way I describe applications using blockchain technology to people and what I call the future of an infinite economy is that, if you think about why are Facebook and Google these multi billion dollars companies, it's really simple. It's because what do they own, right? The data, the data. And they're some of the last companies that are still stewarding these things in a way that is taking vast amount of aggregated ownership over an asset that people are generating every day that's extremely valuable to companies in the private sector. So the way that I describe blockchain is that, if we being to own our self-sovereign identity, then when we're owning our data, that's the foundation for universal basic income. If we take a non-scarce resource like data that's being generated every day, not just from us, right, but the data in the health of the ocean, right. The stewardship of the ocean, the health of the fish, actually saying okay, fish are thriving in this area, and so there's a healthy ecosystem, and so this coin is trading higher because we're stewarding this area of the ocean so we don't overfish. The quality of the air so that, when we're actually de-polluting the air collectively, everyone around us is creating and generating data to say we're making the air better. The air, actually, the health of our bodies, of our Earth, of our minds, of our planet, of even the health of our innovation. Right, what are the incentives behind our innovation, those are all forms of data. And that's a non-scarce resource, so if we take all of these different applications and make many different blockchains. Which I fundamentally believe that there's a powerful theory in having blockchains that are economically scarce, because I believe you're going to empower more diverse spectrums and also have a level of difficulty in creating the coin. You're going to have more innovation. And so-- >> Well, this is a key area. I mean, this is super important. Well, I mean, you step back for a second, you zoom out, you say okay, we have data, data's super valuable, if you take it to the individual's levels, which has not been, quite frankly, the individual's been exploited. Facebooks of the world, these siloed platforms, have been using the data for advertising. That's just what everyone knows, but there's other examples. The point is, when you put the data in the hands of the users, combine that with cloud computing and the Internet of Things when you can have an edge of the network high powered computer, the use cases have never been pushed before. The envelope that we're pushing now has never been in this configuration. You could never have a decentralized network, immutable, storing users' data, you've never had the ability to write the kind of software you can today, you've never had cloud computing, you've never had compute at the edge, which is where the users live, they are the edge. You have the ability where the user's role can enable a new kind of collective intelligence. This is like mind blowing. So I mean, just how would you explain that to a common person? I mean, 'cause this is the challenge, 'cause collective intelligence has been well documented in data science. User generated content is kind of the beginning of what we see in user wearables. But if you can control the data streaming into the network, with all the self-healing and all the geek stuff we're talking about, it's going to change structural things. How do you explain that to a normal person? >> You don't, you don't, right. So you show them. Because I can sit here all day and I can talk to you about, you know, I could talk to you about all of these things, but at the end of the day, with normal people, it's not something you want to explain. You want to show them, because with my, actually, my grandma gets Bitcoin. My grandma hit me up in like 2012 and she was like, "Do you know what that Bitcoin thing is?" I'm like, "Mimi," I'm like, "How do you know "what Bitcoin is, Mimi?" And she's just like, "I don't know, I read." You know, I was like, "This is, so what are you reading? "Like, are you hanging out on like libertarian forums, "like what's up?" And so-- >> What's going on in the club there, I mean, are they playing-- >> Yeah, but she is a really unique lady. So I would say that, for most people, they are not going to, when you explain things to people-- >> What would you show them, I mean, what's an example? >> The way that, so when I was, so I got into Bitcoin in 2011, and the way that I would explain Bitcoin to people is I would just send it to them. I would be like, "Here's Bitcoin, like take this Bitcoin, "here's some Bitcoin for you." And that was, people got it, because they were like, I have five dollars now in my hands that was not there. And this person just sent it to me. And for some people even still, you know, to be honest, even then, I remember how much energy it took for me to do that. Everywhere I go, I'd be like, in cabs, I'd be checking out grocery stores and I would try, I would essentially pitch Bitcoin to every person that I met. >> John: You were evangelizing a lot of it. >> It took so much energy though, and even after that, there was a period-- >> It was hard for people to receive it, they would have to do what at that time? Think about what the process was back then. >> Oh yeah. There were very few people who, even after doing that, really got it. But you know what happened. This is so much perspective for me, I remember doing that in 2013 and I remember, in 2018, actually, I think it was the end of 2017. I went to a gas station, it's the only gas station in San Francisco with a Bitcoin ATM. And I was like, I need to get some cash and I'm running on Bitcoin. >> John: You guys want a mountain view now. >> Yeah, yeah. And so I go in and these guys, I'm like frustrated, I'm like oh, the ATM is like the worst user experience ever, I'm like (groans). That's literally, I'm like, it's just, it was like eyes rolling in the back of my head, like just so frustrated because I'm a super privacy freak. And so it was just a super complex process, but the guys that, the guy's (mumbles) he looks at me and he goes, "Yo." And I was like, "What's up, man?" And he goes, "Are you trying to buy some Bitcoin?" I was like, "I'm trying to sell some Bitcoin right now." (John laughs) >> You're dispensing it, they're like yeah. >> Yeah, he's like, "Oh, word." And he's like, "How much are you trying to sell?" And I'm like, "I don't know, like 2K." And so he goes, "Aight." And he's like, "Let me hit up my friends," he literally calls three of his friends who come down and they just like, they're like, "Do you want to sell more?" They're like, all they just peer to peer. It's like we bypass the ATM and it was actually a peer to peer exchange. And I didn't have to explain anything. You know what made people get it? You showed them the money, you showed them the money. And sometimes people don't, you can explain these concepts that are world-changing, super high level or whatever. People are not actually going to get it until it's useful to them. And that's why a user interface is so important. Like, if you even look at the Internet. Who made the money on the Internet, right, it was the people who understood how to own the user interface. >> I had a conversation with Fred Kruger from WorkCoin, he's been around the block for a long time, great guy. We were riffing on the old days. But we talked about the killer app for the mini computer and the mainframe, the mini computer and then the PC, it was email, for 20 years, the killer app was email. We were like, what's the killer app for blockchain? It's money, the killer app is money. And it's going to be 50 year killer app. Now, the marketplace is certainly maybe tier two killer app, but the killer app is money. >> For sure, that's amazing. >> That's the killer app. Okay, so we're talking about money, let's talk about wallets and whatnot. There's a lot of people that I know personally that had been, wallets had been hacked. Double authentication (mumbles) news articles on this, but even early on, you got to protect yourself. It's something that you're an advocate of, I know recently, you've been sharing some stuff on Telegram. Share your thoughts on newbies coming in, be careful. Your wallet can be hacked, and you got to take care of yourself online. Is there a best practice, can you share some color commentary on when you get into the system, when you get Bitcoin or crypto, what are some of the best practices? >> It's not even, I think you need to remember a key principle of cryptography when you're dealing with digital currency, which was like don't really trust anything unless you call someone, you have like first hand verification from a person that you trust. Because these things are, I mean, I've had, literally last week, I had seven friends contact me, actually more than that once I posted about it, and they were like, "Is this you?" And I was like what, like people would literally just go online, they would scrape my Facebook photo, they'd go on Telegram and they would make, my name is @ToniLaneC, T-O-N-I-L-A-N-E-C, and so is my Twitter, and people would scrape my photos from my Twitter or my Telegram or my Facebook and they would create fake accounts. And they would start messaging people and say "Hey, like "what's up, how are you, that's cool, great, awesome. "So like, I need like 20 BTC for a loan. "Can you help me?" And all my friends were like, "I was just talking to you, is this you?" And I'm like no. And so I think that there's, the other thing you have to, it's not just security in terms of, and this is actually a problem Blockchain has to solve, right. It's not just security in terms of protecting your wallet and, you know, getting like a Ledger or a Trezor and making sure that you're keeping things like in cold storage, that you're going, there are so many, keeping your money in a hard wallet, not keeping your private keys on your computer, like keeping everything, storing your passwords in multiple places that you know are safe. Both handwritten, like in lock boxes, putting it in your safe deposit box or, you know, there are so many different ways that we can get into like the complexities of protecting yourself and security. Not using centralized cell networks is one of the big ways that I do this. Because if you are using two factor-- >> John: What's a centralized cell network? >> AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. Because you are putting yourself in a situation where, if you're using a centralized system, those centralized systems are really easily exploitable. I know because my mom, when I was a kid one time, she put a password on my account so I couldn't buy games. I was not happy about it, it was my money that I was using, it was my money I was using to buy games, she was like, "You should just spend your money on better things." And so I remember going in when I was a kid, and I was like, this is my money, I totally want to buy this upgrade on this game. And so I went in and I essentially figured out how to hack into my own phone to be able to use my own money to buy the games that I wanted to buy-- >> Highly motivated learning opportunity there (laughs). >> But I realized that, in the same way we were talking about things that can be used for good can be used for bad, in the same way that someone can do something like that, you can also say, well, I'm in a call and say that I'm this person and take their phone and then get their two factor auth. So I don't use centralized cell networks, I don't use cell networks at all. >> John: What do you use? >> So, I mean, I have different kinds of like strategies or different things that mostly-- >> You might not want to say it here, okay, all right. >> Yeah yeah yeah, they're different, I'm happy to talk about those privately. The way that I've kind of handled that situation, and then the other thing that I would say is like, we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and for the world. And not social reputation systems like what is happening in China right now, where you can have someone leave you, like let's say I get into an Uber and I'm 30 seconds late. I can end up in a situation where I'm like not able to be admitted into a hospital or I'm not able to take a public train. Because someone rates me lower on this reputation system, I think that's a huge human rights issue. >> John: Yeah, that's a huge problem. >> And so not reputation systems like this, but reputations like the one we're working on at CULTU.RE that are really based more on the idea of restoration and humanization, rather than continued social exploitation to create some kind of collective norm, I think that kind of model is, it's not only a-- >> Well, the network should reject that by-- >> Toni: Exactly, exactly. >> All right, so let's talk about digital nations, we have China, so there's some bad behavior going on there. I mean, some will argue that there's really no R&D over there, and now they're trying to export the R&D that they stole into other countries, again, that's my personal rant. But the innovation there is clear, we chat and other things are happening. They finally turned the corner where they're driving a lot of, you know, mainly because of the mobile. But there's other nations out there that are kind of left behind. The UK just signed this week with Coinbase a pretty instrumental landmark licensing deal, which is a signal, 'cause I know Estonia, Armenia, you name every country wants to, Bahrain's got, you know, Dubai envy. So I mean, every country wants to be the crypto country. Every country wants to be the smart cities digital nation. I know this is something that you liked, and you and I were talking about 'cause we both are interested in. Your reaction, your thoughts on where that's going, I see, it's a good sign. What are the thresholds there, what are some of the keys things that they need to do to be a real digital nation? >> Well, I think it's less about digital nations in terms of like a nation is a series of borders, and more about first nations that we are, this is what we work on at CULTU.RE, that we are actually a nation of people and a lot of those nations have overlap and we should be able to participate in many different nations who have many different economies that are all really cooperating interdependently to create the best possible life for all human good, rather than just saying like I care about me and mine, because that strategy, the way government works now, it's a closed network with low trust that is extremely inefficient in management of resources. And the only way you can really-- >> That's the opposite, by the way, of what this movement's about. >> Yeah, exactly. And the only way you can have influence in government is to go in government and to work through government. All right. So it's the idea that, look at how much food we waste in the United States. If we took the food we wasted in the United States and repurposed it, we could literally cure world hunger. That is how bad it has gotten, right. And there are people starving in the US. There are people on food stamps in the US. >> Well, I mean, every institution, education, healthcare, you name it, it's all, you know, FUBAR, big time. >> Yeah, but we're throwing away tons of lettuce and all of this different kinds of produce because it like looks funky. Like this peach looks a little too much like a bottom. So we're like not able to sell it. >> Or lettuce got a little brown on it, throw the whole thing away. >> Yes, exactly, exactly, and that waste is unacceptable. So what we need to move toward is a model of open networks of governance where we have peer to peer distribution of finance and of resources in a way that allows people to aggregate around the marketplaces that are actually benefiting the way that they believe the world should work. So it's about creating a collective strategy of collective non-violence and eliminating harm, so obviously, you know, having a society that has enough proper incentives so that people are well off and that people are provided for, and I think blockchain will-- >> I noticed you're wearing a United Nations pin. >> Woo-hoo, yeah. And blockchain, I think, will also create this. >> John: I have one too. >> Let's up top. (slap) Yeah, I think blockchain will also help create universal basic income, but in addition to that, it's the idea that, if I'm living next door, I'll give two examples. So one is about the legality of the way that we contribute to the society. So let's say I have a next door neighbor. And let's say that this next door neighbor and I feel literally, we totally get along on everything, there's just one issue we feel we're like, I totally disagree with this, I totally disagree. And that issue is the use of, and I hope this isn't controversial to say, but anyway. So the use of medical marijuana, right. And it shouldn't be, because we can have two different opinions and the world can still work and that's the point. >> Well, in California, it's now legal to own marijuana. >> Yeah, for sure, it's legal here as well. So it's the idea that, if I, so let's say I'm a woman who, you know, I have someone in my life who was injured by a driver who was driving under the influence of marijuana. And so that's all I know about marijuana because I don't really do drugs, I've never been around drugs. So when I hear that word, I immediately think about the person in my life who was harmed because of, yes, and so immediately triggered, and I'm like, I don't want to support anything, I don't want to support anything to do with marijuana, I think marijuana is like the Devil's lettuce. And I have no interest in supporting marijuana. She never has to support marijuana, she doesn't have to. But her next door neighbor is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, her, me, whatever, is a veteran with Parkinson's disease, okay. And the only way that this man can move is, he's literally shaking, but when he smokes medical marijuana, he's actually able to, you watch and literally 30-45 minutes, he's upright, he looks like a normal healthy man. And so he says, "I believe that every, "after I fought in this, I believe every person "should have access to medical marijuana, "because this is the only way I'm able "to even operate my life." >> The different context. >> And I'm so, yes, exactly. And so what culture is really about is about understanding each other's context, that's even how reputation works. It's contextual awareness that provides greater understanding of who we are as individuals and the way we work together to make society work. So maybe they can mutually agree that he is not going to smoke while he's driving and he can pay to support everyone to have access who needs access to medical marijuana. >> Or he could finance Uber rides for them. You know, or whatever, I mean, these are mechanisms. >> Yes, yes, but it's the, yes, exactly, exactly. It's the idea that we are all, we're coming together to share context is a way that's not aggressive and not accusatory, so two people can believe two totally different things and still develop enough mutual respect to live together peacefully in a society. >> You know, the other too I'm riffing on that is that now KYC is a concept (mumbles) kicked around here, know your customer. I've been riffing on the notion of KYC for know your neighbor. And what we're seeing in these communities, even the analog world, people don't know who their neighbors are. Like, they don't actually even like care about them. >> Toni: For sure. >> You know, maybe I grew up in, you know, a different culture where, you know, everyone played freely, the parents were on the porch having their cocktail or socializing and watching the kids from the porch play on the lawn. Now I call that Snapchat, right. So I can see my kids Snapchat, so I'm not involved, but I have peripheral view. >> Toni: For sure. >> But we took care of each other. That doesn't happen much anymore, and I think one of the things that's interesting in some of these community dynamics that's been successful is this empathy about respect. They kind of get to know people in a non-judgmental way. And I think that is something that you see in some of these fragmented communities, where it's just like, if they just did things a little bit different. Do you agree, I see you're shaking your head, your thoughts on this? This super interesting social science thing that's, now you can measure it with digital or you can measure that kind of-- >> We can incentivize it. We can incentivize it. And that's the difference, measurement is one thing. Incentive is a behavior changer. Incentive is a behavior changer. And that is what we actually have to do in the way we think about the foundation of these systems, is it's not incentivizing competitive marketplaces that are like my way of thinking about this is right and your way of thinking about this thing is wrong, and like ah, it's not about that. At the end of the day like, I think we forget or misquote so much of, so many of the great thinkers of the last generation, like if you think about Darwin. What does everyone know about Darwin, right, it's like survival of the fittest. It's not what Darwin said, okay. It's misquoted and it's used, it's like one of those things where people who want to exploit-- >> It's a meme, basically. >> Yeah, people who want to exploit someone else's knowledge for their own ends will use that to, in some way, uplift the kind of like strategy of, you know, incentives of the time. What Darwin actually said was that human beings with the highest capacity for sympathy, qualities we now identify as altruism, compassion, empathy, reciprocity, will be the most likely to survive during hardship. Fundamentally, I mean, look at the state of the world today. It doesn't look good, it's like, you look at the way people interact with each other, it's like a virus that's attacking itself in an ecosystem that is our planet Earth, and we need to be, you know what is the antibody, our own sense of consideration for our fellow man. That is the antibody to violence. And so we can incentivize this, and we're going to have to because we're going to, AI, automation, these will fundamentally transform the way we think about jobs in a way that will liberate us like we've never known before. And once given the freedom, I think that we'll see the world start to change. >> Toni, I really appreciate you spending the time in this thought leadership conversation, riffing back and forth. Feels great and it's a great productive conversation. I got to ask you, how did you get there? I mean, who are you? I mean, you're amazing. Like, how did you get here, you obviously, Coin Telegraph's one of the projects you're running, great content. You're wearing the UN pin, I'm aligning with that. Got a great perspective. What's your story? Where did you come from originally, I mean... How did you get here? >> I think, you know, I don't know. I'm really connected to Saturn, I don't know where my home planet is. >> Which spaceship did you come in on? No, I mean, seriously, what's your background? How did you weave into this? 'Cause you have a holistic view on things, it's impressive. But you also can get down and dirty on the tech, and you have a good, strong network. Did you kind of back into this by accident on purpose, or was it something that you studied? What's the evolution that you have? >> Yeah, you know. I studied performance art and I was an artist all of my life. And I had a really big existential crisis, because I realized, as I was looking around, that technology was replacing every form. I remember the first time I watched an AI generate, this was maybe in like, I don't remember how, this was a long time ago, but I was essentially watching, before like the deep dream stuff, maybe like 2009 or 10. And I remember watching computers generate art. And I just was like, I was like mic drop, I was like anything that could ever be created can and will be created by computers, because these are, you are looking at this data, you can scan every art piece in the world and create an amalgamation of this in a way that extends so far beyond team and capacity that the form that we have used to express artistic integrity, all forms will, in some way, become obsolete as a form of creative expression. And I had this huge existential crisis as a performer, realizing that the value of my work was essentially, like, how long would the value of my work live on if no one is, I am not alive to continue singing the song. You don't remember the people who played Carmen, you remember Bizet who wrote the opera, you remember Carmen the character, but the life of the performer is like that of a butterfly. It's like you emerge from the cocoon, you fly around the world beautifully for a very short amount of time. And then you just, you know, stardust again. And so I had this huge existential moment, and it was a really big awakening call. It was as though the gravity of the universe came into the entire dimension of my being and said these, what you have learned has given you a skill, but this is not your path. So I went okay, I just need some time to like process that and so, 'cause this is my entire life, it's the only thing I ever imagined I would ever do. And so I ended up spending three months in silence meditating. And people are like whoa, like how did you do that? And I don't think people, I don't know, not that people don't understand, but I'm not certain that a lot of people have the level of this kind of existential moment that I experienced. And I couldn't have done anything else, I really just needed to take that time to process that I was actually reformulating every construct at the foundation of my own reality. And that was going to take, that's not something you just do overnight, right, like some people can do it more fluidly, but this was a real shift, a conscious shift. And so I asked myself three questions in that meditation, it was what is my purpose, what is the paradigm shift and where is my love. And so I just meditated on these three questions and started to, I don't know how deeply you've studied lucid dreaming or out of body experiences, but that's another, a conversation we can get into in another time, that was my area of study during that period. And so I ended up leaving the three months in silence and I just kind of, I started following my intuition. So I would just, essentially, sometimes I'd walk into a library and I would just shut my eyes and I would just walk around and I would touch books. And I would just feel what they felt like to me, like the density of their knowledge. And I would just feel something that I felt called to, and I would just pull it out of the shelf and just read it. And I don't know how to explain it-- >> (mumbles) Energy, basically-- >> I was guided, I was guided to this. This was in 2011. And so what I started getting into was propaganda theory, the dissolution of Aristotelian politics as an idea of citizen and state when we're really all consumers in a Keynesian economy structured by Edward Bernays, the inventor of propaganda, who essentially based our entire attitude of economic health on, you know, a dissolving human well being. Like, the evolution of our economic well being and our human well being were fundamentally at odds, and not only was that system non-sustainable, but it was a complete illusion. At every touch, point and turn, that the systems we lived in were illusions. And so is all of the world, right, like this whole world is an illusion, but these illusions in particular have some serious implications in terms of people who don't have the capacity, or not the capacity, everyone has the capacity, but who have not explored that deeply, right, who haven't gone that deep with themselves. >> And one of those books was like a tech book or was like-- >> It was just multiple, no, it was multiple books. And it's not that I would even read all of the books all of the way through. Sometimes I would just pick up a book and I would just open it to a certain page and I would read like a passage or a couple pages, and I'd just feel like that's all I need to read out of that book. It's, you just tune into it. >> When was your first trade on Bitcoin, first buy, 2011? >> You want to know something nuts? People always, people are like, "When did you first buy Bitcoin?" I was not, I didn't. So after I started, once you know, all this knowledge came to me, I just started talking about it, I was like, I've been given some wisdom, I just have to share it. So I started going out into the world and finding podiums and sharing. And that was when someone put a USB full of Bitcoin into my hands. I very rarely, I don't necessarily buy, I've just been gifted a lot. >> Good gifts. >> Toni: They've been great gifts, yeah. >> And then when did you start Coin Telegraph, when did that come online? >> So that was in 2013. I joined, the property had been operable for I think like three or four months. And some guys called me and they said, "We're just really impressed with you "and we want to work with you." And I said, "Well, that's nice," I was like, "But you don't have a business, right?" And they were like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "Well, you have a blog, right?" And so I went in and I said, essentially like, here's, to scale the property, I was like, "Here's a plan for the next three years. "If we really want to get this property to where "it needs to be." I'm like, "Here are the programs that we need "to institute, here's like this entire, "countries we can be operable in "and then other acquisitions of other properties." I essentially went in and said like, "Here's the business model and the plan at scale," and they were just like, I think they were a little like, the first call that we had, I think they were just like, "We just called you to," it was a bold move, like, "We just called you to offer you something, "and you countered our offer by saying "we don't have a business?" It was one of those things, but they-- >> Well, it was the labor of love for them, right, I mean-- >> Well, for all of us, yeah, for all of us. >> When all you do is you're blogging, you're just sharing. And then you start thinking about, you know, how to grow, and you got to nurture it, you need cash. >> Yes, and so I essentially came in and then started, I was both editor in chief and CEO and co-founder of the property who helped bring in a lot of the network, build the reputation for the brand, create a scaling strategy. A lot of mergers and acquisitions, a lot of franchises and-- >> How many properties did you buy roughly, handful, six, less than six? >> So I would also say that-- >> Little blogs and kind of (mumbles) them together, bring people together, was that the thinking? >> Yeah, you know, what's interesting is media from all shapes and sizes, 15 to 20 offices in 25 different countries. I always say this when I talk about this, a very important lesson that I learned. How do you manage a team of 40 anarchists? You don't, you don't, that's the answer, you don't, you don't even like, you're like oh. I remember when I was like, "We're a team!" And someone was like, "No, we're not, "I don't believe in teams, I work for myself "and I don't need," I was like oh, wow. I was like oh-- >> John: The power of we, no. >> I was just like, all right, but it was a good learning experience, because I was like well, this is the way, these are your needs. So if that's your, I was like, well, let's embrace that, let's embrace the idea-- >> But that's the culture, you can't change it. >> And let's create the economy around that, let's actually do direct incentive for it, if you think that you're, if you want to be in this on your own, then let's say okay, we're going to make this fully free market economics and we're going to have a matter of consensus on whether or not someone who's exploiting the system, you write an article, you send it out, the number of views and shares that it gets from accounts that are, you know, proven verified, that is how much you get out of the bounty that's created from our ad sales, and if the community comes together in a consensus and says that someone wrote an article that was basically exploiting the system, like beer, guns, tits and weed plus Bitcoin and then they just shared it with everyone, then obviously, they would be weighted differently because the community would reach consensus so-- >> Change the incentive system. >> We just, I started, yeah, I started redesigning, essentially, once I had that moment, I was like okay, I was like, well, we really got to change the incentives here then because the incentives are not going to work like that. If that's the, if there's a consensus that that is the way you guys want to do things, then I got to change things around that. All right, cool, and so yeah, it was a really interesting awesome learning experience from like, you know, a team of like, maybe like 20 to 40 into, probably took it up 40, and then with all of the other, you know, companies and franchises, to about 435 people. And then just took the revenue from, yeah, just took, it was like skating revenue and then rocketing revenue. So that was really my role in the growth of the business and we're all, you know, it's amazing to see how these kind of blockchain holacracies work, you know, at a micro scale and at a macro scale. And what it really takes to build a movement, right. And then, in some ways, I guess it'd either become or create a meme. >> Well, I really appreciate the movement you've been supporting, we're here to bring theCUBE to the movement, our second show, third show we've been doing. And getting a lot more this year, as the ecosystem is coming together, the norms are forming, they're storming, they're forming, it's great stuff. You've been a great thought leader, and thanks for sharing the awesome range of topics here for theCUBE. >> For sure. >> Toni Lane here inside theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage of CoinAgenda, we'll be right back. (energetic music)