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

(upbeat music) >> Hello there and welcome to a special Cube conversation here at The Cube's Palo Alto studios, I'm John Furrier. Join with me for this special Cube Conference, Stu Miniman with Wikibon and The Cube co-host as well just up at Amazon Web Services Summit. Stu, great to see you again. Our next guest is Ben Golub, who's the executive chairman and interim CEO of Storj, pronounced storage. So it's a really hot cryptocurrency, blockchain based storage solution. I should say decentralized storage, not necessarily cryptocurrency, but tokens are involved, encryption. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, it's good to be back. >> Formerly Docker CEO and now advising at Mayfield Fund as a venture partner and also interim CEO of a hot-- >> Yeah really exciting company. And I'm really excited to talk to you about it today. >> So let's just jump into it. So obviously the ICO craze is awesome and we've always speculated that the blockchain and the decentralized applications are coming is going to be the real action. But yet it's going to create efficiencies where there's inefficiencies. >> Sure. >> Venture capital is one of them and that's why the ICO craze is going. People are raising a boatload of money that they probably wouldn't have gotten that amount. >> Wouldn't have gotten, yeah no dilution, things like that. It's interesting yeah. >> So give us an update on Storj or storage. How much in ICO did they raised, whitepapers out there? It's peer to peer, give a quick, take a minute to explain what the company's doing. >> Yeah well I guess that I should probably start by saying that I think that blockchain is bigger than just cryptocurrency, and decentralized is bigger than blockchain, and Storj is primarily a decentralized storage company. So we're about decentralized apps and the whole thing would absolutely work even if we were just using dollars. But I think it does make it a whole lot more exciting. And so the company, kind of unique in the crypto space in that we actually had a running service that was providing real value, before we did the large token sale. And the token sale raised about $30 million. Fortunately they took about 10 of that in Ethereum and Bitcoin which rose up. So there's a good deal more than that in the bank account right now. >> John: Hopefully they converted to fiat currency. >> And then they converted to fiat along the way. >> It's at an all-time high of $20,000 right now. It's like $7,000, something like that. >> Yeah, so you know, didn't sell everything at the peak, but didn't sell at the-- >> Yeah, so we've been having many blockchain and crypto or token-based economic kind of things. But the real question is what's happening? Now we know the action's been on the infrastructure side. We look at all the top hedge funds, Polychain, amongst others. They love these deals because it's infrastructure. Is that where the action is and how are you guys looking at that because at the same time, there's a wave of decentralized applications also known as Dapps coming on. So there's a relationship going on between how fast the infrastructure can go, and then how applications are going to work with either on chain or off chain dynamics. >> Sure, sure. So maybe it would be helpful to give you a sense of what it is that we do. 'Cause I think that if you do that, then I think it makes sense in the context of decentralized infrastructure, decentralized apps, but also actually traditional infrastructure as well. I've always been searching for a company that I could describe at Thanksgiving. I've never succeeded, so I always end up saying that I'm in computers, and fixing somebody's printer. (laughing) But I guess if I were to describe Storj at Thanksgiving, I'd say it's basically the Airbnb of storage, or the Airbnb of disc drives. So Airbnb, people have lots of condos or vacation properties that aren't being used all the time, and so Airbnb brings them together with people who want to rent those, and they're the largest hotel company in the world, without owning a single property. And we're kind of doing the same thing with Storj, in that there is, first of all, this explosion in the amount of data that's getting created. It would fill a stack of CD-ROMs to Mars and back this year. Yet the price of cloud storage hasn't come down. And 90% of all the disc drives that are out there are only about 10% utilized. So seems like a problem that needs a solution. And that's what we've done. We've basically brought together a very large network of individuals and companies that have spare storage capacity and matched them up with people who need storage. The really cool aspect, there are many cool aspects about it, but one of them is that basically if you want to store on the Storj network, we take your file, you encrypt it, so we never hold the keys. You encrypt it, it's all scrambled up, we break it up into between 20 and 80 pieces, and we spread those out across 150,000 or so nodes that we have in our network. So it's super cheap, but it's also super secure. Great performance because the data's way out at the edge. And super available because there's no storm or power outage or idiot tripping over a power cord that can take out your storage. >> So, Ben, you touched on, first question I was going to ask, of course, trust and security. Storage I absolutely have to worry about, so it sounds like that's at the core, but there's a number of dynamics going on in the industry. Object storage was great, let's spread it out, let's make it more decentralized, but most of the core storage industry is speeds and feeds and latency's super important, and even when you start getting to distributed architecture, I worry about that latency. So what are kind of the use cases, what are some of the key customer issues? Is price a big piece of it? Or what solutions does Storj solve that others can't? >> I always said when I was at Cluster, which was a storage company that there were four things that mattered in storage. There's certainly price; there was security; as in I don't want anybody to be able to access it; there's availability, I never want to drop or lose files; and finally there's performance, how fast I can get it. And so for a huge range of use cases that involve files, basically everything that object storage is kind of used for today, the design of our system is actually much better because we've encrypted it locally and then spread it out, you really can't attack it. First of all, you'd have to figure out... So a would-be attacker who wanted to find one of your files in the storage network would have to figure out which of the 80 or the 20 nodes out of 150,000 it's located on. If they found one of those, and they got the small portion of the file that's there, they wouldn't be able to do anything with it 'cause it's encrypted. Even if they were somehow able to decrypt it by stealing the key from you, not from us... >> So encryption and immutability... >> And immutability, right. So you get all of that. So for the security piece, it's great. For the availability piece, I never lose a file. It's really, really good, because if you just look at the math, the chances that somehow... You can basically lose 10 out of 20 nodes and still be able to recover your files. And all of our nodes are run by different people, different power supply. >> So let's take a step back. How many nodes are on the network now, you said? >> 150,000 now, run by 70,000 farmers, is what we call them. They're not miners, 'cause they're not just solving that problem, they're just producing something of value. 70,000 farmers, and then we have on the network right now, over 50 petabytes of data, which is a really large amount, and yet, we don't run a single data center. >> Have you guys raised any venture at all, or is it all ICO proceeds? >> There was a small seed round that was done, before the ICO craze. But other than that, it's all-- >> And how many people are working on the company? >> 25. >> So you guys are a classic startup. The working product, how does that look now? Is it on the blockchain, is it off the chain, how's it working, Bitcoin? >> So I've described to you what the product does. So far nothing I've described to you involves blockchain. The way the economics work is that as a user, somebody who wants to store on our network, we quote a price in dollars. You can either pay us in dollars or in the Storj token, and as a farmer, you get compensated with a Storj token. And that's done, of course, using blockchain we're actually part of Ethereum. >> Is that ERC-20 token? >> ERC-20 token, yeah. There are also interesting things that we are working on using blockchain for things like you just mentioned, data integrity, so I can make sure that if I'm doing a snapshot of a database, and I want to make sure that it's exactly what it is, nobody can tamper with it, et cetera, then that's a perfect use of blockchain. But using blockchain for the stuff I was talking about before, like figuring out where the shards are and making sure that they're uptime and reliable, that's actually stuff where blockchain isn't the best answer. >> Ben, tell us a little bit about the customers that you find there, 'cause storage administrators, that role's been changing a lot, but the typical storage administrator, if you tell them, "Oh yeah, I'm doing some distributed thing, "somewhere else, and paying in crypto-currency," they'd be like, are you kidding me? I want this thing that I can lock and hold and guard with a gun. >> This is like anything else, there's an adoption curve, and right now it's clearly very much early adopters. And actually similarly to Docker and similar to the cloud in general, it's developers who are leading the way. Developers are saying, oh, wow, I can write to the storage network in the same way that I would have written to S3, only it's cheaper, for many use cases, more performing, and not centralized, so I'm not trusting one cloud provider. So for certain use cases, this is fantastic. >> Are there certain cloud native apps that you're finding have strong affinity here? >> Yeah, so basically what we have affinity with right now, and let's be clear, this is early days. I wouldn't recommend that people store their most sensitive data on this, but-- >> Not Oracle certified yet, is what you're saying? >> We're not Oracle certified, no. (laughing) Basically anything involving a large file that you're not writing to very frequently, but you're reading a lot, or that's getting read by lots of people around the world, we're a really good solution. It's one of the things I think I mentioned to you. So we've got 150,000 nodes. They're located in I think it's now 180 countries, and all over the U.S. So if you want to get your data close to the edge, the people who are consuming your data are really close to the edge, this is actually really good. And because it's spread across so many, you get the benefit of parallelism, so it's super fast, in addition to being super safe and super secure. >> How does it work for the farmers? Because we have video files, so we would love to spread our video files on the Storj network. So let's just say... >> I'd do a special deal for you, too, you know. >> Of course, yeah, get a little token action going on both sides, Cube coins. But the availability thing is concerning. Whose computers is it being stored on? Is it extra capacity? Is it servers? Is it people's home computers? What's the, is it that kind of model? >> Sure, so basically yeah, we, just as Airbnb measures reputation, we measure reputation, too. And so if you don't have a good reputation, certain characteristics, we won't send data to you. What it basically means is you've got to have dedicated hardware and a dedicated connection. So we do have people who are running things in their home, but it's not a laptop, it's not on your phone. But if you have a disc drive that's connected with reasonably high capacity and reasonably well connected, then you'll establish good reputation. But what we are seeing is we are seeing a lot of universities, a lot of small businesses, some data center operators who have spare capacity or just want to use us as like, be both a farmer and a user. So backup and get stuff on their capacity as a good idea. And interestingly enough, we also are getting a lot of people who were Bitcoin miners and bought equipment, which is good quality equipment, but there's such an arms race in doing that. >> So they abandoned, because it was too hard for them to get coins. >> It's too hard to make money, right, and very expensive, specialized equipment, and in our case, basically general high quality equipment works well. >> What's the profit model? How do the farmers make money? Take our Cube videos, as an example, so I'm paying you guys, and you're distributing those tokens? >> You're paying us and you're paying us either in dollars or tokens. And then farmers get compensated in tokens. Right now, about 60 cents on every dollar goes to farmers. And farmers get more storage based off of their reputation. We charge people based on both how much you're storing as well as how much bandwidth egress that you're doing, and we compensate farmers exactly the same way. >> It's handled through a consensus protocol that you guys have? >> Yeah, yeah, so the payment and assessing reputation we actually use good distributed blockchain as well there, right, so you're not counting on Storj to be in the middle there. Now, with the remaining 40 cents, which I think is actually the really interesting part, we keep some of that, we put some back into the network, but what I'm really excited about is that this is now a way for us to economically empower demand partners as well. The first thing we announced was FileZilla, but we have lots of other open source projects waiting in the wings, and we're happy to share with them. So as opposed to centralized cloud, where it's really hard to make money as an open source company, we're not an open source project in our case, right? We're happy if you're sending us users and data, to give you a really meaningful percentage. >> Any kind of freemium model you guys are playing with? I can imagine this being pretty interesting, because S3 democratized and lowered the cost barrier, obviously with cloud. >> S3 has been great for many things. >> How low are you in terms of the disruption? You guys are probably going to have to come in and undercut S3, is that the strategy? Or is that the price value? >> I think what I learned from my time in storage, is price is important but you have to be really safe and available and reliable, 'cause people's data is really important. But we looked across a pretty broad set of use cases, in comparing us to the traditional cloud providers we're probably a third. And we could go lower. What I think is really interesting in our case is that the economics just work really well. So from our perspective, if you're a farmer, you've already got, it's spare capacity, you don't need any more electricity to run this thing, you've got bandwidth, right? You don't need to hire any more people. So it's almost pure margin for a farmer, which is great for them. And so we can give economic value to farmers, we can give economic value to our customers, we can give economic value to partners. >> Any kind of economic models you can share in terms of what someone would make? Let's just say that I had this big music library that's not being used anymore, and I had a-- >> Well, as a customer of course, if you've got data that you want to store on our network, you'll save a lot of money, and it's probably a third of what you might pay. >> But is there any kind of, if I'm a farmer, I want to join the network? >> But if you're a farmer. >> How much am I going to make? >> It really depends on how much you're storing and how good your connection is, but as a farmer, I think you can make decent money. This could probably be I don't know off the top of my head, $20, $30 a month per drive, which isn't bad, and certainly much easier than making money-- >> So it kind of depends like the Airbnb model, depends how well you're using-- >> How well you're used. So some people earn less, some people earn more. And again, for most of the farmers, this is pure margin. >> Great, we got a couple back to back rooms, Stu. We should get some drives up there and get on board. We could pay for the cameras. >> And look, I think for videos, you guys would actually be a perfect use case with a lot of the stuff that's going to be coming out later this year. You get both storage and CDN like things for free, in the sense that because-- >> I'm really glad you brought that up, 'cause I want to ask you about Videocoin, 'cause Halsey Minor has Videocoin, another ICO, he raised $50 million. We covered that on Silicon Angle. But he's trying to democratize Acromi. Is that similar to what you guys are doing? >> I guess you could say yeah, we're further democratizing object storage, democratizing S3, but I think we can also democratize Acromi, we can democratize Isilon, there's certain other really exciting things that are-- >> What other services, you mentioned CDN, so it's not just storing the information, but that global dispersion, what does that enable? >> It used to be that people had a really big difference between archival which is slow, hard to get at, and CDN, right? And but actually, given the way that we're doing this thing, we can be pretty seamless. Pay archival for stuff that's staying in archival, but go up market if you're going to be having a lot of people read it. >> So I got to ask you about the, obviously, security. You're looking at it for additional services around redundancy, I can see that being a nice headroom for you. On a personal note, you've been involved in a lot of industry companies that have done very well, entrepreneurial success. >> Ben: Why am I doing this? (laughing) >> I can tell you're having fun. How could you not have fun, it's a whole 'nother generation of innovation, disruption coming, a whole 'nother price point. So what's it like, are you having fun? And if you could talk to your 22-year-old self right now, 'cause I wish I was 22 right now in this market-- >> Are you saying I'm not 22? >> How do you explain this? And when you go to parties, even in the Valley, and people say, "Man, you're crazy, it's a fricken' "scam out there," how do you explain to 'em this revolution? Because this is like a special, unique wave. How would you talk about that? >> Actually I describe it the same way to people in the Valley the same way that I described at the beginning, which is that blockchain is bigger than cryptocurrency, and decentralized is much bigger than blockchain. And Storj is first and foremost decentralized. It's about decentralized computing, decentralized storage, supporting decentralized apps, keeping the internet from ending up in the hands of just three people, three companies, which I think is really important. But also I feel very good that, to the extent that Storj does touch on cryptocurrency, that we've done it the right way. We had the service working first before we did the token sale. We raised what now appears to be a modest amount in the token sale, tried to be very transparent and at the forefront. >> You probably could've gotten more if you wanted to. >> Probably, right? But we were trying to be forefront in terms of governance and transparency, and I think that it'll probably be a good thing, just as it was kind of a good thing that the bubble burst in the late '90s and you got rid of a lot of such not great companies and not such great operators. I think that the current corrections, or whatever, in the crypto market I think will-- >> Like pets.com is gone, but DogeCoin still exists. (laughing) >> So I'm sure that somebody has a crypto base pets.com or webvan lurking in the wings somewhere. Kodak just did it. >> I got to ask you, you're super smart. You went to some really good schools, I think Princeton, Harvard Business School. So you got a good education, so I got to get your take on the whole token economics vision. 'Cause this is, if you look at outside the tech trends, there's actually new economic models that are coming out. Have you looked at token economics? New liquidity on the one side, you've got sovereignty, you've got consensus. These are not just tech issues, these are society issues. What's your vision around that? How are you viewing it? What's the upside? How is this shaping the future? >> Yeah, I think if you're a token network, you sort of have to have some central bank chops as well, right? And we actually have a central banker. >> John: So you have a chief economic officer? >> So we don't, no, we have an advisor-- >> John: Public policy. >> I actually had a degree in public policy at one point. But we need to think about the token supply in the same way you'd think about the money supply. We're backed by something real, so it's sort of like having currencies backed by gold. We need to make sure that the market grows and the network grows. And my fundamental belief is that the more the network grows, the more people use it, the more value that we're able to provide, that'll be good for token economics in the long run. In the short run, though, what we've done, is again, we price based off of dollars, and we compensate farmers based off the token based off of the spot price. So for farmers, we've tried to remove any need to worry about volatility or things like that. >> So I want your reaction-- >> Or the price. >> I've said on The Cube multiple times that in the old days of venture startups, the CTO was everything. You had to have a great CTO or VP of engineering and great senior executive team on the entrepreneurial team. Now it's almost like the chief economic officer is a critical piece, 'cause you've got public policy intersecting with economics. You've got new kinds of math that's not technical algorithm but it's kind of business algorithms. >> It is, business algorithms. Just like any economy, the money supply matters. And people's trust in that money matters. And the supply matters. All that stuff like that, and stability matters. So I think absolutely this new breed of network based token companies will have to worry about that, and probably should think about a chief economics officer, but it doesn't mean that you don't also have to have a great CTO and great technology, 'cause that's how you make the network valuable and grow. And one of the reasons that gave me both excitement and comfort about going to Storj is that the economic model works, fundamentally, even if the crypto's not there. >> John: 'Cause technology is decentralized. >> Decentralized storage makes sense even if you're buying and selling it with dollars or pounds or rubles, or whatever. >> Ben, great to see you, thanks for coming in and sharing the Ben Golub School of Economics, Public Policy for Tokens. You can give a class at Stanford on that soon, although that's the competition's school. >> Maybe, yes. Slightly different. We still like them. >> Great to see you, congratulations. Storj, pronounced storage. Great, successful ICO, hot startup, really, an example of the infrastructure opportunities of a new decentralized infrastructure that can be and will soon, we think, it will be critical infrastructure in a whole new way. Great to see you. >> Ben: Really good to see you, great to be back with you. >> It's the Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live From Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE covering Polycon 18. Brought to you by Polymath. >> Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Polycon 18. We are in the Bahamas. It's theCUBE's coverage of the cryptocurrency, ICO's, blockchain, the entire industry on token economics. This is sponsored by Polymath, they're the host, hosting us here. They make a securitized token platform to help people tokenize their business. I'm here with Dave Vellante, and we're here with Al Burgio, Cube alumni, one of the only Cube alumni here. Now we're adding more, good to see you. >> Thank you for having me, guys. >> Thanks for coming on, Al, you're the CEO/founder of a blockchain venture, Fusechain, and open-source project, DigitalBits. >> Correct. >> DigitalBits.io, we talked about this on studio in Palo Alto, around the project, how's it going? Are you doing an ICO, what's happening, what's the momentum, talk about what's going on. >> Well the momentum is great, um, as we can see by an event like this. I mean, the attendance in phenomenal, the discussions are great, and there's definitely an ongoing movement towards blockchain, cryptocurrencies and so forth. And we're obviously very excited to be a part of it, and equally so been experiencing phenomenal success while we've been in stealth mode, and we're excited to be sharing that in the coming weeks to the public. >> I always try to get data out of you, but you're like an iron trap, man. You like, will not reveal it. I saw you in the hallways this morning, and even last night at dinner, I mean, surrounded by investors you're getting, and people throwing their cards at you. That's a good sign, I mean, but it's still early. This is an emerging ecosystem, and you're a senior entrepreneur, so you're attracting that kind of interest in the venture solid. What's the story, what's the story of these investors? What are they interested in, why are they approaching you, why the appetite for your project? And how are you approaching as a seasoned ICO, most people want to promote the hell out of their opportunities. You're not, you're taking a different approach. >> Well we definitely, obviously we'll turn on the marketing engine with a full tank of gas. And you'll see that in the coming weeks, but we've been able to definitely have, you know, a significant number of conversations while in the stealth mode phase. Really I think what's attracting a lot of the interest is that we've identified a massive market opportunity. And really where blockchain technology can help, among other things, bring a liquidity to a space that does lack liquidity, and that for us, is the loyalty rewards market. It's a multi-billion dollar market, and we feel that what we've built with the DigitalBits protocol and the DigitalBits network is really going to solve a big problem out there for businesses, enterprises, as well as consumers. And you know, we're excited to be bringing that to life, and with phenomenal support from ecosystem partners, among others. >> Let's talk about the show. We're going to bring you back tomorrow when we wrap up, cause I know you got a lot of meetings and scheduling, you got to check out the sessions, so I want to get your take on the show after the fact. But going into the show, you have some early conversations, some early data's coming in from these hallway conversations and interviews. What are you seeing, I mean, what's the bottom line? Is it ICOs are hot, the SEC is coming down and putting out subpoenas, a wave of subpoenas recently. The advisor role, you got venture capitalists, it's unregulated, they're selling, they're pumping, they're dumping. You know I know of a couple people that are in some coin deals that are, you know, venture funds, but they're also marketing. >> Yeah. >> The same thing, so they're getting their hand slapped. What's the state of the industry? >> I think, you know, there's high energy in the space. It's moving really fast, and some organizations are getting overly anxious, moving perhaps a little too fast without getting their ducks in a row, and maybe perhaps that's resulting in some wrist slapping. But overall, you know, this is a big evolution that's happening. And what we're seeing obviously is a new asset class, but it can take the shape of perhaps the security, or utility, and you know, the law applies to these things differently. And so, you know, people need to do their homework. >> So you were at the VideoCoin event last night. That had been very successful. We're going to have Halsey Minor come on shortly for an interview, seasoned entrepreneur, he's back at the game. I mean, this market's attracting pros. We had the Goldman Sachs guys now run BlockTower, institutional investors, you got pro entrepreneurs coming on, and you got the young guns coming up. I mean this is really kind of a really robust, fertile environment. >> I think it's only the beginning. We're going to see a tremendous amount of ongoing pedigree enter this space. Every day we're seeing evidence of ongoing validation, and you know, it's by no coincidence that we're already seeing some phenomenal pedigree, and I think you know, like I said, it's just going to continue. >> What's the one observation that you would share to people that are watching about this event? Obviously lot of Canadians here, you're Canada living in the U.S., but it's not just Canadians, it's a global economy, what's your observation? >> Sorry? >> What's your observation of the show? >> There's definitely, if I look at the attendee list here, it's this convergence that's happening. So you have Wall Street or the Canadian equivalent, which is Bay Street, you know traditional investment banking, brokerage-type institutions that are here, very curious in terms of how blockchain will impact the securities markets. And then you have the innovators that are on the forefront of this really driving the technology that's going to support and help even that industry evolve. So there's a lot of talk here, in particularly as it relates to that category of things. >> Lot of whales, a lot of influencers, a lot of advisors, a lot of money here, lot of action. >> Lot of action. >> All right, Al Burgio is the founder and CEO of Fusechain, and the sponsors of DigitalBits.io, it's a great open-source project, check it out. I'm going to still try to get some information out of you, cause you're still in stealth mode, but you're good. >> Thanks for having me, guys. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Cube alumni here in Bahamas for theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. More coverage after this short break.

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