>>from >>Around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2020 >>one brought to you by IBM. Hello everyone and welcome back to the cubes ongoing virtual coverage of IBM think 2021 this is our second virtual think and we're going to talk about what's on the minds of C. T. O. S with a particular point of view from the EMEA region. I'm pleased to welcome rasheed Parmer, who is an IBM fellow and vice president of technology for Armenia that region. Hello rashid, Good to see you. >>Hey David, great to see you. >>So let me start by by asking talk a little bit about the role of the C. T. O. And why is it necessarily important to focus on the C. T. O. Role versus say some of the other technology practitioner roles? >>Yeah. You know, you know, they as you look at all the range of roles of the got in in the I. T. Department, the CTO is uniquely placed in looking forward how technology and how digitization is gonna make a difference in the business but also at the same time is there as the kind of thought leader for how they're going to really you re imagine the use of technology reimagine automation, reimagining, how digitalization helps them go to market different ways. So the CTO is a unique unique position from idea to impact. And in the past we've kind of lost the C. T. A little bit but they're now re emerging as being the thought leader that's owning and driving digitalization going forward in our big plants. >>Yeah I agree. And it really has a deep understanding of that vision and can apply that vision to business success. So you obviously have a technical observation space and you also have some data so maybe you could share with our audience how you inform yourself and your colleagues and IBM on on what C. T. O. S. Are thinking about and what they're worried about. >>Yeah. So what we've done over the last four years now is gone out and interviewed Cdos and we do a very unstructured interviews. It's not it's not a survey in the form of uh you know, filling these uh these 10 questions and tell us yes or no. It really is a structured interviews. We asked things like what's top of mind for you, what are the decisions you're making? What's holding you back? What decisions do you think you shouldn't have made or you wouldn't have liked to make? And it's that range of a real input from the the interview. So last year we interviewed 100 CTO s um this year we're actually doing a lot more. We're working with the IBM Institute Business Value and we're gonna interview a lot more teachers but but the material we're gonna talk about today is is really from those 100 CTO interviews. >>Yeah. And I think that having done a lot of these myself, when you do those, we call them, you know in depth interviews, our I. D. S. You kind of have a structure and you sort of follow that but you learn so much and that it maybe does inform those more structured interviews that you do down the road. You learn so much, but maybe you could summarize some of the concerns in the region. What's on the minds of Ceos? >>Yeah. And you know, the the real decisions are made based around seven points. Right? So the first one is we all know, we're on a journey to the cloud but it's a hybrid multi cloud. How do I think about the range of capabilities and need to be able to unlock the latent potential of existing investments and the cloud based capabilities of God. So, so the hybrid cloud platform is one of the the first and foundational pieces. The second challenge is the C e O s want to modernize their applications and that modernization is a journey of moving towards microservices. That microservices journey has two parts. One is the business facing view and that's what containers is all about, choosing the right container platform at the same time. They also want to use containers as a way of automation and management and reducing the effort in the infrastructure. So, so that's kind of two parts of the whole container journey. So Microsoft, this has really become the business developer view and containers become the operational view At the same time. They want infused new data, they want to climb the ladder, they want to get the new new insights from that data that plugs into those new workflows to get to those workflows. There's a decision around how do I isolate myself from some of the services of using that? And we created a layer in the decisions around what's called cloud services integration. So cloud services integration is kind of the modern day E S B as we might think about it, but it's a way in which you choose which technology, which a P I is. I'm going to use from where and then ultimately, the CTS are trying to build what are the new, the new workflows, intelligent workflows and they're really worried about how do I get the right level of automation that managing that issue between what becomes creepy and valuable, Right? You know, the some workflows that happen, you think, why the hell did that happen? Right. That doesn't make sense. And and and and it really sort of nerves. The consumer, the user where some which are, wow, that's really cool. I really enjoyed that. To try to get the intelligent workflows right is a big concern. And then on the two big perils of that is how do we manage the system, the operational automation right from having the right data observe ability of all the infrastructure, recognizing they've got a spectrum of things from 30 40 50 year old systems to modern day cloud native systems, how to manage how operationally automate that keep that efficient, effective. And then of course protecting from the perpetrators, right? Business, a lot of people out there wanting to begin to the systems and, and, and and draw all kinds of, you know, a data from their system. So security, privacy and making sure that align with the ethics and privacy of the business. So those are those are the kind of range of issues right from the journey to cloud, through to operational automation, through through intelligent workflows, right into manage and protecting the services. >>It's interesting. Thank you for that. I mean I remember and you will as well some of the post Y two K you know, thrust and part part of the modernization back then was during that they had budget to do that. But a lot of times organizations would make the mistake that they would they're going to migrate off of a system that was working just fine. That was there sort of mental model of of modernization. And it turned out to be disastrous in many cases. And so when I talk to Ceos they talk about maybe, you know, I'd look at it is this this abstraction layer we want to protect what we have that works. Yes. Some stuff is going to go into the public cloud, but this hybrid connection that you talk about and then we want control and the way we're gonna get control is we're gonna use microservices to modernize and use modern A. P. I. S. And so very very sort of different thinking. And of course they want to avoid migration at all costs because it's so expensive and risky. I wonder if you could talk about, are there any patterns in terms of where people get started and the kinds of outcomes that they're working towards that they can measure? >>Yeah, we we kind of lumped the learning from the work into three broad patterns, right? Um one pattern is primarily around survival. They recognize that this journey is very complex. The pandemic has created tremendous challenges. The market dynamics means they've got to try and really be thoughtful in in taking cost out and making sure they survive some of these issues. And so the pattern is really around cost reduction. It may start with a hybrid cloud, it may start with intelligent workflows but it's really about taking costs out of the systems. The second pattern is what is referred to as a simplification pattern and this is about saying but we've got we've got so much complexity because of technical debt because of you know systems that we've half migrated and half done things with. So how do I how do I simplify my I. T. Landscape from applications through infrastructure for data and make it more consistent, manageable and and effective. And then the 3rd 1 is their city is saying look we've got a really pick the time when we super scale something, we've got something which we are unique and effective on and I want to take that and really super scale that very quickly and make that consistent and really maximize value of it so that the pattern is really fall into three categories of driving, driving, cost reduction and survival, simplification and modernisation transformation. And then those that have got something which is unique and special and really super scaring up. >>Yeah. Right, right, doubling down on those things. That unique competitive advantage in the, in the studies that you've done over the years. You use this term ADP architectural decision points and some of them are quite compelling. Maybe you could talk about some of those. Were there some anxieties from the cdos that you uncovered? >>Yeah. You know, the, the NDP s talk about the 70 Gps and it starts from the higher ability crowd through to two intelligent workflows and so on. And the NDP s themselves are really distilling the client's words and the clients way of thinking about how they're going to drive those, those technologies, um and also how they're going to use those techniques to make a difference. But if we went through those interviews, what became apparent is, see us do have some anxieties as you refer to, and those anxieties, they couldn't necessarily put words on them and their anxieties. Like, are we thinking enough about the carbon footprint? Are we are we being thoughtful in how we make sure we're reducing carbon footprint or reducing the environmental impact of the infrastructure? You've got, we've got sprawling infrastructure um ripping out rare metals from the earth. Are we being thoughtful in how we reduce the amount of rare metals we have water consumption right through to is the code that we're producing efficient, secure and and fit for for the future. Are we being ethical in capturing the data for its right use? Um Is the ai systems that we're building? Are they explainable? Are they ethical? Are they free from bias or are we kind of amplifying things that we shouldn't be amplifying? So there was a whole bunch of those call anxieties and what we did along with the architectural decision report. A point after decision report was was identify what we call a set of responsibilities. And and we've built a framework about around responsible computing which is which is a basis for how you think through what your responsibilities are as a as a Ceo are as an I. T. Leader. And we're right in the process of building out that that kind of responsible computing framework. >>You know it's interesting a lot of people may may think about they think about the responsible computing and and and the sustainability and they might think that's a 1 80 from Milton Friedman Economics, which is the job of businesses to make profits. But in fact responsible computing, there's a strong business case around it. It actually can help you reduce costs that can help you attract better employees. Because young people are passionate about this. I wonder if you could talk about how how people can get involved with responsible computing and lean in. >>Yeah, so what we're about to publish it is actually manifesto for responsible computing. So I think everybody wants to get that published. I'm hoping to do that in the next two or three months. We're working with a few clients. So there's actually three clients that have chosen through your client cts from the ones that we interviewed were very keen to collaborate with us in laying out that that manifesto and the opportunity really is from anybody listening. If if you if you find this of great value, please do come and reach out to me more than happy to collaborate. We're looking for more insights on this. We've also had some competitions. So in in in a media we've had a competition with business partners, looking for ideas of how we can really showcase examples or exemplars of being responsible computing provider, whether it's at the level of responsible data center, whether it's about responsible code data, use Responsible systems right through the responsible impact. And obviously a lot of our work around things like your tech for good is tied directly to responsible impact. And of course, if you want to see what we have never been doing are responsible responsibility report, which we've been voluntarily publishing for the last 30 years, provides a tremendous set of insights on how we've done that over the years. And and that's a that's a great way for you to see how we've been doing things and see if there are people in your business. >>Yeah. So there's so there's the, the ADP report is available. You can check it out on on linkedin. Um, go to, go to Russia linked in profile, you'll find it. There's a blog post that talks about the next wave of, of digitization, uh, you know, the learnings that you just talked about. So there's a lot of resources for for people to get involved. I'll give you the last word. >>Yeah. And look, this is this is what I call job big and it's not job done that the whole ADP responsible computing is a digitization journey where we want to balance delivering business value and making a difference to the organization, but at the same time being responsible in making sure that we're thoughtful what's needed for the future and we create impact that really matters. And we can feel proud that we've put a foundation for digitization which will which will serve the businesses for many years to come, >>love it, impact investing in your business and in the future. Russia, thanks so much for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. >>A pleasure. Thank you. >>Okay, keep it right there for more coverage from IBM think 2021 this is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Yeah, yeah.

hello everyone I'm Jean Faria we are reporting on the ground near Puerto Rico for blockchain unbound exclusive conversations at coinage end of covering all the action restart week of ten of events cryptocurrency blockchain all the people are here with the local ecosystem the cube is here it's great to have you on thanks for joining blockchain innovation is today global this is a revolution way bigger than the Internet itself programmable money programmable contracts that wipes out finance it wipes out legal it wipes out governance in many ways there's no central authority you have access to open source software it's fully connected so now is the time to make it translate we've all heard about the steam digital transformation its businesses that if they don't evolve and adopt blockchain AI all these other things they have a threat of being put out of business it is extremely competitive a new set of stakeholders investors global players governments are it's happening now you have a chance to be a part of an economy without a permission of a centralized organization have to pay 200 people in 40 countries and it's an unholy mess with withholding taxes and concerns around money transfer costs a hassle it's a nightmare like all currency control so you're only allowed to move a certain amount of capital out the country legally so what happens in all your backups our currency and you can effectively invest in assets around the world this is making it much easier to contribute to help people to get healthy and you don't have to go to school there's a very big influx of young and talented minds at that right and this is really changing the revolution landscape you've got the radical Burning Man hippie guy all the way to a three-piece suit yeah and that diversity is very very rich a lot of people are scared I like whoa hold on slow down we're not gonna prove it the other half saying no this is the future so you have two competing forces colliding for some reason crypto really pokes at people's biases you know why does it have any value and I go well why does the United States dollar have any value I mean you've got Full Faith and Credit of the government that's in debt by 20 trillion dollars you know is that a good idea most people that come here sorry with the what the how and people are scared but the young people are like yo this is happening this is not a moment this is a movement is definitely oh say 1996-97 of the internet bubble it's just starting people know there's something really magical they don't quite know what you know America really grew because you're abused to have all the controls and so the capital by sea left Europe and away in America and now it's happening 300 years later as America has all the controls and the capital starting to go away so a new Liberation's happening incredible resources are now being poured in problems that were ignored for many many and what is beautiful is that block Candy's doing it open-source is accelerating the tech these ideas are being freely shared whereas before there's bottlenecks in the collaboration aspect if we're able to write a contract in a thousand people be able to verify that contract and we're able to transfer money from one person to another without the two parties being involved we've got a perfect scenario security and speed and fairness all at the same time you can create these chains of trust and that can happen anywhere in the world you're on a level playing field if you have 4G connectivity now you can compete globally and be a part of the global economy so if you're someone who's in the emerging developing world and you want to begin to build wealth and you'd like to own a piece of first world real estate and today the minimum is about a thousand dollars but by implementing the Plott chain further they won't eventually get down to one dollar you can buy a piece of real estate and enjoy the returns on that I want to solve the wealth gap and I truly believe we can do it when we can allow anyone anywhere to invest in good quality assets a conduit with the current system there's too many friction costs the killer app right is money it's paying people that is the killer app of the block type right now let's say that money is software and it is software so if you buy something with a credit card what do you think's happening it's all software and what has happened is open-source software has always eventually won with respect to close source software so proprietary money is probably back on its heels because open-source money's coming in something like that will give liquidity to a lot of small business owners America is a country of small business owners across the globe it supports small business owners it's an interesting model yeah you don't have to give up any equity you don't have to give up any poor seats yeah right it's much leaner my super if you're an investor you gotta get a pound of flesh somewhere is it's just getting it on the discounted tokens is there a little liquidity going on when you think about you know private sale presale is 99% a token deal right although equities coming in because a lot of more venture capital is coming in and they're demanding a piece of the action from a company and equity perspective its equity might be future revenue sometimes as dividends or the opportunity get dividends so it's a combination of you have a preference you care you know at the other day equity is I was always preferable there is a provision in the 1934 Securities Act called section 12 G it allows us Spacely to go public by telling the SEC we're doing it without having to delay it to wait for their permission after 60 days it's a derivative so we'll continue to clear comments but but the thing is with tokens who knows how long that'll take I mean is the SEC gonna Shepherd something through with crypto 1 or do they gonna make it take 5 years I don't know [Music] all over the island this is the new Oliver field the world is moving too fast today for a big country to keep up it's all gonna happen now in this next century at the city level and so we work a lot with four smaller countries or small countries because I know estonia armenia baja rains got you know dubai envy so i mean every country wants to be the crypto country multiple small countries are going to come into the space which they know now they can get the capital flowing into that company and they're gonna allow their rules to be lacs they're gonna let capital flow through and then us will have to change or maybe UK will have to change orders against us will have to change in the first world a lot of what we're talking about is a nice-to-have it's it's sort of a bit of a game and if i can participate but where I come from an emerging war that's a necessity they are no other solutions so if you live in South Africa or China or India and you want to get your money into a first world country like England Australia America it's very very difficult and virtually no one can do it but it's a major problem because you want wealth preservation you want but Plan B you want your children to be able to go to a first world university etc etc etc Puerto Rico being a free associated States of the United States of America is like the best place to actually test this possibly some push for that for infrastructure for you know internet for all sorts of different things in terms of building the best infrastructure the new newest best-in-class for your business it's four percent corporate taxes and individual it's zero percent now that's what you got to move here you gotta move here okay but you don't have to give you deliver your US citizenship no taxes are great at the same time they fall in love with the islands so it's amazing because to me Puerto Rico is a combination of LA's whether San Francisco's open-mindedness and Barcelona's you know deep European history it's just a really beautiful place and it's US territory so it's a short hop and a jump to the States if you need to most people in America mainland sort of think they're going to a foreign country because it's treated that way by our government how do I come to Puerto Rico do it right not offend the culture in abil them together what's your experience with the play ball stay good friends lost their relocation services for their business and themselves so they write a big check to you guys for the service but it's you guide them through the entire process and there's real energy here because there's a social movement underneath the entire cryptocurrency movement and that's to basically help your fellow man or women all these activity is really going to give a a shot in the arm to the Puerto Rican economy and we're bringing our funds and we're bringing our advisory the radar Thank You exponent there the hurricane was a horrible atrocity that happened and now we have this blank canvas to create a vision for Puerto Rico so what we're doing is we're connecting every single University on the island to work on open source projects to like make solutions for the private sector they know that if they can buy power on a cellphone like they're already doing for other goods and services now we've got a game-changer this is restart week and one of the other things that we've done is help all of the conference's come together collaborate rather than compete so go into the same week and put all of these satellite groups around it and then we blanket it a week around it so that we had one place for people to go and look for all of the events and then also for some for them to understand a movement about the education piece it's very difficult for people that kind of get caught up to speed because there's some technical things that need to understand to really apply this technology into the business world the other day we had an event where we talked 50 people how to create a smart contract from scratch those are 50 people who are not the same anymore ecosystems developing yet entrepreneurs you got projects you got funding coming in but as it's gonna be a fight for the ecosystem because you can't have zillion ecosystems there are definitely some you know the galaxies and you know regulatory aspects that you know put some concerns and a lot of you know people's mind since its inception you've seen people and media and mainstream media in particular target Bitcoin and they're just adopting the government narrative saying oh everyone in this industry is corrupt Oh everyone in this industry is an ICS camera Oh everyone in this industry is a a drug runner and they have all selling drugs on the dark web and and it's like you know what like you can do some research and don't get better than that traditional media they want to take down everybody that they don't consider you know like a birds of the same feather there actually are a lot of scammers and a lot of like dark forces inside of the cryptocurrency movement so that's why I think we welcome kind of more regulatory influence because you know none of us want to see bad actors in the space we've seen folks go out raise you know really big about to capital with no product roadmap no business talking roadmap no real way to get from zero to X what are they trying to shoehorn a regular business onto the blockchain and just assume that by adding crypto at the end of you know toilet paper they're gonna get something I had another founder tell me that you know Mike tokens are worth 100 million humming yep you don't have a user you just have a product you're tokens I've hiked if you ask me it's it's what little I can tell my house is 100 million dollars it's only worth as much as the top buyer how much we really need hardcore reputation systems in our industry and in the for the world I think 2018 is going to be the year of clarity on regulation and I think that's where Puerto Rico comes in and plays a major role just to see the thousands of people who have come here to support these several conferences has been amazing my most surprising thing though is the amount of people that have told me that they bought a one-way ticket and have no intention of going home so to make Puerto Rico your home I think is a really amazing first step when I go to the supermarket and where I go it's full of American and people from outside and when you ask them where you're from and they will tell you from Puerto Rico this is gonna become the epicenter of this multi-billion dollar market we need to have people prepared for this you have to create the transparency the beauty of the transparency is there's actually privacy baked in and that's what I love about blockchain is it has all of the good things all communities need to evolve in my opinion between technology communities 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 benefitting the way that they believe the world should work we're going to be tools that far surpassed what's currently available in terms of the messages the websites all these things for 20 years the Internet has been free it's a really beautiful thing for consumption and open-source is the absolute right methodology for software when it comes to your own content a reward it makes sense everybody is going to get to play together across every device the developers are going to get rewarded for creating content people are going to be rewarded for creating things inside the games and the players are going to get rewarded for getting to the top levels of all the games and we're going to reward them through our cryptocurrency if we begin to own ourself sovereign identity then when we're owning our data that's the foundation for universal basic income communications completely frictionless payment completely frictionless and governance completely frictionless and we have to put this all together who wins here the average citizen entrepreneur that is leveraged citizen player that wants to start something whether it's a banking a service provider of some sort an entrepreneur or a new financial instrument or firm you all have greenfield opportunity here the first thing I would tell found us is to reach out ok this community is very very supportive like you can reach out to me you can reach out to other guys LinkedIn Facebook or come to these events and say your idea and you need help because you will need help you cannot run this alone ok you are running a company you're running your team have a good team that's the first thing you got to be vigilant and you keeping your money in a hard wallet not keeping your private keys on your computer if you're using a centralized system those centralized systems are really easily exploitable strategic partnerships Advisors founding team and then show the idea to the people explain yourself frankly and honestly and I think the community will reward you to go and find it ring whether you're a fortune 500 company or a startup it's all about building the community and I believe that whether it's utility Target or security or combination of the two it provides an incredible vehicle to ultimately be the catalyst to your community and if you the to community adding value then you're going to build a company event it's always gonna be led by the business model because you need something to act as the power pull to pull the thing along right and you can continuously pump capital into something but if the model is wrong it's just going to drain and it's going to go to inefficient systems and in the end maybe do some help but but a very small percentage of the capacity of what it could do then the advice would be to entrepreneurs don't fret about the infrastructure just nail your business models right and because the switching cost might not be as high as you think that's right we're in the old days when we grew up yeah you made a bad technology decision you're out of business yeah but the first advice that I give my clients is to stomp this is this business that's too much formal in it yeah right if you're missing out so no just because everybody's out there Nico you should be doing an SEO right yeah 46% of I SEOs have already failed already failed start with the business gather this in the counties down right so free cash flow unique value proposition Prada market fit what sits under business think about the token model right the token model has to go in handy now with your business model and revenue model and once you figure out that business and took the models now it's time to think about compliance I'm gonna raise money in the US and abroad I've decided to go to security choking hypothetical instance absolute what do I do is there for you an incentive mechanism or is a fundraising mechanism or both who's gonna be my user who's gonna use this token right there aren't gonna be moms dads hospitals they was my target and then how they're gonna use it and are they gonna hold it I'm gonna sell it are they gonna trade it so all these different things define that oh c'mon once you get your token actually authenticated realized everything's transparent and it gets on that secondary market it's better to use that to invest in anything you need investment get everybody incentivized around your token all your employees all your vendors everybody incentivize around that token it's a thousand percent more powerful than a dollar so the dollar doesn't go up in value in your token your token can go up and down and as soon as you find just one spark it blows up everybody boats rise equal it's pasta Sara Lee the time to crack open the champagne you still have to demonstrate product market fit you have to help build a market in our particular case so there's a lot of hard work launch it's a start line it's just like it's only a step along the whole process you know what made people get it you showed them the money yeah you showed them the money sometimes people don't you can explain these concepts that are world-changing super high level or whatever people were not actually gonna get it until it's useful to them average business people and senior business people who have typically been shut off to the idea of blockchain are now seeing this as very real and here to stay momentum is just beginning it's gonna be amazing what these guys come up with that's one of the things I love about doing this thing right I'm an old guy and I get to hang around these smart young people makes me feel young again yeah but the other thing that we have and I think you should share it as well as we have to offer to these young guys experience thing we just invented a new category in the ico category an advisor token and a you have to have the stomach for it and I think you just have to be as educated and as you can what government entity can resist for the long term something that's actually trying to provide a better and better and better financial infrastructure you 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 one dollar will not change your life but if you change your habits you'll change your financial destiny and so my philosophy is get it to a dollar so that every single person can participate and once you start to learn good habits around money and wealth the rest it's a formula like it's a flywheel instead the world will become a better place we'll have better companies positive impact is not counter to profit they go hand in hand the Puerto Rico movement it's a movement while Czech entrepreneurs capital investors the pioneers in the blockchain decentralized Internet are all here this is like the Silicon Valley of the crypto right I think they're calling it crypto island yes TV show we should be honest like it's not lost its crypto island exclusive coverage for Puerto Rico's - Cuba I'm John Ferrari getting the signal here out of all the noise in the market this is what we do this is the cube mission great strip we start week Point agenda open content community thanks for watching [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)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's The Cube. Covering BlockChain Unbound. Brought to you by BlockChain Industries. (upbeat music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome back to our exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico. This is The Cube covering BlockChain Unbound, two days of wall to wall coverage. Got videos flying all over the internet. We're here with Patrick Moynihan, who is with BlockChain Unbound, but conference producer, BlockChain Industry CEO. Thanks for coming on The Cube. >> Thanks for having me John. >> And thank you for producing this conference. It is actually a big event, headlining all the top news stories on Wall Street Journal, CNBC's here, The Cube is here, but more impressive is this rebound in Puerto Rico. This event kind of turned into a flash mob of global players, investors, Bitcoin billionaires, Wales they call 'em, entrepreneurs, a real movement. You even had some folks here from the government in Puerto Rico. A real, not just insider event, this is like a bridging the insider world, and the global community. Congratulations. >> Well thank you. It's been an amazing turn out. I really commend the Puerto Rican government officials for stepping up and there are, you know, the department of economic development is our partner in this and they wanted to really promote this. And as you know, there's many crypto currency holders who are migrating to the island for tax purposes, and the seas and their tax based, which is all fully compliant, and have been in the laws for awhile. But the governor, you know, has really stepped up with his team. We've got Secretary Manuel Laboy who spoke yesterday, and had marvelous words to say. Really supportive of the overall industry. He's an engineer by training. So he's not a politician. So he gets kind of business and structure, if you will, and logic. He's great and also George Joyner, the banking commissioner was here and spoke lovely. So the banking commissioner is also forming a formal working group, as is Manuel Laboy. >> So this is actually a really big movement. I'm reporting here, yesterday and today, that it's not a culture clash. The local island residents, and now governments absolutely are on board with bringing together new a new ecosystem for a lot of reasons. One, they are motivated, there's a rebound going on, the hurricane hit. But now you have a new opportunity to be a digital nation. Digital island, probably in the U.S. I mean really be a player in an economic revitalization. Not only the island, but as an epicenter for all this money movement, all this opportunity with BlockChain. So talk a little bit about that dynamic because I think a lot of mainstream people don't understand actually what's going on in Puerto Rico and how it intersects with this global phenomenon. >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, I think think the people of the crypto currency world believe that the technology is so robust, they want to use Puerto Rico as a test bed for infrastructure, for, you know, internet, for all sorts of different things in terms of building the best infrastructure, the newest best in class. And there's real energy here because there's a social movement underneath the entire crypto currency movement. And that's to basically help your fellow man, or women. That's what this is all about. And leveling the playing field. Taking, you know, big brother largely out of it. And just making it fair and transparent. So, I mean, that movement is huge. If people, if people want to understand crypto currency, they kind of need to understand the social impacts and the ability to really improve people's lives. >> I mean, this is not a tech conference. We do hundreds of tech conferences a year, and in our 10th year with The Cube, and you know what a tech conference looks like. This is not a tech conference. This feels like a tech conference, a developer conference, and the world economic forum kind of rolled in to one. Talk about a little bit about the stats. I mean, you guys sold out early. You weren't expecting this kind of a response here. Give some color into, behind the scenes around the event, BlockChain Unbound. >> Yeah, thank you. So we had an idea to kind of bring the dialogue onto Puerto Rico and really build a prepotency of information. An you know, through the process, and this has been a five an a half week process, we had over 800 attendees here today. It's been sold out for several weeks. We're getting calls from everybody. So you can imagine to get a ticket. But at the end of the day, there's a great mix of finance years, technologists, government people, just regular citizens who want to understand this space and how they can get involved in it. And one thing that we're trying to do is bring an education piece here because the BlockChain is about the next generation, and developing the skills and software for them to prosper and understand, and frankly, just you know, grow the space. Because they're the ones that's going to grow it is the next generation. >> Patrick, I want to get your reaction because one of the things I've observed, I've seen many ways in my day, my age, but this one is massive. And everyone compares to the dot com bubble, which there is some comparisons, more accelerated, obviously, more community that the dot com bubble didn't have, but in those big early days of those major inflection points, the business development, the ecosystem is so early, the nurturing is really important and you see a pattern, you see some emerging entrepreneurs. Boom, lucky strike or good hustling. Do something great. Then you see the PR firms come in, promoting it. You had this kind of promotion, entrepreneur, kind of euphoria, and then you got service providers come in, and then you got investors come in. That then takes to the next step. We've seen that. So we got a lot of PR out there. You see PR firms out there, you know, just pumping a lot of ICO's. The service providers are coming in helping entrepreneurs. Now the institutional investors are coming in with hedge funds. Then it goes to the next level. Real industry leadership, which takes that to the next level That's money, that's connecting different ecosystems. What is your reaction to that? Do you see it the same way and if so, what is that next level growth look like from an architecture standpoint? There's also some government participation. But there's competitions, I mean, Estonia wants to be, I heard France wants to be the ICO city I hear Armenia, you've got Bahrain. I mean, every country wants to be that country. >> They do, and we work closely. >> So what's the leader require to go to that next level? >> That's a great question. You know, we're actually in touch and working with many sovereign governments who have a deep interest in this and want to bring either sovereign wealth coin, or some type of crypto currency play, some type of virtual currency asset into their own system. I mean, what I'm seeing is nothing short of remarkable. The speed of technology and energy into this market is frankly just breathtaking. So what we're looking for next is that netscape moment. That implementation where everyone says, oh my goodness, yes this makes perfect sense. And that largely could be around being on a BlockChain application and having no idea it's BlockChain. And part of that is a technological leap because it is complicated. It's going to take some time to build out and create the speed necessary to make the eubicous behind everything that we do online. And that moments coming, in my opinion. >> You know, one of the things that I'm observing as well, and I think that you're right, I think that there's a new level of leadership. Again, that next level requires new constituents, new stakeholders. I was not happy with the John Oliver greasing of Brock Peters. I thought that was unacceptable. But what that sentiment is about, put that little opinion in there, but I didn't like what he did. I thought that was horrible, but. >> There's no reason to be nasty. >> I mean, they just took him down >> You don't have to be nasty >> Just horrible, John Oliver. I'm coming after you. Only kidding, by the way, he's great, he's funny. But that's kind of a cultural thing. We're hearing conversations in the hallway as, hey, I don't mind the burning man culture. But you can't run an industry like burning man. Although, burning man technically looks like a BlockChain if you look at it from the aerial view. But, you got capital markets coming. You got global governments coming in. So you have that naturation dynamic. So a lot of these early guys are feeling, this is my opinion, I'm seeing this, okay, I don't want to get drowned out. At the same time, we want to go the next level. What is the dynamic, in your opinion, you know, you run a really big firm, you're a senior leader. What is that dynamic? How does everyone win? What are the stakeholders? And what's the formula in your mind? >> You know, I mean, now that's an interesting question because you know, the burning man crew has done incredible things in this space. I think that they're largely viewed as potential anarchists to some government officials and there's a fear factor there So you've got that aspect, and then you've got just straight business people that just simply want to economize and efficiencize and just, you know, be smarter, faster, stronger in their business operation, so, somewhere in the middle, there'll be a blending, and I think, we're all going to have to work together. Competitors, colleagues, everyone working together, with government officials. And again, the regulations are still under flux. The regulators been very clear just saying we think self regulation is a good idea. Step it up. And that's one thing that BlockChain Industries, we're taking extremely seriously. We have our own internal initiatives, as well as several external initiatives. So you're going to be hearing a lot more about our own self regulatory issues in the next several months. >> Well, great point. That's the number one thing we hear is the regulatory issues are what scares people. Because they're out on a limb right now, innovating. >> Yeah. >> They don't want the regulatory regimes and or pressures and signaling stunt the growth of the market. >> Yeah, you know I heard something yesterday that really rung a bell for me. It says, we can accomplish the same thing in the KYCAML does, but just in a different way. In fact, we can use technology to make it easier and more transparent and provide that back to the government officials to keep the bad actors out where needed. And so we're all about that, and we're all about working through a transparent system with full AML. >> So are you guys going to do a lot, you guys in the conference business now? >> Well, you know, I think by mistake we are. We're looking to Tokyo, early October. We'll do a BlockChain Unbound in Tokyo. Very exciting, we've got a great presence in Japan with our local partners, Global Fintech Advisors. They placed a billion six and ICO's in the asian market over the last two an a half years. And so they're very plugged, and they're excited to bring BlockChain Unbound to Tokyo. >> Final question for you. BlockChain Industries, take a minute to explain what you do. What you guys do, obviously you have another business. The conference thing just kind of fell in your lap, lightning in a bottle, congratulations. But, good compliment. What is BlockChain Industries do? >> Thank you. We are a diversified financial holding company. And we invest across the ecosystem BlockChain companies. And that includes, you know, attempted developed crypto bank forming long term mining operations. We do ICO consulting. We invest our own capital in certain deals. And we also have a median education component that really is the brand building globally for us. Because without the education piece, it's very difficult for people to kind of get caught up to speed 'cause there's some technical things you need to understand to really apply this technology into the business world. >> So are people investing in your fund, your company? Is that how it works? >> Yeah, we offer a public vehicle to allow investors access to the private virtual currency markets. In a nutshell, that's what we do. >> It's early days, final observation. What did you learn this week that is going to change your world? >> I learned that average business people and senior business people who have typically been shut off to the idea of BlockChain are now seeing this as very real and here to stay. And I mean, across the board, really technical and sophisticated people across the board, plus even normal citizens. They're hearing about, they're seeing it. It's hear to stay. And the momentum is just beginning. >> And it's a social movement, I agree. Congratulations, you guys did a great job. I know, you know, only a couple weeks to prepare. You pulled it off, congratulations. >> Thanks Boomer, appreciate that man. Good stuff. >> These guys could go all the way. Watch BlockChain Industries of course. BlockChain Unbound is the event. It's The Cube, exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico. I'm John Furrier. Back with more after the 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)

Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's the Cube. Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by, Blockchain Industries. >> Welcome back everyone. This is the Cube's exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of the Cube, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. In Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, this is a global conference. Going to the next level in industry migration up and growth, and blockchain, decentralized internet and obviously cryptocurrency, changing the world up and down the stack. I have an industry veteran here. My next guest Salim is founding CEO, Singularity University and author of the best-selling book, Exponential Organizations. He's seen many waves, friend, known him for years. Haven't seen you in a while, you look great. You haven't changed. >> (laughs) The hair has changed a lot. >> (laughs) I've still got mine. Hey great to see you. Bumping into you in Puerto Rico is really compelling because you have a nose for the future, and I've always respected that about you. You have the ability to understand at the root level what's going on but also pull back and see the big picture. Puerto Rico is the center of all the action because the killer wrap in this is money. So money is driving a lot of change, but there's some fundamental infrastructure, stack upgrades going on. Blockchain has been highly discussed, crypto is highly hyped, ICO's are-- Scammers out there but now some legits. What's your take? What's your view right now on the current situation? >> Well I think what's happening with a place like Puerto Rico is. When you get kind of wiped out of the old, you have the chance to leap-frog. When you think about any of our traditional environments, laying down Blockchain technologies, et cetera. It's really, really hard because you have to get the Supreme Court, the Constitution to approve blockchain based land titles, and then you build a stack there from a legal perspective. Here they can basically start from scratch and do it completely from the ground up. Which is what's exciting for everybody here. >> The top story that we've been reporting here is that Puerto Rico is rebooting. The hurricane obviously, I won't say a forcing function, but in general when you get wiped out, that is certainly an opportunity to rebuild. If there's any kind of silver lining in that. >> There's a long history of that. Japan got wiped out during World War II, so did Germany and they rebounded incredibly. We've seen that recently with Rwanda. We do a lot of work in Medillin, in Colombia, and that's just been one of the worst cities in the world, is now the most innovative city in the world. So this is the transition that we've seen a pattern for. >> One of the things I'm really excited about decentralization and blockchain is all the conversations have the same pattern. Efficiency is getting wired into things. So if you see slack in the system or inefficiencies, entrepreneurs are feeling the void. The entrepreneurial eye of the tiger goes that to that opportunity to reset, reduce steps, save time and make things easier. Classic value proposition in these new markets. You run a great university but also author of Exponential Organizations. A lot of people are scared, they're like, "Whoa, hold on. Slow down, this is bullshit, "we're not going to prove it." And then the other half saying, "No this is the future." So you have two competing forces colliding. You have the new guard saying, "We got to do this, this is the future." Old guard saying, "Blocks, Road blocks, blockers" You covered this in your book in a way, so how do you win, who wins? How do you create a win win? >> You can create a win win. What you have to do is leap-frog to the newest, fast as possible. The only question is, how can you get to the new? And the problem that you have is, as you rightly pointed out is. When you try disruptive innovation in any large organization or institution, the immune system attacks. I saw this at Yahoo running Brickhouse. Yahoo is supposedly a super advanced organization, and yet the minute you try to do something really radical, you spend all your time fighting the mother ship. So I've been focusing a lot of time the last few years focused on that particular problem, and we're pretty excited, we believe we've cracked it. >> How does someone crack that code? If I'm Puerto Rico, obviously the government officials are here at Blockchain Unbound. This is not just a tech conference. It's like a tech conference, investor conference, kind of world economic form rolled into one. >> Sure >> There's some serious players here. What's your advice to them? >> So what we do, and let me describe what we do in the private sector and what we do in the public sector. A couple of years ago, the global CI of Procter & Gamble came to me and said, "Hey, we'd like to work with you." And what we typically see is, some executive from a big company will come to Singularity. They'll go back headquarters with their hair on fire going, "Oh my god!" If they're from BMW for example. They go back going, "Drones, autonomous cars, hyperloop, VR." Back in Munich, they'll be given a white coat and some medicine and be put in a corner. "You're too crazy, now stand over there." And that's the tension that you are talking about. And then somebody else will come six months later then they'll do the Silicon Valley tour, then they'll have one of our people go over there, and it takes about three years for the big company to get up to speed, just the C-Suite to get up to speed. Forget transmitting that down. So I was talking to Linda Clement-Holmes and I said, "Look we're about to start this three year dance "I've been thinking about this, "let's shrink it to 10 weeks." So we designed what we now call an ExO Sprint. Which is how you get a leadership, culture and management thinking of a legacy organization, three years ahead in a 10 week process. And the way we do it is, we're in an opening workshop, that's really shock and awe. Freaks out all the incumbent management. And then young leaders and future lieutenants of the business do the thinking of what should come next. And they report back. Some thing about that opening workshop suppresses the immune system, and when the new ideas arrive they don't attack them in the same way. >> It's like a transplant if you will. >> It's like when you do a kidney transplant. You suppress the immune system, right? It's that same idea. So we've now run that like a dozen times. We just finished TD Ameritrade, HP, Visa, Black & Decker, et cetera. We're open-sourcing it. We're writing a manual on how to do it so that anybody can self-provision that process and run it. Because, every one of the Global 5000 has to go through that process with or without us. So then we said, "Okay, could we apply it to the public sector?" Where the existing policy is the immune system. You try and update transportation and you're fighting the taxis. Or education and you're fighting the teacher's unions. We have a 16 week process that we run in cities. We do it through a non-profit called the Fastrack Institute based out of Miami. We've run it four times in Medillin, in Colombia and we just finished four months with the mayor of Miami on the future of transportation. We're talking to the officials here about running a similar process here in Puerto Rico. >> Are they serious about that? Because they throw money at projects, it kind of sits on the vine, dies on the vine. Because there is an accelerated movement right now. I mean, exponential change is here. I'll give you an example. We're seeing and reporting that this digital nation trend is on fire. Suddenly everyone wants digital cities, IoT is out there. But now what cryptocurrency, the money being the killer app. It's flowing everywhere, out of Colombia, out of everywhere. Every country is moving money around with crypto it's easier, faster. So everyone is trying to be the crypto, ICO city. Saw it on Telegram today, France wants to be, Paris wants to be the ICO city. Puerto Rico, Bahrain, Armenia, Estonia. U.K. just signed a deal with Coinbase. What the hell is going on? How do you rationalize this and what do you see as a future of state here? >> Well I think, couple of thoughts. And you're hitting into some of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently. Number one is, that when you have a regulatory blockage, it's a huge economic developing opportunity for anybody that can leap-frog it. Nevada authorized autonomous cars early and now a lot of testing is done there. So the cities that have appreciated-- >> So you're saying regulatory is an opportunity to have a competitive advantage? >> Huge, because look at Zug in Switzerland. Nobody had ever heard of the place. You pass through there on the way to Zermatt. But now it's like a destination that everybody needs to get to because they were earlier. This is the traditional advantage of places like Hong Kong or Dubai or whatever. They're open and they're hungry. So we're going to see a lot of that going on. I think there's a bigger trend though, which is that we're seeing more and more action happen at the city level and very, very little happen at the national or global level. The world is moving too fast today for a big country to keep up. It's all going to happen this next century at the city level. >> Or smaller countries. >> Or small countries. >> So what's going on here at Blockchain Unbound for you? Why are you here? What are you doing? What's your story? >> I have this kind of sprint that we run in the private sector and in the public sector and then a community of about 200 consultants. And I have to pay 200 people in 40 countries and it's and unholy mess. Withholding taxes and concerns around money transfer costs-- >> It's a hassle. >> It's a nightmare. And so I've been thinking about an internal cryptocurrency just to pay our network. All of a sudden now, three or four countries have said, "Hey we want to buy that thing, "to have access to your network." So I've got all this demand over here, and I need to figure out how to design this thing properly. So I've been working with some of the folks like Brock and DNA and others to help think through it. But what I'm really excited about here is that, there's a-- You know what I love is the spectrum of dress. You got the radical, Burning Man, hippie guy, all the way to a three-piece suit. And that diversity is very, very rich and really, real creativity comes from it. This feels like the web in '96, '95. It's just starting, people know there's something really magical. They don't quite know what to do. >> Well what I'm impressed about is that there's no real bad vibe from either sets of groups. There's definitely some posturing, I've noticed some things. Obviously I'm wearing a jacket, so those guys aren't giving me hugs like they're giving Brock a hug. I get that, but the thing is, the coexistence is impressive. I'm not seeing any real mud-slinging, again I didn't like how Brock got handled with John Oliver. I thought that was unacceptable because he's done a lot of good work. I don't know him personally, I've never met him, but I like what he's doing, I like his message. His keynote here, at d10e, was awesome. Really the right messaging, I thought. That's something that I want to get behind and I think everyone should. But he just got trashed. Outside of that, welcoming culture. And they're like, "Hey if you don't like it, "just go somewhere else." They're not giving people a lot of shit for what they do. It's really accepting on all sides. >> Here's my take on the whole decentralization thing. We run the world today on a series of very top down hierarchical structures. The corporation, the military industrial complex, Judeo-Christian religions, et cetera. That are very hierarchical-- Designed for managing scarcity, right? We're moving the world very, very quickly to abundance. We now have an abundance of information, we'll soon have an abundance of energy, we'll soon have an abundance of money, et cetera. And when you do these new structures, you need very decentralized structures. Burning Man, the maker movement, the open-source movement, et cetera. It's a very nurturing, participatory, female type of archetype and we're moving very quickly to that. What we're seeing in the world today is the tension going from A to B. >> And also when you have that next level, you usually have entrepreneurs and sponsorships. People who sponsor entrepreneurs the promotion side of it, PR and that starts the industry. Then when it hits that level it's like, "Wow it's going to the next level." Then it gets capital markets to come in. Then you have new stake holders coming in now with government officials. This thing is just rocket-shipping big time. >> Yes >> And so, that's going to change the dynamics. Your thoughts and reaction to that dynamic. >> Completely, for example... When we do these public sprints we end up usually with a decentralized architecture that needs to built. For example, we're working with the justice system in Colombia. And the Supreme Court has asked us to come in and re-do the entire justice system. Now you think about all the court filings and court dates, and briefs, and papers all should be digitized and put on a blockchain type structure because it's all public filing. We have an opportunity to completely re-do that stack and then make that available to the rest of the world. I think that trend is irreversible for anything that previously had centered-- I mean, most government services are yes, ratifying this and ratifying that. They all disappear. >> Well Salim, I want to tap your brain for a second. Since you're here, get it out there, I want to throw a problem at you, quick real time riff with you. So one of the things that I've been thinking about is obviously look at what cloud computing did, no one saw Amazon web services early, except some of the insiders like us. Who saw it's easy to host and build a data center. "I have no money, I'm a start-up or whatever." You use AWS, EC2 and S3... They were misunderstood, now it's clear what they're doing. But that generated the DevOps movement. So question for you is, I want to riff with you on is, "Okay that created programmable infrastructure, "the notion of server-less now going mainstream." Meaning, I don't have to talk about the server, I need resource so I can just make software, make it happen. That's flipped around the old model, where it used to be the network would dictate to the applications what they could do. How is that DevOps ethos, certainly it's driven by open-source, get applied to this cryptocurrency? Because now you have blockchain, cryptocurrency, ICO is kind of an application if you will, capital market. How does that model get flipped? Is there a DevOps model, a blockchain ops model, where the decentralized apps are programming the blockchain? Because the plumbing is the moving chain right now. You got, Hashgraph's got traction, then you got Etherium, Lightning's just got 2.5 million dollars. I mean, anyone who's technical knows it's a moving train in the plumbing. But the business logic is pretty well-defined. I'm like, "I want to innovate this process. "I'm going to eliminate the efficiency." So this dynamic. Does the business model drive infrastructure? Does the plumbing drive the business model? Your thoughts on this new dynamic and how that plays out. >> I suspect you and in violent agreement here. It's always going to be lead by the business model because you need something to act as the power of pull to pull the thing along, right? The real reason for the success of Etherium right now is all the ICOs and it was a money driven thing. Today we're going to see these new stacks, now we're on version three of these new types of stacks coming along, and I think they're all looking for a business model. Once we find some new killer ops for this decentralized structure, then you'll see things happen. But the business model is where it's at. >> So basically I agree with you. I think we're on the same page here. But then advice would be to the entrepreneurs, don't fret about the infrastructure, just nail your business model because the switching cost might not be as high as you think. Where in the old days, when we grew up, you made a bad technical assess and you're out of business. So it's kind of flipped around. >> Yeah, just hearing about this term, atomic swaps. Where you can just, essentially once you have a tokenized structure, you can just move it to something else pretty quickly. Therefore, all the effort should be on that. I think finding the really compelling use cases for this world is going to be fascinating to see. >> So software-defined money, software-defined business, software defined society is coming. >> Yes >> Okay, software defined, that's the world Salim thanks for coming on, sharing your awesome expert opinon. Congratulations on your awesome book. How many countries is your book, Exponential Organizations-- >> It's now about a quarter of a million copies in 15 languages. >> Required reading in all MBA programs, and the C-Suite. Congratulations, it's like the TANEx Engineering that Mark Dandriso put out. A whole new paradigm of management is happening. Digital transformation. >> We now have the ability to scale an organization structure as fast as we can scale technology. >> Blockchain you know, the nature of the firm was all about having people in one spot. So centralized, you can manage stuff. Now with blockchain you have a decentralized organization. That's your new book, the Decentralized Organization. >> Although, I'm not sure I have another book in me. >> There's a book out there for somebody, Decentralized Organizations. Salim, thank you for joining us. The Cube here, I'm John Furrier the co-host. Day two coverage of Blockchain Unbound more coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCube! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (lively music) >> Welcome back to theCube's live special coverage here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbounded which is the global event where people from around the world are coming from Silicon Valley, New York, Miami, all over the globe, Moscow, all over the world here to talk about blockchain decentralized internet, and of course, cryptocurrency. Your next guest is Olga Petrunina with Adara.IO. Welcome to theCube. >> Hi, happy to be here. >> Thanks for coming on. So you're from Moscow which it's cold there right now. What's it like? >> It's minus 15. (laughs) It's much better here in Puerto Rico. I'm happy. >> It's so exciting to have you. Thanks for coming on. So the global conference, this is really a global phenomenon. Take a minute to explain what you're working on, what the product is, what it will become, is it launched yet, what's the company about. Take one minute to explain. >> Okay. We are building intelligent blockchain ecosystem which consists of exchange and crypto wallet with artificial intelligence mechanism inside. We are providing access to the crypto for Main Street investors who have no idea about crypto, want to invest, just put their money in our wallet, pick up the strategy, and just get money. (chuckles) >> So you're targeting mainstream investors, not like the insiders? >> No, no, of course we have professional players on our platform because we're going to educate our investment mechanics with strategy of professional groups of traders. >> So are you going to have an exchange and software behind it? Explain the architecture of the solution. >> All right, we are based NEM. It's our core partner. We are early adapter surveying their protocol, Catapult. We integrated it in our exchange because they have really good new features like aggregated transactions when you can send a pool of different currencies in one transaction. That's a really great idea. Also, they implemented the centralized exchange in their protocol. So our exchange right now is centralized. We're going to build the decentralized part of our exchange based on Catapult. >> Are you worried about the centralized portion because of recent hacks? How are you thinking about doing that? >> Yeah, in case we are using a NEM protocol, they have like four layers of security. As for me, it's the most secure and most scalable protocol. Of course, we are using the cold wallets connected to our platform so we are not storing anything on hot wallets. It's like 95% storing on the cold wallets. >> What's your biggest fear? >> Oh, (laughs) spiders. (laughs) No, I just-- >> Is that a cryptocurrency I don't know about yet? (laughs) >> As for me, the biggest problem for crypto is regulation. Now, we have to... Like they're building the structure for obtaining different licenses in different countries. So we have bought update for licenses in Dubai, in Estonia, and also we are going to apply in Switzerland. So it's really hard to negotiate, everyday the new news regarding regulations. >> So talk about where the exchange will be. You mentioned Dubai. Are you having one in one nation or you having multiple countries participating? How does it work? Does everyone have to participate? >> In case of that in Dubai, there is no legal structure, for example, bank licenses in crypto, so we're going to have to invent licenses in crypto in Switzerland. In Dubai, we obtained for license trading crypto into commodities because Dubai, they're focused on commodities base. In Estonia, we received a payment system license and brokerage license. >> So one of the big news this week is Coinbase, one of the most popular exchanges, had done a deal with the UK government. I don't know if you saw that, the Financial Conduct Authority, the FCA, just now gave them a license for their fast-payment service for Fiat. So a new government move, really interesting. Are the governments that you're talking to thinking the same way? >> Yeah, we talked to Central Bank of Dubai. They're also going to legalize all the crypto and involve their blockchain and cryptocurrency with companies to set up in their legal structure in Dubai, the same with Estonia also. Everybody want to be like the "crypto alien." (chuckles_ >> The crypto Wall Street. >> Yeah, the crypto Wall Street. >> And every country wants to do it, Puerto Rico, Armenia, Bahrain wants to get in on the action. >> Yeah, the same with Russia. We are members of Russian Blockchain Association. We are working on laws for Russian government regarding crypto. It's going to be pretty good regulation. We'll publish in this summer, like July. So I hope that the-- >> Olga, talk about the entrepreneurial landscape in Russia right now. How vibrant is it? We know they have technology savvy. >> About me? >> And Russia in general. >> And Russia in general. >> In Russia, in Moscow. >> Yeah, a lot of good blockchain developers. >> And the young kids. >> Vitalik is Russian. (laughs) >> I interviewed his mom, by the way. >> Our developers based in Moscow, that's why I'm also based in Moscow. Everybody like crazy about crypto in Moscow because I think we have a lot of good tech background in Russia so why not use it for blockchain expansion. >> Great Russian expertise. I know a lot of Russian developers are good, but also in Estonia, there's some great developers, too, all over the world. >> Right, but Russia has >> It's a global revolution. >> In blockchain. Vitalik Buterin is Russian, so it makes a lot of sense. (laughs) >> When we get him on theCube, we'll grill him. What do you hope to do in the next? What's next for you? >> We're going to be public in June. Now we already developed our exchanges for (mumbles) and security check. After that, we're going to build our artificial judges of investment mechanisms, so we need like one year and a half for educated. Our next step, we are thinking about taking utilization real assets also because we already have all these elements which is necessary for the organization in our core partners technology, NEM. So I think we will move in this year also. >> What is the main thing that you're going to use in your exchange that's going to make you different? >> What's different about your exchange? >> We have a lot of expertise from different traders around the world. All of them are claiming about their unstable APIs of exchange, and we are focused on high scalability and like best technologies in API building of exchange because we need a lot of traders on the platform. We have development that APIs for follow trade. So it's like our best feature, I guess. >> What kind of partnerships are you looking to do with other people? >> We're looking for traders, of course, because we need them to bring our platform, to bring forth great entity to our platform. We are looking for companies which going to list on our exchange. Looking for investors, also. >> Olga, what do you think about this conference here? >> Oh, it's pretty amazing. Our first time in Puerto Rico. I was really surprised. It's amazing country, amazing island, and a lot of good connections. So, I'm happy to be here. >> It's a global landscape right now. >> Yeah right, it's global, peer-to-peer economy. (laughs) >> Well, Olga, thank you for coming on and sharing, theCube. We learned something today. You don't like spiders. >> (laughs) Right. (laughs) Thank you for inviting me. >> You're afraid of spiders. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right, more of Cube coverage here in Puerto Rico. I'm John Furrier, the host of theCube. Extracting the signal from the noise here in Puerto Rico. It's theCube's continuing coverage of the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the decentralized application revolution. We'll be right back after this short break. (lively music)

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

(upbeat music) >> Live from Madrid, Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> We're back in Madrid, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my co-host Peter Burris. And many-time Cube guest Xavier Poisson is back. He's the vice president of Cloud28+ and service providers worldwide for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And he's joined by Eugene Viskovic, who is the chief business officer at Veon, a Cloud28+ partner. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Welcome back, Xavier, it's good to see you again. >> Thank you, hi. >> Hi. So give us the update on Cloud 28. It started out as sort of this focused European effort. It has exploded now globally. What's the update? >> So I don't remember, I don't know if you remember it. It was last year, the same event. We were in London, I believe. And we were saying, "Okay, we are 300. "How many will be next year?" I took that back. It will be 700. We are 700. >> Dave: Wow, congratulations. >> 700 members. We have been expanding in the different geographies. So also in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, but we expanded in North America, in A-Pac, Latin America, and Caribbean. So now we are present in 60 countries. We are proposing 24,000 cloud services, so the catalog has been expanding dramatically. We are offering capabilities, data center capabilities from all partners in 33 countries. And we can offer from 400 data centers already. So average we have 40,000 hits per month on the platform, acquiring members and so on. And, yes, it has been a delight to launch that everywhere. It's really taking off very, very quickly. >> And the basic value proposition, you are essentially enabling cloud partners to create cloud-like business capabilities. >> Yeah, so what we do is, first of all, we enable the partners to get known on the market on this side, to publish all their services built and consume also. So it's not only IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, but also integration services as well because it's a comprehensive value chain. Then, what we do, we're not a marketplace where people go and leave. In the center, they can speak everyday. So they publish articles, full leadership articles around security, big data, manufacturing, and so on and so on. This year, only this year, they have published 600 articles. So when you're a customer, you go to this platform. You can see the offering, but you can see how the vendor is positioning himself around the market, his value-add, and what they are doing. So digital marketing a lot, also for them. We have been increasing the value on the market of many of our partners with social media because we are very good activity in this area, and also lead-generation engine because now we have so much offerings that we can target specific campaigns for our partners in specific geographies and generate a lot of leads on the market. Last, but not least, the market is evolving. We have a lot of partners, so we create platform-connected offerings. Example we have done is a specific cloud-in-a-box for manufacturing for plants where, in six clicks, you can provision from Cloud28+ all your information system for a plant. So this is also the kind of things that we do. >> Great, okay, Eugene, tell us about Veon. Why are you in business? What's your story? >> Okay, yes. Just talk a few minutes about Veon because it's not a very well-known name around the world, and don't be ashamed if you don't know Veon because it still is the seventh largest mobile operator in the world. It's significant. We are, today, around 42,000 employees, over 12 different countries. I have to say, very unusual countries. Not the type of countries you may choose to go for holidays, but it would be a shame because, honestly, some of them are good like, you know, all Eurasia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia. We have also emerging market, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, and one, only one European market, which is Italy with WIND, WIND Three. Which means it's a very large region. We are dealing with 10, more than 10% of the total population of the globe, 235 million customers, which is significant. And within this organization, there is an enterprise division, which I'm leading, which is around 4,500 people dedicated for enterprise and wholesales. Full revenue around $3 billion, just to give you a scale on who we are. Again, not very well-known, but definitely within our footprint we are the number one in this particular region of the world. >> It's sizable, substantial business. >> Eugene: Exactly, yes. >> So what's driving your business today? Obviously mobile is exploding. >> Yes, it's clear we came from the mobile business. We are number one mobile operator in the majority of these countries. We are what we call some fixed business. And since the last two, three years when I joined the organization, we completely reorganized our business model and moving more into the what we call value added services, ICT services. And one of the components, definitely, was to try to find a partner for our cloud proposition. You need to understand that we're in a very emerging market for this type of subject. We are sitting in a very traditional way, you know, how enterprise operating. They own the infrastructure, they own data center, they own the servers, the management platform, and their own people. And they have not yet shifted to this new model, which is to try to outsource some of the infrastructure. And this is where we came into the game as a global provider in order to have enterprise really to operate the shift. There is also another interesting situation is every time we bid a cloud proposition, usually we try to centerize it and have different country. In our part of the world is not possible. We have to set up a cloud platform in every single of our countries for regulatory constraints, which is not very economical, but definitely it's an opportunity for us to lead this market especially with HP Enterprise. >> Well, it allows you to differentiate, as well, from some of the mega-cloud providers that everybody knows, everybody talks about. So is that a primary way in which you compete? >> Oh, completely. It's clear the big players today are not very well-implemented in this part of the world because of this particular constraint, outside of Italy which is a little bit different game. But it's clear in Russia and Eurasia, yes. Today there is a opportunity. We believe that we want to be the single provider within this region operating across different market segments because we're covering from SO up to multinational accounts, even government. And having a set of value propositions we can offer across every single of our countries. >> Xavier, is it common that, amongst the Cloud28+ partners, there's that theme of local presence, of course, but is there also a differential in terms of what the partners will do, the types of work they'll do, customizations? >> Yeah, typically the case of Veon is very specific because they address very specific markets. Some other players will ask different things. But what is very important in the case of Veon is, first of all, to have a ready-to-deploy solution that you can industrialize in different countries. So this is the reason why we played with one of the technology partners of Cloud28+, with Ormuco, who has a cloud-in-a-box solution that can be deployed and managed remotely if needed. But that was fitting the needs of the market. Then, what we need to do is really to engage locally. So, in this particular case, what we're going to do is to engage with the HP organization in order that when we have the needs for our customers to go for cloud computing kind of workloads, we say, "Okay, we have the solution. "We have a partner, a Cloud28+ partner, "who took the decision to go with us, "and we trust each other. "So you, Mr. Customer, you want to do "backup as a service, disaster recovery "as a service, compute, storage as a service, "or security as a service, Veon is there." And the good point is Veon is there on very qualified hardware of HP synergy with a very good solution, which is one of the solution ready for service providers of HPE and operated by a very serious tech operator with the number six on the market, this is Veon. And we go together. So in this particular case, what was interesting was to have a solution that can be deployed everywhere the same with workloads that may fit with the different expectations of the market, engage the HP people to play with and, then, we market and with Cloud28+ we'll amplify their message. We will be able to drive lead generation campaigns. We'll be able to onboard our resellers because one thing I believe is that in this kind of regions, people don't go, as you say, Eugene, directly to the cloud. They continue to go to their resellers and, "What do I need to do?" And here, you know that we have the largest reseller network in the industry. So we will introduce this solution to our resellers in order that when a reseller of HPE is in front of such a case, it can have the mind to say, "Okay, let's engage with Veon." So this is the way we are going to operate. >> So when I think of many of the Akistan countries, I think of natural resources, challenging topography, challenging terrain. How does the physical reality and the industries that typify that region impact the way you're providing cloud services? >> It's clear, we're talking sometime a very, very large geography in terms of country size. When you take only in Russia. >> Mountainous. >> Eleven time zones you have in one single country. And when we operate, yes we have to spread our capability in order to be able to touch every single country, including in some infrastructure. Especially as a carrier, I like to imagine how much we need to pull fiber, cable, across the country and have these different set up of infrastructure, cloud propositions, to make sure we can serve better in term latency especially when we're talking about financial sections and so on, which brings some level of complexity and, as I said earlier, also some level of efficiency in term investment because we are not in a perfect world, especially when we talk about the regulatory constraints, which, yes, we need to find some middle way. How we can have a better, being still competitive, but as sometimes still delivering the expected quality. But you are right. This particular part of the world require a lot of work in term of physical infrastructure and also in our team. Our people are spread across these different countries, and for that reason yes, it's not an easy situation. >> Does it drive, are you likely to see a higher demand? HPE talks about the intelligent edge. Are you likely to see a higher demand for things like the intelligent edge because of the nature of the natural resource industry's petrochemical, et cetera, mountainous regions and a lot of communities that you serve, is that going to be a driver of new services or is it going to be something else? What do you think? >> Well, I think there would be two aspects. The first one, there is, definitely, a requirement driven, very often, by very large, multinational corporations. You'll be surprised how this multinational corporations are covering this part of the world. You have natural resources. All the western industry is present. And because they are present, they need to bring their standard in term of infrastructure they are using within this particular country. That the reason, yes, the demand is coming from there. At the same time, you have the rest of the market in term of large, local businesses where it's clear. They are moving. If you're looking in our part of the world, we are exactly where we were 10 years ago in Europe, in North America, and in Asia. We are really into emerging in face, in adopting this type of infrastructure. It's clear it's going to go much more quicker because, on top of that, enterprises have big pressure to reduce costs, but at the same time not to sacrifice the quality, what they're looking. Which, again, together we're capable and we can demonstrate they can get better for less. And this is a big work, and that's the reason when Xavier was mentioning about working together in each of the countries, this was one of the critical element in choosing with HP Enterprise because I'm a mobile operator and fixed. I'm not yet organized as an ICT services or cloud. It was very important for me, if we wanted to go very quickly to associate a brand with a leading organization like HP. And I have to say, I have tested several times. Every time we say, "Okay, we are in "partnership with HP Enterprise. "We are partnered with Cloud28+." This ring immediately the bell of the enterprise we are meeting, and it's easier for us to move quicker. But, definitely, I think we have a big, big opportunity. Large market to address, but definitely something interesting to go after. >> And it's early days, it's only been two years now, what do you want from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and what are you guys going to deliver? Let's talk road map a little bit. First, from the partner/customer. What are you driving HPE and Xavier to deliver? >> For me there would be three axes in term of development. The first one in term of value proposition. We want to be able, over the next 12, 18 months to be able to offer to the market a full set of propositions, as you mentioned earlier. But Xavier, in term of public, private, hybrid cloud, and moving to different solution, we're talking about security. And, also, we're moving into more vertical market approach. We're talking about IUT where will also be some direction. This is the first ax. The second one, it's in term of countries. We're not going to launch a platform in every single, as I said earlier. We need to do it country by country. We are starting with Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan will come behind, Algeria. Very quickly, over the next 12 months, we are going to launch one by one these different countries. And the last element for us, which is also very key, is market segment. We are organized, as I said, by market segment. SO, small-medium enterprise, large key account, multinational corporation, and government. And each of these segments have different requirements. And we need to customize our approach. This is where where working with HP and Ormuco, we want to have a very customized, bi-market segment from highly customized to off-the-shelf type proposition. But, for me, these would be the three key axes in term of development working with HP Enterprise. >> And Xavier, how does that align with your roadmap? >> Well, you know, it's fully alligned in the sense that, first of all, we are expanding a lot the value prop of Cloud28+ with ISV software vendors. And the problems of telcos and service providers moving to the cloud, that's correct there is ICT branding, and there we can help. But this is the content because one day or another, they will face what the others have been facing, even in these countries, meaning yes is not enough. So if you have a portfolio of applications, verticals, horizontal applications, that they can use to continue to satisfy the demand of the market, so it will be great for them, and we are investing a lot in this order. The other thing is today I believe that we have now reached a maturity on digital marketing with Cloud28+, which is impressive. We had a big event yesterday. I will not give to you the number of impression we had only in four hours. It has been massive. If we take that, we put this at the disposal of this partner in every single country, we will speed them on the market. So these are the two big elements. The third element is what I said about this platform connected solutions because the more we go, the more we see that our outside-in approach with Cloud28+, thinking customers first, is excellent. We need to continue on that. But, as you were mentioning, the move to the edge, we see more and more solutions for energy, for manufacturing, oil and gas, environment, that we need pure hybrid because you cannot put everything into a cloud. And where we are lucky with Veon is that they have the network. So you can imagine, they have their big cloud in a country that they could deploy also some private cloud very, very quickly in specific area within an oil and gas land or I don't know where in energy, mining, or where you have not that. And you cannot, because of latency issues you cannot go directly to the cloud, but you need to handle at the edge, send back to the cloud for analytics or AI or so on, and this will be at the disposal for them. And I believe the combination of the two for that will be for the benefit of the customer. So this is my opinion. >> I completely agree. I think they approach, in term of the partnership, as I said, I think when we're going to deal with very large organizations is going to be very infrastructure-type discussion driven. But when we're going to cool down, it's purely, definitely Sowasis, content. I want to be able to address, for example, the marketing department, how we can help them to understand the behavior of a consumer by using data, big data, you know, analytics. In term of delivery for an organization, using fleet management. In term of manufacturing, using more IUT. But when you look at these different solutions, what is below is a type of infrastructure. Is to have a cloud infrastructure where we can rely on a strong partnership, bringing this solution, and offering to our customer definitely a very cost-effective but also agile, very, you know, able to move with the market demand in a very vertical way, but definitely this is a way we want to work together. >> Excellent. All right, we have to leave it there, gentlemen. Cloud is exploding. Cloud is going to be local. We've talked about this a lot. Hybrid IT, intelligence edge with a local flavor. Gentlemen, thanks very much for coming. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And congratulations for all the success. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE. We're live from HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Be right back. (upbeat music)