from New York it's the cube covering blockchain week now here's John furries hello and welcome back I'm John Fourier we're here on the ground actually on the water on the majesty bow to New York City as decentral has their big unveiling Anthony do you Arielle cube alumni a good friend of the cube is having a massive event here in New York City celebrating the new releases of their new platform their new hardware product actually called the cube to talk about that with Anthony but moreover it's part of a big holistic blockchain week in New York City exciting new projects from new financial products that Kryptos enabling technology innovation a lot of personal people going doing deals so what's going on with you you look great we are at the party looking good people are going crazy out out there we're in a boat I think this kind of environment is very friendly to the kind of community that is created by blockchain naturally so I really commend decentral and Anthony and all of their efforts around this in that they're now creating an environment where I can't walk five feet down the hallway without seeing somebody else that I know and the important thing about that is that now we're really creating this big digital conglomerate we're creating a network of people where I was just speaking to someone outside and he said that it's amazing to see people sharing all kinds of information about their new projects they're they're they're recognizing that there really is enough pie for everyone there's not it is a competition game but really that we should really compete on the application layer and that we should collaborate on the codebase we should collaborate on security and we should collaborate on these really big issues like regulation and privacy so it's amazing to see all these people and that's important that's the open source ethos right there really work together on a project not product because there's a difference between a project and a product and open source is that's languish it's important yeah that's the ethos I love that what's going on in the bug will share some anecdotes what's happening here people who didn't make it couldn't make the boat they you know ate some cars Aston Martin bracelet here what's some of the hallway conversations on the bow what are you hearing here during blockchain week well first of all blockchain week has been has been an amazing opportunity for the blockchain Research Institute to really showcase the work that we are doing to express our interest in enterprise blockchain but really also to support the growing community that is happening in the world and more so in Canada we believe that Canada has an amazing opportunity to to be a leader in blockchain and they are already really a significant amount of the people here our Canadian you know Anthony is a proud Canadian lots of different companies are and one of the major initiatives that we had at consensus was the Canadian Pavilion so we gathered together 23 Canadian blockchain companies and by the way you need a bigger room we did because so many there was a lot yeah open your own conference but the key part with that is that we really wanted to showcase the amazing Canadian innovations that are happening so that people recognize that you know Canada and the more specifically the Toronto Waterloo corridor is is the next Silicon Valley the next hub of blockchain and of quantum computing and of AI and so if you take those three together really those are done taps got an Allen snaps got our two co-founders they authored a report for the World Economic Forum and they argued that that blockchain really is the third leg of the stool that we need to provide an atmosphere for innovation and this was a really good way for us to do that and certainly it's got money tied to its the applications now have a financial component token economics a real key enabler in this to us certainly blockchain check great we love it everyone loves blockchain but it's the token economics that kick in that are starting to see money things applications tying into tokens and coins and yeah I think but that really creates a lot of it creates a lot of confusion it creates a lot of noise suddenly you know in that in the first generation of the internet we we said you know government hands off we want to you know we want to regulate this ourselves this is our thing it's the age of information like like that Tapscott said you know we're entering the internet of value but in entering the internet of value we're now we're now no longer dealing with just information we're dealing with things that matter to people we're dealing with identity and privacy and physical assets and you know real estate and all kinds of different things that are really foundations of the economy and in this case we really need the community to come together and support a regulatory environment because if we don't then the regulator's will and it won't work in the in our messengers it's got to be open open always be proprietary I'm so convinced that open source software which I have lived that generation when it was we were fighting for you know UNIX versus Xenu copyright with AT&T and then was a tea or two citizen now it runs the world's Tier one source one and the model is proven it's coming to crypto and yeah you see that do you see that coming clearly or did that I think as as platforms like you know obviously aetherium but as platforms like hyper ledger and r3s Corte and the forum platform from JPMorgan as these platforms grow in size and grow in membership and grow in in collaboration people will see that the the way to collaborate it's all about this I don't know if you've seen the graphs about fad protocols yes now we're in trusting our payments and our identities and our you know the things that really matter to us we're not giving them to the application layer anymore we're giving them to the protocol layer and if we're giving them to the protocol layer then we really need to collaborate to ensure that all that information is correct all the time and the only way we're going to be able to do that is to be able to create open source platforms and open source activities where everyone is able to participate that's the only way we can create something and if you want to take the code and do something downstream for that liberation please so we have lots of enterprise clients like Procter & Gamble and ExxonMobil and and PepsiCo and others where they're very interested in in enterprise blockchain but at the same time they want to be able to leverage the security of the public chain right it's um Matt spoke at a a Onix had a really really interesting comment about two weeks ago he said I think and he apologized in advance like this might be controversial but but I really think he's right in that he said you know five ten twenty years down the road we won't know the difference between an enterprise blockchain and a public chain right like we're gonna be up we will be a choice right I do you think we'll be able to have it we'll get to a point where it will be dumb not to use the public chain it will be dumb not to be able to leverage the security of it because if you and I enter into you know if we build our own blockchain together I mean that's great one of interesting things too you missed the panel because you might have seen Jimmy song's debate with I did yes that was very provocative so he's got a point on it's just two sides of the coin you know no pun intended right one is what you're saying that enterprises can come in Jimmy was saying is that it's a waste to use the public chain now because some inefficiencies he's technically accurate but that's gonna get better so I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater sometime no I agree but but I think there's a lot of solutions to come in the next year or two or three around interoperability and I think at the end of the day everyone should be able to use whatever blockchain that they think best fits their features but that they should integrate with it with a company like a on or icon or metronome or all these other interesting interoperability projects where you're able to to leverage the security of the public chain but also be able to continue to have your own ecosystem together yeah son of Don Tapscott about this one you interview them at an IBM event and and I'm old enough that I've seen a couple although some of these waves and I lived and I hear the same arguments all the time oh the performance is not there compared to this and easily but these are waves these are shifts right so PC oh no one's having anything with that you know Delta goes on on on web oh it's the so it's slow to dial-up and load a webpage but all of them who were shifts in growth growth was coming behind it yeah so that's the wrong conversations are happening the growth is coming so you guys really nail it with your analysis I think I had your team because it is the shift it is about not necessarily getting in the weeds over did this one thing is it good now yeah great work or well will something really move forward I think that so don actually said in 1992 i in paradigm shift he said that leaders of old paradigms often have trouble embracing the new and so for us at the blockchain research institute we really exist to bridge that knowledge gap between top-tier executives like fred smith and rob carter from FedEx like you know internally at PepsiCo we aim to bridge that knowledge gap so that they just better know how to flow funds within their own company just doing great one is doing great work well to get me to give a plug real quick love your work explaining some of the things you guys are doing you're on the right track I can say I love what you're doing I looked at it it's right on but you're open you're not like you know down on your fist on the table yeah you guys are cool with the work you guys are doing so we're doing 80 projects on the strategic applications of blockchain technology in a variety of industries so our research fits in three categories we have verticals where financial services is obviously our largest vertical but we're also looking into projects in in retail and manufacturing in supply chain in healthcare in government in media and telecommunications in resources and mining and you know you know pickaxe mining not real mining mining old-school mining yeah and then we're also looking at a lot of the management applications of blockchain so you know the first generation of the internet didn't really do a lot to change the structure of the corporation it allows that it allowed us to find people all over the world I can find people to do anything but I still have to negotiate a contract with them myself to enter into an agreement I sell to establish trust but if we now have this amazingly fluid technology that allows us to lower the cost of search the cost of negotiating contracts the cost of contracting and the cost of establishing trust then that blows the windows and the walls of the corporation wide open and in that we are really driving to help our member organizations understand the nature of the firm is changing economic theory of yesteryear being disrupted really fast way yeah vodka Jane thanks for coming up here one more question yes this week what did you hear in the out there in the city what's your observation for the people didn't make it to New York a lot of great face to face a lot of great engagement good networking good contacts growing ecosystem but still a tight-knit community people know each other they're sharing information what did you hear share some data some insights that that folks couldn't get if they didn't come I think for us a lot of the reason that we are here is that it's a you know peril if you don't show up it's being part of a community if if we are going to show a leadership role in this community then we need to show up for our colors we need to show up for companies that that you know may not be able to advocate for themselves I've met so many interesting companies this week that either do not have the resources or they're trying to raise money or they're trying to be investors and and the life of an entrepreneur obviously is is a tough one and for us we we have a growing pioneer membership at the blockchain Research Institute where we aim to connect large corporations who are looking for or looking to invest in different in different watching platforms but don't know where to start and so we run essentially a white listing service where we are partnered with lots of amazing companies like pay case and shift and Collider X and a on and all these different companies where they're they're really working to move the ball forward as well as make an impact so yeah it was for us it was it was looking for more innovative companies but also you know doing our part showing our role this was a one of the first times that I actually saw Don Tapscott a now except thought actively you know taking meanings and participating in the conversation and and being present and being there so so for us it was a lot of it was presence he was a lot of presidents we're some fun you having fun I am yes yes behind us is a boat we're on it we're in the front part we're in the anthony o diario private suite lounge here's where he can relax it gets kind of a green room behind us awesome DJ four stories of boat going down to your just past the Statue of Liberty a lot of action let's get back to the partying what are you saying alright I'm jump for it thanks for watching we're on the boat New York City thank you for watching

from New York it's the cube covering blockchain week now here's John furry hello everyone welcome back to this special cube exclusive on the water coverage of the awesome cryptocurrency event going on this week blockchain week New York City D central Anthony do re oh seven a big special event launching some great killer products me up to cube alumni that we introduced at polycon 2018 Genevieve Dec Monroe and Jeromy Gartner great to see you guys thanks for having us so you guys look fabulous you look beautiful you're smart we're on a boat we're partying it feels like Prague it feels like prom feels like we are at the top of another bubble couldn't feel better five more boat parties and then the bubbles officially at the top but we're only had the first boat party well the real existential question is what do we view next you know we've we've graduated from nightclubs and strip clubs and now two super yachts like do we go on a spaceship neck's or a Boeing Jets yeah I mean the options are somewhat limited in how we scale up the crypto parties I actually heard today one of my clients is launching in space a crypto mining operation that's fueled by solar power so we might be going to space Elon Musk wants to get involved I agree like where are we going you guys are awesome I love the creative so this party to me is really a testament of the community talk about the community I see polycon was great in Puerto Rico they had restart week and that but I heard these guys saying here at the central that the community's fragmented is the community fragmented seems like it's not out there or just only one pocket of the community I think the community so we have 10,000 people at consensus okay so these are 10,000 people that have gone down the rabbit hole and they're all at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan kind of going like how'd you get involved why are you here 10,000 people is a lot but I think that yeah we're we're at the decentral party so some of the yeast communities are being fragmented but I think we're having like infrastructure built to kind of connect the broader world to the things whether it's custodial services whether it's like tonight the jocks 2.0 wallet and you know everything that's getting involved there I don't know Jeremy Jeremy it's like an international traveler so you Carly Jeremy it's 100 percent in an echo chamber more importantly rabbit holes are like dark and confusing places that there are they're winding and a lot of people are here for very different reasons and thus when you have all these new entrants to the industry to this technology here for all these different reasons of course you have some fragmentation you know in many regards the ideological and philosophical roots of Bitcoin and blotchy technology have been lost son on many of the new entrants and and so it takes time to get to the point where we're all winding I think different blockchains and different applications of this technology will have different kind of approaches to how people think about investors always gonna be pragma because this is a massively growing industry that touches upon every kind of business and governmental and non-governmental it's actually fragmentation is a relative chairman is Genevieve you I saw you and you guys are working with things from cannabis coin I think you had to cannabis cabin this week in New Yorker yeah we're doing that tomorrow night actually so crypto and cannabis are two the hottest millennial sectors right and so we kind of like to say Agri capital we like to dance on the edge of chaos I actually found out about a cannabis company in Vancouver so just outside Vancouver that is using a crypto mining operation and all the excess heat that is coming off that to power a grow-op so we're literally at the intersection of crypto and cannabis not just for our handling money but handling energy in a different way which is so fast that's real mission impact investing right there you know using energy to grow weed that's the Seidel impact isn't it good bad I mean even as you look at it you know better cannabis healthy cannabis is a mission people look care about we're helping people's wallets and we're helping people's minds right in like ways that the government banks and pharmaceutical companies are fighting against so you know if you can't beat them join them so I welcome Astra Zeneca and the Bank of Canada to come on board our mission this is specially turning into a cube after dark episode Jeremy I gotta get your thoughts on these industries because look at cannabis we joke about it but that's an example of another market this zilean markets that are coming online that are gonna be impacted so fragmentation is a relative terms but hey look at it I mean energy tech is infrastructure tech and solid that's what I'm concerned about who nails the infrastructure for network effects and what's the instrumentation for that that's the number one question that is essential question for the protocols whether it's Theory amore Bitcoin oreos Definity so forth the protocol that provides the strongest and and most adaptable and infrastructure and foundational technology is going to be one of the main ones are those will be the main winners and so the names I mentioned they're up there they're very competitive but it's anybody's game right now I think any blockchain can come along right now and be the winner a decade from now and for entrepreneurs represents a challenge because you have to figure out what blocks came to go build on this is why I am big on investing in interoperable Ledger's technologies that enable the kind of transfer smart contracts and crypto assets between blockchains it's a great great segue let's just get an update since we last talked what are you working on what are you investing in what's new in your world share the update on strangers so now my fund is officially launched where how much we launched with just over 15 million dollars and amazingly we launched at the perfect time we're already up 55% and we got making an investment for a venture fund we actually did the exact WA T investment which transferred over from my personal investment portfolio but doing great I have really run the gamut in terms of investments we're making on the equity side of things and in crypto assets but what we're seeing is really accomplished entrepreneurs coming to this space continue actually more optimism than I had felt at polygon poly car and I was like this market needs to correct in a real way today I think that Corrections been prolonged if we were gonna feel a lot of pain it was gonna be two months ago but instead I think it's gonna be one to three years before the market goes through the correction that we need to see for the real shakeout to happen because so many of these teams that I think are garbage have so much money yeah and they're just floating around they got has worked their way out it's just like a bad burrito at some point it's got a pass Genevieve what are you working on I'll see you've got grit capital what's the update on your end what's new yeah amazing actually literally tonight probably about 60 minutes ago my business partner and I signed one of the fastest-growing exchanges in Canada called Einstein exchanges of quiet so these guys have only ever raised like one and a half million u.s. and they're the biggest exchange in Canada by sign ups active accounts so they're probably doing like almost a hundred million in top-line transaction volumes and they're probably never going public somebody's probably gonna buy them but we're gonna be marketing them across the country getting customers I mean the tagline is it doesn't take I'm Stein to open an account it shouldn't take n Stein it by Bitcoin you can literally get this account set up in under 60 seconds so they're vampires ease-of-use surety reducing the steps it takes to do it and get it up and running fast absolutely like my dad could do it and like alright so we say now follow you on Instagram and Facebook which is phenomenal by the way I got a great lifestyle what's the coolest thing you've done since we last talked to Polycom Wow polycon was kind of a high really peaked and then everyone got sick like our team got said polymath untraceable cuz everybody just got the flu yeah we were like on adrenaline and we kept going ah what's the coolest thing that we've done since then I think it's signing up like cool companies like Einstein we also signed a big cannabis company in Colombia called Chiron they're about to go public I don't know Cole what do you think I don't know maybe what's the coolest thing you've done travel what's your good so last night Jeremy and I just met we're together on a blockchain Research Institute project that Sonova Financial is backing and meeting him so you guys working together on a special project right now how's that going what's that about JCO which is a new sort of financial services firm they're creating what it could effectively be understood as a compliant coin offering that is available to more than just accredited investors and that's they're making ico something that falls within the pre-existing regulatory framework and also accessible to your average Joe which I think it's really important if we're going to follow the initial vision for both blockchain technology and offerings all right final question I know you guys want to get back to your dancing and schmoozing networking doing big deals having fun what is blockchain New York we call about we could pop chain we here in New York what the hell's happening there's been a lot of events what's your guy's assessment of you observed and saw anything can you share for the people who didn't make it to New York or not online reading all the action what's happened so as someone that did not attend consensus spoke at three other events or speaking at three other events I can say with certainty that the New York box chain week has been about bringing together virtually everyone in the industry to connect and kind of catch up with one another which is really important we we don't have that many events Miami was too short the industry's gotten too big but having a full week of activities in New York City has enabled me to kind of foster relationships are oh I yeah man get a lot of work John well I've gotten so much work done I haven't had to actually be a date conferences to reconnect with just about everyone that I want to industry that's really special Genevieve what is your observation what have you observed share some in anecdote some insight on what happened this week I know fluid he started I saw Bilt's I was just chatting with him about it it was started in over the weekend it's gone up and we're now into Thursday tomorrow coming up well I don't think it's a coincidence that Goldman Sachs came out today and said that they were launching some sort of digital currency marketing yeah exactly using the power of the 10,000 people i consensus but yeah i know i agree with what jeremy says it's not really about being at consensus it's about what happens like behind closed doors it's all these decentralized parties that are happening yeah open doors but like it's you know like we hosted a core capital asset we had a hundred people in a suite at the dream hotel and it was just like you put the biggest CEOs of the mining companies in the world together and like put those with investors in a room it's like you know 100 people and that's where the deals happen it's not like in the big you know huge auditorium where like nobody looks at each other and everyone's on their phone well I gotta tell you how do we know we the Entrepreneurship side is booming so I totally love the entrepreneurial side check check check access to capital new kinds of business model stuff economics so we reported on all that to me the big story is Wall Street in New York City has been kind of stuck the products kind of like our old is antiquated like the financial products and like that's why Goldman's coming out they got nothing what they don't have anything what are they got so you see in a stagnant they got a traditional product approximately nothing really like new fresh so you got in comes crypto just do a crypto washer so I think I see the New York crowd going this is something that is exciting and we could product ties potentially so I don't think they know yet what that is but I think some of the things that are going on you guys I like I like so I my dad's always the kind of barometer to this whole thing and he's like when are they gonna come out with like a Salesforce stock column for the blockchain right like some sort of application that it doesn't matter if you're like illegal if you're like in investment banking like some sort of pervasive application that just goes wild you have that yet what is that happening Jeremy Jeremy did the date was it's the Netscape moment if you will the moment that blotching technology becomes tangible and now and in retrospect a few years out we may decide that's great for all the young browsers is a browser the original browse for the Internet that was that moment may have already happened we don't really know it maybe it been something like a theory a more augered you know something where there's a use case but people haven't wrapped their heads around it yet but if that hasn't happened yet it's coming it's where we're on the cusp of it because people know what bitcoin is they've heard of the blockchain it is part of the zeitgeist now and and that cultural relevance it's so important for having that Netscape moment Jeremy Jeremy thanks so much to spend the time here on the ground on the water for our special cube coverage of blockchain week new york city consensus you had all kinds of different events you had the crypto house where we were at tons of fluidity conference all this stuff going on good to see you guys you look great thanks for sharing the update here and the cube special coverage I'm John Faria thanks for watching Thanks

from New York it's the cube covering blockchain week now here's John furry hello everyone I'm John Frey here on the ground actually on the water in the majesty boat here in New York City part of blockchain week New York City I'm here at Maggie's ooh who's he whose abyss development a decentralized launched a huge party here we're on a four story boat it's like the Titanic but it's in New York you can see hopefully we won't hit me icebergs but no icebergs ahead in blockchain thanks for joining me here on the water thank you John it's actually really funny you mentioned Titanic first time we came and saw the bow we're like oh my gosh this boat look exactly like Titanic let's really do something about it because see Centro is really about technology both being forward and so yeah we I think we pulled a very crazy party right now so tell us about the event this is a really cool event how big is the book just give us the details you ran the event so I know it's hard to run these kinds of events a lot of moving parts you're giving away two aston martin cars on a bracelet that's gonna light up and turn off based upon if you want or not so is it how's it work okay so this boat has a thousand people on here right now plus our team member plus a boat people so we have about eleven hundred people here and this whole event was run in the last five weeks the team has been working so hard and right now this bracelet that you see it syncs with the music so beats per second it syncs the colors and everything with the music and 11:45 today we're going to be giving away to Aston Martin's the bracelet will dim down one by one and the five bracelets that remaining will go on the stage everyone's gonna cheer out the crowd we're really gonna get everyone you know cheered up and this is not just like you know us giving away Aston Martin's this is really about bring the whole blocking community together we want to be say hey this is a small community let's all get United the cars are just a way for us to thank our partners and everyone I found about you know and I get a little nervous when I see these kind of launch parties because it reminds me that comm bubble but what's different about what's going on with you central is you guys have a business that's up and running this is not an ICO there's no fundraising going on you guys are actually executing and this is important because you guys are doing this as a community take a minute to explain the role of the blockchain community for you guys how important that is right so if you think about a blocking community right now we have the different coins we have the different exchanges the community is very fragmented and that is unfortunate because you know someone like my mom doesn't really understand the term blockchain or cryptocurrency but at the same time it's kind of like Internet 2.0 where you know these technologies are so new there's a lot of people who are so passionate on one of them and just like we just want to spend every day trying to make this better so the central role is really a bell okay let's do all these partnerships so we have over a hundred partnerships almost 200 now all signed and these are the people that we work with like every single day and what kind of partnerships are they they code development together as an open source or they're using the Jax platform you guys made some significant announcements today yeah I'm the Jax Liberty cube ice cube for cold storage I like the cube name not be confused with the cube as in the media cube us but this is a unification strategy talk about the news what did you guys announce tonight all right so today we announced two things we announced at Jax Liberty renounced Jax unity and then we announced the other things but that are part of that whole essential project so the Jax Liberty is the platform it's kind of like an app store all of our partners are gonna be part of this app store and we're just gonna have over 200 partners and more going on onward and every single the apps and integration will be here and we'll make it kind of like a game for the new users what's the bet value proposition for people to join the network it's a free platform we're not charging anyone anything and you know we're probably gonna do that forever so for us the model here is really about bringing all of these different projects together whether it be exchanges whether it be cryptocurrency Wallis whether it be different new sites encrypted messaging all of these things that touch every part of our life we want to say hey we want to bring freedom and power back to you and freedom to us is really your ability to control the information you know I'm very impressed with anthea see I interviewed a couple times in the Bahamas and he's got a great vision and one of the things that he talked in the presentation was kind of not will say buried but I think is the most important notable thing is that he talked about a new Internet infrastructure okay and the wallet is central to this new Internet infrastructure you guys are doing something really pioneering where you're actually creating a unification around infrastructure in network effects with currency this is a super important thing do you guys is this part of your mission or is this part of a just part of the product in your mind our mission like I said is really about brain freedom back to everyone right now if you think about you know how Facebook has their social data how Google has our browsing data all these different entities have our data and we feel like that's really the only way so what descent who is doing is we're saying that we want to create a one platform where we can bring all these different partners together and in doing so we're able to allow people to you know just being able to take control of your life that that is our mission we want to empower people so your pitch basically is join dee central if you joined essentials platform you join the community that wants to unify that's pretty much sounds like the pitch yes we want to empower people and we want to unified whole block G and a world community now you talk about your background how did you get here I mean like you just wake up one day and say hey I'm gonna get in the blockchain I mean what's your background got a legal background how did you give so my background is in business and then business law so I practiced for two years as a business lawyer I may not look like one but you check my record and they were covering lawyers that's okay exactly recovery and then so what I really want to do is all about impact I went into law school because I wanted to do a lot of impact I realized a lot of it is one-on-one not really doing it going to technology and I saw I found my passion and then I found blockchain I was like oh my gosh like this is it does this really you know we are sitting at the forefront of a technology that might be able to just change millions or billions of people's life and a lot of it people are talking about it if we're not really explaining it properly or building things properly I fell decentral is really at a forefront to make sure that is being done that's awesome what are some of the partners you guys have that are notable can you share some of the names and what they're working with you guys on so we're from Toronto Canada proud Canadian and internal we have a all new Co you're a into probability blocking space we have poly mas they do security platform we also have Bri the blockchain Research Institute that's led by Tapscott you know he wrote a very famous book we also have a shift that's you know just doing the KYC AML we also have the big ones like hoeing base like just a lot like block that's the consulting firm we have a lot of different partners that are just like all to cure one ones because of Anthony's background because of our experience in the space for the last four years people trust us people trust our wallet people want to be part of our sea and be part of our mission while we're on the water gonna get you go back to all the partying and schmoozing that's going on great event thank you for putting it on and and I think the community is very very robust out there right now we're having a good time yes outside is like a zoo and I'm really excited that you're here and we're able to meet some of the really great people and you can interview them Maggie thank you for coming on the cube on the water okay with the new cube product with the central unified essential has a new offering on cube is here covering and I'm John Fourier your host thanks for watching [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube. Covering Interconnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> OK, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas. I'm wearing the Blockchain Revolution hat right here. Of course, I'm John Furrier with the Cube, and my co host Dave Vellante, we're excited to have celebrity author, thought leader, futurist and fill in the blank on the title Don Tapscott, who's the author of the Blockchain Revolution. Legend in the industry, thought leader, you and your son a compelling new book, but you've been on the fringe of all the game changing technologies going back with social media, we've been following your work, it's been great. Now we're at the front range of Blockchain, OK? Now it's becoming pretty clear to some of the innovators like IBM and others that it's not about Bitcoin alone, it's about the Blockchain Revolution, the Blockchain itself. Welcome to the Cube and what's going on? What is Blockchain? (laughing) >> Well, it's great to hear, be here. The one thing you didn't mention is I play keyboards in a rock band. So. >> The most interesting man on the Cube right now. >> We used to do a concert every year whether our public demanded it or not, but no, we're a charity event. We've raised a few million dollars for good causes. Anyway. I think, along with my son Alex, we figured this out a couple of years ago that this is the second era of the internet. For the first few decades, we've had the internet of information. And if I send you some information, PDF, PowerPoint, E-mail, even with the website, I keep the original. I'm sending you a copy. That doesn't work so great for assets. Like money, stocks, bonds. Identities, votes. Music, art. Loyalty points. If I send you $100, it's really important I don't still have the money, and I can't send it to you. So this has been called the double spend problem by cryptographers for a long time. And Blockchain solves this problem. We've had the internet of information, now we're getting the internet of value. Where anything of value, from money to votes to music can be exchanged peer to peer. And where we can transact, keep records, and trust each other without powerful intermediaries. Now that doesn't mean intermediaries are going to go away, but they're going to have to embrace this technology or they will be toast. >> I mean, this is clear, you see the distributive computing paradigm, I mean, we're all network guys and by training, you can follow this revolution. But now when you start thinking about trust and value and you talk about digitizing the world. So, if you go to digital transformation, that's the thesis, that we're in this digital transformation, you're digitizing money, you're digitizing transactions. Explain more on the value piece because now if everything's going digital, there now needs to be a new model around how to handle the transactions at scale, and with security problems, hackers. >> Yeah, OK. Well that gets to a couple of really good points. First of all, what is digital? You know, you think, "Well, I tap my card at Starbucks "and bits go through all these networks and different "companies with different computer systems and three "days later a settlement occurs." But that's actually a bunch of messages. It's not money. Money, cash, is a bare instrument. If you have cash in your pocket, you are the bearer of that instrument, which means that you own it. And what we're talking about is something very different here, of creating digital cash. That's stored on a global ledger. So, rather than there being a three day settlement period, there's no settlement period because you're just making a change in the database. And this is a very revolutionary concept. And as for security, I mean, think about, I don't know, you're right, it's not about Bitcoin. But if we took the case of the Bitcoin Blockchain. If I wanted to hack that, I'd have to hack that 10 minute block that has all those transactions, which is linked to the previous block and the previous block, I'd have to hack the entire history of commerce on that Blockchain, not just on one computer, but simultaneously across millions of computers, all using the highest level of cryptography, while the most powerful computing resource in the world, the minors are watching me to make sure I don't mess around. Now, I won't say it's impossible, just like I suppose it's not impossible to take a Chicken McNugget and turn it back into a chicken, but it's really hard to do. A lot, and so these systems are way more secure than our current systems. >> Yes, it fundamentally impossible, and you don't have a third party verification system that's also an exposure area, it's globally distributed, right, so let's go back to what is Blockchain? What's the Blockchain 101? >> Well, Blockchain is a distributed ledger where anything of value, from money to votes, and music can be stored, transacted, managed, in a secure and confidential way, and where trust between parties is established, not by a big intermediary, but by cryptography, by collaboration, and some clever code. >> So, talk about the premise of the book. Sort of why you wrote it and what the fundamental premise is. >> Well, three years ago, three years and five weeks ago, at a father son ski trip, over a large piece of beef, and a very nice bottle of wine, Alex and I started thinking about what all this means. And we decided to work together. And he wrote a very cogent paper about how this new ecosystem could govern itself and my publisher got wind of it and said, "That sounds like a book." So we launched a dozen projects, couple of years ago, on how this technology changes, not just financial services, how it changes the corporation and the deep structure and architecture of the firm. How it changes every industry. How it changes government. Democracy, there's an opportunity to end the crisis of legitimacy of our democratic institutions. But what it means for culture and so on. And then we wrote the book. And it was published in May 10th last year, it's been a big best seller, it's the best selling book on Blockchain. It's actually the only real book on Blockchain. In some countries it was ridiculous. For a while, in Canada, it was competing with Harry Potter and an adult coloring book, as the best selling book in the country. >> That's the state of our culture right there. (laughing) >> What is an adult coloring book, anyway? (laughing) >> That's the million dollar question right there. >> There are a lot of geeky books on Blockchain, but this-- >> Well, actually, there aren't, there are books on crypto currency, on Bitcoin. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And but the only real book on Blockchain is Blockchain Revolution. >> So, but you're really focusing on the business impact, organizational impact, even societal impact, so explain the premise. >> Well, where do we start? Let's start with the firm. Corporation, foundation of capitalism, based on double entry accounting. That's what enabled capitalism. Well, with Blockchain, you get a third entry onto the ledger, so you have triple entry accounting, so you don't need, say, audits. Every year, because there's an annual audit. That's just the beginning. Because the reason that we have firms, according to the Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase, is that the transaction costs in an open market, like the cost of search, finding all the right people and information, the cost of contracting, for every little activity we're contract prohibitive. The cost of coordination, getting all these people to work together, didn't know each other. The cost of establishing trust, all of that in an open market is prohibitive, so we bring that inside the boundaries of a firm. Well, Blockchain will devastate those transaction costs. So we're talking about a fundamental change in how we orchestrate capability, in our economy, to innovate, to create goods and services. And for that matter, to create public value. So this is not some interesting little technology. This is the second era of the internet. I think it's going to be bigger than the first era was. >> So the internet, I mean, the value creation side. So let's take that additional asset side. So assume everything's digitized, got IOTs out there, industrial IOT, wearables, smart cars, smart cities, smart everything, but now you've got to create value as a firm, so let's roll that forward, we have the now somewhat frictionless transactional environment in an open market, how do firms create value out of those digital assets? >> Well, they'll create value in some ways that are radically different than today. So let me give you an example. Who are the big digital value disrupters today? Well, you can start with the so called sharing economy. You know, Uber, Airbnb, Lyft. >> The Cube. >> Sorry? >> The Cube. (laughing) We're disrupting the world right now. >> Well, you're actually not a sharing economy company in the sense that I think. >> In the traditional sense. >> Actually, I don't think they are, either. I mean, the reason that Uber's successful is precisely because it doesn't share. It's a service aggregator. So, why do you need a $70,000,000,000 corporation to do what Uber does? It could be done by a distributed ledger with some smart contracts and autonomous agents. Everything that the corporation does could be done by software. Airbnb. You know, how about, we'll call it B Airbnb, Blockchain Airbnb. So, you go onto your mobile device, and you're looking for a place, and you're going to be in Vegas, and all the hotels are booked because of IBM, and then you find a place, you book it, and then you show up, you turn your key that starts a smart contract payment to the owner of the apartment or the room, and you check out, you turn your key, it's closed. The software has a payment system built into it. So the renter of the room gets paid. You enter a five star on your device. And that's immutable, and it's a five star rating on a Blockchain. Everything that Airbnb as a company does could actually be done by this software. So, Bob Dylan, there's something going on here and you don't know what it is, I mean, people are all locked in an old paradigm about what's disruption. Get ready for this. >> So what's the impact, I mean, not the impact, what's the inhibitor, so, obviously, any new technology you see all the naysayers, so obviously this is a great vision, what's going to be the impediment? >> Well, they are all kinds of impediments and inhibitors, and there are all kinds of ways that this can get messed up. A big one is that we're overcoming now is that people think, well this is about Bitcoin, well, it's not. The real pony here is the underlying technology of Blockchain, and that's the biggest innovation in computer science in a generation, I think. But also, you know, I wrote this 1992 in Paradigm Shift, I said, when you get a new paradigm, it's a new mental model, and these things cause dislocation and disruption and uncertainty, and they're nearly always received with coolness. I mean, you guys know what it's like to be received with coolness as you introduce a new idea as do I, going back to the '70s. But, and vested interests fight against change. And leaders of old paradigms have great difficulties embracing the new. So you think about a company like Western Union that can charge 10% for remittances that take four to seven days. Well, with new tools, they don't take four to seven days, they take minutes, and they charge, based on Blockchain, they charge a point and a half. So, it's the old-- >> The inhibitors, they got to get their solutions out there so that they could go after and eat some of the lunch of the older guys. >> Well, they have to eat their own lunch, that's-- >> Western Union could be disrupted by a new entrant, right? So you got a new entrant coming in, they got to cannibalize themselves-- >> And at that point, it tips, there are enough disruptive entrants, right? >> So, it's all those inhibitors to change and for the IT people that are at this event, this is an exciting opportunity, but you do need to learn a new kind of knowledge base to function in this distributed ledger environment. You need to learn about hyper ledger, for starters, because that's the real enterprise platform. >> All right, so folks watching, like my son who helps us out sometimes as well, you have a father son relationship, which is super inspirational. He's, say he wants to get involved in Blockchain. He wants to jump right in, he's kind of a hacker type, what does he do? How does he get involved? Obviously read the book, Blockchain Revolution, get the big picture. Is there other things you'd advise? >> Well, buying the book in massive volume is always a good first step, no. Seriously. Well, one thing I always say to people is personal use is a precondition for any kind of comprehension. So just go get yourself a wallet for some crypto currency and download it and you'll learn all about public key encryption and so on. But I think in a company there are a number of things that managers need to do. Need to start doing pilots, sandboxes, developing and understanding use cases, and our new Blockchain research institute is going to be a big help in that. But also, for an IT person, is your son an IT guy or he's more an entrepreneur? >> No, he's 21 years old. >> He's 21. >> He doesn't know anything about IT. >> He's a computer science guy. >> He's born in the cloud. IT, can't spell IT. >> Well. (laughing) >> IT's for old guys like us. (laughing) >> We're telling him what he should do, he should be here telling us what we should do. >> John: That's why we hired him, he's a little guinea pig. >> Digital natives, you know, we're digital immigrants, we had to learn the language. But, for the IT people, it's all about not just experimenting, but about moving towards operational systems and about architecture. Because our architectures are based on traditional computing environments and this is something from Paradigm Shift, you remember, I interviewed Max Hopper who invented the Sabre Reservation System for American Airlines, and he says, "The big problem, Don, "is that if I don't have a target architecture, "every time I spend a dollar, I'm building up my legacy "and making it worse by investing in IT." And so that's where I came up with this formulation, yeah, God may have created the world in six days, but he didn't have an installed base to start with. (laughing) So, what we need to do is to start to think about architectures that embrace Blockchain. And this is an historic new opportunity for anybody who cares about IT. >> Is the disruptive enabler for Blockchain the fact that we're now fully connected as a society, or is it something else that we don't see? What's your view on, what's the real wealth creating disruptive enabler? >> Well, you can sense that the rate of change is a lot faster for the second generation than the first. 1993, '94, when I wrote the Digital Economy, it was dial-up. Ebay. >> 14 four. >> Amazon didn't exist. >> Actually 98 I think it was. >> When I wrote that book. Google was five years away. Facebook was 10 years away, so but now we've got wireless, we've got IP everywhere. We've got mobility. We've got the cloud, we've got all the preconditions for this new innovation to happen a lot faster. And that's why, I mean, a year ago, there wasn't a lot of talk at this event about Blockchain. Today it's the big buzz. >> I wonder if you could talk about other applications. You talk about hyper ledger, it's a great place for a starting point, especially for IBM, but one of the areas I'm excited about is security. You know, like the MIT Enigma Project, and there are others, you know, security is such a problem. Every year we look back, John and I, we say, do we feel more secure? And no, we feel less secure. What about the application of Blockchain in security use cases? >> Well, Blockchains are more secure in a number of ways. One is they're harder to hack than traditional servers. And people say, "No, our company, we're bulletproof." Right, tell that to JP Morgan and Home Depot-- >> Target fidelity-- >> The Democratic National Convention, but also tell it to the CIA. I mean, if the CIA can be hacked, then any of these traditional server technologies can be hacked. So that, alone, is a huge case to move towards hyper ledger and these other type platforms. But you said, "I feel less secure these days." And that's a really interesting statement. Because I think that, in many ways, the security of the person has been undermined by the internet of information, as well. That, first of all, we don't own the data that we create. That's a crazy situation. We all create this massive new asset. It's a new asset class. Probably more important than industrial plant, in the industrial age. Maybe more important than land in the agrarian age. We create it, but these data frackers, you know, like-- >> Facebook. >> --Facebook. Own it and that's a big problem. The virtual you is not owned by you. So we need to get our identity back and to manage it responsibly, and people who say to me, "Well, Don, privacy's dead, get over it." This is foolishness. Privacy is the foundation of freedom. And all these things are happening in our world today that undermine our basic security. Our identity's being taken away from us. Or the fact that things happen in this digital world that we don't know, what are the underlying algorithms? If I take this, and I drop it, that's called gravity. I know what's going to happen. But if I go onto Facebook and I do certain things, I have no idea what are the algorithms that's determining what's happening with that and how the data is used. So-- >> Hello fake news. That's how fake news came about. >> Well, yeah, totally. >> People don't know what to trust and it's like, wait a minute. >> Exactly, and well, this has led, also, to a total fragmentation of public discourse, where we've all ended up in these little self reinforcing echo chambers where the purpose of information is not to inform us, it's to, I don't know, give us comfort. >> Divide people. >> Yeah. So, I'm not saying that Blockchains can fix everything, in fact, they can't fix anything, it's humans that fix things. But the key point that Alex and I make in the book is that once again the technology genie has escaped from the bottle, and it was summoned by this person that we don't even know who they are. At a very uncertain time in history. But it's giving us another kick at the can. To sort of fix these problems. To make a world where trust is embedded in everything and where things are trustworthy, and where people are trustworthy, and maybe we can rewrite the whole economic power grid and the old order of things for the better. And that's really important. >> My final question for you, and this is kind of a thought provoking question. Every major revolution, you see, big one, you've seen a counter culture, '60s, computer revolution, PC revolution, are we on the edge now of a new counter culture developing? Because the things you're kind of teasing out is this new generation, is it the '60s version of tech hippies or is there going to be a, because you're getting at radical reconfiguration, radical value creation, this is good evolution, and fast. So you can almost see the young generation, like my son, you're talking about, teaching us how to do it, that's a counter culture. Do you see that happening? >> Well, first of all, I see this change in culture profoundly, so artists can get fairly compensated for the work they create. Imogen Heap puts her song on a Blockchain platform, and the song's inside a smart contract that specifies the IP rights. And you want to listen to it, maybe it's free, you want to put it in your movie, it costs more. The way she describes it is the song acts as a business, and it has a bank account. So, we can profoundly change many aspects of culture, bringing more justice to our culture. But I'm not sure there'll be a counter culture in the traditional sense because you've got people embracing Blockchain that want to fix a bunch of problems, but also people who want to make large organizations more competitive and more effective. The smart banks are embracing this because they know they can cut their transaction costs in half, probably. And they know that if they don't do it, somebody else will. >> And IBM's embracing it because they write software and they service all those firms with technology. >> Well, IBM, the case of IBM is really interesting, and I'll end on that one. That if you think about it, and I go back, I mean, there were only main frames when I started, and IBM was the leader of the bunch, right? And then all the bunch died, but IBM somehow reinvented itself and it got into mini computers and then we saw the rise of the PC and IBM invented the IBM PC, and then we got into the internet, and once again, all these companies died off but somehow IBM was able to find within itself the leadership to transform itself. And I'm, I won't say I'm shocked, but I have to tell you, I'm really delighted that IBM has figured this one out and is driving hard to be a leader of this next generation of the internet. >> And they're driving open source, too, to give IBM a plug, Don Tapscott, great to have you on the Cube. Good luck with your speech today. A legend in the industry, great thinker, futurist. Amazing work. Blockchain is the next revolution, it will impact, it's an opportunity for entrepreneurs, this is a disruptive enabler, you can literally take down incumbent businesses. Changing the nature of the firm, radical economical change. Thanks so much for sharing the insight. >> Nice hat, too. >> I got a nice hat. I got a free bowl of soup with this hat, as they say-- >> Don: It's all about the Blockchain, baby. >> It's all about the Blockchain. >> It's all about the Blockchain. >> More Blockchain Cube analysis as we disrupt you with more coverage, I'm John Furrier, Dave Velante, stay with us. (musical sting)