 Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. Okay, welcome back everyone. Here's theCUBE live here in Toronto, Canada, in Ontario for Untraceable Presents Blockchain Futurist Conference. I'm John Furrier, here with Al Versio, Julie Lyle for the wrap-up of the show. Special guests, industry legend, Al, serial entrepreneur, Julie, CMO Barnes and Nobles. Great career you've had, you're new to the first time, looking at these big events. And the wrap-up, we try to get a handle of that. I think that the big story here, for me at least, was during this week, you had a Futurist Conference, while the price of crypto was plummeting to an all-time low for the year. You get everyone's upbeat, because they're talking about the future, not about prices. This has been a big part of what we see, build out durable companies, real entrepreneurial activity. Sure, they want to make profit, people kind of frowning a little bit here and there, but most of the time upbeat. You know, it's hard to judge things or understand things from afar, John, right? And people tend to just look at prices all day long, but that doesn't necessarily give you an indication of what's going on with blockchain technology, with some of the organizations out there. The team at Untraceable, by far, a leader, not just in Canada, but internationally, with the people that are able to try out the entrepreneurs and what have you. It's events like this that, with just a couple days, you kind of get yourself brought up to speed and keep your finger on the pulse. Big names. Yeah, huge names. And a Futurist event, you got to have some players, some whales on the money side, check. Thought lose, you're actually inventing the future. Entrepreneurial hustle, pitch competitions happening. So all this is kind of blending together. Julie, your perspective, first time seeing on a crypto culture, kind of a community, what's your observation? Well, I would echo what Al has said about the event itself. It was really well organized. And what I was impressed with, surprised, actually, but impressed with was the combination of both the technologists as well as the investors and those that are trying to understand how to build these commercial communities and commercial applications out for a marketer like myself. It's difficult enough to see around corners, but to understand this technology and have people here who are really trying to target it at solving a specific real world business problem. It seems like a natural extension of just the march on towards bigger and greater and more powerful communities. And the technology is interesting because like in previous jobs you've had, you've innovated with data, real time, user data, user experience, now the shift of token economics potentially could have a huge slingshot advantage to create new opportunities, instrumentation, target experiences, seeing that big time here. But the plumbing's not yet in place. It's like the roads aren't paved out. When is blockchain going to be good? Yeah, so everyone, I mean, there's a clue, sediment, blockchain's the future, their visions are amazing. Ironically, the name of the conference is the Blockchain Futures Conference. And so you have some visions of this that are maybe five to 10 years old, but many of what others are working on, it's the here and now, right? You have opportunities that can demonstrate product market fit today. Others, maybe, you know, within the next 24 months and they're working hard to do that. Fostering their communities of early adopters, businesses, perhaps consumers. And so I think, you know, in the market in general, there's this concern, when's the use going to happen? You know, quite frankly, we're seeing early stage projects, companies, going to market extremely quick. Normally this is the stuff that, you know, private companies do, you know, here are the successes and failures, most fail. Irrational zuberance certainly happening going on, but that's ending, you're starting to see that with some of the bubble popping a little bit. It's not so much as mega pop, it's more of a big air coming out of it. But I want to ask both of you guys, as senior industry players, because I see a couple things happening that are high level. Token economics is driving a new business model innovation. Blockchain is infrastructure, making things go immutable, having advantages, decentralized infrastructure. And the middle between the two is interoperability. These are the core themes. How do we get all those working together? And what would be the benefits of all those working together? Because interoperability is a big theme of this event. Yeah. So, I mean, it starts with obviously having a forum where you can collaborate with like-minded individuals. And you're hearing a lot of these conversations happening and getting a sense of what people are working on as well. It's a new emerging technology. I mean, this is, in terms of interoperability, you know, I tend to look at integration as perhaps more important than a focus around interoperability. Looking at pre-existing systems in the market and really identifying ways where they can slowly and gradually use aspects or features of blockchain to really start this shift and this movement and this evolution towards Web 3.0. So your observations about business model innovation, opportunities that markers and senior people should be thinking about, mindset-wise. So, you know, loyalty obviously would be a great application. But I think there's far more sophisticated business models around actually, again, the communities. The power of networks, right? And artificial intelligence, blockchain, and just what the internet and technology is doing to drive those communities and to empower those consumers. That's where this is headed. It seems to me like a very natural extension. I would also say, though, that there's a lot of work to be done in corporate America, private or public businesses. There's a lot of infrastructure to build that interoperability and to make it a seamless experience that will either drive value and adoption or won't. And we've seen that with other technologies fail as well. We've seen the same classic adoption, cloud computing, same thing. Absolutely. Amazon, no one's ever going to use it. Oh my God, let's make it consumable and easy. Boom, usage goes up. Same kind of thing going on there. Yeah, the answer interface is evolving. For all things blockchain. All right, guys, thanks so much for coming on. Final predictions. You want to dare make a prediction now? Before prediction, one of the things I'd really like to highlight for this event really was having the opportunity to share the stage with someone like Larry King. Take a minute to explain what happened. Larry King, the legend, was here. Explain what happened. The CNN, Larry King. We had fellow legends on the stage and I was humbled to be in their presence. That Larry King really was here. He had the opportunity to interview some of the brightest minds in blockchain. And a lot of ways helped bring legitimacy to this event, let alone the space. I mean, conversations I would hear in the hallways of people having conversations with people that they know and sharing with them that they were attending this event. And always, blockchain isn't Bitcoin, you're going to one of those conferences. And then mentioning that one of the headliners was Larry King, it's all of a sudden. What was your impression of him? Certainly getting up there. I would say it's exactly, it's the Larry King we know. I mean, his questions were phenomenal. Really engaging and he knew how to direct those questions. Each question he had to the right fellow attendee on stage, so it was awesome. Awesome. Well, congratulations, great job. That's a wrap here. Live in Toronto, Canada, and Ontario for the Futurist conference, Cube coverage. Special guest, Al Bercio, Julie, here in the Cube. Thanks for watching. See you next time.