 Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. Hello everyone, welcome back to our exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico. This is theCUBE 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 Industries CEO. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. 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, theCUBE 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, whales they call them, 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. Yeah, well thank you. It's been an amazing turnout. I really commend the Puerto Rican government officials for stepping up and the Department of Economic Development is our partner in this and they wanted to really promote this. And as you know, there's many cryptocurrency holders who are migrating to the island for tax purposes in the season or tax base, which is all fully compliant and been in the law sets for a while. But the governor has really stepped up with his team. We've got Secretary Manuel LeBoy, 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 in structure, if you will, logic. He's great. And also George Joyner, the banking commissioner was here and spoke lovely. So the bank commissioner is also forming a formal working group, as is Manuel LeBoy. 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 a new ecosystem. For a lot of reasons. One, their motive is the rebound going on, the hurricane hit, but now you have a new opportunity to be a digital nation, digital island. They're part of 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 the people of the cryptocurrency world believe that the technology is so robust, they want to use Puerto Rico as a test bed for infrastructure, for 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 cryptocurrency 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 Big Brother largely out of it and just making it fair and transparent. So, I mean, that movement is huge and if people want to understand cryptocurrency, they kind of need to understand the social impacts and the ability to really improve people's lives. I mean, this is not just a tech conference. Yeah, we do hundreds of tech conferences a year in our 10th year with theCUBE 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 into one. Talk a little bit about the stats. I mean, you guys sold out early. You weren't expecting this kind of response here. Give some color into the behind the scenes around the event, blockchain unbound. Yeah, thank you. So we had an idea to kind of bring the dialogue onto the island of Puerto Rico and really build a proponency of information and through the process and this has been a five and a half week process. We had I believe over 800 attendees here today. It's been sold out for several weeks. We're getting calls from everybody as you can imagine to get a ticket. But at the end of the day, there's a great mix of financiers, technologists, government people, just regular citizens who want to understand the 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 are gonna 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 waves in my day, my age, but this one is massive and everyone compares it 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 hustle, they do something great. Then you see the PR firms come in promoting it. You have 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 just pumping a lot of ICOs. 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 does that next level growth look like from an architecture standpoint? It's also some government participation. But there's competition. I mean, Estonia wants to be, I heard France wants to be the ICO city. I hear Armenia, you got Bahrain. I mean, every country wants to be that country. They do, and we work closely. So what's the leadership required to go to that next level? That's a great question. 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 cryptocurrency play, some type of virtual currency asset into their own system. What I'm seeing is nothing sort of remarkable. The speed of technology and energy into this market is frankly just breathtaking. So what we're looking for next is that, 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's a technological leap because it is complicated. It's going to take some time to build out and create the speed necessary to make it ubiquitous behind everything that we do online. And that moment's 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 it's a new level of leadership. And again, that next level requires new constituents, new stakeholders. I was not happy with the John Oliver greasing of Brock Pierce. I thought that was unacceptable. But what that sentiment is about is, I'll put that little pinion in there, but I didn't like what he did. I thought that was horrible. There's no reason to be nasty. I mean, he just took them down and it was 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 in. You got global governments coming in. So you have that maturation 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 to 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, that's an interesting question because 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 you've got just straight business people that just simply want to economize and efficiency and just 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 have been very clear just saying, we think self-regulation is a good idea. Step it up. And that's one thing at 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. 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. They don't want the regulatory regimes and or pressures and signaling stunt the growth of the market. Yeah, I heard something yesterday that really rung a bell for me. It says, we can accomplish the same thing that KYC and AML 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 asking 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 NICOs in the Asian market over the last two and a half years. And so they're very plugged in 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 on your lap, lightning in a bottle. Congratulations. But good compliment. What does blockchain industries do? Thank you. We are a diversified financial holding company and we invest across the ecosystem of blockchain companies and that includes, you know, attempt to develop a 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 speak because there's some technical things that need to understand to really apply this technology into the business world. So are people investing in your fund or your company? Is that how it works? 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 that are hearing about it, they're seeing it, it's here to stay and the momentum is just beginning. And it is a social movement, I agree. Congratulations, you guys did a great job. I know, you know, only a couple of 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 theCUBE, exclusive coverage here in Puerto Rico. I'm John Furrier, back with more after this short break.