 Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound, brought to you by Blockchain Industries. Okay, welcome back everyone live here at theCUBE in Puerto Rico for our extended coverage, exclusive coverage, two days, wall to wall, I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media Inc. We're here at Albergio, founder of DigitalBits.io. Two days out, we're just rocking here in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico. Great to see you. Thanks for having me guys. CUBE alumni, you're like my wingman on the crypto. We both were at Polycon 18. You were the only CUBE alumni there, first show in crypto as we start our tour. Now we have a mass, probably like 40 interviews. So now we have 40 new CUBE alumni's, but a great community growing. A new level of interesting dynamics I want to get your reaction to. In any wave, there's always a start. Entrepreneurs make things happen, then the promoters. The promoters and the entrepreneurs cheerlead each other. They cheerlead, but it gets up to the point where there's a lot of growth. And then the next level is a new set of stakeholders, investors, global players, new stakeholders, governments, it's happening now. For me, this is the moment I start to see the ecosystem going to that next level. Blockchain unbound the event we're here in Puerto Rico is a combination of developer conference, industry conference, investor conference, economic world forum rolled into one. So it's kind of a unique thing. You've been doing a lot of presentations. You're a sponsor here, even though you're a startup. A lot of conversations. Do you agree with that? Your thoughts, your reaction? Yeah, there's definitely, the topics throughout the presentations, both yesterday and today, we've covered all those areas that you've discussed. With, in addition to that, I would say, there's a focus on Puerto Rico itself. I mean, this particular event that we chose to sponsor, which, you know, I'd like to point out that everyone is promoting our logo simply by wearing the lanyard for the event. But your product's not even out yet. No, we actually, we had an announcement this week. So we issued a press release, basically articulating for everyone to understand the vision for our blockchain, and also announcing that it's going to be launched on Monday. So we're really excited about that. The team's been working really hard over the past, you know, number of months working away. And we have more exciting news that obviously will be coming out very shortly in terms of what we've done and so forth. But our actual blockchain network is going live on Monday. I noticed Lottery's also a sponsor. They had a hot deal, you have a hot deal. Your product's not out yet. It's coming out on Monday. You have an announcement. What is the product? The digital bits. It's an open source project. Yeah, so what's it going to end up doing? Blockchain infrastructure protocol. It's our own blockchain network that we've launched. But anybody can tokenize on this blockchain. However, the specific vision for our project is to support the loyalty and rewards industry. We see a huge, I mean, a third of points every year that it gets you go on redeemed. In the United States alone there's over $100 billion in perceived value points sitting on the balance sheets of these issuers from retailers, airlines, so on and so forth. It's a huge liquidity issue. That number grows every year. And so that's 1.0. And blockchain has the opportunity to bring loyalty rewards, obviously many other things, into 2.0 and change that game a bit and eliminate tremendous amount of friction and challenges that traditionally have been experienced by consumers, businesses, and so forth in the space. And so on our blockchain, businesses, whether it's their existing loyalty program or new loyalty program, can tokenize that program on our blockchain. And so we're not ourselves operating loyalty program, but we are very much supporting that industry. And in addition to that, these various points that are tokenized on our blockchain consumers could trade points A for points B and so on. That's awesome. Also Al, you've been also active in the community here in Puerto Rico. I've noticed that you've been involved in a lot of activities here on site. Puerto Rico, since the hurricane, sideways, big problems, aid, now getting back on its feet. This community has been doing a lot of stuff. You've been very active in that. What's going on? Explain to the people, what is the vibe in Puerto Rico? Is it rebounding? Is it rebounded? Rebounding coming back, the roll of tech, the tax breaks. There's a lot of things going on here. And there's a number of events, obviously, this week and going into early next week under this theme called Restart Week. What we've all learned is that there's still a lot of parts of this island without power and so forth. What's really great, I think, about this event, among other things, is that all of the proceeds from this event, so it's a nonprofit, go to the people of Puerto Rico. And beyond that, there is a community here, whether it's early in the morning, for the course of the day and so forth, they've arranged initiatives and what have you to do things here to help get back. And I don't think it's just isolated this week. There's obviously been a lot of news in terms of things that have been happening, leading up to now and things happening in the future. Blockchain and the Blockchain community, cryptocurrency communities and so forth, are really focused on wanting to help this island. And I think it's a wonderful island. I mean, it's my first visit here, but it's not hard to fall in love with Puerto Rico. Well, theCUBE has landed here for two days. We're wrapping up, two days of coverage. What's your observation in the hallways? I hear a lot of things happening. I heard one VC, or investor, not VC, but now token investor, seven deals, MOUs, a lot of smart people here. So the block tower guy earlier, I see all the legacy, whales are here. So the entrepreneurs are here, a lot of money flowing around. You know, so there's obviously a lot of news in terms of how regulation is evolving, some jurisdictions faster than others in terms of the introduction of clarity and what have you. But that clearly doesn't appear to be stopping the enthusiasm in Blockchain. I mean, and it's just further validation in terms of how powerful this technology really is and will continue to find its way into society and so forth. I think people have faith that in some of these jurisdictions that aren't necessarily moving as quickly, that they'll get there. And so, you know, as a result of that, people just continue to stay in the game because it's great to be early. So I got to ask you about the, just overall activities, on-site, off-site, coin agendas around the corner tomorrow. Yes, we're sponsored there as well, by the way. Well, you're flush with cash. Why sponsoring, just curious. So, because you're a startup, you don't have a product yet. No, that's right, but you funded the company. Yes, yeah. And so we're getting our brand out there now. We're coming out of stealth mode. This was the first event that we chose to sponsor. Coin Agenda obviously being the second. And so, very important, we want to let consumers, businesses, the community know what we're doing with blockchain. And we have, again, of course, in the next few weeks, traditional announcements we'll be making in terms of the great people that are involved, great partners, and so forth. So we're really excited to get that out in the open. And, you know, at the end of the day, when you build a product, marketing is important. All right, and so this is a great community to support. Proceeds are going to this particular event. Proceeds go to a great cause, and a lot of great people here. So, you know, among the people on the planet that we would love to have know what we were up to, and so that's why we made the decision. So, you're doing an ICO. We're not doing an ICO. You're not doing an ICO, okay. What are you doing? So we have a lot of interest, obviously, in our project. And, you know, we basically are taking alternative, compliant approach to this, and we'll be announcing that, obviously, at some point in the future, but we're not doing an ICO. I was saying, well said, legal statement. Yeah, I practiced that one. You practiced that one? I'll try to knock you off your game. Okay, we'll go back and rephrase the question. So, how are you financing this? So, the great thing is that we've done nothing crypto in terms of creating, you know, having capital to build this. So... Meaning your own capital? Yeah, we had our own capital. So, Digital Bits was born in a company called Fuse Chain. So, Fuse Chain raised traditional equity to go do what it wanted to do. And among those things was to give birth to this open source project called the Digital Bits Project. And so, you know, we didn't need to prematurely create a token just for the sake of having a funding event so we would have capital to build this. We did not need to do anything crypto-related to be able to have capital to build our blockchain. But now you are doing crypto-related. Well, so, what's happening with us is that, again, the network goes live on Monday. We'll be clearly demonstrating for the market the utility and, you know, organically you'll see use of what we've done. And obviously during stealth mode, we've evangelized with key partners or prospective partners at the time. Who's going to be on your launch? Who's going to be using your chain? So, it will be obviously businesses that are looking to tokenize. But in addition to that... But you have names. We have names. You know, unfortunately, I can't say who they are at this time. Are you going to announce them on Monday? We will be announcing in the future. Yeah, so not on Monday. Okay. On Monday. We will be announcing the launch. We'll announce who are amongst the new additions to the team as well on Monday. Following the launch, we'll announce who some of the partners are as well. Well, rumor has it you got a hot deal. I can tell by your body language, you're trying not to reveal it. What's been the reaction for this project? It's been phenomenal. I mean, it's, you know, obviously as an entrepreneur to see a vision become a reality and for others to share that enthusiasm is, you know, it's humbling. And so, but, you know, we're very focused. We know it's still... You know, that's a saying that I like. You know, in the early days, it's not necessarily the time to, you know, crack open the champagne. You still have to demonstrate product market fit. You have to help build a market in our particular case. And so there's a lot of hard work. Launching is a start line, not the finished line. It's only a step along the whole process. So a lot more steps ahead, but we're very focused. We know, we believe we know what we need to do and it's going to be a phenomenal year for us. All right, what's the coolest thing you heard this week and the weirdest thing you heard this week? No comment. No comment. No comment was the weirdest thing you heard. Okay, we know there's some weird things going on. Now, CUBE alumni, wingman on the crypto for theCUBE. Great to see you, great to have you back on. Thank you very much, John. Good stuff. Albergio, entrepreneur, founder of digitalbits.io. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. More coverage here in Puerto Rico, blockchain unbound after this short break.