 Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE, covering Polygon 18, brought to you by Polygon. Welcome back to our live coverage. It's exclusive CUBE coverage in the Bahamas for Polygon 18. It's cryptocurrency. It's token economics. It's decentralized worlds. It's all about the future of the internet, Dave. I'm with Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Margo Avatarjian EVP, a transform group and partner and co-founder of Cool Pool Fund. Great to have you on. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So you are on the women's panel. I saw you up there, women in crypto, one of our big focus areas this year, as well as crypto for good. So super excited to have a conversation with you. But first, take a step back. Introduce yourself. What are you working on? What's cool? What's getting you excited in the space and life? Where's the crypto thing? What does it mean to you? Sure. Well, I lived in San Francisco in 2011. So I had a bunch of nerd friends. And I heard about this crazy cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. I had free office space for my startup. So that meant free electricity. So I was like, oh, let's start mining because we have free electricity. We're not really raising money with this thing. And I ended up not doing that. I thought that'd be a jerk thing. Though I'd be retired by now. So kind of regretting that decision. And then 2012, I met the people who were relaunching the First American Bitcoin exchange, Trade Hill. I ended up joining that. And at that time, I used to say, oh, I'm the leading woman in Bitcoin. But I was also the only woman in Bitcoin. And then after that, I ended up co-founding another Bitcoin exchange called Apple Point, which pivoted still around. And then I co-founded another exchange called Monetigo, pivoted also still around. And then I joined Transform Group as EVP. And we're the leading PR firm in the Bitcoin and blockchain ICO space. So we've done most of the big ICOs. We did Ethereum, Augur, Madesafe, Golem, Gnosis, Quantum, Unicoin, Wax, Bankor, et cetera. We've done over 70, 60 at this point. So I have a lot of experience seeing ICOs, how they've kind of changed and evolved. Then I started a pre-ICO syndicate. So getting in before the public sale, getting a steeper discount, which then turned into a fund because people were like, can I just give you money? This is really complicated. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, just you do it for me. Yeah, I know. So I was like forced. My hand was forced. I'll take your cash and send it to me. No contract. Well, no, no, no. Actually, the space you really, really have to have a team of lawyers, it's you know, you're not too big to fail. You're not going to get a client. Just take the cash and say you were hacked and then disappear. Yeah, well, you know, it's getting a little more difficult to do that. It looks like they're dragging it. Margaret wouldn't steal electricity. Yeah, that's actually true. I know. Of course I'm being visited. Comedians are crying out. Look, I'm trying to get her on a roll here. All right, okay, funniest story in crypto for you right now that you've seen. Could be back in history in time. What's the funniest thing you've seen or the most outrageous thing? Is this PG? Like, look at it. It's internet. It's unrated. It's NC17 or unrated. You mean the time when one of the crypto hedge fund people took a ton of liquid acid and then I had to take care of him and he ended up eating all my birth control pills and had to take him to the hospital because I thought he was going to die? Yeah, so that was pretty crazy. OD on birth control pills. That's a first. That would be a first. Because the only person that was awake at the time that I could ask who was a chemist and was an EMT said that his body temperature was going to rise, but when I took him to the hospital in New York, the nurses, I thought he was going to die. And then the nurses are like, well, he's not going to get his period. That's for sure. I'm like, is he going to die? They're like, bring him back if he's spawning. I'm like, so he's okay, he's all right. And so, yeah, he was fine. They're like, we're more worried about the acid. So, yeah, that's, I guess, maybe up there. So you've seen, it was a 60, 70, you've seen a lot. You got a good observation space. Tell us what that's like. And I mean, public relations for me is hard. Like messaging, I don't have that gene as you know, John. But so, how have you been able to shape it? Do you get a lot of them who just go, oh no, these guys really need tons of help or take us through some of the examples, maybe not specifically, but just generally how you approach that problem. Sure, so first of all, we don't just take anyone. We do vetting and it has to have a story we can sell. And luckily at our firm, we have a lot of people, including the founder, Michael Turpin and myself, who have a background in the space. So we understand really what they're saying. And our job really is to break it down so regular people understand what the heck we're talking about and why it's important. So I think a lot of part of the problem with people not getting in the cryptocurrency is that they get too hung up on the technical details. You know, I don't know how my television turns on. I don't know how my debit card works. There's so many things we do without knowing the technical backgrounds of it. And we don't get hung up on that. And for some reason, this industry, people get really hung up on the technology instead of understanding the uses and the purpose of it. And so that's what we really do. We talk about what is the purpose of this? How is this important? How is this changing in industry and relating it maybe to news that's going on right then? So it's really just making it understandable to regular people. You know, let's talk about the women in crypto conversation, women in tech. Dave and I have a passion for this because we have a lot of women friends that are either executives and or in good positions and we interview them like they were a guy. So we really didn't never really got into that whole thing. Turns out we got a big library of women in tech but now it's been so politicized and so important. Yeah, certainly we agree that you got to do all that. But if we're even having the conversation, that makes the problem. So at one point that do we need to do to kind of keep the vibe going to saying, okay, let's focus on positive and what's your just view of how to make it engaging because women make up 50% of the population. Yeah. And so, what do we do? First I want to say there are actually some bad ass women in crypto. Two of the biggest ICOs had female founders, they're Bankor and Tezos. There's actually, I would say more than you would expect but they're not as loud and brash as I am. So it might be harder for you to see them. Conferences definitely need to be putting more women on these panels. This conference here has a lot of representation by far really strong. Yeah, well to be honest, like putting me on a woman in blockchain panel, I love talking to women and inspiring them and telling them you can do it cause part of the thing is nobody's a blockchain expert. All right, there's no such thing because it's just changing so fast. There's too much information out there and I think sometimes women get hung up on needing to know everything before they do something. And I like to say, you know, probably 80% of the men here have no idea what they're talking about. So it's, you don't have to connect. I mean, always be learning in this space. It's an evolution. Yeah, and in doing, when I first got in this space and started the first American Bitcoin exchange, I didn't even know what an exchange was, you know? But I met one of the co-founders of YouTube who was into Bitcoin who had a fund and I ended up leveraging that to get into this and I learned as I went. And what's so exciting right now about blockchain is that it's really integrated in pretty much every industry you can imagine. Like people are doing ICOs in healthcare, in fashion, in anything you can think of. So if you have experience and skills in one industry, you can then leverage that in another. So if you're a woman in finance, guess what? If you join someone's ICO and they have someone from a traditional finance world, you're lending credibility and that's valuable. And that kind of experience and we need to bring more mature industries into blockchain. That's what I think. And you've heard me say this, like never before, you could see because it's digital, because it's data, what blockchain is, people can traverse industries like never before. It used to be, if you're in healthcare, you're in healthcare for a life. That's it. But so many of the digital skills that people are learning are applicable to other industries. Do you feel like, I think you just said it, but that will promote more women involvement? You're saying it's disproportionately high here. I don't know. I don't know. I thought it was a little interesting that they put me on a woman in blockchain panel instead of putting me on a panel that I could talk about my experience since I have a lot. That's my point. Instead of that, there's nothing. Like winning women or whatever. Well, I wouldn't segregate all the women into one panel. I'd want to put them on other panels. And you want to put them on panels where they're pros and they can do a good job independently just being a player. A lot of women say that though. They say, let's not make this about women in tech or you know, Lara Logan and that crew may have me too too. Well, it depends on what their social justice gene is. But I'm curious how do you feel about that? With shining a light on whether it's women in tech, women in crypto, is that offensive to you or is it, is you welcome that? Some welcome it, others? I think it's weird because I've been in this industry for so long and now I think it's good that it's becoming a topic, but it never was anything that I even paid attention to. In fact, I rather focus on the positives because being a woman in this industry is great because guess what? I can just say whatever I want. I can get away with saying things and like calling out the elephant in the room where most men can't. But I think part of the problem is these guys here want to hire women, but how do they find them? And I just had someone come up to me from Zed saying we want to hire a female CMO. Like how do we find that? And the jobs are out there. It's about being able to get these women who want to do this and connecting them to opportunities. But on the other hand, women really need to be more assertive and be like, hey, I don't know anything about blockchain. I want to learn. So I'm going to go to a conference instead of being like, I don't know anything and I'm scared. So I don't want to go to a conference, you know? And like I said, most men have no idea what they're talking about here. Well, I mean, everyone's learning. We're trying to figure it out. Margo, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. We're looking for the Stand Up Comedian Act. We're going to get that next episode of CryptoCube. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, check out my videos, too. What's your YouTube address? It's youtube.com slash margo with an X. M-A-R-G-A-U-X-W-I-T-H-A-N-X. All right, we'll put it on the blog when we catch it. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break.