 From New York, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Week. Now, here's John Furrier. Hello everyone, welcome back. This is theCUBE here in New York City on the ground for Consensus 2018. Part of Blockchain Week, New York City. I'm John Furrier, your host theCUBE. And Enrique Rodriguez is here with me. He's a Blockchain guru and he's part of the crypto consulting group. Welcome to theCUBE. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. So I love the Bitcoin little thing there. Come on, you holding some Bitcoin right now? Yeah, yeah. So tell me about your project. It says in the hallways here and checking in on what's going on, you're working with Andrew Prell, you're an alumni, a cool project. Explain what that is. So the project with Andrew or what we do? What do you guys do first? Yeah, so essentially, there's a big problem right now with people trying to get into the space. There's a lot of pitfalls, newcomers fall victim too. There's not a lot of education out there. It's really fragmented across the internet. So what we're really trying to do is provide really great resources to people that are looking to get into the space. We essentially want to be the on ramp for people looking to get into the crypto space. Where are you located? Louisville, Kentucky. Okay. Yeah, so it's a different location. I think that's why we stand out quite a bit because we're trying to bring such a new and disruptive technology to a place that's not, you know, so on the leading edge of technology sometimes. And you know what's cool about it too is I live in Silicon Valley, which needs to be the epicenter. Everyone's got to go to Silicon Valley. The blockchain phenomenon and crypto in general is a global thing. It is not one place. You can be anywhere. Absolutely. So what are you doing? What are you working on with people? What are some of the things that your projects you're attacking? What are some of the things? Yeah, so right now we're really working on our educational events. We're really putting together just great content for people to come and join us and really just learn about the tech. We're also working with Andrew Prell from Silicon Nexus Project. He's having an ICO soon. And one of the things we're doing for them is really auditing the accounts that they have their tokens in. So they have, you know, in their tokenomics, they have funds to decide for the team, for the advisors, all these different things. And they also have 10 investment funds that they're going to be using to essentially get more developers to develop on their project. And so we'll be auditing those transactions that they send out just to ensure the transparency and that people know the investors that are putting their money into this project know where those funds are going. So basically it's an audit trail, but it's not code review. So when you do smart contracts, there's one aspect which is code review. And the other side of the coin, so to speak, is the transactional efficiency and effectiveness. Yeah, no, absolutely. So if, you know, out of this wallet, they send 10,000 droids to this developer or this project, you know, we are essentially going to be putting together reports for that. So, you know, there's all the auditing and the transparency available. So you're automating his system and so he can manage it. Absolutely. His alternative is what? What's his alternative? Andrew's in particular. Yeah, I think he went to the big four and they really didn't know, I guess, display enough knowledge about the blockchain, the blockchain explorers and all those things and really came in at a high price. And so instead of doing it themselves, you know, it's something that we do on a regular basis, you know, blockchain explorers looking up transaction second nature to us. So, I mean, it's really a good fit and it's an industry first. It's awesome. You know, it really could be a breakthrough for ICOs that come. So we're hoping it works out well. And Ricky, how did you get here? What's your journey? Tell your story. It has been a while. So I'm 23 years old, around the age of 20, started hearing about Bitcoin and blockchain. I worked at UPS in the international department in Louisville, which if you're not familiar, we have the Worldport, the biggest automated hub in the world. But we were having a lot of problems with the supply chain, you know, packages going missing, invoices being fraudulent, a lot of manual paperwork. So really just looking into some of these problems and trying to find a solution, stumbled into blockchain, and really went down the rabbit hole and Kevin came up since, started telling people about it, meeting with people in coffee shops. He became a enthusiast, an evangelist. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's really grown from, you know, me meeting people in restaurants, coffee shops, and now we have office, we have eight consultants working with us, and really trying to make a national network of people that can just educate, you know, investors and individuals, you know, on the technology. Are you happy you made the move? Oh, so happy. You know, I work for myself now, it's really the happiest I've ever been. I'm passionate about something that, you know, can potentially change the world. And so, I love the space I'm in, and just being here with so many like-minded individuals, you know, from so many different backgrounds, you know, it really is a beautiful thing that Coin Desk was able to put together here. And it's also cool, a lot of new people are coming in, both old and young. I mean, old guys like me, we saw Dan Bates on just before, you know, we're kindred spirits, we're the old dogs. He's doing real business, but the young guns are making it happen too. Absolutely. So it's not about ageism. Yeah. A lot of those old systems guys know that this is all kind of one big operating system. Even with our clients, I mean, we have people as young as 15, coming in like, hey, how do I figure this out? And 85, people that don't even have email set up, you know, they want to get involved in the space. I mean, we have a wide spectrum of people. If you got an AOL account, we're ignoring you. Although I just tried to turn mine on. I have to, instead of doing the throwback, I got to ask you because one of the things I've really been a part of my whole life in computer science is open source. Even when I was a renegade and back in the old days. Now it's tier one. Open source cloud computing has really, in open source in particular, really built the idea of a community. Absolutely. The blockchain community is very small, still young, tight knit, and growing. So as people come in, what's your advice to people entering the community? How they should align, what should they do? This is something we have to deal with a lot. So whenever, because a lot of the headlines that go around, you know, the Bitcoin bubble, you know, all the crazy gains, the Lambo's, people come in with this mindset that it's a get rich quick thing. You know, they want to dump money into, you know, the newest ICO or the next big Bitcoin. And what we really have to educate them on is that, you know, this is a long-term play. We're still very early in this space. You know, never invest anything that you're, you know, not willing to lose. And so a lot of these, we call them the commandments, actually just in a podcast episode on them. So there's a lot of just base level things that we try and enlighten our newcomers in. And, you know, it's been really great because, you know, a lot of people, whenever they learn about this technology on under the surface, you know, it's just enlightening. And so it's been great. The community grows. A lot of businesses are growing into the community. A lot of people are joining the community. But also a big trend is that big business and small, medium-sized businesses are looking at it as an opportunity. So I got to ask you the question, right? Which is, I see a lot of people out there that are passing themselves off as go gurus because they bought Bitcoin in 2013. Oh, absolutely. They don't, but they haven't actually built anything. So a lot of people are hiring fraudsters. So I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with trading Bitcoin and being involved in the currency. Yeah, absolutely. But the difference between someone who buys currency and builds the next generation with the community, how does someone vet that person? How does someone, as a business owner, how do you figure out the pretenders from the players? Yeah, I think it's really about getting to know the person that you're talking to about this, seeing how transparent they are, their ideologies, why they're in the space, why they bought Bitcoin. A lot of these fundamental questions that you could tell a lot about a person from their answers. Because we've come across that a lot. Whenever, the reason I started this company is because over the past three years or so, it's been a lot of trial and error really trying to figure this stuff out. And so just to- I always ask too, what have you built? Yeah, no, absolutely. And so we're currently actually in the beta version of a platform that we want to build that's essentially going to allow us to connect these consultants as well as a portfolio tracker, but all the good things in the world. I got to ask you a question then. What's the coolest thing you've done? The coolest thing I've done, probably getting my pilot's license a month after my driver's license in high school. Just in general, you'd be able to leave school and go fly planes. All of my best friends were in class. You know, it was really, it was amazing. Surreal, Enrique, great to chat with you. You as well. You as well. Awesome voice. So it's good to have you on theCUBE and good luck with your venture. Thank you. With Andrew Prell. That's cool project and all the things you work on. Best of success to you. Enrique Rodriguez here on theCUBE, breaking it down. A lot of new action going on, a lot of great voices, a lot of talent coming into the community. Of course, it is a community. It's tightening it. It's early, growing super fast, and it's the crypto action. It's theCUBE bringing it all to you. I'm John Furrier. We'll be watching after this short break. We'll be right back.