 Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE. Covering Polygon 18, brought to you by PolyMath. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here at theCUBE with the Bahamas. This is the live coverage in the Bahamas for Polygon 18. I'm John Furrier. This is our wrap-up of our day two, a new show wrap-up brought in, special analyst guest, Dave Vellante had to jump on a plane, head back to Boston to get out before the snow storm and head to California, Albert Gio and I are gonna wrap it up. Al, serial entrepreneur, founder of FuseChain and CEO of FuseChain and Digital Bits, an open source project had you on yesterday. We also were out scouring last night and getting all the data. You were the only CUBE alumni at this event. Now we added another 20. Good success, good to add more thought leaders into the family with Polygon. But big story here is the security token. I mean I was talking to the founder of Polymath and Genevieve with Grid Capital and just my take is looking at the ecosystem, it's been a sigh of relief on one hand. Oh my God, finally, documents we understand, accredited investors, no scams, feel for a good solid foundation to get funding, no rush to do a utility token because although utility is super important, people were using utility tokens to get funding, using that money and running as fast as they can to build a product, sub-optimized kind of role there. So again, big news there. No absolutely, it's been natural evolution and companies like Polymath and Securitize and others are helping with this natural progression and birth of the security token. And there's clearly a lot of people here interested in that, a lot of action, a lot of new announcements at the event as well. What jumped out at you for news announcements? The news, I guess, you know. Ecosystem news is big. If we go, the latest today announcement with Barbados Stock Exchange and folks at Polymath, it's interesting, these emerging markets, embracing new technology, it's the next wave and a lot of capital's gonna be raised this way. What did you learn last night? I mean, first of all, this event just for the folks watching was a real interesting event. It was a 400 plus attendees, really an industry conference about what the thought was, you had billion dollars of whales here, they called whales, which they have net worth in billions and millions, hundreds of millions. And then you have investors, variety of investor types and then entrepreneurs all coming together. I heard a lot of different things last night. What did you hear? You know, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of people are sharing their perspectives. Some are presenting different perspectives of the future. Come on, spit it out. Others are really, in some cases, stating the obvious. But there's definitely a strong ecosystem that's coming together here, strong alignment on a number of things irrespective of where everybody's sort of come from or the industry that they're in. And a lot of people want to see this new asset class come and grow and be very successful. And so you had YouTuber influencers here, you had CEOs of well-established organizations and up-and-coming CEOs of a lot of these blockchain emerging companies. And there's definitely tremendous synergy amongst some of them as well in terms of how they're sharing perspective and how they're, in some cases, working together. Liquidity has been a big option. I heard people talk about liquidity. What's your take on that? What's your observation of how that's evolving? Well, I think there's a huge opportunity with areas where traditionally they've lacked liquidity, or there's been minimal liquidity. Tremendous friction and challenges in terms of being able to leverage what one possesses. And blockchain really presents a huge opportunity to change the game there. I mean, as it relates to digital bits and what we're focused on, we see a huge opportunity in all things loyalty and rewards. There's, in a lot of cases, you've been centralized organizations. You could kind of think of them like a central bank. And people have had these difficulties in earning points, if it's a pair of golf clubs you want, you maybe have to earn points for maybe three years and you get tired after a year. That's your adventure. I mean, the fuse chain and digital bit specifically is solving a big problem. Big problem. There's tremendous lack of liquidity in all things loyalty and rewards. And what's your angle of attack there? Obviously, you're disrupting a pre-existing and somewhat fragmented loyalty programs. I don't even use the airlines things anymore. I get so many points. I never use them. I try to use them. The good ones that I use a lot like Southwest or whatever. As an example, I use because my kids need to fly to an abandoned soccer or whatever. But other ones, I've lost all my points. I don't even know the number. Where the hell is it? I mean, what email address did I use? It's about perceived value, right? Maybe you started off with some degree of enthusiasm and had a higher perceived value. But then towards the end, it goes to nil. Because it's really, you know, it's something you have. But I can't get led with my points. This is the problem I want to ask you. Traditionally, legacy, you know, and so what you see now, I mean, a few weeks ago, we saw an announcement by Singapore Airlines, you know, announcing by August, their existing loyalty programs will be placed on the blockchain. And we're seeing examples of this, you know, almost every week now, companies are embracing blockchain technology. And what this allows for now is a more frictionless transfer of points. And so, for those companies that are embracing blockchain technology, if you have points, and yeah, you could potentially, after you have X number of points, go and redeem them for something you like. But in the meantime, you know, you get discouraged. Maybe you're, you know, you love self-response, but maybe some of these other programs, you could trade them and hand them over to someone that actually could take advantage of it and, you know, get an alternative asset that you have a higher perceived value for. Digital currencies in gaming has been around for a while. We've seen the young guns get that, that's like a fish to water. Obviously, loyalty is different now with some old school techniques, old stacks, technologists, if that. So I have to ask you the question. How is blockchain disrupting the loyalty program that is the massive billions of dollars being spent and earned in that market? So a third of points never get redeemed. There's a huge problem with many corporations they have. As they're issuing points, it's a liability on their balance sheet. More points get issued, you know, this is a hemorrhaging issue. It could potentially create solvency issues for companies. And so, there's actually been professors from some, you know, reputable organizations that have really done a tremendous research in this area. And it really evolves nicely into what blockchain can do. Like, give an example. I mean, what's the disruptive nature of it? Is it storing of the value? Is it trading on that value? Is it, I mean, what is the real one thing that blockchain does to the loyalty program? The fact that it allows for more frictionless transfer of points. So for the programs that are tokenizing their points on a blockchain, it empowers the user to be able to directly transfer those points. So you guys have fused chain with digital bits. You're tokenizing loyalty. We're supporting organizations. Our big mission is to support organizations that have either existing loyalty programs or wishing to create new loyalty programs to be able to tokenize those on chain. And the ability to then allow the consumers, the users of these points program to, in addition to the traditional uses of redeeming them, perhaps a reward store would have you, the ability to transfer them for other assets that they like. So if I understand this correctly, the trend that you like or would like to see continue or happen is retailers or loyalty programs would tokenize themselves. So there'd be literally thousands and thousands of loyalty tokens and you would be the platform to support that. Correct, absolutely. And so I've used the sort of red hat analogy. We have fused chain as well that's really focused on helping support enterprises that maybe are struggling to spell blockchain. But they see all the value. That's everybody. Well, from a technology perspective. And similar to Linux being born, enterprises needed to go to companies like a red hat to support them with the integration maintenance and so on and so forth of such technology. And so we're focused on having an evolving ecosystem of other organizations that can support enterprises that have loyalty programs consume blockchain technology. You're a tech entrepreneur. I'm a tech entrepreneur. I have a media business. You're building another business. You sold your last business. You're very successful. You and I always talk about this, but I want to ask you here live on theCUBE, as a tech entrepreneur, what is the opportunity that this ecosystem of tokenizing your business using blockchain, how do you look at it? How would a solid tech entrepreneur look at this opportunity to integrate in a new enabling technology? What's the orientation? What's your view on how tech entrepreneurs should look at it? And how do you look at it? Well, so if we just, you know, as it relates to the liquidity issues, this is a very powerful thing. Right now, perceived value for many points programs is very low. And so if the perceived value, you know, you solve a liquidity issue or you create technology that can help solve a liquidity issue, perceive the opportunity for the perceived value to be perceived in a more optimal light, everybody kind of wins. The merchant, the business that is issuing these points, they now have a more desirable asset that they're issuing. And as a result of that, consumers have an ever-growing desire and want to be part of these programs and earn points. And so this is, you know, it's fascinating when you start to think of it in terms of- Technology is applying because it's the application of societal impact, whether it's a retailer or a nonprofit, tokenization is happening. Absolutely. And it's happening, obviously, not just in loyalty or wars. We've seen it happen, starting to happen now in other spaces and with a different- And you're a big takeaway, obviously you've done a lot of work and I know you can't talk about it because you're in a startup mode and you're doing some financing right now, but just generally speaking anecdotally, the landscape of this ecosystem health-wise feels like the security token has been a good thing. The utility token's still evolving under observation, obviously SEC and other regulatory challenges. Good, bad, ugly. I mean, still the scams out there we're here in the community loud and clear. We're going to stamp out the scams and flush that through the system as fast as possible. Your take on this ecosystem? I think those that are taking their time to build great technology and at the right pace will build great products and ideally do it at such a rate and in such an order that they'll stay out of trouble. And we're seeing a lot of great entrepreneurs come together, surround themselves with their own ecosystems and building great platforms. I think where we see others that are moving a little too quickly, they might trip on their shoe laces. Yeah, and people don't, I mean, there's a general consistency. If you want to move fast, but you don't want to be in jail. Literally, I heard that quote here on theCUBE. Investors, we've been meeting, we had on theCUBE, but also we've chat, I know I've seen you chatting sidebars, I've had a lot of sidebars, Dave has as well. Conversation among investors, not necessarily with your job, I know you can't talk about it because it's a hot deal, but I mean, in general, generally speaking, what's the conversations in the investor landscape that you're seeing and hearing here? It's interesting. I mean, everyone is trying to find their own point of view or speculating in terms of what's gonna happen next. You know, I've heard comments in terms of arbitrage as a result of income tax, people realizing that transferring between old coins is actually, you know, likely taxable and accountants making new investors in the space aware of these things and having to potentially sell to be able to pay that bill. And then there's others where a lot of us are seeing this as an emerging technology. The actual use of certain, let's say, utility coins, it has not yet been demonstrated. That doesn't necessarily suggest that a particular project is bad, things do take time. I mean, we saw in the 90s with the internet, I mean, I remember starting in that space, I call it in the dial-up modem era, you know, but we had these big visions of video and I mean, the cube could not be possible at that time, but the vision of a cube could be, you know, a wonderful thing, people could have bought in that and you know, you kind of ride the trend and evolve your technology and then you disrupt it and you help change the game. Final question, honestly, your business is you doing some things here. How does the show go for you here? You feel good about it? Absolutely. You know, obviously this is not like in Amazon, some of the other events you've been at. I'm more intimate. But there's money here. There's billionaires here. Absolutely, and look at 80 of us type of events. I mean, they start with thousands and tens of thousands and next year it's 20,000. I mean, we're going to see that kind of growth in this space as well and it's great to be involved in it early. But there's definitely quality, high-profile individuals who are high-net-worth individuals and they're investing their money in this space and they're going to help it drive it forward. You know, I remember the first show we did with Amazon and meeting Andy Jackson for the first time. First of all, really like him a lot, sports fan like me, but he's also really smart and a great operator. We even made a comment that some of the best companies are ones that are misunderstood at the beginning. Obviously we run a different kind of media business. People don't really understand us. Cryptocurrency and blockchain is funny because everyone understands it, but doesn't understand it. They understand how big it's going to be and there's money involved. So that's the key learning that I had this week was, yeah, we see the big opportunity. We can see money being made, but people still don't truly understand what it is. If you talk to all the smartest people, whether it's Jeremy that came on, you get 26 years old, to Bill Tye, they say, we're learning every day and women in tech, the Crypto 6 came on, said this is a learning environment. This is still not understood. Absolutely. And this is the big opportunity. It is a huge opportunity. In the early 90s, people didn't understand the internet. I mean, there's a classic commercial program, episode of a Today Show, and I think it was Brian Gumbel trying to understand what is the internet and so forth. And fast forward, here we are, right? So, fascinating things, there's smart individuals that can see and embrace the vision right away. Others were scratching our head, but eventually we all get there. Al, great to see you and great to see a CUBE alumni here at the event. I'm glad you were here because I get to know at least one person that I know intimately of CUBE alumni. We had 20 more new CUBE alumni's. The sun is setting here in the CUBE, day two of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier, really excited to have been part of this event. It begins, kicks off our 2018 cryptocurrency tokenizing the world, blockchain, top events. The CUBE will be there. The CUBE is there. It's relevant, we'll be tracking all the signal and extracting it from the noise and sharing it with you. It's a wrap-up of the cryptocurrency token economics, decentralized internet at Polygon 18 here in the Bahamas. Thanks for watching. Thank all the crew here, great job. And you guys are watching more to come. Stay tuned, check out silkenangle.com, thecube.net and wikibon.com, of course. CUBE coin coming soon. Stay tuned for what we're doing. Love to tokenize that business and everyone's doing it. It's really relevant and thanks for watching.