 Well, the criminal involvement in cryptocurrency is one of the reasons why Bitcoin became as popular as it did in the early days. We need to make cryptocurrency as we know it illegal, I think. If cryptocurrency is going to survive, you will have to move to a permissioned infrastructure. Because cryptocurrency is the problem here. The whole economic context for the dark web is cryptocurrency. What book are you reading right now if you're reading a book? Criminals have been using cash since the invention of cash. And once that happened, well, all of a sudden it became the way you got your pornography. And you're too young for this. You weren't even born. Can you just introduce yourself in like 30 seconds or less, just a few words? Okay, well, I'm Jason Bloomberg, president of Intelix, and Intelix is an industry analyst firm focused on what we call Agile Digital Transformation. So we help enterprises, so big companies, understand how all of the various disruptive trends in enterprise IT fit together and support their transformation goals. So for us, blockchain is one of those trends. You kind of have maybe made a reputation for yourself for saying some pretty bold things about cryptocurrency. I know that in your panel today, you talked about crime involving cryptocurrency. And in March, you wrote an article in which there was a sentence that was like, we need to make cryptocurrency as we know it illegal, I think. I hope I'm not misquoting you, something like that. So can you explain that statement, make cryptocurrency as we know it illegal? Right, or shut it down was the phrase I used. Well, the challenge that most cryptocurrencies have is that they run on a permissionless blockchain infrastructure. So by permissionless, we mean that there's nobody in charge, right? Anybody can be a miner. So a miner is an individual or a company who sets up computers to process transactions of the cryptocurrency. So the way that blockchain works is because it's decentralized, essentially every transaction processor has to process every transaction. So there's a lot of duplication. So only certain ones get rewarded for it in a proof of work system, but every transaction processor has to process a transaction. So because it's permissionless, anybody can sign up as a miner, including criminals. Now not all miners are criminals, obviously, but criminals are welcome to be miners. There's nothing stopping them from being miners. So as a result, many criminal enterprises, including organized crime syndicates, have gotten into the mining business. And there's really no way to stop this aside from moving away from permissionless blockchain-based approaches. So when I say shut all cryptocurrencies down, what I'm really saying is shut down the permissionless ones. If cryptocurrency is going to survive, you will have to move to a permissioned infrastructure. Hypothetically, if people start taking you up on this call to action, what would that look like? What would happen to the crypto industry? Do you have a vision of how that would start to affect what we know today as the crypto industry? Well, in practical terms, it would be very difficult to shut down, say, Bitcoin, because it doesn't exist in any one country. So each country would have to decide what laws it wanted to create in order to make transactions illegal or whatever it would be. So it would have to be on a country-by-country basis. So what I would expect to happen is, over time, as various organizations, the Union governments as well as banks and Wall Street trading firms, realize that permissionless cryptocurrency has these issues, then gradually the trend will be to encourage permission systems versus permissionless. And that will drive down the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that run on permissionless systems. So if you drive down the value sufficiently, then it is no longer cost-effective to mine the cryptocurrency. And at a certain point, then, essentially, it will fall apart. Nobody will be running transactions because there's no money to be made in conducting transactions, and fewer and fewer countries allow for the cryptocurrency. And hopefully, other cryptocurrencies that are based on permission systems are essentially taking the limelight, and now investment is going to move to them. And there could very well be a flourishing permissioned cryptocurrency infrastructure as a result. But I would say that the permissionless ones will essentially fade over time. There'll be less interest in them. There'll be less valuable, and fewer and fewer people will want to mine them. Well, what do you say to the people who really care about the decentralized aspect about cryptocurrency, which I think is like, you know, there's different names for those people. But it's sort of like the base core of the values that people have around cryptocurrency. The fact that it's decentralized is really important. The fact that anyone can sort of interact with this, essentially, when the case of cryptocurrency can send money from one person to another directly without intermediaries, without an enterprise, without a bank. So what do you say to those people when you're talking about sort of shifting the entire value system, you know? Well, you're quite right, and this is a very astute point that there's the whole perspective on decentralized cryptocurrency, blockchain, versus the centralized permissioned approach. And for many people in this community, it's all about decentralization, and some of them don't even see permissioned blockchain as being blockchain at all. They don't even want to define it as something that they're interested in. So there's this whole separation between the two. In terms of decentralization, I still see that there's a way to implement decentralization without opening the doors to criminal enterprise. And so all of these people with these libertarian priorities, libertarian vision for a decentralized world with no government intervention, essentially the problem there is that if you don't have sufficient regulation, you don't have sufficient permissioning of the transaction processors, then essentially it becomes just a playground for criminal enterprise. What about the fact that not all cryptocurrencies are proof of work, meaning you don't need to mine all of them? So it's not necessarily true that you have to have a, if it's mineable, it's centralized or permissioned. You can have permission list and proof of stake, right? Well, this is an important trend, and so I mentioned that sort of earlier, is that the trend is away from these permissionless systems to the more permissioned approach. And there could be a lot of different variations, whether it's proof of stake. Ripple is an example of a centralized permissioned approach. And I would expect these, maybe Ripple, maybe not a lot of people don't like Ripple, but there are, I would say that that is really where the focus will be. But whether or not there's a way to solve the crime problem and still be decentralized, I just don't see that. Because I think the whole point is that we need to have essentially a centralized entity that people put their trust in who is now extending that trust to the participants in the infrastructure, so to the miners. And without that, we're just allowing criminals in. And this has happened over the years with various approaches, right? This is nothing new. Well, the criminal involvement in cryptocurrency was one of the original reasons why cryptocurrency took off. One of the reasons why Bitcoin became as popular as it did in the early days. And it's now, it's only continuing to expand. Right? I mentioned in my panel this morning that in 2017, the most, you know, the most active form of hacking of big business was ransomware. So ransomware is only practical with when you can pay the ransoms in some sort of cryptocurrency. And before cryptocurrency, there was no ransomware just wasn't feasible. So cryptocurrency now gave the criminals a way to conduct ransomware. That was 2017. Ransomware is no longer the most popular. In 2018, the most popular is cryptojacking or Lysik crypto mining, where the hacker puts crypto mining software either in a browser, but increasingly on servers, both in enterprise data centers, as well as in cloud, cloud environments that essentially sucks up electricity and pays the criminal in, in some sort of cyber cryptocurrency. This is now the most popular, right? The most predominant way of hacking a big company is via, as I spoke. So essentially we now we have what's what cryptocurrencies become as not only a way for criminals to get into the mining, but it's a way to conduct criminal transactions. It's a way to conduct hacking, right? If you look at the dark web, the whole economic context for the dark web is cryptocurrency, right? Dark web wasn't really practical because there was no good way of exchanging funds until cryptocurrency came along. Once cryptocurrency came along, the dark web exploded and the primary type of transaction in the dark web is illegal drugs. So you wanted to do illegal drug transactions, especially international, look to the dark web, look to cryptocurrency. Why would you fight the medium of exchange rather than looking for other ways to prosecute criminals? Criminals have been using cash since the invention of cash, obviously, but that, that's actually a false comparison, right? You're saying, well, because criminals use cash, we shouldn't worry about criminals using cryptocurrency. It's like saying, well, if I get stopped for speeding, my argument to the cop should be other people are speeding or other people going faster than I was. No cop is going to let you off a ticket because you say somebody else is also committing a crime. That is not a justification for a crime. It's not like we keep the cars from being able to speed. It's sort of crushing the dream of the decentralized world. Well, I don't think it's a question of crushing a dream. It's that the technology that people have come up with does not support the dream, right? The dream of being able to, you know, conduct a transaction as easily as giving you a dollar bill, but being able to do it internationally and electronically. Okay, well, that makes sense, you know, on a superficial level. So why come up with this huge technology infrastructure that is hugely valuable to the criminals and becomes a central element of organized crime globally speaking? And this has happened over the years. In fact, I just did some research, came out with a newsletter this morning about how this notion of decentralized network communication has really, we've never come up with a way of doing it without it just ending up being a means for criminal activity. This started back in the 80s with bulletin board systems. You're too young for this. You weren't even born. But I remember I'm being a gray hair from the 1980s before the internet became something people would use. You'd have these modem based systems where you'd call up somebody's computer and the computer would answer and you'd be able to, you know, upload and download messages. And as modems got faster, you could upload and download binary files, which in those days were just images because we, you know, couldn't, couldn't do much more images and small pieces of software. And once that happened, well, all of a sudden it became the way you got your pornography because back in the 80s hardcore pornography was hard to come by where you couldn't just, you know, the web wasn't around. You'd go to your local store. You could get Playboy, but that wasn't hardcore. So, so this was it, right? So, and it was mostly illegal until the Clinton administration relaxed the obscenity rules in the 1990s. Once the Clinton administration did that, mainstream pornography moved to the web, which has been there ever since. So now we have the rise of use net. So these are the news groups which were similar to bulletin boards only on the internet. And now those started off as being ways that clubs could communicate with their members and it soon became a way of exchanging binary files. And because primary, because mainstream pornography had moved to the web, what are those binary files? Well, they are child pornography and wares, that is pirated software. And that became the modus operandi of use net and everything else was spam. So use net became spam and contraband, right? Now along comes bit torrent. So we're now using the internet, internet speeds are going faster, we're now able to download videos. So what do we do? We come up with a peer-to-peer, right? It's decentralized, peer-to-peer protocol that allows anybody to exchange big files with anybody else. And so what do you use that for? Well, pirated software, pirated videos, and illegal pornography, okay? That because that was the primary use. So this is just human nature. If you have a way of exchanging information or files that is hidden from view, then it's going to be primarily used by criminals to conduct criminal activity. The problem with bit torrent was that bit torrent itself was not particularly anonymous, right? You had to identify your IP address. So it wasn't very good for organized crime, right? It became sort of a disorganized crime protocol and also didn't provide a payment mechanism, right? So it was more about sharing that illegal porn with your buddies than building a business. What do we need? We needed a way of greater anonymity in the payments and a payment infrastructure and along came Bitcoin. That's why Bitcoin exploded is because bit torrent did not have those things. Now we add Bitcoin to bit torrent and now we can build a global professional black market for illegal contraband. And that's the dark web. So this is the history of distributed technologies. It's been one of facilitating criminal enterprise. Bitcoin played right into that and now we have the dark web and now we have hackers who are leveraging the technologies as well. This is the story. This is the story of cryptocurrency and people are pretending or fooling themselves that it's about some sort of libertarian ideal where people are going to behave. No, people will not behave. Criminals are going to come in and they're going to take over and it's going to be the whole reason why we have this stuff. Let's get back a little bit into the sort of nitty gritty of cryptojacking that you mentioned that particular type of hacking. Or what's the harm being done there? Can you explain that? Because I think in a lot of cases it's a little bit ambiguous because in the case of something like ransomware it's pretty clear. Like your money is being stolen from you. But in the case of cryptojacking, what's the harm being done? I'm not saying no harm is being done, I just want you to explain what's the exact harm being done? So with illicit crypto mining or cryptojacking, the early days it was all about the browsers. So you'd have some sort of compromised website that would give you some JavaScript you'd run on your browser and so your own computer would sort of spin for a while and it steals a little bit of electricity and a little bit of processor power from you. And that software has gotten better and now even when you close your browser it'll still run on your computer. So it's sucking up your processor on your laptop. So that is relatively minor compared to crypto mining software on a server. So you put it on a server, it's getting more sophisticated, it's now consuming electricity and processor power on the server. If it's in the cloud, it's running up the cloud bill, okay? So companies are paying money for their cloud services, including any crypto mining that is running on there. If it's on premises, it's still consuming electricity and processor power and we'll continue to do so until the miners proliferate and take the entire network down, right? There's not just one hacker doing this, if a company is vulnerable, then multiple different bad guys are going to figure this out and put mining software on there which is forming itself into botnets. So many different computers, mining software consuming electricity and processor power unbeknownst to the other crypto mining software on the same servers. So essentially at a certain point it just uses up all the processing power, the server stops working and this could happen across the entire network. So it could take down an entire company's data center. But because it's running behind the scenes, because it doesn't require a command and control link, right? Like ransomware, the money has to go back to the criminal with crypto mining. The way the criminals make their money is simply it's processing transactions and they get money from the Bitcoin or Monero infrastructure directly, right? So the money isn't going directly from the victim to the perpetrator, it's indirect. But as a result, it's catching a lot of the CISOs, the chief security officers, unawares. Until such time as it takes down their entire network. So this is already the biggest problem on corporate networks today. But it's not getting as much attention as perhaps it should because it doesn't have the command and control link. And in the early days, it doesn't have much impact. And you think the solution just to clarify is not to deal with preventing that kind of an attack or mitigating it in some way. But to actually shut down cryptocurrency because cryptocurrency is the problem here. I don't think that is really a practical solution. It'd be great if I could say, well, just shut down cryptocurrency. That's going to stop crypto mining, and yes it would. But I don't think that's practical for the reasons I listed, right? There's no one country, it's no one country's laws. So it's going to take a lot of time. It's going to be really the economic forces, right? It has to be less valuable to own certain cryptocurrencies over others. And once we shift the economy to the safer cryptocurrencies, then that is going to be a long-term gradual solution. So in the short term, yes, it's essentially traditional cybersecurity methods. Malware detection and threat prevention. And this is where a lot of big companies are spending their cybersecurity dollars a day. Let me ask you a question that's a little bit pointed. But what are you hoping to do by coming to Blockshow or any other crypto block chain related events? Why are you here basically? Why am I poking my stick at all these people? Well, I write for Forbes, I'm a Forbes contributor, so I write five articles a month for Forbes. So I'm always looking for good stories, and so that's part of the story. But I'm also essentially looking for the gems in the rough, right? I'm looking for those enterprise blockchain companies that have real solutions, at least in the works, obviously it's still early days, so it's usually proofs of concept. But real solutions in the sense that they're solving business problems for companies who aren't just other companies in the blockchain echo chamber. So there are some of these, right? Decent is one I know who's here. They're one of our customers actually, helping them with their marketing. And there are a few others, and hopefully I'll run into some more. And those are the stories that I think are most important to tell. That yes, I can tell stories about the flaws of cryptocurrency or the problems with the libertarian perspective on things. But that only gets you so far, right? But really, it's more important to focus on the positive stories, right? The real business cases for real companies who are solving real customer problems. And that's really what I'm looking for. What book are you reading right now if you're reading a book? What book am I reading? Well, I generally don't have time to read books professionally. So it's not like I'm reading any books on digital transformation or blockchain, but I do read science fiction and fantasy for fun. So I'm reading, I forget what it's called. It's a Neil Stevenson's book and it has Dodo in it. It's about time travel, but I forget the whole name. But Neil Stevenson is one of my favorite authors in some of your audience. I'm sure has read him as well.