 Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE conversation. We are on the ground in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound and restart. We have a variety of blockchain, crypto currency, industry events, a lot of action here. All the thought leaders, the pioneers. A lot of the people making it happen from entrepreneurs to the investors and entrepreneurs who made it in Bitcoin Blockchain, as well as the participants in the local community. Our next guest is Michael Angelos, the co-founder of edublock.io, edublock.io. Interesting story here. He's got a school chain, I call it going around. Michael, welcome to this conversation. That's great to be here. So I talk about what you guys do. I think it's super fascinating. You guys are creating a value chain with the university system. Obviously, the first thing that jumps in my mind is, hey, select the internet. Connect the internet with TCPIP. And next you know, the internet's born, the web is born. You're doing something really fascinating with your project, connecting the universities here in Puerto Rico. Take a minute to explain what you're working on. Okay, so edublock is an educational platform based in Puerto Rico. So what we're doing is we're connecting every single university on the island to work on open source projects to make solutions for the private sector. And so you're enabling essentially connectedness. So you've got the blockchain that's going to enable that. Cryptocurrency in Puerto Rico has certainly had a lot of the ecosystem blending in, coming in to the country, into the area. People are excited. What's going on in the front lines? As the young kids are looking at this revolution, it's a massive wave, they've got to be inspired. They've got to look at this as an opportunity. What's some of the things that you're seeing on the front lines there? Okay, let me tell you. So people are scared here. So edublock wants to create transparency in blockchain and make people trust us and trust the movement. So we see a bunch of people coming here and we see a tremendous potential for the island. We could become an emerging market through blockchain technology. But people are scared, most people come here and they talk about the how and the what. So edublock wants to talk about the why. So why is we want to educate, we want to make this transparent, we want to change the lives of a bunch of people, teach them so they can become the next world leaders. And really enabling them with tools. So Brock Pierce gave the keynote here to the kickoff blockchain unbound as part of a kind of pitch competition with D10E. Great message, the power of we, not me, is really what makes it happen. Paying it forward, it's cultural ethos, it's global. So this whole global economy is shaping. This is an opportunity for a digital nation to emerge. How do you guys talk about that? The young guys going in there, the developers, the trust needs to be there. What are some of the things people are working on? What kind of things do you imagine happening with edublock? What are some of the things on your mind there? Okay, so basically what we're doing is anyone who's coming here in the island, we're just asking them, if you want outreach, you have an ICO, you have a big project. So we have this ecosystem that's running. We have software developers and you want to teach people. So if you have your ICOs, you have a project, you give it to us. We just lay it down in the ecosystem and see how it works, trial and error. And it's a win-win because it's free. So you win the expansion here in the island and we win knowledge. So basically you guys are opening up your arms saying, hey, throw us what you got. We'll kick the tires. We'll give it a dry run. We'll give you feedback. There's some learnings that are shared. Is that kind of the thing you guys are thinking about? Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing as of now. So we have a few projects. We're working with a list coin. And we have a few ICOs of ourselves that I can't go into details right now. Some big projects that I think some software developers in the island that have talent could work on and just develop. Michael, talk about who's working with you guys. Who's helping you out? Give some shout outs. Who's involved in the project? What kind of momentum do you have? And what are you guys looking for for continued support? So we're looking for people that come to the island have big ICOs. We're looking to just speak with them, see if they could give us some feedback on what we have to do to move along this project. So we're working with Link Puerto Rico. It's a software development company here in the island. So they're helping us with the curriculum. So we're working hands on with ICOs, but we also want to teach. So we have to make a curriculum. So we teach people to have no idea. The other day we had an event where we taught 50 people how to create a smart contract from scratch. Those are 50 people who are not the same anymore. So we're working with Brock Pierce. He's going to be one of the main speakers at our event. We're going to have an event the 17th. You can register at edublock.io. It's totally free. Why did this event come to be? So we have blockchain on bound, right? So it's about $1,000. So most people want to be part of this event, but can't pay. Most students, that's two of a hefty pay. It's a lot of cash. It's a lot of cash. You know, $1,000 is food. $1,000 is gas. A whole semester is $1,000. So what we did was we grabbed 14 main speakers from blockchain on bound. Enrique Martinez, Brock Pierce, Blisscoin, Artcoin. They're going to be talking about micro grids, about housing. And so we got a university. We have the people, it's free. So anyone can come. All you have to do is register at edublock.io. Great stuff, Michael. This is fantastic. I love what you're doing. And I'm really thankful you're doing it. And because when you get people together, magic happens. And I think what's really exciting is that the market is accepting that now. And Brock talked about that on stage today here at Blockchain on Bound, announcing his restart venture fund. 100% dedicated to entrepreneurs. And he's structuring it in a way where, I mean, not a lot of profits here. So he gets a little bit carved out for the managers of the fund. I think that's a lot of cash you're managing. But it's all about feeding the entrepreneurial ecosystem to for venture development. And that's great. That's why eduBlock has to be a thing. Because we are the educational system in the island. And so if this is a movement that's happening here, and this is going to become the epicenter of this multi-billion dollar market, we need to have people prepared for this. We have to create the transparency. So that's why eduBlock is such an important thing here in the island. I love what you're doing. The young people, I see it in Silicon Valley all around the United States and around the world. Trust matters, reputation matters, who you work with matters. And I love your project. It reminds me of when I interviewed Vincer many years ago, father of the internet. TCPIP connected three universities, four universities, five universities, and then multiple universities. That became the backbone for the internet. I see what you're doing as something as game changer. You can connect the universities and then the curriculum and keep it decentralized. No central authority. You have the trust and you have the voices of the people in software, in applications. That's super fantastic. By the way, I just want to say something right now. You don't have to be a software developer to be in eduBlock. Most people are scared that if they aren't a programmer, they don't have the experience. They don't know Solidity. They can't be part of eduBlock. The thing is we're teaching from scratch as well. We're working with software. We're working with hardware. We're working with a team of daily traders. Miners, we're going to teach how to make a GPU, how to make an A6 from scratch. So you're going to learn a lot of things and it's free. Great point. That brings up the community question because the point is, you don't have to be a coder. You're in the community. So I want to ask you, what is the community like right now? What's it look like? It sounds like it's robust, it's active. What do you and you guys hope to do with the development of the community? Okay, so the community is, I would say it's divided as of now. So most people are scared. They don't know what's going on. Most people that come here, sorry with the what, the how, and people are scared. But the young people are like, yo, this is happening, this is not a moment. This is a movement. It's a movement and they're just so happy to be part of it. Well, I got to tell you, as an old guy like me, I've seen many waves. When the waves come, you jump on it and I'm so excited that you're doing what you're doing. Appreciate what you're doing. Michael, Angelo, co-founder of edublock.io, edublock.io, they have a big event on the 17th. If you want to check it out, we're going to try to do a swing by with the queue, but congratulations bringing the content of the masses. That's our job at the queue, what we do. That's our mission and thanks for taking this time. Appreciate it. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.