 Okay, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in Monaco, for the Monaco Crypto Summit. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got a great guest, Dustin Plant-Holtz, who is a crypto advisor, but also the crypto editor for Forbes Monaco, here emceeing the official event, the inaugural event of the Monaco Crypto Summit in Monaco, your coverage area for Forbes. You're emceeing, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me. And it's always fun when I get to have an event in our backyard, because I get to hear what others know. And to me, I'm very curious, always learning. So you're on the emcee on the stage here, keeping the program online, great program, so it's an innovative event, inaugural event, great name, by the way, Crypto Summit and Monaco Crypto Summit. Yeah, the Monaco Crypto Summit. That sounds like I want to attend every year. You're more than welcome to attend next year. Well, I hope so. Either way, I'm at the inaugural event with you. So give me the take on what's on stage, what's been the program like, what's your observations going on here at the event today? What we're starting to see globally is this digitization of things. And the people that are part of the innovation side, and so that's what we've been able to see this morning, we're now at the break, is what sort of companies are out there, the good ones. And what are they building? Is this innovation, is it even innovative? And figuring out how they're going to do it, and the roadmaps to getting there, from the metaverse to NFTs, and even to decentralized finance. Yeah, and it's the number one question I get is, what's legit, what's not legit? And then you're starting to see the wheat and the shaft separating here, and you know, something called crypto winter, but I don't see it. I mean, I see correction for some of the bad things going on in terms of not having the right underpinning infrastructure. The creative ideas are amazing. We're also seeing like digital bits and other platforms kind of coming together to enable the creators. And the NFTs side, for instance, has been huge. What has been your observation on that enablement? Because you have two schools of thoughts. You have the total nerds who are up and down building everything. Then you have artists and creators, whether it's music, tech, apps, building. They don't necessarily want to get into the covers. They don't want to deal with all that. Have you seen, what's your take on that? So I'm seeing that a lot of these major brands, you know, they're striving for excellence. They're being more careful of who they partner with, and the types of companies, and you know, they look at it from reality, and a little tough love, to figure out should they align their brand. And so what we're seeing here is, is that there is so much inertia moving forward, that we're just at the beginning of this thing. McKinsley recently said that the ecosystem will be over $30 trillion. So when you recognize that we are so early, and it's those right now, or some might say are the risk takers, but to me, they aren't taking risk. They're being a part of making history. Yeah, you get the pioneers, and you get the finances. So as they come together, how do you see the market? Because what I've noticed with crypto and here in this market is international one, a lot of international finance. US is kind of lags behind, you got all kinds of rules. But you got the combination of the future billionaires. Sure. Okay, the pioneers, and then the financiers. Yeah. Coming to money. The money and the power coming together. What's your reporting show you that's going on right now? What should people know about it? How this is evolving? What they shouldn't expect? So you have a group that wants to become cryptonaires. They're seeing these individuals globally. They're making lots and lots of money. But what they don't realize is that not everybody is gonna have that outcome. But looking at the technology aspect of it and how it's going to improve a system that many can agree is collectively broken, legacy. It just can't move beyond. It was never designed to. You'll see people take shots at certain car companies. I go, what you recognize, they developed the assembly line. And so I'm seeing that the smart money, they got in long ago, believe it or not. And those now that are looking out for their errors are the ones that saying, I will not have an excuse when my grandkids or my nieces or my nephews, when they come and ask, where were you? When the greatest transformational shift in human history from both education to jobs, careers and even wealth was being shifted to a digital world. Why were you on the sideline waiting? And so I think what we're gonna see is this tsunami coming. And it's gonna start with one big player and then two and five. You go alone, you go far. Go together, you go further. And that's what we're seeing is that this collective is moving forward. And the community we just had Beth Kaiser on. I've known Beth for many, many years and what she's, her journey has done. She's had a great mission and then gets, she's a data scientist and came to Analytica. Now she's doing work with Ukraine. And the rallying support around it has been impressive. And it's a community vibe, but the community is not just like sympathetic. They're hands on together to your point. Yeah, but it also takes courage. I mean, you look at Brittany Kaiser and what she had and to me, courage is not not having fear. Courage is not allowing the fear to stop you. And I recently asked my executive coach who's 85 and I'm turning 39. This question of, do you let fear stop you? How do you decide? And he said, you know, you can either let, you can either ride the dragon and I said, or let the dragon chase you. And Brittany has been one of these that made a decision to do what was right. And it came down to integrity. So what do you have to these days? What's going on in your world? What is going on in my world? So I moderate events all over and I connect and I like to ask people questions. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to turn it to the interviewer. All right, this is it, in natural. What are you learning? I mean, I'm learning, I mean, today or this week or this month or this year, while I was just talking with Brittany about this, the security world is converging, cloud technology, cloud computing, that revolution has just been amazing. Amazon posted their earnings yesterday. They blew it away as far as I'm concerned. So they kind of show there's no tech recession. I've learned that this recession that we're so called in is the first downturn in tech where there's been cloud players as hyperscalers as an economic engine. Okay, so from a business perspective, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, now Google Cloud, Alibaba's now in the international version. This is the first time a downturn's ever happened with cloud computing as an economic engine. And so therefore what I'm seeing is the digital transformation that's happening across the world for enterprises and entrepreneurs is not stopping, it's actually accelerating. So although the GDP's down and inflation is down, you're seeing a massive shift continuing to accelerate spending and transformation with cloud technologies and decentralized. So you can all see it kind of in this event and other events, even some of the bigger events. The best, smartest people are working on it. The applications in all the categories are transforming. If cloud is step one, decentralized is going to be step two. So I see that kind of bridge going from cloud computing, cloud native to decentralized native. And I think the DApp market's going to just explode. I think NFTs are just scratching the surface. I think that's kind of, I won't say gimmicky, but I think it's much more of an illustration that there's more coming. There is a lot more coming because people are seeing that there's more to an NFT than an ugly, like in JPEG image, that there's data in there. And that your avatar will be stored as just that, as an NFT. And I learned today from Gaurav Singh that decentralization is the key to innovation. And I agree with that statement wholly. Yeah, I mean, I think access to stuff is going to be multi-dimensional. Like you think about the NFT as an ID, whether it's him or unstoppable domains, is a company that just got financed another round worth a billion dollars. Their concept is like, hey, one NFT is your access for all of your potential identities in context. And isn't that exciting that we're now going to be at this stage where you travel with you. Instead of someone else traveling with you, you get to decide who you will be. And to me, everything you're doing in this world, this reality is now becoming part of your digital asset as a whole. Yeah, I remember when I started my podcast and company in 2004, Early Pioneers, Evan Williams was there with ODO and you had the blogging revolution going on. That whole democratization wave actually didn't happen right then, but all the people that were involved in that Web 2.0 kind of craze was all about democratization. It's kind of happening now. I mean, 15, 20 years later, Web Services has transformed cloud, the democratization for own your own data, putting users in control. And I think in the middle of that, the Facebook's a little engagement. The walled garden data manipulation kind of took it off track a little bit. So I think now I'm psyched to see that it's back on track to where it was. I mean, Facebook made billions of dollars. Now you got LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn's great for your resume, but it's also become a walled garden with no data export. Yeah, and then some of it keeps changing. Think about this, that if you want to apply for a job, just change something quickly. Ah, now you're the senior VP before you were an office manager. Like to see the immutable block change. You don't get to see when did the record change. Yeah, reputation, data, you're a digital exhaust. People don't want to rein that in. And I think the user in charge message that Brittany Kaiser was, he talks about is hugely a massive under amplified concept. Digital assets are key, but the data ownership is something that I think is powerful. So I'm going to be launching a brand new company in and around September called Crypturns. And it's a crypto career center. Think of it like the crypto for LinkedIn that it's an aggregator, becoming the industry standard for education, becoming the industry standard for crypto chips with partners like Ledger and MoonPay and Casper Labs. Look at this, we've got an exclusive scoop on the cube. This is the first time, I will tell you, this is the first time in an environment like this that I'm excited to talk about because it's time to be part of the change as a father. I look at, I know where it's headed in the world of business. I know in the world of this, we're going to call the internet of connected things that it's going to require you to have a certain talent skill or a certain certification. And to me, it's important to have an industry that supports one standard. And also history on misinformation. Smear campaigns can happen and ruin a career overnight. Can you imagine that? One little thing. And because the internet never forgets, it stays around indefinitely. The truth has to come out. Dustin, great to have you on the cube. Thank you so much. Final question, what have you learned in there as MCing, what's your takeaway real quick? What I've learned is I never tire of learning. Thank you again. To learn more, dustinplannell.com. All right, thanks for coming. Cube coverage here at Monaco. I'm John Furrier. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.