 Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE covering Polygon 18, brought to you by Polymash. Hello and welcome to theCUBE for a special CUBE event, our first kickoff for our cryptocurrency blockchain decentralized computing world that we know is Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain and all the rest. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. We're here previewing the conference. We'll be live tomorrow and Friday, but we're here down getting ready for the big festivities, which is tonight's opening keynotes. We had the co-founder of Ethereum, Anthony Diorio, and then Brock Pierce coming on. He also is the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, luminaries and as well as a bunch of other great guests, Bill Tye from California, a friend of theCUBE's. This is a game-changing event, Dave. You and I have talked about this on theCUBE many times. The waves of innovation come this big once in a generation, maybe centuries. We're seeing one that I think is not as even big as the other ones, bigger. You combine the PC revolution, I was just texting Michael Dell earlier today and said, this feels like the PC revolution. A bunch of pioneers coming together, but it's got a different vibe, it's bigger. It's like the combination of the internet and PC revolution all rolled into one with a community vibe on it. So we're going to have tons of coverage on this. What I want to ask you, Dave, directly is, you've seen many waves and we work with and we cover some of the old guard, older companies like Dell EMC, HPE, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and they're doing really good work pivoting and trying to be ready for this new wave. It's not just on a blockchain, it's just how the world works. Cloud, IOT, but decentralized cannot be ignored. So some think this is a blind spot to these legacy and emerging vendors, changing vendors like Oracle and IBM and HPE and Dell technologies. Are they ready? Do you think they're ready? Do you think they even understand what's coming and people squabble over cloud market share? This is funny, right? It's like there's a bigger thing coming over the top. Well, first thing I got to say is, I got to give you props as my partner because you've been covering blockchain, Bitcoin on Silicon Angles since, I don't know. 2010. 2010, when I first met you, right? And so once again, you were sort of ahead of the curve. I feel like we're at our first Hadoop world when back in 2010 and so props to you and the Silicon Angle team. To answer your question, no, no, they're not ready and it's not, to me, it's not even about just blockchain. I mean, in blockchain technology, they can adopt. The bigger issue is digital disruption. And digital disruption is all about the data at the core of the organization and business models that are built around data. And if you think about the history of companies, it's human expertise and data's bolted on. We've seen this time and time again. But if you look at the top five market cap companies, Facebook, Amazon, Google, et cetera, they're data companies. Data is at the center and they take human expertise and wrap it around there. So the future is going to be about innovation with data, with artificial intelligence and cloud economics. And the old guard doesn't have those things. Blockchain fits in there. To me, blockchain is about building out a new distributed web and on top of the old web and rewarding those who are building it. So it's a new form of open source where the builders get paid. But it's also decentralized and you have a value store, value creation capture model that has all the wrappings of what we traditionally see in a centralized database or even cloud. You need networks. You need storage. You need databases. You need tokens, which is a form of data. So token economics, I mean, it's a new value economy, Dave. I mean, and I just don't, I feel like the, I just, from my perspective, I just don't think those guys are seeing it. No, and so it's not only those guys. It's the most of the world. I mean, you turn on CNBC and Buffett's on there saying this is going to end badly and there's negative, you know, trade press about, you know, Bitcoin and Silk Road and all that stuff. What most of the world is missing and that makes people run away. But this is happening. It's real. It is going to be the foundation for a next generation internet. It's just, it's happening. You see it all the time. Developers built the internet. Developers are going to rebuild the internet on top of this. So I would suggest to people just try to squint through or squint past the negative press and try to really understand what this trend is all about and how it's fundamentally going to change the internet and change the world. Well, there's negative press that's worthy. There's a lot of scams out there. There's security issues, but these are evolutionary problem spaces that can be solved. One, the scammers are going to get vetted out the bubble bursting, but the real value creation is going to come from developers. And that, to me, is what I hear you saying as your main point. No question about it. And I think that, you know, there's lots of challenges. This stuff is not easy. First of all, who would have ever thought that something like Ethereum could even have been built this kind of distributed infrastructure? I mean, it's very, very challenging. And of course, we know about the scaling problems, the latency issues, all that stuff, but these are problems that smart people are going to go attack and solve. And again, I emphasize, it's the new form of, remember the old open systems, UNIX and open systems? Well, fast forward past open source, which the internet was built on open source. Think about Linux, everything's built on Linux. But today, developers who are building these new protocols are actually going to get paid to do that. I was like Anthony, you know, made hundreds of millions. And then Dorio, co-founder of Ethereum, doing Jack Swallet as part of Decentral. Great use case. He's paying it forward. And I think the community here is a real dynamic. And I think, you know, what we learned at theCUBE, Dave, is the communities matter. And now more than ever, they're actually having an input. Look at what open source has done to the software business over the past three decades. Okay, completely revolutionized the world we live in. So if you take the open source and apply those principles to, whether it's content, media, or decentralized infrastructure and applications, it's going to be a haven of innovation. Well, and you think about this too, folks, is that, you know, the centralized model has essentially co-opted all this innovation in the last 15 years, right? They've won, closed one, Facebook won. They killed RSS. Facebook's not winning now. They're under a lot of pressure because they screwed the election over and the data that they're using, some will argue that I, when I use Facebook, okay, Facebook's great. I get a free app. I let them have my data because I want to connect with my friends. But they're throwing elections off. I didn't bargain for that. The context has changed. So to me, the shift of user data is going to move into the hands of the users. Do you agree with that state? Yes, no question. And the other thing I would, you know, just to finish my thought. That's not good for Facebook. And we talked about this, John. Protocol development is stagnated, you know? Gmail is built on SMTP, you know, HTTP, DNS. These are all protocols that were developed by governments and academia. And the big guys just co-opted them. And so protocol development stagnated. What you need to understand about blockchain is it's bringing back innovation. Well, Anthony Diorio said on my interview with him one-on-one that protocol developers are the most in-demand role. Because those big guys taking, co-opting those protocols, Dave, as you pointed out, is causing a revolution. It's almost like the 60s for tech. It's like, there is a groundswell. I see it, I feel it. Not just a wave of innovation, but the actors and the people involved. Look at this as a liberating opportunity to free the centralized forces that are quite frankly holding the world back. And I want to, this is very important. And it was really epiphany when it hit me. Is that if you wanted to invest in TCPIP back in the day, how would you do that? You could invest in TCPIP. You could maybe invest in companies. Cisco. Yeah, you could invest in companies. Okay, but you and I couldn't have gotten in early on Cisco. It was all the insiders. Today, developers who are building out these protocols, they can own the protocol. That's a form of investment. And they get essentially equity in that token. Dave, we're going to be doing a lot of crypto shows and blockchain shows, because we're talking about the decentralization of the world. This is the future of our globe and work and play. What are you looking for as we go down and knock down these shows? The Cube goes out on this new mission. Well, it's like, Anthony kind of hinted at this, is he's looking at infrastructure. It's like the early days of the internet where the pickaxe guys made all the money. It's the infrastructure that's getting built out. So I want to see how that develops and how that sets the foundation, the platform for distributed applications. Number one. Number two is I want to understand some of these challenges and how they're going to be addressed. The scaling issues, the latency problems, some of the nitty-gritty technical challenges. Who's working on those? And then the third is, what's the right investment profile? How are the investors at this conference and other conferences going about deciding what to invest in, right? How do they squint through quality and garbage? Well, I'm going to be heading to a special investor event. Dave, I'm going to get them put my ear to the ground. And of course, it's the Cube. We'll go wherever it takes to get to the story, whether it's the Bahamas, not a bad gig here, but important, we're going to get the most important stories and share that with you and continue our mission of getting this content out in the open, shining the light on relevance and the right reputable people. Dave, always great and looking forward to a great week. Nice job.