How is blockchain technology enabling the tokenization of high finance for cryptocurrency markets, and what are the economic and cultural impacts of such decentralized transactions?

Looking to answer these and other questions, SiliconANGLE is at the inaugural Polycon18 in the Bahamas, an intimate conference claiming to be the world’s first crypto event dedicated to security tokens. Broadcasting live from the conference will be SiliconANGLE’s roving news desk, theCUBE. (* Disclosure below.)

After gaining mainstream attention in 2017, the volatile crypto market has seen increasing interest from investors and regulators, all looking to stabilize the uncertain outcomes inherent in decentralized money markets. One way to seed faith in cryptocurrency is through security tokens, which back digital assets with real assets, such as equity, limited partnership shares and commodities.

Security tokens are particularly useful in the booming world of initial coin offerings, a prime example of decentralized fundraising that circumvents traditional obstacles, such as power consolidation in the boardrooms of venture capital firms or bureaucratic red tape complicating a company’s journey to an initial public offering.

Yet liquidity remains a challenge for security tokens upon launch, hindered by a lack of support from traditional financial markets and regulatory bodies. That’s why use cases in blockchain-based services, such as Microsoft’s latest identity management efforts, are necessary to the innovation cycle. Today’s opportunistic experimentation has the potential to decentralize utilities, education and even the ballot box.

“Right now the ICO market is a storytelling market … partly because none of the blockchains … are fast enough for these new projects to actually run at industrial speed, so each ICO right now is a story of what might get built,” said Michael Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager, during a panel at this year’s MENA Summit. Now the chief executive officer of Galaxy Investment Partners Fund LLC, billionaire Novogratz thinks the risk-taking nature of decentralized markets poses real threats to traditional companies, and the next few years will present a unique opportunity for his investment firm to both question and guide the market’s riskiest experimenters.

“Is there a great team behind it? Do the token economics make sense? Is there a reason this industry should be decentralized? Not every industry should be decentralized,” Novogratz said.

The cultural effects of decentralization, however, are bigger than cryptocurrency’s current position in its innovation cycle, according to venture capitalist Bill Tai. The co-founder and chairman of ACTAI Global recognizes software’s underlying influence on entire ecosystems once they’ve been decentralized, returning society to a structure not seen since before the industrial revolution when oil became the “tokenized” commodity.

“The old industrial revolution with machinery made oil fundamental to people’s lives. Now it’s all software,” said Tai, also a panelist at the MENA Summit. “I think what cryptocurrency is — it’s essentially the tokenization of electrons as opposed to petroleum molecules and it’s becoming … a reference storage for all of the things that are useful in your life.”

Keynote speakers at Polycon18 include Overstock.com Inc. CEO Patrick M. Byrne, Ethereum Co-founder Anthony Di Iorio, and investor Bill Tai. Other speakers include Bloq Inc. Chairman and Co-founder Matthew Roszak, Hive Blockchain Technologies Ltd. Chairman Frank Holmes, Grit Capital CEO Genevieve Roch-Decter, and AnthemGold Inc. President and Co-founder Cynthia Blanchard.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at Polycon18, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website and Ustream

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from Polycon18 will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

The list of guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE at Polycon18 is still being finalized, but we will keep you updated on the dedicated event page.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from Polycon18, which runs until March 3, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes, which you can enjoy while on the go.

(* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Polycon