Blockchain and cryptocurrency’s wide horizon of business and social potential is now visible to pretty much everyone. But the public won’t believe in its practical use cases until it sees them. They’re showing up here and there, but the expected explosion hasn’t quite popped yet.

“Cryptocurrency and blockchain is funny, because everyone understands it — but doesn’t understand it,” said John Furrier (@furrier, pictured, right), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

While the bubble of possibilities is palpable, who actually knows what will finally splash out of it? “Yeah, we see the big opportunity; we can see money being made. But people still don’t truly understand what it is,” Furrier said.

Furrier and guest analyst Al Burgio (@Fusechain, pictured, left), founder and chief executive officer of Fusechain Inc., discussed the latest news and events from the Polycon18 event in The Bahamas, including crypto’s pace of evolution and materializing use cases.

Cracking the use case

All of the guests theCUBE interviewed at the conference have one thing in common: They admit that they don’t know all there is to know about blockchain and cryptocurrency. In many ways, they resemble what the internet was in the 1990s, according to Burgio.

“There’s a classic episode of the ‘Today’ show. I think it was Bryant Gumble … trying to understand what is the internet,” Burgio said. We know how that turned out, and crypto may be on the same path, he added.

Certain rough-and-ready pockets are ahead of the curve. “Digital currency in gaming has been around for a while. We see the young guns get that. That’s like a fish to water,” Furrier said.

Usage is spreading to old-school domains, such as loyalty-points programs popular with airlines and retailers. But the state of such programs is pretty pitiable at present, according to Burgio. “A third of points never get redeemed. There’s a huge problem with many corporations … as they’re issuing points; it’s a liability on their balance sheet,” he said, adding that this could create solvency problems.

Burgio’s company, Fusechain, helps companies tokenize points on a blockchain so that end users can easily track and transfer their points, solving the liquidity problem. “As a result of that, consumers have an ever-growing desire to want to be part of these programs and earn points,” Burgio concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Polycon18.

Photo: SiliconANGLE