By today’s highly interactive standards, the earliest web pages were a pretty dull affair. In the 1990s world of Web 1.0, pages were static without much in the way of video, sound or transformative graphics.

The era of Web 2.0 ushered in user-generated content and an explosion of social platforms, coupled with vastly improved technology that made interoperability dramatically better and the world infinitely smaller. It opened the gates to a new period of collaboration and sharing.

Many believe that the new world of Web 3.0 is upon us, a time when middlemen are removed from transactions and regulatory bodies take a back seat to community-based, self-governing rule. It’s increasingly being viewed as a time when the blockchain’s method for encrypting transactional ledgers is beginning to change the modern financial system.

“Many refer to blockchain technology as Web. 3.0, and I’m a big believer in that,” said Al Burgio (pictured), founder of the DigitalBits Project, Fusechain Inc. and Console Connect Inc. “This is the next evolution of the internet.”

Burgio spoke with John Furrier and Dave Vellante, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit in Toronto. They discussed uses of the blockchain in enterprises and beyond, the role of events like the summit to further that understanding, continued growth of private and public blockchains, new opportunities for capital formation, the hot cryptocurrency market in Asia Pacific and a possible move toward self-regulation of the financial technology industry.

This week, theCUBE features Burgio as its Guest of the Week.

Familiar pattern of adoption

The waves of technology innovation have followed a familiar pattern for the blockchain, according to Burgio, who sees the categories of supporters in three distinct classifications. “It’s first movers, willing followers and the unwilling,” Burgio said.

Another way to view the pattern is in terms of those who “get it” and those who don’t. Before branching into blockchain, Burgio was the founder and chief executive officer of Console Connect Inc., an interconnection platform for cloud and the enterprise that was sold to PCCW Global Ltd. in 2017.

During the time with his previous company, Burgio got to know a lot of enterprise stakeholders, and when it came to blockchain, he found a split level of understanding. “What I found was two different extremes,” Burgio recalled. “You had CEOs and CTOs with a high ‘get it’ factor. And then there were multibillion-dollar organizations where the leadership team was still trying to figure it out.”

To fill that knowledge gap, Burgio felt strongly that there had to be a better way to raise the “get it” factor. So he sponsored an invitation-only event to bring key stakeholders together.

“Ultimately, there needed to be a forum, not just here in North America, but in every corner of the world, the Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit, providing an opportunity for convergence,” Burgio said. “There’s amazing things being spoken on stage as we are sitting here.”

Public and private blockchains

Among the topics discussed at the gathering was the current use of private and public blockchains. A need for privacy or control has led to the creation of numerous private blockchains for enterprise uses, including supply chain monitoring among a trusted circle of participants.

However, the growth of the public blockchain has become a technology phenomenon. That’s because it is the engine that drives initial coin offerings, a token economy that has experienced remarkable growth and heart-stopping volatility.

“Public chain is a phenomenal phenomenon,” Burgio said. “It’s given birth to the ICO, this new way of capital formation that is unbelievably awesome. The world has never seen anything like this.”

The effect of ICOs on capital formation has captured much attention over the past year. In the traditional startup funding model, entrepreneurs without a previous money-making successful venture would raise money from friends and family to get started and then progress to raising capital from angel investors or the venture capital community. Independent token sales are now bypassing traditional funding all together.

“You’re basically sharing your idea with the world and all of a sudden saying, ‘Hey. Here’s our token economics; we’d like to raise some capital,’” Burgio explained. “In a matter of seconds or minutes, you can have a currency go from a bedroom in Florida to a project in Singapore, or vice versa, without going through a bank.”

Hot market in Asia

There may be even more blockchain-related projects from Singapore and other Asian markets in the near future. A recently released market report showed that the Asia Pacific region will be the fastest-growing for blockchain over the next five years, with Japan and China expected to experience significant growth.

“What’s happening in Asia is absolutely phenomenal in the blockchain space as well,” Burgio said. “You can see on many of the cryptocurrency exchanges out there an insane amount of volume, more so than any other corner of the world. They are a very active investor and utility token buyer community.”

The potential cooling factor for blockchain expansion continues to be regulation. Recent action by some U.S. regulatory agencies has raised concerns that more crackdowns could be coming.

Burgio sees opportunity for a self-governance model similar to the management structure that guides the internet today, where no one government controls the allocation of internet protocol addresses.

“Let’s define self-governing bodies, and if they can play a great role in it all, then fantastic,” Burgio said. “Otherwise, maybe the government steps in.”

Discussion at the summit highlighted the emergence of the blockchain and a token ecosystem as one of the more significant disruptors of the internet age, a time when Web 3.0 could indeed transform the global economy. For Burgio, and many of his fellow entrepreneurs, it’s still all about innovation and the spread of new technologies like blockchain to make it happen.

“We’re in this pioneering era, with mass innovation happening,” Burgio said. “I believe we’re going to continue to see an acceleration of innovation and not just in certain pockets of the world, but in many corners of the world.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit:

Photo: SiliconANGLE