“5 Ways Regtech Can Help Stabilize The Crypto Markets” With Alex Wearn & Breana Patel
This week, At Bonova Advisory we had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Wearn, CEO — Aurora Labs S.A./IDEX
Alex has led software and product development teams at Amazon, Adobe, IBM and other industry-leading technology companies.
With a dual MBA in Finance and Operations and MS in Design and Innovation from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Alex specializes in leading operations, marketing, and sales analytics for cutting-edge software products. Prior to joining Aurora, he led a product management team in re-platforming their application to operate on a private Ethereum blockchain (project still in stealth mode).
Breana: Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the story of how you got involved with the Regtech or Crypto markets?
Alex: I first heard about Bitcoin in 2012. I was intrigued by the fact that people were using this “magic internet money” to make real world purchases, but I initially dismissed it due to the fact that it wasn’t backed by any asset or issuing entity. It was only a few years later that I dug in further and began to understand how it’s the fundamental properties of Bitcoin — the first scarce digital asset that can be sent anywhere in the world without reliance on a third party — that makes it valuable. How valuable is anyone’s guess, which is part of the reason you see so much volatility in the market, but I’m betting that the impact will be significant.
In 2014 Ethereum was announced, and I became fascinated by the idea of expanding on bitcoin’s foundation and creating programmable assets. Allowing digital assets to move based on all sorts of criteria or signals can solve a whole host of problems. My Co-Founder and I began exploring further and eventually settled on decentralized exchanges as an exciting opportunity and haven’t looked back since.
Breana: Can you share 5 ways that Regulation and Regtech can help stabilize the Crypto Economy?
- Provide clarity around regulatory requirements for those building decentralized applications, especially those that move funds without ever taking custody.
- Make institutional investors comfortable with adding digital assets to their investment portfolios.
- Help control market manipulation and other activity that is illegal in traditional financial markets and may be driving away participants (we take this seriously and have our own internal processes to eliminate this in spite of the lack of industry-wide regulation).
- Reduce the risk for entrepreneurs in the space and increase the number of participants
Breana: What are the top concerns that crypto firms should be considering in order to have a competitive edge?
Alex: The number one question any cryptocurrency-based company needs to ask themselves is “do blockchain or cryptoassets actually solve (or improve) the problem?” Clearly, for exchanges, blockchains and cryptoassets are a vital part of the business, and even more so for decentralized exchanges. However there are many other projects where it isn’t clear how the use of a blockchain or a cryptoasset makes them better than just using traditional, centralized architecture (through lower costs, better service, etc.).
Breana: Can you share examples of measures you take to prevent internal data breach?
Alex: As a decentralized exchange, IDEX relies on the Ethereum blockchain to handle all critical functions pertaining to fund custody and settlement. Publishing to the blockchain eliminates critical “internal” data and brings an unparalleled level of security and transparency to our operations by design.
We also take an active approach to protecting consumers’ data/funds across the web by teaming up with PhishFort — an anti-phishing company specializing in the blockchain industry. Phishfort uses a combination of cutting-edge techniques to detect, blacklist, and ultimately take down phishing websites, apps, chat bots, and more across the web that are pretending to be IDEX or our representatives.
Breana: Can you share a story of a time when things went south for you? What kept you going and helped you to overcome those times?
Alex: We actually fell victim to our own early success back in May 2018. Over the course of a few weeks, IDEX’s active users more than doubled, and trade volume quadrupled as we quickly became the go-to exchange for newly listed tokens at the time. We tried to maintain system performance throughout this explosive growth using various live patches, but it was like changing a flat tire with the car still at full speed. At a certain point, we made the decision to pause the exchange and re-engineer the system from the ground up.
While IDEX’s downtime resulted in unhappy users, a loss of potential revenue, and lack of sleep for our whole team, we came out much stronger on the other side. IDEX was not only able to implement long-term structural improvements that allow us to scale indefinitely, but we also hired and trained a 24/7 live support team to guide all of the new users joining our platform.
Ultimately, we have always been driven by our passion to deliver the best decentralized exchange experience for our customers, and we are so grateful to those who believed in us through those tough times.
Breana: What are some things that you do on daily basis regardless of how busy you are?
Alex: Get product updates from the team to make sure we are hitting goals. Check Nomics or CoinMarketCap to gauge the markets. Listen to one of my favorite podcasts. Enjoy a meal with my lovely new wife.
Breana: What are the top 3 upcoming conferences you are attending and are excited about?
Alex:
Crypto Invest Summit (LA)
Devcon4 (Prague)
TOKEN2049 (Hong Kong)
Breana: Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Alex: I wouldn’t express it as any one specific quote, but the time I spent with Amazon is perhaps the most relevant in terms of shaping my perspective and approach to developing our company. Their success and growth has been the result of obsessing over what some have called “The Virtuous Cycle” — creating exceptional experiences that result in repeat orders, customer loyalty, positive word of mouth — that becomes self-perpetuating. We bring that same philosophy to the table in everything we do. You can see this most clearly in our AURA staking and trading rewards models, where we incentivize the use of the IDEX platform from all angles to create a virtuous cycle of our own.
Breana: How can our readers follow you on social media?
- Discord: http://bit.ly/AuroraDiscord
- Twitter: http://bit.ly/Aurora_Twitter
- Reddit: http://bit.ly/AuroraReddit
- Medium: http://bit.ly/AuroraMedium
- Bitcointalk: http://bit.ly/AuroraBitcointalk
Thank you so much for this. This was very enlightening!
