From a young age, Lukas Krikštaponis had an interest in repairing computers and hacking which led him to a career in technology. Having over 6 years working in IT he has hands-on experience in government, banking, and cybersecurity industries, including, in a multinational investment bank and as the head of security engineering department in a multi-million startup deploying AI solutions to the biggest telcos in the USA. His strong passion for technology combined with a drive to accomplish goals ensures he achieves the best results possible.
Today Lukas is CEO of ROKKEX — a cryptocurrency exchange focused on cybersecurity and transparency. The exchange is going live in Q3 2019 while it is being beta-tested already for a month to ensure everything functions as it should be.
We interviewed Lukas about his strategic vision, motivation, and how ROKKEX will look like in a year.
How the idea with ROKKEX was born?
Me and Evaldas Ūsas (ROKKEX CISO) have been passionate about the crypto for several years already and we even thought of building our own mining farm. However, having analyzed the risks and opportunities we came to the conclusion that it’s not going to be a hugely fortunate enterprise. Still, we continued brainstorming ideas and then Coincheck hack took place…
It enlightened us with the idea of building a highly protected and transparent crypto exchange, the one crypto traders and regulators could trust. At that time, there was no secure exchange where money was backed up by licenses.
Being cybersecurity specialists, we had enough skills and knowledge to fulfill this idea into reality. We invited the best lawyers and started researching how we can build the trustful crypto exchange.
I’m pleased to announce that such an exchange will see the world in Q3 2019!
Besides, our short-term plan is to unblock the barrier between crypto and traditional financial market. We’re looking forward to building a securities exchange that will allow crypto traders to buy stocks and shares on ROKKEX. For this, we’re going to hold STO (Security Token Offering).
What major threats and opportunities do you foresee for this business? How do you plan to handle them?
Definitely, hacking is one of the greatest threats, because I know that no system is 100% secure and every security researcher will support me in this. Nevertheless, we’re doing our best to ensure the highest level of protection possible: we’re collaborating with white hat hackers, perform security tests, receive certifications, and equip the platform with the latest software and hardware used in banking industries.
Among the opportunities, we want to address concerns that crypto isn’t the synonym to scam and fraud :). We’re exploring the legal landscape to ensure stability for ROKKEX. Moreover, we will list only pragmatic and workable projects on the crypto exchange; for that, we’ll meet teams, check their products (yes, it should exist by that time), and perform other audits to make sure that scam coins aren’t traded on ROKKEX.
Crypto is a fast-growing industry and we want to keep up with it!
What does success in a year look like for you?
I see ROKKEX fully compliant, regulated, and licensed; crypto-to-fiat option is available and confirmed by the banks. We’ve successfully launched a tokenized version of the stock market. No incidents happened. There are 500 satisfied users on the platform.
Also, I envision ROKKEX to be in Top 10 CMC and CER lists in 3 years and not only under ‘highest daily volume’ score but also ‘cybersecurity’ and ‘liquidity’ ones.
How did your hacking experiences mold and shape you into the leader you are today?
Hacking allows to be free, not managed by someone, not to have guidelines, and at the same time to be responsible for your actions. Basically, hacking just gave me an opportunity to find a job.
What was the best advice anyone ever gave you, and did you follow it?
“Never delay until tomorrow what you can do today” — CEO of CUJO.AI, the company I worked in before ROKKEX.
What gets you up in the morning? What is your motivation?
The realization that nobody will do my job for me :)
Conversely, how do you ensure your team stays motivated and engaged while pursuing this vision?
We choose who we are at ROKKEX. Everyone can shape a product we’re creating and add a piece of oneself to it.
I support freedom and the absence of abusive management!
Describe ROKKEX competitive advantage in one word.
Trust!
At ROKKEX, we take security extremely seriously and our crypto exchange is built on ‘Security First’ principle. We want to share our expertise with the broader public for the world to become happy, safe, and wise :)
If you have any ideas and suggestions, contact us at
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