A Conversation with Shaun Newsum, CEO of ICO Watchdog
Tell us a bit about how you started working with Science
I reached out to Mike Jones directly a couple years ago with a cold email; basically hitting him up saying I was a serial entrepreneur working on different projects. He responded and invited me to his office. We forged a relationship from there where I would keep him updated on new startup ideas I was working on.
About a year ago, I launched ICO Watchdog and mentioned it to Mike, almost in passing, while we were catching up over coffee. He said Science Inc. was actually looking to launch a whole blockchain division and thought that what I was working on might fit nicely into their strategy. He then invited me to continue to build ICO Watchdog under Science Blockchain.
What got you interested in cryptocurrencies?
A good friend of mine (Eric Willis over at Product Hunt) came by my office one day and suggested I check out the crypto space based on my background in finance and software development, since he thought my skill set would be a good fit. I took a look at the space, and the rest is history.
First thing I did was open a Coinbase account and bought Bitcoin. I also created a Binance account (which felt really shady) and purchased a few altcoins by using the Bitcoin I purchased on Coinbase. From there, I traded back and forth to see how much money I could make.
What are you trying to do with ICO Watchdog? How has it evolved from when you got started?
Our mission is two-fold:
- Help cryptocurrency investors determine the best blockchain projects.
- Enable investors to identify any illegitimate projects and avoid those.
Initially, we started out as alerts for crypto investors, but now we’ve grown to be a full-fledged investment research for digital assets. We launched TokenGrade, an audit service that lets token creators to submit their whitepaper plans and smart contract source code for inspection by ICO Watchdog’s team of crypto experts. ScamWatch is a chatbot feature that rewards ICO Watchdog’s more than 50,000 community members for reporting fraudulent ICOs.
Additionally, we’ll be launching Blockchain Report, our first content channel.
User education is a huge need as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology can be overwhelming for even some of the most Internet-savvy users. The Blockchain Report will be a video news channel with a focus on short-form news and Q&A. We’re calling it, “MTV News meets Blockchain”
What do you think are going to be the most consequential learnings from the ICO mania?
One of the biggest learnings is that there is a lot to be built on the blockchain. People were coming up with these ideas and solutions — but the platform was still very immature in terms of being able to develop the solutions people were coming up with. The plumbing wasn’t there, so to speak.
Now, a lot of the investment is going toward building out scaling solutions for the blockchain that people can build real-world solutions on. You couldn’t build real-world solutions on the blockchain, but that will change very soon.
What are some things in this space that you think are overhyped right now that we will soon see some disappointment about?
I think blockchain projects that claim to be faster than Bitcoin and Ethereum are overhyped. The hardest part for any blockchain project is to foremost get miners and the development community that’s involved in pushing the platform forward. People don’t switch from one platform to another very easily so it will be challenging for newer blockchain projects to gain adoption from the crypto community because they’re late to the game.
Is there anything that you think people are not paying enough attention to that will become fairly important and popular in the long run?
I think Ethereum has a huge future, and the scaling solutions that they’ll be implementing over next 1–2 years will create dramatic improvements. Loom Network is one such project that is making Ethereum more useful for average developers that will help it scale even further.
If you had the power to change one major thing, what would it be?
I think we would change the way a cryptocurrency wallet works because it’s just fundamentally not user-friendly. Also, the lack of that user-friendliness is causing the adoption rate to be a lot slower than new technologies. The way people use the blockchain needs to be re-thought from a design perspective.
Security tokens have reemerged as a big part of the conversations around crypto. Have you thought about entering that space in any capacity?
Not yet. We’re still taking a wait-and-see approach for security tokens. Security tokens in the short-term will still be limited to wholesale and accredited investors due to the compliance costs. There’s a much higher cost to launching a security token to retail investors, which creates a barrier to entry and more attractive opportunity for utility tokens.
Are there any categories that are underinvested or underexplored when it comes to professional trading tools landscape?
There needs to be more derivatives products in the cryptocurrency space, such as swaps and futures contracts.
What is your strongest belief about how utility tokens will play out in the long run? What would likely need to happen for you to change your mind on that in the short run?
Utility tokens are in great shape as long there are large trading exchanges such as Binance who will support them.
Binance would need to completely shutdown for utility tokens to disappear in the short-term.
