Meet the Brains Behind Zeek (Daniel Zelkind)
Zeex is lucky to have many advisors and supporters. I recently sat down with our very first advisor, Daniel Zelkind, who also co-founded Zeek. We spoke in depth about the gift card market, the cryptocurrency market and Zeex itself. Below you’ll find some of his answers to our questions.
Q: Please tell us a bit about your background and why you founded Zeek.
A: Before I founded Zeek, I was deeply involved in online media. I founded Mediacom, which became Israel’s largest online media agency. I eventually got tired of that world because it’s hard to truly differentiate yourself in online media since technology is a commodity and things are very political. I also felt that I wasn’t really contributing to the world, and I wanted to make a difference. When we started looking into the gift card market, we saw that it was very large, about $500bn in 2014, yet there was no exchange or way for people to buy and sell. Despite this, there were not significant barriers to making an exchange because gift cards are treated as SKU’s or regular products to be sold. We created Zeek as a way to solve this problem and allow people to exchange more easily.
Q: What got you interested in cryptocurrency?
A: I have been interested in blockchain technology for a long time. Cryptocurrency is a derivative of blockchain, an important and useful one, but the real game-changer is blockchain. I understood the potential implications quickly; the internet revolution was a consumer revolution, but the blockchain revolution will be an infrastructure revolution. From payments infrastructure to electric grids and transportation, blockchain can vastly improve efficiency on a large scale.
Q: Speaking of that world, what do you think are the biggest challenges in the blockchain space today?
A: That’s easy: regulation, liquidity and friction. Right now, there is very little clarity on regulations regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain companies, and for the technology and the market to mature we need fair rules for everyone. Liquidity is a concern because it’s still difficult to use cryptocurrency as an actual method of payment, and transactional friction (the cost of performing a transaction) is still unconscionably high, which makes it even less likely consumers will pay with cryptocurrencies.
Q: How do you see cryptocurrency and blockchain progressing over the next couple of years? How will Zeek and Zeex need to evolve to handle this?
A: Blockchain will definitely change the way transfers happen in finance, but there’s much more to it. To consumers, this will be less visible, but blockchain will drive significant change in the way machines communicate with each other. For example, a blockchain solution that could replace POS integrations and connect end to end could reduce fees even in fiat transfers. Later on, we may see huge corporations buying up blockchain projects, which could end up reducing decentralization. In general, about 65% of the world remains unbanked or underbanked and blockchain will help them take control of their finances. For Zeex to stay competitive we need to embrace regulation and be vocal while it’s being debated to make sure that regulations protect consumers and are in the best interest of the public.
Q: How did you manage to build such a vast network of brand partnerships at Zeek?
A: It’s a snowball effect really, but it wasn’t easy. We had to prove that Zeek was a good idea and a good business, that it would be a mutually beneficial relationship between us and the brands. We also had the advantage of our proprietary fraud prevention technology, which the brands like. Now that Zeek is established it’s much easier to add new partners because they can look at our current partners who are all very happy with us and they can see the proof in the pudding as they say.
Q: What do you think sets Zeex apart from our competition? Since Zeex is open-source, what’s to stop another company from using our code (like Litecoin used most of Bitcoin’s code) and doing the same thing?
A: Honestly, I WISH someone would take our code and compete with us, because we welcome that kind of competition. The corporate currency market is estimated to be worth $3T by 2020; we need more people in the space! We are building a decentralized economy, and that means we need both users and businesses to participate in and support that new economy.
It’s clear from Daniel’s answers that Zeex is moving in the right direction. The three major issues he raised are not unique, they’re issues that everyone in the cryptocurrency space shares. By working together with a decentralized network, we can all contribute to a brighter future.
