Giorgi Khazaradze Interview

Tell me a little bit of your back story and how you grew up? 

I was  born in the Republic of Georgia and our family immigrated to Dallas, Texas when I was 8 years old. We left the country with nothing more than the clothes on our back in 2000. During that time, the country was in bad shape as the government slowly lost its power to corruption. My grandfather was heavily involved in creating the country’s banking infrastructure from the ground up after the Soviet Union fell apart and when Georgia became a republic in the early 90s. This was a period of time when our family was living comfortably but soon after the government became corrupted, we escaped to the United States.

From the day we arrived in the U.S., my parents and grandparents worked hard to put food on the table. Witnessing this effort inspired my sister and I to attend college in hopes of creating a bountiful life in our new home.

My first job was in a warehouse when I was in 8th grade, I worked alongside my parents. At $6 an hour for manual labor, I hated working there. Looking back at it now, I wouldn’t change a thing because that experience was what drove me to become the entrepreneur I am today.

I spent a lot of my time at home on the computer learning and exploring all its possibilities. Over time, I realized that there were people out there making money through internet marketing, affiliate networks, and things I had familiarized myself with.

From 10th grade on, my current partners (that I met on an online forum) and I worked on various businesses. Before I had even left high school, we were generating tens of thousands of dollars a day from our unique advertising methods.

When did you first encounter crypto and what attracted you to it?

My business partner Taras was dabbling in crypto a little in like 2015-16, so I started investing a little, a really low amount. And I instantly lost a few hundred bucks and I thought, you know what, I don't want to deal with this. Its too stressful. But the upside was it got me thinking about investing more in ourselves instead of these other entities.

I started getting serious about Crypto during one of its bull runs, when I saw its value really taking off, yet I noticed there really was no financial terminal exclusively for crypto, the data was all over the place and terribly disorganized, so we hatched the idea of applying the traditional securities dashboard terminal for crypto, with everything on one screen, 

Do you remember your first trade?  

Yeah. And I'm actually upset that I sold. It was something that Taras had recommended, and I bought it, I don't even remember what coin it was, but it was like $2,000 and within days it dropped like 500 bucks and I thought, Geez, I have developers to pay. That 500 would have covered a couple days of their work 

I'm afraid to ask, but do you know how much that trade would be worth today?  

It would be worth like 20 million or something insane.

But in a practical sense, the first time I bought Bitcoin was actually to pay some of our developers. This was when it was cheap, when you could buy a Bitcoin for a few hundred dollars. I sure hope they held on to theirs!

Tell me about Aurox?  

As I was saying, when I first started dabbling in Crypto and saw it taking off, I noticed the need for an all encompassing financial terminal, applying the best parts of traditional securities exchanges on a crisp dashboard terminal, everything on one screen, but in the style of cryptocurrency. That was in 20xx. And we've been working steadily at expanding our services and platform ever since.

Crypto has been in the news a lot, not all of it great. Kim Kardashian just got her wrist slapped by the SEC pretty good. What concerns you most about the industry?

As Crypto goes more and more mainstream, especially during the recent run-up in values, a lot of newcomers come to the crypto space strictly wanting to make a quick buck. And that fear of missing out mentality results in a lot of inexperienced crypto traders losing money and souring on the whole system. So I hate to see that, for long term I see so much value in the technology.

But mostly, and I'm probably going to get hammered for this, but the lack of regulation is becoming a problem. There are perfectly reasonable ways to regulate cryptocurrencies in ways that protects all parties, traders and programmers alike, without over-regulating it and creating tension, potentially keeping the technology from being developed properly.

For example, that token that Kim Kardashian got in trouble for pumping up. The average person probably does not know that there were likely problems with that coin's utility and valuation. So when they saw her promoting it, they might have purchased it for all the wrong reasons, getting stuck with this completely worthless project that was going nowhere and meant nothing. Those of us in the industry sensed that, but this is what we do all day. How is a crypto newcomer to know any better?
 
So I think the industry as a whole needs to be better at policing itself, for without proper regulations, the industry risks public backlash and a general aversion to wider spread adoption and acceptance of cryptocurrency.
 
The speculative side of many new coins are also problematic. Too much hype and disappointment is just not great for the industry. People are too caught up in trying to make a quick buck. Get in, get out. Buy low, sell high, no matter what the project is. Some of its just not healthy nor sustainable. We've made such progress these past few years achieving mainstream acceptance. Hate to see all our hard work jeopardized in such a way.

The utility of cryptocurrency has dramatically improved. Ease in acquiring/investing in a variety of coins has never been easier.  NFTs are an integral part of the emerging Creator Economy.  What in your opinion is the next big advancement for the crypto industry as a whole .

On the technical side, there are a lot of cool projects, involving increased scalability, to be able to process more transactions cheaper.  ZK Swaps are one. dYdX is another advancement in a stand alone blockchain enhancement. But as far as our business, at Aurox our mission is to continue to improve the user experience for trading and investing in crypto.

The economy is a bit volatile right now. What do you say to the skeptic?

 As for the skeptics, I mean, I would tell them we've been through these market fluctuations a few times now. This is actually the third or fourth wave we've had to manage.

So with each bear market, crypto's valuations get more honed in. There's little difference between our charts and many Fortune 500 companies. So, in an odd way, crypto's mirroring of the larger economic trends just makes it stronger. But if I were to address the skeptic directly, I would tell them the incredibly challenging work of creating a new currency with as an acceptable store of value with widespread acceptance has already been completed. Crypto is accepted by Fortune 500 companies as well as all the major investment banking firms. The underlying technology is sound and only improving by the day. Crypto, or digital currency, is here to stay and only going to continue growing. So now its about positioning oneself for the future.

 What's the next big advancement in the Crypto space? 

The User Experience for sure. That's one of the issues with cryptocurrencies that the user experience is lacking because everyone's working behind the scenes developing these cool ways to manage money, tokens, et cetera.

And only a handful of us are focusing on the front end. You shouldn't have to read and understand the underlying technical documentation in order to swap tokens or use a lending protocol.
 
For the average person is not going to do that. So one of our objectives is to create a platform where its as easy as point and click for all your crypto investing needs, making the wallets easy and understandable as well as the tokens one may be interested in
 
We don't want the consumer overwhelmed by all of Crypto's complexities.

Lot of market volatility of late. Ease my fears

Yes, most importantly, Avoid the FOMO.  You could potentially invest in a new company or token and it could go up 10, 20, 30s time.. Its happened, but most people don't get that lucky.

Don't treat crypto like gambling. I would recommend if you're purchasing a token, looking into the utility of the token, see if it's something that you think is going to be useful to you in the future and treat your investment responsibly with a  long term goal.
 
If you're a beginner looking to just get in, stick to the top tokens that are established, that's where you should probably be purchasing and learn how the markets work.
 
Whereas if you're more intermediary or advanced,  make sure you do your research and make sure you've really focus on the utility of the project rather than the advertising material, which does require to read the documentation for those projects.

Innovation.. The genius of the web is it takes such minimal tech skills.. Peeps get shook with a software update or a modified user experience. How do we make crypto more inviting, less intimidating?

One of the issues with cryptocurrencies is that the user experience is lacking because the programmers are working diligently behind the scenes developing these cool ways to manage money, tokens, etc, only a few firms are focusing on the front end. The internet was developed in the 1960's, but it took decades before the user experience improved enough for widespread public usage, and even then, WEB 1 internet was pretty primitive. So it takes time and patience to reach widespread public acceptance. But I've never been more excited about the direction of cryptocurrency investing. To be on the front lines of something so new and exciting makes our work all that more satisfying.

 


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