At the end of the year, The Cryptonomist had a chance to interview some of the most successful Italian companies in the crypto and blockchain sector, one of which was Chainblock with its CEO Federico Pecoraro.
How was 2019 for Chainblock? Can you summarise the milestones you achieved?
2019 was a very fruitful year for both the business and the industry. We consolidated our user base and started various discussions with international players to pursue complementarity. We are witnessing an excellent upward trend for Chainblock which, with more and more new ATMs scattered throughout the territory, the last one being in Milan with a dedicated location (my bank), we can safely say that we are still number 1 in Italy.
Our online exchange service with bank transfer and Chainblock Buy cards is offering excellent results although much more recent and in the coming months, we will integrate new features such as recursive purchasing and lighting network for BTC for instant transactions.
What are the 2020 targets for Chainblock?
In 2020 Chainblock aims to increase the user base with new services that actually help the population. Many people, especially in Italy, are wary of buying online so we will start with tests to discover new services.
We want to be the trusted partner of all Italians and European customers who want to enter the crypto world, with exactly the same availability and diligence with which we have served the over 20000 customers who have trusted us for years. Much is in the planning stage and most of the specifications cannot be “disclosed” for now.
In general, how do you think the crypto industry is changing and what do you expect to happen in the new year?
It’s been a year of signals. By that, I mean that for the first time we are seeing governments that have stopped stalling and are actually taking action. 2020 will certainly be a very significant year for the industry since in my opinion a lot more ordinary people will be able to interface with crypto in various forms or ways.
We are aiming for a greater and pervasive spread, which will happen with the clearance of big companies (which is close). Signals like those in Germany, where banks will be able to purchase and store digital valuables for their customers is already an excellent first step, isn’t it?
What do you think about DeFi? Will you add other services related to decentralised finance?
We are big fans of DeFi and are convinced that it could be a killer app for ethereum in the medium term. We talked about it just a few days ago at Bocconi University. Simply from the interest of the young students, we could see that the topic is more relevant than ever, both in the academic and potentially working field.
There are many young entrepreneurs who want to redefine the concept of the financial system. The technologies are now present, and not too far away in time I am confident to see a market cap, to put it that way, over a thousand billion. Currently, at Chainblock we are thinking and working to understand how to integrate some services related to this phenomenon with our core business. The first one we have on the integrated ATM service is DAI;
