In celebration of NOWNodes’ 6th anniversary, we have an AMA session on NOWNodes X spaces with BitOK CEO Dmitry Machikhin, to discuss the BitOK’s mission, growth story, web3 security and how NOWNodes plays a role in powering its infrastructure.
AMA Recap: BitOK x NOWNodes
Pauline: Hello, my name is Pauline- I’m gonna be helping out as the host of this AMA. Super excited to be here. So today is a very exciting day. This space is dedicated to NOWNodes’s birthday! And, right now, we’ve got the first guest for our AMA from the excellent service, BitOK. Welcome, Dmitry, and thank you so much for joining today. I would also like to introduce you all to the wonderful Xena Kash who is the CEO of NOWNodes.
Xena, would you mind saying a few words about?
Xena: Hello, everyone. Happy to be here. Really nice to meet all you guys, and talk about nodes and talk about crypto analytics and how’s how it all works out together.
Pauline: Thank you. So, Dmitry, super nice to have you in space. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and what your role is over at BitOK? And, also, would you mind telling us a little bit about what BitOK is and what it does and, basically, anything you might wanna say. Please go on.
Dmitry: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. My name is Dimitry, and I’ve been in crypto space since forever, I guess, was, like, over ten years since I’ve been there. I’ve been doing a bunch of things, including building centralized exchanges, crypto mining, crypto consulting, I mean, legal and stuff.
And finally, three years ago, we started building BitOK at the AML capability provider, one of 20 or 25 in the world, I believe. We’re building, like, similar solutions, including crystal channels. So that you might have heard of some of them.
I am basically the CEO of BitOK. So I review when it comes to the general management representing the company as not as big as some of you may be thinking because of, you know, complexity and the general industry. It seems complicated. We are a team of 28 people on the board, doing very important stuff for the market, for the entire crypto market because we are, we are building transparency.
What we actually build is, serve is a kind of service which helps businesses. Not all businesses, but sometimes private users, but normally businesses to prevent scams, to stay compliant, facing regulators, to not to deal with the mass and dirty stuff because in crypto, there is always something tricky. And our role is to help businesses to avoid it with all efforts they can put on it. That sounds super exciting. And, yes, you asked me about the partnership and how it is going.
Well, generally, if it goes well, we are super happy to have NOWNodes, which is actually one of our main node providers. And, yes, to be 100% honest, sometimes, sometimes it goes. But it’s one of the solutions we’ve found so far. So everything goes, like, let’s say, 96% well. Thank you so much.
Pauline: Thank you so much. However, before we kind of move on to discussing the partnership with NOWNodes, I would kindly like you to tell us a little bit about how you like it, how you got into web3 and blockchain. That was about ten years ago, so I’m assuming that was around 2015, when like, it was probably when, crypto was kind of like a niche or, like, more fringe thing. Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you into space?
Maybe a little bit about your previous experience. Pretty sure everybody would be super interested in hearing all about it.
Dmitry: Well, the funniest thing here is not what brought me there, but who? And the name of the person is the same name as me. It’s actually literally between my chickens.
Not another. That’s the funniest moment you may have heard. That’s because that’s true. So literally the person, whose name is like mine, he brought me into the space because he has been one of the most popular crypto team members.
And the team, who has been building all the crypto stuff of that time. I mean, exchanges like cryptomedia, other startups, they were also, they they they were all, they all belong to one owner, to one, to one group of companies. So that’s what they think because they’re all the they weren’t, I mean, no competitors were, at this time, so nothing. And they invited me to trust it. So even a lot of people didn’t understand what happened there and what crypto is, what Bitcoin is.
So, yeah, I got a lot of expertise and a lot of connections back in 2017. Back then, 2018 was a nightmare for all the cryptos. Many companies died. Many people live in space.
But me, I didn’t leave the space. And I’ve been there, since those times building some other projects and realized it mostly to contact, so for me, it’s like it was my everything was very natural. I collected a lot of positive vibes growing from those times. A lot of positive people, who were solid and brave enough to stay during this winter market from 2018 to 2019. And, like, a few years ago, you know, began once again for all of this.
And many good projects started in those years, including some of the startups. I still involved personally, but really it started for us, a bit late, a bit later in 2021, 2022. So now, everything I have in crypto, including my experts, including my team and people and everything I got during all these years, it’s the perfect combination, which you are able to find. You’ve been okay as stuff there. There are a lot of stories.
Pauline: There are a lot of good and bad stories. There is a lot of fun. There are a lot of makes, too, of course. I think Xena, of course, can. First of all, let me thank you for the story. It was super interesting.
I do have quite a lot of questions to go, to a little bit later on, but first, let Xena ask her questions first.
Xena: First of all, nice to meet you again. I’m happy to hear from you. Well, you started talking about, like, the Wild West before and in 2017, 2019 even.
Well I’ve been there, experienced all of that. Can we say that, well, this Wild West is what led you to create BitOK?
Dmitry: Well, some, sometimes I think that I betrayed crypto because I built the product and the company, which is not about decentralization because the true crypto, began with the true decentralization. You know?
There’s this kind of heritage of Satoshi Nakamoto and stuff. And, all the crypto early adapters from those years I mentioned, they all they all were like, we are crypto anarchists here. We are here to kill banks, etc. But in a way, I think the truth is, it is somewhere behind, like always.
And, crypto is not about it’s not only about hiding something about distillation in a distillation in a bad sense. There is kind of there is kind of so the market is divided. I mean, some people choose complete anonymity. I don’t know why.
But sometimes for hiding something. But some people want to be transparent, facing regulators or centralized exchanges. And for that, we love it.
Pauline: Honestly, in my personal opinion, I think that there is always a time and place for, you know, crypto punks and crypto anarchists.
What I was gonna say is, that in my personal opinion, I do think that, the concepts of being fully decentralized and being a crypto punk and what not, and, kind of striving towards self regulation, which is what BitOK, I believe, is doing. So, again, I don’t think that this is kind of like a bad act. And in the same way, the question I’ve got here for you is, was there anything that inspired the creation of BitOK?
Dmitry: Well, there yeah. So that’s a great question because there was actually an accident related to anti-molecular learning stuff. Well, one friend of mine, they’re actually friends of mine. They were the founders of one of the biggest and most accidental things.
Well, the name of the company is Chatex. Do you remember this company?
I think when Chatex was I think that was, like, in 2021 when You kind of met their untimely end. Yes. When actually Easter. So your distance there is a slight connection.
Well, do you know why Channick’s is gone?
Pauline: I think there was, I don’t know why. What I remember was, I think, like, in the I believe, like, in spring and summer, of 2021, Chatex still existed.
I think I even know the founder of Chatex, but I think that we’re gonna defraud it, closer to the end of the year. But, correct me if I’m wrong.
Dmitry: Well, so the thing is that actually Chatex is finished accidentally.
Xena: Well, just circling back to the topic before, like, regarding the analytical services overall and how we’re coming from the, you know, anarchy and full decentralization. I just wanted to mention that, yeah, obviously, like, the whole the whole sphere right now, the whole crypto way is going towards kinda more centralization, I would say, or even more control.
And control is what we need actually to, again, to prevent scammers, obviously, to help newcomers and, obviously to create mass adoption to improve mass adoption because, more people coming in crypto means that we need to have such services to be compliant with all the regulations and laws that different countries give us. And obviously, in the NOWGroup as a whole, as you know, obviously, we do support this thing. I understand that we have to be kind of on the verge of giving decentralization to the people but keeping it compliant and keeping it safe. So overall the existence of such services and the appearance of more and more services like BitOK is just amazing and I hope that these services will grow even more from now on.
Pauline: I mean, obviously, and, I don’t even think, well, I mean, obviously, I do agree with you, on the topic of, you know, us being compliant and following all the rules and regulations that exist in this space.
But I think what, if we go a little bit down, like, a little bit lower to, a strictly interpersonal level. So, basically, if we step into the shoes of a, like, retail consumer, a retail user of crypto, services like BitOK actually make them more secure while joining the space, and I think less scared of it being, like, more of a Wild West type of thing. And I think that we need more BitOKs in the space if we want to achieve mass adoption at large. And it’s not even about, you know, making more compliant with the government, but it’s more about making newcomers into space feel safe.
Dmitry: But what we need is to make our product work, or ready for changes because crypto is associated with a lot of. So we need to understand, is it really mixed? I mean, to hide something, which could be bad stuff, I mean.
Something or not or just a general use. But for that purpose, we need to have this bridge labeled properly. And, clusterized. So there might be a complicated word, but clusterized to understand all of the wallets how complicated it is.
And we need to be always on time in the complex and very fast changing crypto world. So that’s the main challenge for such products as we are. And, we do everything that can relate to us and on our backs to things to say, one step ahead about crypto scams because our clients, they are asking for it. That’s kind of the huge demand because, from year to year, the amount of scams and hacks are growing. But if you take a loop back on this, for example, you will see this huge amount of stolen money. It could be done in all the wallets including maybe yours, maybe mine.
Good occasion. We should be there to, to to prevent and to notify and to have the proper information about all of the wallets. This is a lot of work that we are doing!
Pauline: This is awesome and thank you so much. And from what I know, NOWNodes serves very well, like, serves your purpose very well because of the archival notes, but I’m gonna let Xena explain that better since she’s the CEO, and she knows a lot more, like, more technical details than I am because I am just a humble host.
Xena: Ah-ah, not many technical details. I’m more on the business side for sure.
However, yeah, like, NOWNodes is right now looking into working more specifically with the web3 analytical services and preparing more, like, more services for them. Like, already, BitOK is our great partner, and it’s not the only one who’s from the sphere of web three analytics. We have, like, Elliptic, we have IntoTheBlock, and we’re going to expand. And right now, like, one of the obviously, one of the most used services and one most requested ones, from such types of services is obviously, yeah, archival nodes. And we have over a dozen of them and, adding them, like a lot more than that even.
On shared tariffs, on dedicated tariffs. So yeah. And like this brings the question, how do you currently use nodes? Like, what are the specific purposes that you use them for?
Dmitry: Well, for the blockchains, we are currently the main part also of Nodes is to have them, like, the main source of information related to the transactions.
And, as long as they’re quick, we can analyze and get information the quickest possible way. So that’s the main thing. So the other way to have this information is to have archival nodes. So notes as a service is kind of the most the most relevant solution for the company like ours to to get this information to get this information in the quickest way. Because, as far as you perfectly know, there’s a lot of transactions during the day and you’re denied because they, they end up.
And, for us, it’s crucial to have them, like, twenty four seven in the online regime because if not, we’re out of data. That’s why we need nodes!
Xena: So, basically, what I’m hearing, obviously, yeah, the speed, the latency is what’s most important for you and again the 24/7 service, which obviously we do when we bring. And what networks do you currently support in BitOK?
Dmitry: Yes, for now it’s Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Litecoin.
Xena: Okay, well cool. Any plans for the expansion?
Dmitry: Huge plans. I would say something which is hidden if I say that we now want to add Solana and some EVM-networks as well.
Xena: Wow, that’s that sounds amazing and we can actually help you with that regarding the services that we offer.
Pauline: I mean, again, I would also like to thank you for doing the good work in this space, but I still have a little bit of a curious side about BitOK. So I’m still gonna keep asking you questions because, again, I wanna know everything. I do know that BitOK has quite a bit of competition in the space, and we have mentioned a few of those already. But can you tell us a little bit more about what makes you stand out from other crypto research and data platforms?
Dmitry: We are not as I think, a closed type company as we’re talking. Because we are open to the community. We do a lot of marketing. We’ll do a lot of, you know, we do a lot of, you know, open, like, investigations for everybody.
We might read some of them in our blog. We are not depending on somebody’s decision or political or geopolitical attitude towards something. And this is important. So our mission is to stay always, is to stay, like, in the middle of all of the things happening in the world, including bad things, of course, for the sake of transparency and for the sake of prosperity or cryptocurrency, I would say. We are not disclosing information whatsoever.
And that’s one of our competitive advantages. It’s also important because we don’t think that somebody should stay out of annual compliance. What else must I say? And in terms of our, maybe, new features, which are coming in the market, which is almost up and running, it’s our graph, show a lot of new features compared with the chain analysis. They are brand new with the new technology stack.
This is about flexibility, I’m sure. I think that’s it. And for now, stayingtransparent, staying, like the AML for everybody, I would say like that. It’s kind of a mission. It’s kind of the DNA of the people who I work with. We do a lot of things in education, we provide AMA sessions like this one. And we don’t deal a lot with the state authorities because we are just the guys doing analytics to the market, how to track illicit crypto. We are not from the government. We are not from companies.
Pauline: Yep. You don’t need to explain further, and I think that this is really, a very noble goal, and we’ll be following your developments fairly closely. But, can you tell us a little bit more about how you like it, how the partnership with NOWNodes actually began? What did you like, what was attractive about NOWNodes? What kind of were you looking for, in terms of picking out a NOWNodes as a service provider?
Dmitry: Well, that’s kind of the easy question because our product director, he just I reviewed all the, all of the offers, came to him, like, two years ago, and he analyzed all the products selected to use the main provider because of the quality, the price, and the service. I think that’s pretty much easy.
Pauline: Nice. Xena, are you proud to hear that?
Xena: Absolutely proud. I’m proud every time people say that. And we’re working really closely to give, like, even better performance to our clients. The whole team, like, we have an amazing team of technical specialists, and a big one as well, who do the work to keep all of the chains that we have, all 100+, as stable as possible. And keeping the price low.
Dmitry: We are familiar with other products of yours, the one we’ve started to test recently and, we’re really happy with this as well and it’s NOWPayments.
Xena: Wow, really? I started as a CEO of NOWPayments and then moved to NOWNodes, actually. So I’m absolutely happy to hear that you started working with NowPayments.
Dmitry: We give a lot of feedback, by the way, in terms of what can be, what can be done, what can be modified. And the team is very responsive. I mean, with our feedback, it stays, stays in a good hand and I think it’s cool.
Xena: Thank you so much. For sure, like, our support teams are what we’re proud of on every, now group product, on ChangeNOW or NOWNodes, or NOWPayments. And, like, it’s really nice to hear such great feedback from you. And yes, indeed, we do hear it, like, what our partners have to say.
Pauline: Yeah, and, basically it’s been super nice to hear all about BitOK. I personally will be following you guys closely. And, do you have any closing remarks?
Do you have anything to add? Maybe we’ve missed something, Xena. This applies to you too, obviously, because, I mean, this has been super exciting to hear. And thank you so much, Dmitry, for showing up to our AMA event. So, yeah, any closing remarks? Anything else our listeners and the readers of the text version of our AMA might need to hear?
Dmitry: No. I don’t think so from my side at least. Well, as I understood, you are celebrating your birthday. And, if I’m not mistaken, I wish you success and growing 100% and maybe more. Thank you for the invitation!
Xena: Thanks for inviting me. Thank you so much. And I’m expecting that we’ll be growing together and that will bring me so much happiness. Again thank you for this AMA session. Thank you for coming and talking to us here.
Again, it was really exciting to meet you and I hope at some point we’ll meet in person which would be great. I saw you at different events actually like on Token2049. It was nice and yeah, I hope we’ll meet again there. Okay. So thank you.
Dmitry: Let’s meet in Singapore.
Xena: Yes. Sure. Let’s meet in Singapore. Yeah.
Pauline: We will do that. We will be there as well. So we can just go and have beers together.
Thank you so much to the listeners for showing up. So, you guys have an excellent day ahead of you, and, yeah. LFG, we’re gonna make it. Bye.
