In the modern world, it can be quite difficult to keep up with all the rapidly developing technologies and choose an innovative tool that will help you to achieve your goals quickly, easily and without knowledge barriers. This is the exact situation we are seeing right now in the crypto industry. The high educational and technological threshold has been repelling the average Joe from using cryptocurrency for years.
Chatex is the solution that fits both advanced traders and regular smartphone users. Chatex is a cryptobank suitable for professionals and accessible for the common folk. Read further to learn more about how the project developed, what inspired its founder to create such a product, and maybe consider going to your office in… slippers?
Meet the Chatex Founder — Vlad Bulochnikov, and His Story!
Vladislav Bulochnikov, one of the Chatex founders, plunged into the cryptocurrency industry several years ago. Before diving into all the industry intricacies, he was engaged in the development of banking software, billing systems, a back office for VISA/MC cards at TSYS Inc, payment systems for payment terminals.
“Back then, I approached the study of this topic thoroughly. A little bit earlier my childhood friend who lives in my neighborhood launched his first mining farm. There wasn’t even an ASIC back then. So, he bought video cards and used them to mine Bitcoin. He made 0.5 Bitcoin weekly, I remember these numbers very clearly. In the beginning, I could not understand anything regarding mining. The first crypto exchanges were on the rise. It was interesting to me, but I didn’t really dive deep into it. I thought: “Yes, there is some kind of Bitcoin, some coins are traded, but no more”. Nevertheless, my financial background helped me figure out cryptocurrency eventually.”
First Vlad’s Interaction With Cryptocurrency Community
Back then Vlad and his partner owned a payment terminal network. Also at that time, the first offline crypto communities began to appear in Moscow. Vlad was interested in this and he began to immerse himself more deeply into the topic. He was fascinated by the drive and attitude of people broadcasting from the stage that Bitcoin is a breakthrough phenomenon.
Vlad noticed that crypto could empower people to replace financial intermediaries such as conventional banks. At first, he began to exchange with other crypto enthusiasts, he was engaged in plain speculation. Then Bitcoin ATMs emerged, and the founder decided to build a Bitcoin ATM network of his own in Moscow. Unfortunately,at that time the realization of such projects was not allowed by Russian legislation, so he left for Spain. The largest cryptocurrency ATM network was located there at the time. However, Vlad’s Moscow ATM network was never launched.
The idea of cryptocurrencies haunted Vlad. He wanted to somehow contribute to the crypto community. Then, the founder noticed only geeks, nerds, and people who are very good at finance were interested in cryptocurrency. Therefore, cryptocurrency usage rarely made it past the IT community.
At the time cryptocurrency operations were too sophisticated of a task. Almost no one understood how they worked or how to implement them in day-to-day life.
The Main Idea Behind Chatex: Crypto is complicated, Chatex is not
Nevertheless, a string of certain events have planted a seed in Vlad’s head that will slowly lead crypto to gradual mass adoption. For instance, Vlad had a friend periodically sending money to his son, who was studying in Canada. To make a transfer, he had to go to Western Union’s office and send money through its system. It was exhausting for him due to the time-consuming nature of the process that demanded physical interaction with the intermediary. Therefore, Vlad suggested making a crypto transfer instead. Vlad sold some BTC over the counter for cash and delivered the BTC to his son’s crypto wallet in Canada bypassing all the fees. From Spain to Canada, the two friends had figured out a way to pay for school abroad. And this way required less time and effort. Eventually, crypto related fees were much lower than ones associated with international transfer.
“I remember how he came down to my office in slippers, brought a couple of thousand dollars and after half an hour I sent his son Bitcoins. He immediately paid for his current needs and withdrew the remaining sum in fiat,” said the Chatex’s founder.
Vlad tried to persuade his friend to start a cryptocurrency wallet himself and transfer coins directly, but he refused, citing the complexity of such operations.
“It was at that moment when I realized there was a problem with the high technological entry threshold. It was very difficult for the majority of people. Wallet numbers, technical information, a huge amount of cryptocurrencies and other stoppers prevented mass adoption. Also, it was necessary to keep different wallets for different cryptocurrencies,” explained Vlad.
It was a fundamental prerequisite for the creation of Chatex.
Chatex as a messenger bot: the relevance and efficiency of messenger bots
Another case helped Vlad to solve the problem of mass adoption and simplify the process of conducting crypto transactions. Another Chatex founder and good friend of Vlad moved to Moscow. He made an internal product for Sberbank — a chat bot. This friend shared his experience with Vlad, while Vlad told the guy about crypto. And then Vlad came up with the idea that it was necessary to unite two technologies to finally simplify the use of cryptocurrencies for an ordinary person.
The thing is a messenger is the simplest form of communication: both between people and between a person and a machine. It’s all due to the process being similar to interacting with the console. In one field you type a request, and in the other field you get the result. At that time, the first API bot appeared in the Telegram, so many bots began to appear there as well. Other messengers began to catch up.
Social banking changes everything
“Around the same time, I came across an article that described the concept of social banking, as a step in the development of Digital Banking. Then I came across an analytical article claiming that about 86% of millennials and buzzers prefer messaging as a form of customer service consumption,” Vlad recalled.
Messengers reduce the amount of information a person consumes, allowing them to be distracted and do other things while waiting for a response. The founder of Chatex decided that he should move in this direction as well to lower the entry barrier by simplifying the user interface and some onboarding issues.
The Innovation of the Chatbot Technology
Chatbot technology itself has evolved so much that it is no different from an application experience. A chatbot allows users to send or receive text messages, audio files, videos, and geolocations. A wide variety of information can be processed in the form of text, buttons, graphics, or sounds. This means that, in theory, you can take any existing web service and import it as a chatbot.
Moreover, Chatbot technology doesn’t only provide convenient and accessible user experience, but also gives an opportunity to consume in a familiar or preferable ecosystem. Many startup founders ruin their interesting ideas by initially choosing the wrong paradigm and trying to impose their methods of communication on the user. It is necessary to go from the opposite direction. This is one of the main reasons why Chatex creators selected one of the most popular messengers out there — Telegram — as its vessel.
Whom and How Would the Founder Want to Help With Chatex?
By analyzing demand and realizing the full potential of crypto and chatbots, the general concept of the future product began to emerge. It appeared logical to try to update retail financial products and services available at conventional banks with crypto.
To do this, it was necessary to investigate accomplished classic banking digital solutions. These were primarily accounts and wallets. It was a little more difficult with loans and deposits before the advent of DeFi, but Vlad had a basic idea of how to solve this problem as well. Thus, the first outlines of the road map appeared, which the Chatex team began to implement.
The Perfect Solution
The Chatex team started their journey to develop a cryptobank by creating one of the most accessible cryptocurrency wallets — Smart Wallet. At the time, everyone was already used to transferring money by phone number but not crypto…
“I wanted the common fear of incomprehensible crypto transactions to dissolve. Conventional banks have been offering a service for sending fiat from one card to another using just a phone number. A person does not think at this moment what kind of currency they are transferring: digital or non-digital or about the transaction process itself. The user entered the receiver’s phone number, the amount of money and that’s it. At Chatex, I wanted to achieve the same effect,” shared Chatex’s founder.
Then the Chatex team decided to make a card gateway. However, the company quickly abandoned this decision, as it was very expensive at the time. Despite the relatively low Simplex’s (fiat/crypto infrastructure company) commissions, additional fees were included in the price of the asset.
“We tried to connect some flexible rates, but for the user, the Bitcoin cost of a transaction was 8 to 18%. Moreover, Simplex had a low success rate for bank cards. Only about 20% of the cards passed,” Vlad explained.
Centralization Isn’t the Way Out
The Chatex team quickly realized that issuing debit cards was the wrong path, since it was still some kind of centralization. In addition, at that time, Bitcoin was presented as a kind of replacement for banking services. Another important factor was the issue of the availability of quasi banking services to people who previously did not have access to financial services.
“Then I first learned about the existence of unbanking people. It turns out that even in the United States, about 8 million people have not acquired bank accounts. For many reasons. Some don’t have documents, some have a bad credit history, and so on. The countries of the third world were also a discovery for me. It turned out that bank accounts for many people in these countries are an achievement. The issue of remoteness plays a role here. A person may live in a desert, from which he/she has never left. But even if a person has a bank card and can use it to buy something online, ridiculously small spending limits are applied. It can be as little as $100–250 per month. Simply because the Central Bank does not have that much stable currency. For people from such regions, cryptocurrency is the only way to conduct international transfers and purchases,” Vlad explained.
In addition, the vast majority of the Third World Countries’ economies suffer from hyperinflation. For their citizens, cryptocurrency is an opportunity to save the value of their funds, considering that it isn’t possible or extremely hard to buy gold and/or stable fiat currency, since the Central Bank simply does not have it and will not be sold to them. For them, cryptocurrency is the holy grail. The only way out with which they can solve their financial problems.
Thus, the Chatex team abandoned the card gateway, deciding to follow the Local Bitcoins route, developing a P2P marketplace. The great thing was that it relieved Chatex from the requirement to accept fiat from customers, so there was no need to open accounts and licenses.
In addition, this technology is available worldwide. In order to sell Bitcoin for Nigerian naira, you do not need to accept the same naira. We need a trader who sells for naira and another person who buys for naira. They can conduct a transaction between each other, and Chatex will transfer money from one wallet to another. Same goes for any other two currencies, of course including some of the most popular cryptocurrencies.
Chatex’s Path to Success
This is how Chatex came to be a P2P exchange. It all started from the release of the P2P Crypto-Fiat Exchange and Multicurrency Smart Wallet features in the Russian crypto community. During 2018, Chatex’s first year in operation, the project managed to pull together 5,000 active users.
Since 2018, Chatex has snowballed to reaching over 370K active users worldwide. The following year a full-on crypto-to-crypto exchange was implemented. In 2020, the Chatex team has developed a B2B product — Cryptobank Trading API, while also releasing ChatexPay Telegram.
At the moment, Chatex is rapidly approaching 400K users and moving into DeFi by launching Chatex Savings. The Chatex savings product requires an entire token ecosystem all its own. That’s why we are releasing $CHTX.
Conclusion
Now, Chatex is a rapidly growing Cryptobank where you can safely store, sell and transfer your crypto assets. Shortly, Chatex users will also be able to save up, borrow and spend funds. The new products that Chatex are about to implement will mark another milestone in Chatex’s evolution as an affordable and easy-to-use tool.
The main mission of Chatex is to make cryptocurrency transactions available to people around the world, regardless of their social and financial situation. Considering the fact that at this day and age anyone can buy a smartphone (that for sure would be able to run a Telegram messenger) for as low as $20, Chatex becomes the most accessible financial service there is. Add the simplicity and security of a Telegram Bot to it, and you will be left with the most simple and accessible crypto project!
Stay tuned and prepare for our upcoming tokensale!
Chatex is here to make the entire DeFi world as simple, secure, and accessible for the global community as it can be.
Don’t miss out — stay tuned to our updates in our Telegram group and Twitter. Just join us, and be ready for some great stuff!
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