EKMH Innovators Interview Series
An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
For cryptocurrency payments to go mainstream, the user experience must be equivalent or better than its fiat competitors like Visa and MasterCard. As of today, that is not the case. CRUXPay aims to solve this problem by letting users to interact with blockchain-based systems with ease, by allowing them to create a human-readable ID (CRUX ID) which can be linked to all their blockchain asset addresses within a wallet. These IDs act as users identity in the crypto ecosystem and allows them to send and receive funds, request payments, authorize payments and link dApps with their wallets securely and seamlessly. Powered by Blockstack and secured by the Bitcoin hash power, CRUXPay is built by CoinSwitch team.
In November CRUXPay announced its first integration of CRUXPay with Zelcore — a multi-coin wallet, built by the team behind ZEL coin. CRUXPay’s addition into Zel seeks to provide “testament” to the Zel team’s vision of creating an overall better user experience for its users. According to CRUXPay, with this integration Zelcore users will be able to create a secure and decentralized global human-readable IDs (CRUX ID) within their wallet, which can be linked to any of their crypto addresses on Zelcore. Zelcore users with CRUX ID will be able to receive/send cryptocurrency to each other or with other CRUX users by simply sharing their CRUX ID instead of their crypto addresses. In future versions, Zelcore users will be able to request payments and connect to dApps directly from the Zelcore wallet.
I recently caught up with CoinSwitch.co and CRUXPay Co-Founder and CEO Ashish Singhal via email to learn his views on multiple topics including his hacking expertise, blockchain, crypto, Bitcoin and leadership skills. Our interview follows.
EKMH: What needs to happen to achieve mass adoption of crypto, cryptocurrency payments and crypto trading markets?
Ashish Singhal: Blockchain is a backend revolution, giving people control of their data by using a true P2P network for data storage and retrieval. Similar to any good backend solution, blockchain needs a front-facing user experience helping people to understand and adopt blockchain-based solutions. For mass adoption, the user experience needs to improve multi-fold to simplify the overall crypto experience for payments and trading alike.
EKMH: Many people still feel nervous about buying crypto. When and why did you first buy crypto and how has the overall experience changed?
Ashish Singhal: Reading the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2013 was a game-changer for me. I really got hooked on the proposition and possibilities Bitcoin can have. It was difficult to buy bitcoin at that time in India as there were no trusted sources to buy from. By 2014, there were a few exchanges in India through which I was able to get hold of my first bitcoin.
In recent times, Bitcoin has become a worldwide phenomenon pushing more companies and innovators to simplify the process of acquiring and keeping bitcoin safely. Now there is a ton of information available to understand the technology, how and where to buy and how to hold bitcoins and keep them secure.
Bitcoin still has a long way to go in terms of simplicity and real-world applications and hopefully as more people embrace the use and need of it, more people will work to create user experiences that can push it to the next billion users.
EKMH: How do you aim to increase customer trust? How do you improve the overall customer experience?
Ashish Singhal: The crypto industry is relatively new and lacks regulations to protect the users, hence making it susceptible to fraud which creates a barrier for the user to trust crypto services. In such an industry it's very difficult for a brand to develop trust easily. Gaining customer trust is a slow process and we try to focus on our customer support to help earn users' trust by helping them during and after their transactions, explaining to them if something goes wrong we can act quickly to resolve any issues. Due to our focus on helping users, today CoinSwitch is the highest rated exchange on Trustpilot with over 250+ reviews.
We are working on improving the overall customer experience by simplifying crypto itself. Our new product, CRUXPay, aims to simplify the crypto experience and make it as simple to use as any other digital payment products with which our users around the world are familiar -- Google Pay, Paypal and Venmo -- and allowing one-click payments between users and services without involving the complexities of blockchain addresses etc. with 0% error while sending crypto across different parties. Simplifying the way to onboard new users to the crypto wagon can help with crypto adoption.
EKMH: What do you know now that would have been helpful to know before founding new platforms? How have you learned to lead multiple teams?
Ashish Singhal: “Making things that people want” seems intuitive but a lot of people miss initially; I also made the same mistakes with my initial product decisions. Being an engineer, it was in my nature to build more features in the product, but what I learned over time is that a simple product is more powerful than the one overwhelmed with features but not loved by the users. Gathering user requirements and their needs before building new features has helped us avoid countless wasteful hours.
Leading teams is more about defining objectives and setting the path to achieving it. With good teams the only tasks for a leader are to explain to them what they are trying to achieve and why that matters. I have learned that to the best way to lead teams is having a single metric that defines how to measure your team's success or failure and get out of their way while they work to achieve that goal.
EKMH: As a winner of most of the major hackathons in India, what sparked your interest in hacking? When was your “eureka” moment? How have your experiences at Amazon and LivSpace.com helped shape your leadership style?
Ashish Singhal: I always liked building things, figuring out how to break systems and hackathons are a great place to build interesting things in a short time that we may not do daily, so I always liked participating in them.
CoinSwitch started as a hack itself, which my co-founders and I built for ourselves to get the best rates across exchanges while trading crypto. The “eureka” moment came when we realised that hack was needed by others as well and made our project public. Within the first day, we crossed $10K in trading which went to $100K in the first week and has grown significantly since then, attracting backers such as Sequoia Capital.
Customer obsession is the core principle of both Amazon and Livspace and this is something I live by, and has shaped how I work. The core of CoinSwitch and CRUXPay is to always start with the customer and work backwards while solving a problem, working vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. My team and I work to make our customers' lives better each day.
EKMH: How do you mentor other hackers to disrupt and innovate? What advice do you have for hackers looking for work in the sector?
Ashish Singhal: To disrupt and innovate the key ingredient is to try to simplify things and not be afraid of failure. The advice I give to others is always to be curious and build things which can create a positive impact --no matter the scale-- and not to be afraid of failure or rejection.
Currently, the crypto industry is going through a very positive change, and getting ready for mass adoption. At this stage, my advice for hackers looking to work would be to try to build solutions and simplify the overall crypto experience. Even a small change can make a big impact in this industry. As a relatively new industry, there are a lot of opportunities for people to build amazing things.
EKMH: On which problems in the crypto and blockchain industries is CoinSwitch.co focusing this year? Next year?
Ashish Singhal: CoinSwitch has always strived to make things simpler for the users. Our next big product is CRUXPay, built to simplify the crypto experience and make something on par with other current digital products such as Paypal and Apple Pay.
CRUXPay is an open, decentralised protocol that enables users to create a human-readable ID (CRUX ID) and link all of their blockchain addresses in one wallet. Providing a single point of use for all crypto transactions for individuals or businesses, CRUXPay ensures the highest level of security with zero error when sending and receiving payments.
CRUXPay creates a seamless payment experience matching online fiat payments, allowing one-click payments without worrying about the complexities currently existing in the crypto world.
EKMH: Lastly, which books do you recommend?
Ashish Singhal: For entrepreneurs, I would highly recommend, Zero to One, The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Recently I read The Messy Middle, which is also an amazing book about how to build and grow products.