Know The Wallet: Atomic Wallet’s CEO Konstantin Gladych on Blockchain and Products
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Atomic Swap, Cryptocurrency, Crypto

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Know The Coin, or, rather, Know The Wallet, with ChangeNOW! Today’s guest is Atomic Wallet’s CEO Konstantin Gladych, who was very kind to sit down with us and talk about his awesome product, and his view on the blockchain industry and crypto exchanges!

Hey there, Konstantin, really nice to meet you! Could you kindly tell our readers about your background and your previous experience with the crypto world?

I’ve started from building products for mass market trading. Switching to crypto became a turning point for me. Together with my colleagues and partners, we’ve founded Changelly, which is today’s one of the most popular instant cryptocurrency exchanges. The experience I got in the company cannot be underestimated. It helped me create a robust, competitive cryptocurrency wallet, Atomic. Currently, Atomic Wallet has 150k active users and over 100k downloads on Google Play Store.

Could you tell us a little bit about your work in Changelly?

Changelly was the first project I worked at as CEO. Now it is one of our key partners, as well as a few others, like ChangeNOW. We’ve reached 2 mln users all over the world. The company has grown from scratch to 60 people in a team and became a leader on the market of instant crypto swaps. I appreciate the experience the project gave me and all the wonderful people I met. I’m still in touch with most of them. We had many ups and downs. All these lessons in Changelly were successfully extrapolated on Atomic.

When and how did the idea to create a wallet like Atomic emerge?

The cryptocurrency market is still nascent and has a breeding ground to create a convenient ready-made product that would ease a crypto holder’s life. Because it’s still pretty tough to enter the crypto sphere, regardless of the plethora of wallets, exchanges and social media, people need a guide that will support them and provide solutions. I was inspired by the idea to start a brand new project based on my early experience and best practices of other market players.

Such a great project like Atomic must have been developed by a team of amazing professionals. Could you say a few words about them?

Atomic is a team of 20 young enthusiasts, fully engaging and treating the project as their own. The team includes 8 full-time engineers with proven experience on blockchain related projects, 5 support members, working 24/7, as well as a marketing and business development team. For most of them, crypto became a lifestyle.

How is Atomic different from other wallets out there? Why should people use Atomic instead of other wallets?

People tend to use the most convenient product that fully meets their needs and expectations. This is what Atomic strives for. We try to provide a single app for all operations with crypto. For example, one can send/receive, exchange and buy their cryptos. For some pairs, we provide Atomic Swaps. All in one interface, without using external services. Atomic is a pioneer wallet with its own token (AWC) and loyalty program. There is still room for improvement, though, like integrations with new tokens, enhancing security and UI features, localization and many other things in our roadmap we are gradually implementing.

How did you come up with the idea of creating a wallet with integrated atomic swaps? How exactly are they integrated into Atomic?

I’ve integrated Atomic Swaps, because why not? No one did that before. Apart from being quite interesting and catchy technology, Atomic Swaps are very safe and anonymous. You can exchange one crypto to another without using exchanges.

For example, if Bob wants to exchange BTC to LTC, he clicks the “Atomic Swap” tab in the wallet, selects the pair and places the order. In several minutes, the wallet finds Alice who is ready to close your order. Once closed, Bob’s bitcoins are automatically sent to Alice, and she sends him the exchanged amount. Nothing tricky.

When are atomic swaps going to become the primary way of exchanging one crypto to another? What do you think is going to happen to services like ChangeNOW — do you think there will still be a place for them in the crypto world?

Atomic Swaps are a promising, yet a pretty raw means to exchange cryptocurrency. Anyway, we need to take into account that the crypto market is constantly evolving, so we shouldn’t underestimate the potential of the swaps. Given Binance has taken a step towards decentralization, we can admit current trends in the crypto market to be dramatically changed soon. So maybe ChangeNOW will need to implement Atomic Swaps down the road 🙂

Surely! Now, what do you think about the recent exchange hack cases, like the one that happened with Binance recently? Is it proof that people should just stop using CEX’s?

Such cases, unfortunately, take place on almost every platform that handles millions of operations per second. No one is 100% protected from these malicious activities. I don’t think people should stop using CEX’s. Rather it’s a sign that something in CEX’s needs to be revised and changed. I’m sure CZ realizes all the risks of being prone to hacker attacks and will take all necessary measures to prevent them in the long run.

Excellent point! Now let’s talk about your awesome utility token. Could you elaborate on what AWC is and what it’s used for?

Atomic Wallet Coin is our native utility token used for rewarding our bounty and airdrop participants. The token fuels extra features, rewards, bounty program and other partnership privileges. We’ve moved half of our token supply to the Binance Chain and listed it on Binance DEX.

A great move for sure! What do you think about the Binance Chain and DEX?

I think Binance has created a product that will push decentralization forward. I truly believe, Binance DEX will be the major player on that market in the long perspective.

How will the Binance Chain and DEX listing impact AWC’s price and utility, in your opinion?

Binance is the most popular crypto platform. Once Binance Chain had been launched, a myriad of projects migrated to the BEP-2. Because the role of Binance in the industry is huge, and their products, undoubtedly, may govern the processes on the market.

Let’s hope it does! Now, what do you think about the state of crypto mass adoption in 2019?

From this perspective, I’m convinced Binance Chain is the leverage we can use to strengthen AWC’s position on the market. This project has full potential to make our token soar.

Let’s talk about the market. What do you think about the recent changes in the crypto world? Do you think the bull run is beginning?

What about any new Atomic updates and features? What do you guys have in stock for the future?

I think crypto has everything to get massively adopted in 2019. But there is one major obstacle, such as scammers. We have to get rid of scam activity first. The clear, robust technology that aims to transform financial institution has to have a flawless reputation which guarantees safety and convenience for mass use. Crypto still needs to deserve people’s trust.

Nice! Thank you so much for your time, Konstantin — is there anything else important you would like to share from the things we haven’t mentioned already?

That is what I expected! I foresaw these changes at the beginning of the year. Yes. I think we’re on the edge of the continuous bull run that may change the market.

We’ve just released Atomic 2.0 beta. That’s a big update with dramatically improved performance, smooth animation, and new crypto assets. As I said before, we have a lot of things to do. Currently, we’re focused on security and interface improvements, like implementing 2FA authentication and QR-code scanning. Next, we’re planning integrations with hardware wallets and Lightning Network support.

Thank you for having me! The only think I’d really like to add is that I wish everyone to treat their crypto wisely. That’s the most important thing.

Thank you so much for reading — stay tuned for more Know The Coin/Wallet episodes soon!

Atomis Wallet Coin ERC20 to Binance Chain Swaps are available here — powered by ChangeNOW!