Ivan on Tech: "I was involved in Bitcoin since 2013"

I was involved in Bitcoin since 2013. Really? Bitcoin people were like, Ivan, you should be more harsh. It's all about trust and being smart.

Hey guys, this is Katherine Rose here in Berlin in an on blog show. I am here with Ivan on Tech, a famous YouTube blogger, software developer and young entrepreneur. Hi Ivan, nice to have you here.

Amazing to be here. Thank you very much.

We are big fans of your show. Me personally, I watch it every single day. So how many subscribers do you have right now?

Currently I think we are around 170,000 subscribers. Good.

And how many people usually watch your videos?

So, I mean, when we had this amazing bull market, we had anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 to 200,000. Currently what you see is that people who are really professional, who are really in this for long term, they're still here, although we have a bear market. So currently it's 20, 30,000 approximately for videos. But I mean this is highly, highly correlated with the markets.

Yeah, I know. We've noticed this with the articles at Cointelegraph as well, of course. And what is your most popular video ever?

I think my most popular video is whether it's too late to invest in Bitcoin. Welcome to yet another episode of Good Morning Crypto. Only here, only Ivan on tech.

Oh really? And where did you made it?

So that was last summer.

Last summer.

Last summer.

And how many views so far?

I think it's half a million. Around half a million.

Oh my God. So people are still interested in that, right?

And that was the first question I googled when I was new. Is it too late to invest? Because you see this huge price in the increase, you see the bull run, of course you're interested. Is it too late? And therefore I thought, you know what, I will give my opinions as well.

So what's your opinion right now? Is it too late to invest in bitcoin?

I mean, it's all about the long term, short term, there are so many unknown variables. You have the scams, you have different news that can come out and say that, you know what, China is banning, Russia is doing this. So short term, I think it's impossible to predict. It's all about the long term. I mean, bitcoin is useful. It's useful to many people. It's helping people all around the globe, increasing financial inclusion, that now wherever you are, you can actually send and receive funds. You can get funding for a company.

From any point in the world. Right.

So for me it's all about the long term. And long term I'm extremely bullish on bitcoin.

And how did you come up with the idea to start a YouTube in the first place?

So I was involved in Bitcoin since 2013.

Really? How did you heard about it in 2013?

Yeah, it was in high school.

Oh my God.

I had a friend in high school. He was very involved in bitcoin and he started talking and I had to check it out. So I come from a very technical background. I started programming when I was nine. And for me, when I heard about bitcoin, I thought, how can this ever work? How can you have this currency that is decentralized, no central point? And I started studying and then you had so much developments happening. And Ethereum came along and the YouTube really started last April.

Last April.

So a bit over a year ago. And the reason is because everyone asked me. I worked at Ericsson, a software developer and telecom provider in Sweden. You may remember. You remember Sony Ericsson phones?

Sure.

And I realized even my very technical peers at the company still didn't know anything about cryptocurrencies. So I started teaching that on YouTube. Why you have so many. What is the technology? How can you program on cryptocurrencies and how can you program smart contracts and so forth?

So you decide to educate the audience? Yes. So this is your target audience, right? People who don't know.

People who don't know. But of course, the YouTube channel has evolved a lot during the year. So now it is about technology, how things work. It's about programming. It's about also the big movements in the industry. You have regulations. You have, for example, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange moving into crypto, for example. You have Nasdaq powering a cryptocurrency exchange. Why are they doing that? There is a very interesting question that I discuss a lot. You have New York Stock Exchange also, you have Binance making more money than Deutsche bank, for example.

Yes, the report.

Everything started with technical interest, but then you realize the big picture and there's just so much to discuss and talk about. And that is why it is so exciting as well.

Okay, what is so specific or peculiar about the crypto community? The audience itself? Do they respond in any particular way? Does it have any difference between any financial community?

It is very different, I would say. And the community is changing all the time. The community we had a year ago is completely different now.

Really?

And in 2013, what happened is that I started to go to meetups, and there you had very ideologically driven people and a lot of tech People nowadays, when you go to events, for example, blog show, you have all kinds of people. You have people from real estate, from insurance, from financial institutions, also speculators. And regarding the speculation, I think the industry has seen a lot more new people joining due to the bull run during the winter and autumn. And now a lot of them have disappeared because we now seen this bear market and bear crashes. But some of them are still here and some of them are interested. So I would say the community is always changing. Sometimes it feels that the community is a bit immature and we have all of these conflicts and fights within crypto. So, for example, I interviewed Roger Ver on my channel a few days ago, really. And Roger Ver is of course all about bitcoin cash. And then you have. Yeah, and then you had this fight in the comments between bitcoin and bitcoin cash. And for me, staying neutral, it was quite interesting to see that you get love and you get hate from both communities. Bitcoin people were like, ivan, you should be more harsh. And bitcoin cash people were like, ivan, why didn't you raise bitcoin cash more? But so for me, I'm all about being neutral. I'm personally, I'm exploring this. For me, for example, interviewing Roger Ver, interviewing Dan Larimer, interviewing IOTA founder David. It's all about learning. I'm exploring myself and I found it very interesting to interview Roger and everyone else that I've interviewed on my channel. And that is why I want to make clear that, yes, I know a lot, but you need to learn every day. You need to learn, otherwise you'll be behind very quickly.

Exactly. My next question is. Well, you speak your own opinion, right?

Yeah.

So you educate people, but you express your own opinion.

Of course I have opinions.

Do you feel like sometimes you might be influencing somebody else's decision?

Yes, of course. But that is something to realize. Whenever you talk to someone, just basic human interaction, you inherently influence people and you inherently shape their worldview. So for me, it's about telling my opinions, but also make it very clear that watch other people read Cointelegraph, read Tosha Times, read whatever, and make your own view of the world and make decisions based on that.

You've started your own media company, right, not long ago. How is it going?

It's going very well. We've started a bit over a month ago and we've seen a lot of traction and a lot of demand for our content. I mean, currently, I think we are at about 120 viewers per month. And it's going great and we're expanding now in South America. Next up is India. So I think when it comes to media, there is a lot to do and Cointelegraph is of course doing a great job. You are very well known name and when I first started in cryptocurrencies, a lot was through Cointelegraph and I learned a lot from you. But you also realize that a lot has to be done in other markets. For example, Latin America. So many people will benefit from blockchain there. But there's just not enough content, not enough education. And therefore for us it's important to bring the whole space together because it's primarily in English.

So you will be doing it in different languages.

So currently it's in English. And next up is Spanish.

Oh, fair enough. So your aim is to educate people as well, but through media, through written content in this case, right?

Yes, yes, yes. And sometimes it is the case that I do YouTube every day, I stream every day. But you cannot tell everything. So a lot is the format is that I tell the most interesting things. But if you want to read more, here's our full article.

Okay. Okay. This sounds so cool. You've mentioned that you film every day. How do you do that every day? I mean, it takes a lot of job. Do you have the whole team working for you?

Actually, many people think it's a whole team.

It's just like it.

Yeah. So thank you very much. But the whole idea is that have very, very good pipeline. So it's easy to prepare the shows. And for me it's all about actually preparing the content. Everything around the screens, the camera. I have a camera like this standing and I turn it on and I turn live stream and then I focus. I'm only focusing on the content. So I don't need to care about production. Everything is just there. And for example, I have in the studio, all the curtains are closed, it's dark 247 because the lighting conditions should be the same. You shouldn't be spending time adjusting the lights and doing all of it. I just come in there, turn on and focus only on the content.

Okay. I mean, I am subscribed to all of your social media presence and thank you for doing that. So you use social media platforms to reach out to people, right?

Yes.

Because you consider it as the most efficient way.

Absolutely. It's global 24 7. You reach anyone. And I mean you should be doing social media in the space. Absolutely.

So one more question is what is your advice to people who actually thinking about starting a YouTube channel, whether in crypto or finance or anything like top tips, advice you can give.

I would say do it every day, improve every day. Think about how can this can be, how can it be better? Because something to realize as well is that you can have great content if you do not think about the title. Now this might seem like very normal advice. Think about the title, the thumbnail. But it is really a skill and you see new people coming onto YouTube writing, I mean descriptive title but not attention grabbing title.

You know, like a catchy title.

And it comes with time. Everyone is bad in the beginning. So a good title, a good thumbnail and just keep that in mind if you are great but you don't have this attention grabbing side to it, unfortunately no one will listen. I wish it could be the case that I can record a video and just write what I just said in the title and people would watch. But you need to think about, okay, how can I make this attention grabbing? So people actually enter and then they say, wow, this is so much more than just this thing that I saw in the title. But of course you should. It's all about trust. It's all about not taking this too far and being smart on that front.

And the last question is, there are still a lot of people who don't know anything about crypto. They've heard about it, but they, they don't know anything. So what's your advice for a person who would like to know something but they don't? So what should they do?

So this is something we focus a lot on. And we have, for example, our academy, academy.iontaging.com teaches everything from scratch. Then we also have a coding academy, coding.ionte.com where we actually teach programming from scratch and then program on Ethereum, NEM and Eos.

Oh my God.

So this is very important to us. But of course my YouTube channel also check out other YouTube channels, there are a lot. And be active. Be active. Learn as much as possible. Explore YouTube, explore Cointelegraph, explore Tosha Times. Just be as active as possible and you realize that it takes time. Don't be too harsh on yourself. You will not understand anything in the beginning. But then you read, you watch something. I would say buy, buy something. Don't invest a lot. Buy something that you actually are invested in this and you. And you feel that now I actually own it. It's not just some magical coin. I have it in my phone and it makes it more real. I think you definitely need to interact with it on a practical level to understand it. And so, for example. For example, my grandmother, she's from Belarus, and when she heard that I do bitcoin videos on YouTube, she came to me and said, ivan, I heard that bitcoin is like, mmm, so, mmm is this Russian pyramid scheme in the 90s. And I explained it to her, no, it's just decentralized money. And this is how it works. And she understood it.

Did she change her mind?

Yes, she definitely changed her mind.

Did she invest?

And she doesn't speculate. She just knows how it works because she has tried it physically, practically, how to do it. And this is. You hear a lot that bitcoin is a scam. Bitcoin is this. Bitcoin is that. But it's all about, you know, test it out, try it out.

Okay. Thank you so much, Ivan. It was a pleasure. Thanks for coming and thanks for being a part of the show.

Perfect. Thank you for having me. Watch Cointelegraph, like Subscribe and hodl.

Guys, Cointelegraph like Subscribe and Hodl.

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