Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargent, Around The Coin Podcast. Today we spoke to Pawel Kuskowski. He was one of the founders of CoinFirm, which is one of the largest blockchain investigation companies. They just recently sold to LUCA. So he talks to us about the founder journey, being on the board, all of what was happening during the sale, what it was like when the money hit that account.

And his new project that he's building out with a core team of amazing compliance professionals, GateKnox. We talk a lot about the technology, what it was like 20 years ago, and how the technology and crypto and compliance has evolved. What he thinks about regulation in the decentralized protocol space, as well as DeFi.

And we talk about personally, like, what it, the toll it took. to build such a massive company to exit. So this is a great episode for founders, anyone interested in crypto, or anyone that has a payment or crypto company looking to get into the industry now. He has a one stop shop in GateKnox on how to build out these traditional financial institutions and corporate entities and build a network around compliance. Hope you love it.

Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargeant, Around The Coin podcast. We have a special guest today, Pawel who's the CEO and founder of GateKnox, but he also built one of the competing blockchain investigation companies around the world. Pawel tell us a little bit about yourself. Uh, and then we're going to go into some questions, uh, dive deep down into you selling your company and what was going on with that.

Pawel: Hi, Stephen pleasure to be here. Um, I'm very, you know, curious about the topics that you're going to ask me, you know, so very, very excited, you know, to be here. Listen, I mean, it's kind of unusual in terms of the setup for my, you know, history, my background, because I'm a compliance person, you know, by heart, you know, and it's like, I never done anything else than compliance.

You know, it happened that I built a company, which was very good in compliance, but still I didn't step away from my, my core, you know. So that's, that's, and on the way, you know, many things happen, you know, so I, I, you know, um, grew up in Poland, studied in Poland, studied in Italy, then moved to Ireland, you know, where I, you know, started my, uh, compliance career back at the time when it was 2005, right?

When compliance was completely different, right? I mean, it's like, it's such a, I mean, AML, you know, like it's nothing to compare. I think what it is like, 20 years. Yeah. 20 years. And we are in completely different space when, in terms of requirements, in terms of technology, I think technology was the biggest jump, which is not so easy to...

Stephen: I want to interrupt you. Talk to me back then. What was going on back then? Like, was it check fraud? Like what was really going on back then that you guys were worried about compared to today, where kind of technology is kind of taking over the forefront?

Pawel: Yeah. I think, uh, a couple of things. At that point was, I mean, anything was paper based, right?

So even if we onboarded and, you know, part of my job was to, you know, the fund registration in Ireland. Uh, I was at that time, I met you some apprentice, you know, the, the biggest law firm in, in Ireland and, you know, big business was for them was, uh, you know, fund approval. Um, and, you know, whenever we Actually introduce any fund to the, to the regulator, uh, in Ireland.

It was, we had to go through the AML scrutiny, right? And, and at that time it was simply paperwork, right? So we got the papers, we collected, you know, information provided by the client and we send this information to the regulator. That's it. You know, this was the entire KYC, nothing else. Right. And sometimes there's some funny stories, like we had very big fund.

And, you know, which was about to start the fund, I mean, the U.S. fund, which was one of the oldest ones, which was opening a new fund in Ireland, right? And I remember, you know, like part of my job was preparation of documents. Etc. Right. And I received these documents in the like big envelope. Right. And it was like, for your eyes only.

Right. And it was like, my boss said like, you, we don't want to see this. Right. You just take this, right. You review this and you send to the regulators. We don't want to see this. You know, this is like kind of the AML approach. Right. Uh, back then. So since then, you know, I think, you know, the technology is, Just amazing, right?

And I think not many people realize and that's, that's a problem which we have on the market that you have such amazing technology right now, um, but efficiency, I mean, I'm just, I was just helping off, you know, in one of the, you know, uh, company to set up AML, um, you know, shop. I mean, in the sense that the team, technology, putting these things together.

And I tell you, like, thousands of clients can be serviced by a few people right now. And they make it completely effectively with QA, with, you know, proper review, without the backlog, you know, just simply applying the right technology. So I think this was like a huge jump. I'm not sure about, you know, like the overall picture, if that helped.

You know, because I think at the same time, um, like the criminals would be doing their job on the, like, how you make this more complicated, right? Or how you bypass the systems. But at the same time, again, you know, it's not, I think, you know, AML is a number game, compliance is a number game, right? So you manage to focus, I mean, if you build the system in the right way, you have Effectively 99 percent of the clients being completely alright, you know, 1% when you need to start digging. Right. And this is how it's supposed to be done, you know, in my, in my mind. Right. So you don't, you don't want to be focused on, you know, a hundred percent and treat everyone as criminal until proved otherwise. Right. Which is the, the, the approach many, many companies would have. Right. You want to reverse this, right.

And you can do this in a number of ways. So, you know, this is the back then and now comparison in terms of AML, right.

Stephen: So you've been in there for 20 years and you started, you know, in crypto fairly early doing compliance and blockchain analytics. Do you know this? And I'm assuming you still have CryptoFocus or CryptoNative companies coming to you at GateKnox.

Have you seen a shift between when companies are approaching you? I'm assuming at the start they'd approach you after they've launched the product, probably had some customers conducting transactions. We have a lot of payments and crypto companies that listen to this podcast. Are they approaching you a lot sooner now, like before the product's going live?

Before they've kind of like flipped the switch on?

Pawel: Yeah, definitely. Um, you're still going to have You're still going to have companies which kind of, you know, build and then, you know, first, which I, you know, like, frankly, I believe it's all right, you know, until I think the regulators would chase you, you know, if you do a couple of transactions, right.

And then you, but you know, but you need to do certain things, you know, to, to do this properly. Right. So, but definitely, you know, the knowledge and kind of risk, uh, You know, how risk averse companies are right now versus historically, right? I think, you know, if you're dealing with the right companies, right people, you will learn this how they approach to, you know, how they approach compliance, right?

If you have guys who are, you know, they know that they're going to be cutting corners, you know, they know they're going to be And we're gonna, you know, you, you get this feeling from the start, you know, immediately. Um, so I see if you want to deal, I mean, if you have someone who knows about compliance and they want to start this properly from the start, this means they, this, uh, these guys are going to be successful and they're not going to be scammers.

You know, if you have someone who is like, ah, you know, like let's do something, you know, and, but it doesn't have to work perfectly, right. And et cetera. You know that these guys. Not gonna happen for them, or if it's gonna happen, it's gonna be, you know, scam. That's my, my approach, right?

Stephen: I love it. Now you start CoinFirm, which is a blockchain analytics company. We'll get into, you know, what happened to that. But you started this in 2016. When did you get into crypto? Because you're saying you're based in Poland, maybe Ireland at that time. Like, it doesn't seem like those are the two most forward thinking when it comes to crypto or blockchain technology or distributed ledger technology. When did you get into crypto?

Pawel: Yeah. So this story is actually funny, right? Um, I was chairman of the Polish Compliance Association, right? And we met, we were running events like, you know, annual events, uh, in Poland, when it was like 300 people coming in, you know, like you had the regulators, you have, You know, heads of compliance from, you know, major financial institutions in Poland.

Uh, you had, you know, the secret service, you know, ministry of finance, all this, all these different people coming in. So this was, Annual, let's say, uh, thing. And I was always wanted to keep this interest interesting for everyone. And then, you know, I heard about, okay, this new thing, which is called Bitcoin, which is like, when you think about it, right.

You know, at that time, um, it's like, you know, cross border. You know, international way of paying things, you know, for things and it's internet, let's say, uh, native, right? So I invited these three guys and you had the most, let's say, like the way you call it right now, DGNs, you know, like, uh, you know, Bitcoin, these three guys, and I started this conference from this point, right? So everyone is ready. You know, you have keynotes and you have these three guys, you know, coming out there and saying like, you know, this fantastic technology, you can make, you know, international transactions. You can, you can be anonymous, you know, and it is gonna happen and it's gonna crash banking, you know, like all this stuff. And I was like, you know, the reaction, you, you could imagine the reaction, right? ,

Stephen: Everyone's taking notes as soon as they heard anonymous. They're like writing it down.

Pawel: Yeah. But I tell you, you know, the, the funniest part was, but I, you know, I was sitting next to the, you know, the guys who are like.

You know, the compliance people are from the most conservative financial institutions, right? And then at some point, the guys pull out, you know, on the screen, you know, this is the app, how you can buy Bitcoin, right? And this guy's like, you know, they pull out the phones and they're looking like, like what they're doing, you know, they're downloading the app.

They bought, you know, whenever you're talking, you know, they bought Bitcoin and I think, I mean like by far it was the best investment. , you know, imagine 2014, I dunno, like couple of you know, uh, hundreds of dollars, you know, in Bitcoin, you know, like it was huge. I think one of the guy bought, bought, bought the car.

But I said like, if these guys are actually able to jump into this, right, that's, it means it's gonna happen. Right. If it's going to happen, right, they will need to have the framework, how it's going to happen. Right. If, let's, so let's look, you know, what, what needs to be done, you know, primarily is the transaction analysis.

You know, I used to, I took part in some of the Visa data analysis, those, you know, a moment in banking, but, you know, Visa allow access to their data and do some, some analytics on top, you know? And I said, like. You know, from a lot of data that you can take from transactions is very, very useful in terms of AML, right?

So we said, I mean, I was sitting with, with Paweł Aleksander and we said like, you know, this is opportunity, right? This is, this is amazing. So we start digging in, in 2013, uh, into this, right? Um, took us a couple of years as you can imagine, you know, to get, and I think we still, still 2016 was early. Right. Uh,

Stephen: What was the scene like then that was there? There wasn't many exchanges. I think, you know, Mount Cox, you probably had like, maybe Bitstamp or a couple of other exchanges. What was like the main exchange where you were in Europe? What was like the go-to that everyone knew about back at that time?

Pawel: Uh, Bitstamp. Surprisingly, you know, there was a lot of, you know, European, like smaller one. Uh, we had couple of good one in Poland. Uh. None of them exist anymore. Um, so there was, I mean, the, it was kind of, you know, European based, you have obviously, you know, the Coinbase and the US market, yeah, and some shady businesses, uh, you know, in Asia. And then, you know, we, we had opportunity to take part in the whole ICO crazy world, right?

2017, 2018. And we are first in the market with the Ethereum proposal. Right. So this was, this was like, and I was like, like, Stephen, if I tell you like how I, that's the moment which I, the most regret that we didn't. Take full opportunity of that point of time, right? We were charging a lot. We were earning a lot, but we, we have, we haven't been thinking in CoinFim about, you know, making this.

Recurring revenue. Right? That's a magical word. Recurring revenue.

Stephen: Now you know that. Exactly. And I know why. You saw the money coming in, but you didn't think like, hey, if we could get more of this on a regular basis.

Pawel: It's like simple agreement, you know, if we would have this idea before. Yeah. So there's, there's like, it was my, you know way to get into the crypto again through compliance, as you can see, you know, so. One of the guy, you know, uh, Maciek, um, help us building, uh, CoinFuse, so he was one of the founders, you know, out of the three guys, you know, so there's also, you know, indication that he was like big time, uh, Bitcoiner, you know, like, like big time.

Stephen: So you start to, you know, drum up this business. You have an understanding of the ecosystem. You're like, hey, this is going to need guardrails. Like any good compliance person, even when this podcast started with Faisal Khan and others, the first thing they said is like, hey, we've been in the payment sector for two decades.

Everyone's saying there's not going to be any regulations. Trust me, there's going to be regulations. There's going to be guardrails. So I think all good compliance people know. Same thing with AI. There's going to be guardrails at some point. Everyone says it's going to, everyone says they're going to disrupt until they realize they need the traditional banking system to actually have a successful business.

What were some of those early maybe mistakes or challenges that you had? Because, you know, Or even, how did you get those early sales? There's no regulation for the most part, you know, you know, exchanges are getting hacked left, right, and center. No one seems to care. How did you sell that first customer on like, what was, what was your go to strategy?

What was your competitive advantage? Hey, use us to, so you'll be properly regulated for regulations that don't exist. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm curious about those early sales pitches.

Pawel: Yeah, that's, that's good question actually, you know? Um, so our approach was that. It's good to have, you know, um, it's kind of your insurance policy in case you have, you know, any problems.

Uh, then you have the discussion around, actually what you are doing is, has been regulated since, since, The beginning, right? Because you could argue that many of the regulations, okay, it wasn't, I mean, it was always around value transfer, right? When you have value transfer, you have certain requirements, you know, so, uh, and certain risks.

So that's, was the explanation, but It wasn't easy sale, right? You know, and that's something that But at the same time, you know, when ICO, during ICO time, right? People were kind of, uh, the approaches in the right way saying that, Listen, we, we take from the market couple of millions, right? Um, and you know, why do we Even risk anything, you know, we can just pay these guys like 60, 000, you know, and get this done and no problem, you know, and there's like money was flowing, you know, like it is like incredible flow of money, you know.

Um, so this was kind of, you know, the approach we set, like, you know, we do this in Ethereum, the only one in Ethereum, so come to us. And it's like one, one project was very interesting, right? Uh, was it pillars out of Switzerland anyway, you know, so the guys were doing a very fundraising for KYC project, you know, so at least they knew, you know, like, but this is something that important, you know, um, and they collected, I think around a hundred million, something around this, this, this amount, and they got stuck, right.

Because, you know, they wanted to pay, you know, Providers, you know, they wanted to pay, you know, uh, employees in real money, right? Not the funny money, the real money, you know, like the fiat, right? Um, so they went out to the, the, the banks, right? To, to kind of, you know, ask, okay, you know, can you open the bank account?

And the guy said, like, you know, how much money you have to deposit, like, Well, a hundred million. All right. Where did you get it from? Right. He's a people. Yeah, yeah. So, and you know, the, the banks simply said like, you know, we cannot accept this. So they came, they came to us and they asked us, okay, can you help us to prove the source of the funds?

And like, we put some ridiculous amount, you know, I tell you, you know, we put some ridiculous amount in terms of how much we're gonna pay for this, right? Uh, and they agreed. We did the work, we analyzed the whole transaction, obviously. I mean, you rarely have in this type of transaction, especially historically, could find any, let's say You know, data, which would be like straight, straight, you know, like criminal, uh, proceeds or anything like this.

I think, you know, there's like 2 percent at risk, you know, so we, we carve out this funds, you know, those, they were returned and the rest was, was clean. And we prepared this like comprehensive report. They get this, you know, they went to the bank. And the bank was okay with this, right? So that's, that's kind of indication that this story was, you know, um, kind of the win story for, for, for the clients, right?

So this is, this is how you, I mean, the intersection between the crypto and traditional was forcing them to, to be more compliant, right?

Stephen: I like that. That's an interesting story that I'm assuming the risk was low because it's an ICO. Most people are sending the funds probably from Uh, a known exchange, crypto exchange.

It's probably not coming through their personal wallets, uh, at Silk Road. Or what did you see? Most of the exposure was to exchanges or, you know, self custody wallets.

Pawel: Self custody actually, you know. Interesting. At that point of time, you know, mostly was self custody, you know. Even if, you know, it's like funny because this market changed a lot, but at the same time didn't change, right?

You know, in terms of You still have, I think, similar percentage, uh, which would be self custody. Maybe right now is shifting to, to the exchanges more because it's, it's, it's much more convenient. Right. But at the same time, um, during the ICO, a lot of was, you know, simply funded from the, uh, You know, self custody wallets, right?

Stephen: That's interesting, though. I would have never thought. I want to interrupt. How about now? Like, even maybe while you were still with Coinfirm, did you see a lot of projects coming to you because they kind of needed you to be able to scan their blockchain or their token in order to get listed on the crypto exchange?

Because I hear, like, that's a big thing. Like, hey, we'll pay whatever. As long as we can get listed on Binance, we're golden. So we'll spend as much as we need to have a blockchain analytics company kind of give us that seal of approval. Did you see a lot of that at Coinfirm?

Pawel: Yeah, but you know, at the same time, you know, the competitive landscape is increasing, right? I think it's even increasing right now. I mean, it used to be like, you know, Chain, Elliptic, TRM, CoinFur, Merkle. Then right now, you know, there are many other players. are popping up, you know. Um, so I think, you know, like that's interesting time when you start raising questions around, um, the, the quality of the data.

Right. Um, and that's something that, you know, it used to be like, you know, expensive that it went down because the market didn't realize, you know, Or the regulators didn't realize, you know, what you're using is critical, right? You know, where you get the data from is critical. Because then you have, I mean, you can buy some data, you probably go to some dodgy providers and they give you all green, you know, all perfect.

Uh, and, or you pre agree, you know, on what's, what's going to be, you know, uh, high risk. So I think, and you know, the market is competitive, um, there's kind of like, and I think, you know, in compliance in general, it's like kind of lack of understanding of what does it mean to be quality, right? And I know that there was some movement, um, couple of friends, you know, were actually indicating that we need to, you know, agree.

Create some industry standard, you know, like on what's actually quality, which is, there's always a risk of becoming kind of, you know, closing the, Oh, that's us and them. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's like, it's like, you know, I saw this in other sectors and it's, it's not good. Or maybe it's good for the existing companies, but it's not good for innovation.

Stephen: So that's, that's something, yeah. Where's GateKnox now? Are you talking, your organization focuses on compliance. The same conversations that you were having 11 years ago, like, Hey, there's no regulations kind of, but you're going to need to, are you having those same conversations now, decentralized exchanges and DeFi protocols are saying, Hey, we're outside of the purview of FATF and other regulations.

And you're like, trust me, you guys are going to be under the umbrella. Come in now, let's build for the future. Look at the Coinbase compared to a lot of the other crypto exchanges we've seen that kind of waited until the last minute to worry about regulations and What are your thoughts now about like the DeFi, the NFT sector?

Where are they going to fall under this?

Pawel: I think, I mean, frankly, I don't understand why they are so hesitant to, uh, to embrace compliance. Right. And that, you know, because it doesn't have to be say like, Oh, you know, we're going to be perceived as big, you know, we have to do this and we don't want to have to do this.

Right. Uh, but at the same time. I think it's like one of the, one of my friends said very good comparison that, you know, crypto is like a, like, you know, high school, right? It's a really good, you know, top high school. You can learn a lot. You can earn a lot, but at the same time, you know, This high school is free for scammers, you know, killers, rapists, and nobody cares, right?

I mean, it's like, you know, you don't want to go to this high school, right? Even if it is the best high school, right? And you don't want to go and, you know, have these risks. It's almost like, if you think about it in this way, right, and you know that, like people ask me, you know, if I got ever scammed, right.

I said, no, but it's a matter of time. It's probably going to happen to me. Right. It's, you know, because it's, it's like this, right. You know, vague, perfect, the tools, the money's flowing, nobody's stopping this effectively. So that's, that's something that I think, you know, we reaching the stage when we need to choose.

You know, which way we want to go, and I think, you know, without proper, let's say, setup, right, and applying to everyone on the market, right? I mean, it can be very low threshold, right? Like, I don't know, like, if I got scammed, right? Or someone comes to me and said that these funds are, you know, in question.

Let's Let's communicate to the market, right, that these funds are in question, right? And let's make it as a process, right? Or if we say, see that this is something that, uh, reminds, you know, uh, Scam or Rockpool or anything like this, right? Uh, that we should be looking at this very closely, right? As, as entire ecosystem, it's like, it's not like, you know, Oh, you know, like, Oh, I You know, I accept this money.

That's fine. You know, someone else, there's Chainalysis, you know, Coinfirm, who are looking after this, you know, it's not my problem, right? I mean, if you, if we keep thinking about it. It's almost like, you know, there's something that, you know, I want, you know, we, we launching as well, you know, we, we call the sanction network, right.

Where we want to create kind of constitution for, uh, for crypto. Right. And I, and I know that it sounds really, you know, crazy. Right. But at the same time, I think. There's so many people who are long time in crypto who are tired of this market, right? And, you know, they are technologists, you know, very smart people.

And they said like, no, I want to drop this all together because I hate this. You know, it's like this connection of, scammers, you know, what's happening wrong in crypto. It's a beautiful technology. We can fix a lot of things. But at the same time, Nobody seems to care about, you know, we have this bad, you know, uh, bad things, you know, happening, you know, so.

Stephen: Do you think that's led by greed? Do you think, because I didn't see any lawsuits in the NFT craze in 2021. When everyone's making money, everyone's a degen, everyone wants to be privacy, but they have no problem adding their name in real life. To a class action lawsuit when the $5, 000 token or ape that they bought goes down to $0.

They're not blaming themselves, they're blaming you because all of a sudden, you're not compliant now when they're not making money. I think some companies or some protocols don't realize when the times are good, nobody's coming after you. But when things go bad, which is what we saw, everyone starts coming after whoever put the NFT on OpenSea.

They're not blaming themselves.

Pawel: Yeah. So I think, I mean, it's going to, I hope it's going to change, but you know, you're right, you know, I'm not sure if it's going to be like, uh, you know, change, which is like, who's going to be driving the change or let's, let's put it in this way. Right. If it's going to be, I don't think regulators will be driving the change.

I think it needs to happen at the industry level, but at the same time, you know, you and I, we've been around the block, you know, for a long time and we know that how difficult it is to say that we need to change as an industry, right? We need to take the steps, you know, before, it's almost like, you know, let's pump it.

So I don't know, like, I have some hopes and I think too many people are becoming tired that it's either going to be gone or it's going to be fixed.

Stephen: I agree. Now, you raised, and I don't know how true these numbers are for CoinFirm, you raised about, I'd say 18. 5 million over 5 years. I don't know if that's close enough.

Um, that doesn't sound like a lot of capital to run a top blockchain investigations company. So I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs are probably wondering, how did you stretch that? Like, how did you make that work? Um, especially in the time where, you know, to get that high quality data and accuracy that you're talking about, you have to invest a lot in the technology and the engineers, you know, you know, parsing that tech, parsing that and using that technology.

How did you make that stretch for so long? Because we saw SPF blew that in one day, uh, by putting, by putting FDX's name on an arena.

Pawel: Yeah, I think, um, this kind of, I mean, we focus on technology and, you know, many, many European startups would have this, right? Where in order to really become a champion, you need to go to the US, right?

And the US is burning, you know, this is like, I think you need to have right now, like 10 million plus to go there properly, right? Without this, like, there's no reason you go there. Uh, and without actually this, You think about exit strategy, which is not, uh, the leader exit strategy. so that's the, uh, you know, kind of the answer, you know, like you, you cut on sales, you cut on, uh, you know, go to market marketing strategy or, you know, expenditure and you focus on technology and you focus on, you know, business.

This is what we've done, right. You know, this was kind of, you know, our, and there's also, you know, why We got acquired because we had really good data, right? And so that's something that, you know, this was kind of our winning formula to get the data, but it wasn't our strategy, like to be completely honest, right?

You know, we, it wasn't our strategy. There's always like. We had to survive with much smaller money.

Stephen: What are your thoughts too, now that you've kind of left that scene, when you see Chainalysis reigning, like they, I think they raised a hundred million two times within one year, what are your thoughts when you see that happening?

You're like, Hey, what about us? We got some good stuff over here too. Or were you like, Hey, this is bringing more investment dollars into our industry as a whole, so maybe if they weren't around, we wouldn't have the investors looking at this the same way. Personally, how did you see when you saw that money coming around?

Pawel: Yeah, I think we, we got used to the, you know, this type of crazy numbers, you know, obviously we're jealous, you know, obviously, you know, we wanted to have, you know, this type of, you know, investments, uh, but at the same time, we knew that their valuation are, you know, uh, really. Pumped, right? So, and I think, you know, keeping the valuation, it's, it's tough.

And I, you know, we see this like with Carta, for example, right? So, I don't know if you saw Carta, you know, like they went down from seven and a half billion to one billion, right? In like, you know. I don't know, six months. Right. Uh, and this is because of the pumped valuations. I don't think it's wrong in terms of, you know, pumping valuation.

Uh, I don't think it's, I mean, it's a comparison with, between Europe and the U S that's why, you know, the European market is, is, is, is actually almost like it's a stagnant or it's a kindergarten for, for, you know, technology.

Company, right? We, you know, as quickly as you can exit from here, go to the US, right? Or at least, you know, to Asia, don't stay in Europe, right? That's unfortunately, you know, the case. So yeah, we saw the rounds, we're, we're jealous, but at the same time, we said like, you know, that's, that's life, right? You know, this is, this is how we need to survive.

And, you know, let's keep, keep doing what we, what we've been doing. Um, you know, for, for a number of years, We are growing like, you know, 200%, you know, on annual basis, right. Recurring revenue. So it wasn't bad, bad growth. It was simply, you know, like the discussion with VCs was like, Oh, you know, like it's a winner take, takes it all.

You know, but it's like, it's not the case. It's, I think, you know, there's no industry except maybe, but even in social media, right. But winner takes it all. Especially when you have B2B, in B2B sector, you have like, you know, you have, I don't know, five communicators, right? Minimum. Right. And there's like, who would expect that Telegram would be winning this, this race.

Right. It was like, but we had this conversation and we were saying like, Oh, you know, like, China is so big, you're not going to be, you're going to be probably second, third, you know, so we only invest in the winner. So it's almost like, like, I don't think, you know, VC are the smartest people in the world.

Stephen: But they're, they're, they're betting. Right. So when you're betting, you want a shiny horse. That looks like he's in the league, right? Yeah, at the end of the day, because that's the biggest payout if you win. Not, they're not thinking long term. They're like, Hey, get my money in, get my money out. I think there's sometimes an allure you want to be saying like, Hey, I invested in Chainalysis early, like, or I'm with these other VCs that are like, I think people use that as it's almost like a status symbol.

Looking back, do you think like, Hey, maybe we should have took like half a million or a million and like dumped it into more marketing, especially in Europe, we saw Bitstamp selling to Robinhood for what many people are saying, pennies on the dollar because of the same thing. They never really advertised.

They never really did anything outstanding, which is probably good when you're a crypto exchanger. We're never in the headlines for anything bad either, but sometimes people like to be in the headlines, whether that's negative or positive. What are your thoughts? Do you think now, looking back, like, hey, we should have poured on the marketing, the razzle dazzle, bought out a couple conferences, etc.

Or are you happy with the way that you kind of evolved it?

Pawel: Hmm, good question. I think the only difference, uh, is that To be in the U. S. to fight for government contracts. That was the only way to, to make it grow, you know, like at that point of time. Spending on marketing, I think wouldn't work, right? It's not the market when you, where you would have the marketing spend.

I think, you know, unless you are in, uh, Really in the consumer, uh, segment, right? In consumer apps, like spending on marketing, it's, it's, it's a waste of money in many situations, right? Like, and to your point, like those government

Stephen: contracts are huge, especially I'm assuming US is probably one of the biggest spenders when it comes to contract, uh, government contracts like that or defense things.

For countries that you can't allow. Like I'm sure North Korea probably spends a lot of money, but you can't, you can't really sign with them. Tell me about your first couple of hires. It's you, it's Grant, who's an out there character. You're very, you know, you're out there. You're, you're not scared to share your thoughts.

Um, talk about how that was like, did you have to kind of tone it down a little bit when you're speaking to VCs or, you know, how did you get people to buy into coin firm so early, you're still ahead of your time and did you see a shift when Bitcoin kind of. Made CNBC in 2017. Did you see more people wanting to come work for your company at that time?

Pawel: In terms of investors or in terms of like, you know, key hires? Key hires. Yeah, so, you know, we started with Paweł Aleksander, right? You know, it's like, that was the core. Then we got Maciek, who is like, you know, Bitcoin review. Then we brought in Grant, who is, who was our, you know, US connection. And, you know, I mean, he was fun in terms of marketing and, you know, many things he did like extremely well.

Right. And so, so Grant was a character, right. And then we, we were looking for, you know, technology person, right. And I remember, you know, we had. Uh, this young guy coming to us and I said, like, you know, can you, I mean, do you have any CV? He's like, yeah, we can, I can do something. Right. And then. You know, and it's like, I got the CV and I said, like, you know, the guy is fixing, you know, water pumps or something like this, or heaters, right?

And like, no, you know, um, no IT school, nothing right like this, but, you know, Maciek was saying, like, I know the guy, he's like proper, right? So we met, he was, Jakub was at that point of time, 20 or 19, right? Um, and we met and, you know, you know, I remember we were sitting like in, in, you know, in the garage, we actually started in the garage, you know, so it was, we were sitting in the garage, like very cheap place.

Right. And since he said like, Oh, you plan to do this and this, right. But you shouldn't be doing this and this, you should be doing this and this. And he's like in two minutes, right. He just throw to the bin, uh, anything which was created before. Right. And then Uh, he, he brought this, you know, himself again, right?

Turned out that he was, at that point of time, he had the biggest, uh, Bitcoin mining facility in Poland, right? Uh, he, I mean, in his, uh, father's, uh, backyard, right? You know, like, he built this himself. Yeah, I mean, He was extremely talented, you know, like Jakub was like, so we kept, we had a lot of characters, this type of characters, but we got very lucky in terms of key hires from the beginning, right?

Stephen: What were your thoughts about like, you know, your whole organization kind of resting on the technical ability of this 19, 20 year old?

Pawel: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you see, you, we could see. You get this, um, I mean, I had my experience in terms of hiring people, you know, in the, in the corporate world, right? At that point of time, I was like, you know, a hundred people, uh, reporting to me in Royal Bank of Scotland, you know, like all this stuff.

So you start to, Understand that, you know, when you meet smart person, right. And these guys are, you know, like top smart person, right. It was simply, he didn't give a damn about, you know, his, his studies and all this stuff, you know, and like, we had really good team in terms of learning, understanding, uh, and kind of challenging each other.

Right. And we, we still, we, we still are very good friends and we still kind of have this, you know, uh, but we can sit down and like, really without any like arguments, right. Have argument without like being angry. Right. So it's almost like, and we had this open conversation all the time. And I think this, this was, you know, Part of the winning formula.

And I think this is winning formula right now in GateNox as well. You know, we want to maintain this, like, you know, challenge me and, you know, let, let be yourself to be challenged, you know, so this is something, you know, which is like, you know, constantly looking for this type of approach and this type of people.

Stephen: Is that challenging though? Cause I see Carol Van Cleef is part of the team, our advisors, like. You know, she's been in the same amount of years in the industry probably as you, strong, smart personality. Is that tough when you have all A players? Like, who's going to make the final decision? Or are you kind of like, you're all used to this now after dealing with so many A players for such a long time?

Pawel: I think you get used to, but at the same time, I mean, you cannot delegate decision making at the end, right? Decision making is with, with CEO. I think it's rarely you can delegate this, right? I mean, you can delegate, you know, the parts, which you know, that you can kind of allocate, right? I don't know, tech, data, but it's all running.

But at the same time, if we say, if we need to take decision, like just to give you some idea, you know, where we are working on, um, like data engine. Right? And we had graph, um, graph data engine, uh, we started and we're looking for solutions available, right? So there's a couple of, you know, a couple of technologies, early technologies really starting, right?

And so we had to make proper decision. So we kind of, you know, the guys did the research, right? And it took like three, Three to six months, I think, in terms of researching, you know, all different technologies, people available on the market, who we can hire, you know, whether this makes sense or not. And at the, but at the end, you know, it's almost like, you know, that's, that was my decision on the basis of their, you know, information and decision making process.

Right. So this was, but you know, this, this type of decisions were really. You know, uh, collective, but at the same time, the final decision comes from you, right? And I think this is, this is something that CEO must do, uh, and that's the, the key role for CEO, right? You know, this is the, this type of decision, but the, the, otherwise the team needs to be running themselves.

Stephen: I love it. I love it. So you sell CoinFirm to LUCA. They seem like they provide tons of analytics, reporting, insights. Uh, what was the process there that, that you can disclose? Did they reach out to you and say, Hey, we need a blockchain analytics company. You guys are doing your thing, but if we bring you in here, we have like, you know, we have UNO.

We got the full set, a suite of, uh, of applications and things that our clients need. Or were you like, Hey, I'm tired of this. I've kind of moved on to GateKnox anyway. What was that kind of process for you and the CoinFirm team that was still existing when you left as CEO?

Pawel: Yeah, so listen, it was very, I mean, we reached the stage and there was a couple of decisions, you know, if you ask me about wrong decisions, it's like, you know, letting too many VCs on the board.

You know, and I think, you know, the whole VC aspect in startups is unnecessarily, uh, toxic, right? Um, I think, you know, this is, I mean, money would have to come with. Some responsibility on every side. Right. So it's like, you know, we can, we can talk about this, you know, like, uh, in, in, in a second, uh, about VC, but you know, yes, VCs were really creating a lot of unnecessary tension for me.

Right. I think, you know, 2019, 2020, I was very close to heart attack. You know, my family was, you know, really falling apart. You know, I was like, like, No shape at all, right? Uh, like I was fat and really out of shape, which was never the case for me. Otherwise, right. So I, I had this feeling, but again, this needs to kind of stop at some point.

Right. I did the close of the, you know, like series, series B, you know, with, with SIX and, uh, Avalog and then, you know, there was kind of tension in the board and I said, like, you know, I want to step down, right. And then, uh, there was new CEO and the company was, you know, we are growing like very, very fast at some point, you know, It's, it's, well, you know, start running flat, right? So there was kind of, you know, the thinking that we need to sell, uh, CoinFuel, right?

Stephen: And was that during the pandemic when kind of everyone was like, Hey, nobody's building, so nobody needs compliance if they can't even afford to build?

Pawel: Yeah, yeah, there was pandemic, you know, many things as typically you would have the many things, you know, coming together.

Right. Um, but there was no, no space to grow. Uh, like the, the, the company was, uh, you know, really, um, Up for sale, right? And then there's, you know, Luka, a little bit luckily, you know, came to, came to us and said, like, we're interested, right? And for them, I mean, there are so many companies which, um, you would have, I mean, for them would be obvious to buy, but it's very difficult for, unless you're living and breathing, you know, this industry.

It's very difficult to assess, you know, which company you should buy or not. We were very surprised that Cyphertrace was bought, you know, at that point of time, right? Right. But, you know, so we had, uh, we had Luca coming to us and basically like, okay, you know, this is, this is, this is for us, perfect, perfect match.

It was perfect match, right? So I came back to the board, you know, to drive the transaction. Uh, yeah. And this for them, it was data, you know, Very much data and, you know, like security aspect of the data, right? So that's kind of obvious, you know, we had, I mean, it's almost like it's very difficult to assess, but from what we knew from the clients, we had the best coverage in terms of coins. You know, we never source data from third party. We always had our own data.

Stephen: Which we hear a lot about in this industry, right? People paying for any data just so they have some data.

Pawel: Exactly. You know, and, but if you have like API calls to external provider on your critical, you know, uh, data, Ah, that's not good, not good approach.

So we, we had every note of, uh, of, of the blockchains or, you know, coins that we covered. We had this on our own infrastructure fully running, you know, so that was kind of couple of things. You know, incredible points that we've done. You know, we, we never had the cloud infrastructure. We had actually our own infrastructure, which in terms of security and even in cost effectiveness, right.

Or, you know, accessibility of data was amazing. Right. So, you know, this was, you know, kind of why it happened.

Stephen: Was there any sticking points? They were like, eh, you know, you know, it would be great. But like, was there any points that you thought like, Hey, they say like in order for a deal to happen, it must almost not happen two or three times.

Did you kind of go through any points and you know, what were some of the sticking points where they're like, uh, this could be a deal breaker, but you were able to maybe, uh, massage it out before the deal was done?

Pawel: No, I tell you, I think, you know, the, the, the interesting part was when we had, uh, all that, um, on data and there was like, Very quick audit in terms of we understood that everything is proper, right?

I mean, it wasn't quick because it took months, right? But it was like, you know, um, done in the fastest way we could imagine is, is being done and, you know, because we knew that. The way we created infrastructure, we care about the data, curated data, all this stuff is like amazing, right? That, so this was part of, like, I knew that if we can fail, it would be more into the personal aspects, but I think all parties wanted to deliver on this. So there was like price tag, uh, in terms of negotiations.

Stephen: How do you audit data? You guys are the, you are the data you have, I'm assuming some of your stuff is like closed end, black box. That's the whole thing about blockchain investigations and analytics. It's like, it's kind of like this black box. Who's going to go audit your data other than maybe another blockchain analytics company?

Pawel: I think, you know, um, we try to be maximally transparent in terms of how we set it up. You know, our algorithm, you know, like everything was written. Everything was on paper, the whole infrastructure. The data sets, we typically had like, you know, two sources of data for every data point, you know, like everything scraped, you know, like all that.

We have one peta, we had one petabyte of data, you know, so, uh, so that's, that's kind of, you know, properly structured. So you start looking and you, you see if the data does what it's supposed to be doing, right. Or if the engine do what it's supposed to be doing, right. So that's, that's how you, how you measure this effectiveness.

And if Everything goes in line with what's described. Um, yeah, I think that's the, that's the easiest way to explain this. Obviously, you know, it took, you know, very smart people, uh, to review this. Uh, so it's completely outside my, you know, remedy, but this is, this is how I would approach this, yeah.

Stephen: Are you worried during that time that they could be like, Hey, now they know kind of how we do this. They could like, essentially take that information, And start up your own, or is there such a high level of excellence that has to go in to recreating what you've done?

Pawel: Uh, it's cheaper.

Stephen: It's cheaper to buy, I love it. So now, take me to the day, you open up your bank account, the money hits from the sale, and I don't know where you are personally, do you feel like, man, I will never do this again, the money's good, but like I've almost killed myself to get to this point, or is it kind of like, hey man, for all the hours I've actually worked, Sleepless nights, the sacrifices.

This seems like I got paid minimum wage over the last five or six years and I'm just finally getting the payment now. What are your thoughts when that money hits the account?

Pawel: It feels good. Um, typically, you know, uh, I mean, but at the same time, I don't think, you know, uh, Like none of the founders would do this for money.

I think, you know, like immediately, um, I think money is important. That's kind of your measurement, but at the same time, it's fun. I think it's fun. You know, like, like that's the, that's the most critical element in startup building something, especially when you make it in the right way and it's achieving success, you know, it's fun.

You meet incredible people. You really kind of, you know, you, you would never get, get into this You know, uh, points or meet these people or go, go to this meetings, you know, otherwise that's kind of, it's a modern way of venturing. I think, you know, like it's used to like Columbus was going, you know, discovering America, that's a new way.

You have, you have to have the team courage, right? You have to be able to risk everything, you know, it's not physical risk, but. Sometimes it's even physical, right? You know, when I went to Lagos, you know, like that was kind of, you know, my, you know, weird trip.

Stephen: Can you tell Me about like now, you know, you've, as you said, you were worn down, you almost, you know, harmed your relationships, your physical body, but now your kids are like, I want to do what daddy did. I want to build a business and make millions or hundreds of thousands or billions of dollars.

I'm going to do exactly what you did. Would your advice be like, Hey, maybe you should approach it. I could have done this differently. Here's what I would have done differently. Like, how do you approach that? Your kids seeing what you've done, but they're also seeing the reward and the risk. What advice do you give them if they want to follow in your footsteps?

Pawel: Do it. Don't think about it too much. You know, it's like, it's simply the best of try. I mean, you cannot try it, right? You need to do it. You know, and it's like, you know, the only thing which is like crazy for me is I'm trying not to do too many things, you know, or not to think about new business because I'm trying to realize them.

You know, this is something, you know, I would, I try to do things. Um, so that's kind of, you know, the builder, Uh, in your mind, you know, when you start doing something, you know, it's like, it's probably, and if you are successful, you probably try to repeat it, right? I would love to go to retirement, right? But, you know, there's no way I can actually think about me going, what, should I play golf? You know, like..

Stephen: Your brain doesn't work. You can't, your brain doesn't work like that, right? That's the, it's the blessing and the curse. The blessing is your brain works. Many people are like, I wish my brain worked like that. But the only caveat is it never turns off, right?

Pawel: Exactly, you know, so the risk is that you don't, I mean, you can be in the situation when you're constantly doing this, right? And you, I mean, I think at some point you need to stop or stop risking your money, right? That's, that's something that You know, it's really, because in Coinfair, we put everything right on, on this. I didn't have any savings. I didn't have any, you know, I mortgaged my house, you know, everything. Right. So that was kind of crazy approach.

Stephen: How about now you start GateKnox. It seems like this is a more easier lift. I want to say easier. I might be misinterpreting. It seems like an easier lift, right? Compliance is what you know. Technology you're really good at. It seems like just making these pieces. Into something that kind of solves probably the same problems that you were seeing a company's had when you were working with coin firm.

Was there anything that you're like, Oh, I can duplicate this. It should be super easy. Was there anything you're like, Oh, I didn't think about this or a challenge or something that happened where you're like, Oh, I'm gonna have to switch the way we do things here because it's not going to be the same as the last time.

Pawel: Um, I think, you know, much more, much more focus on sales, um, and getting early, early clients. You know, that's something that we right now our approach is, you know, to have certain amount of kind of wins, right. But then work on the big clients who we can learn a lot from. Right, and work with them in the way that we almost like we are software house for them.

I mean, like the software developers for them. Right. So we solve the problem and we learn in the process. So I think, you know, that's, I think the product market fit takes longer than you would expect, or it's actually set on the market. Right. Especially when you, if you do something. You know, easy, right? I don't know consumer app or anything like this.

I know that it couldn't, I mean, doesn't have to be easy, right? But it's easier than trying to solve critical problem for, you know, sophisticated company, right? You cannot like do MVP on this too much, right? You need to create a product which works and does things which are critical, especially in compliance, right?

You cannot have like, oh, it's more or less correct, right? You cannot do this, right? So, The product, product market, uh, feed time is longer than, uh, you would expect. So I don't, I don't buy into this like, Oh, you know, make this, you know, website and see how many people would call, come for what, right. You know, uh, if you don't have anything to even understand that you are, I mean, in compliance, I mean, you know how it is, you know, like not many people understand compliance.

Like, they may think that they understand compliance, right? But at the end, they, 99 percent of tech people wouldn't understand compliance, right?

Stephen: And what is your product? Like, pitch us gate knots. What is the product that you're offering? Who are the clients that maybe you're like, I can't believe they're not buying this right off the shelf.

We should be selling out, like, pancakes or hotcakes to them. What's Gatenox providing? And who do you think is the ideal client that you're like, Oh, they need this. They may not know they need this, but trust me, they need this.

Pawel: Okay, so our main USP is how we deal with corporate, um, onboarding, right? When you think about it, you know, how you are right now, if you want to offer your payment product or crypto product into the institutional client, right?

You need to build extensive, you know, onboarding mechanism, data sources. Sanctions, PEP, negative news, individual client verification, um, you know, what else? Data structuring, audit, you know, verification panel, uh, storage of this information. It's effectively, you know, in my, in my mind, if you want to build.

If you want to offer your product to institutional client, if you want to do this properly, right, it's a minimum of two million dollars, you know, which you need to pay upfront, right? This is the cost which you, which you have to allocate, you know, from the, let's say, onboarding, right? You know, the, the interface to onboard, the data collection, verification, all the data sources, because if you, if you onboard institutional client, you have I think 90, 195 jurisdictions, right?

US is actually 40 something jurisdictions, right? You know, so that's, and you have the registries for different jurisdictions. And then especially in crypto, right? You would have like someone in, you know, you have UK company, but the shareholder is from BVI, that BVI is, you know, like, and the connections go around the world, right?

And it's complex, right? So you either cut the corners. Thinking of, okay, you know, like, uh, just get some information so I can say that I've done, you know, what I should be doing, or I need to spend 2 million as a starting point. And then I need to maintain this for another, you know, million a year. And then I need to build a team to, who understand how to, how to use it, right?

Recruit them, you know, all this stuff. So I think like that's, and this is how, you know, we deliver end to end. Including, and that's something, you know, which we, which we do as a next phase, you know, including people who can help you to actually, if you have, I don't know, pigs or if you have anyone, uh, so that's going to be, I mean, that's the engine.

Onboarding someone, you know, so make this as you, as good user experience as possible, uh, through verification, compliance checks. You know, PEPs, negative news, any individual, uh, part of, uh, let's say, uh, party directors or UBOs, all discovery happening. So that's, that's, let's say what we are delivering right now.

Next phase is also, you know, when we similar to GateNet, to Coinfirm, right? You know, what we are building is a database. I want this to be as streamlined in terms of data discovery for companies as possible and very similar to blockchain analytics, right? If you think about blockchain analytics, right, it's like you have nodes and then you have, you know, connection between the nodes, right?

You know, and then if you think about corporates, there's also, you know, the corporate is, it's a node, right? And you have connection in the nodes with the nodes, right? So it's kind of similar way to, to do this analysis, right? And then Right now, you know, when you do the corporate analysis, right, you, you have company and then you go to the BVI where you have the, um, you know, shareholder, you go and check with them, you know, then you, you know, if you said, you know, you go and check in them and disconnections and you build, and it takes, you know, week, month, weeks, months, you know, that's something that is the other way to think about is, is like, you will have this data already database, right?

And you simply, you click and you have all the connections already disclosed, right? All of these connections are already, you know, understood, uh, and, you know, put this together in one report, risk report. This is how you can, you can, uh, you can sell it. So that's, and it's massive market, right? You have the crypto market when we, you know, work with clients who are onboarding this, you know, because they do all that, all from, for, you know, corporate clients.

But, you know, we more and more work with the DeFi projects, uh, which basically they don't want to do compliance, right? And this is what I was saying, you know, but you can pull the puzzle together. Right? So we want to be one of the components. If they want to have DEX, which is, uh, you know, compliant, right.

And they don't want to take any counterparty risk, you know, like they could simply tap on to our solution or to our network, right. And, you know, uh, interact only with verified, uh, identities, right. We also want this to be. You know, the, the, the blockchain gives you beautiful, like, zero knowledge proofs, selective disclosures, you know, all this stuff.

So you can actually, what we want to build over time is kind of, you know, the data containers for identities, right? And that's something, you know, many are doing this. You know, uh, what we are doing differently is like, we do this for corporate. Nobody's doing this for corporate. We want to do this also in the verified way, you know?

So we want to have the, the, the verification mechanism, right? And you know, it could be people, it could be Python scripts, but it could be AI models, which are verifying data. So there's a lot to do, right? And I think, you know, over time you effectively should have understanding of the risk before you engage.

Right. This is especially with corporate. I think with individuals, it's, you know, it's slightly tricky. I think it's at the end, individual verification is more complex than, you know, corporate verification. Interesting. Yeah. So like individuals, they can fake IDs, you know, like all this stuff. Corporate, you know, it's like if they start faking, you know, like that's, that's an interesting situation.

Right. So I think, and over time you should be Look, you know, okay, you know, these guys exist in this data container, this identity for like a year, right? They were verified, uh, you know, on the ongoing basis a couple of months. So it's easy for me to engage and the risk is much lower, right? And if I don't want to have problems, and that's something, you know, which is critical as well, it's like, uh, you know, I just engage with the low risk or medium risk.

Right? Because, you know, the Pareto principle is working very well in compliance. 20 percent of the customers which are creating, or 10 percent which are creating the biggest problem would be consuming 90 percent of your resources. Right? So if you If you think about it in this way, you know, why are you dealing with 10 percent of the risky clients, you know?

Unless your profile is that you are comfortable with the risky clients, right? Or you put some, a lot of costs, you know, on this and you're focusing on this risky clients. That's, that's the way. And I think, you know, this is the way we should be, we should be approaching this over time. We would end up with, um, market when you, you want, I mean, the, the, the, the coming back to the high school, right?

You know, like you want, you have the high school when you know that only good people are there, right? Nobody's entering them, um, you know, uh, like with high risk. You basically, and it's self, self, you know, um, self sufficient, self sustainable, um, ecosystem, right? Right.

Stephen: Even using that example, no parent wants to send their kid there Same as no corporation wants to spend their customer's money there.

But what was the existing landscape? We have a couple minutes. What was there before? Like, it seems like to me, if I'm thinking, like, if I'm building on a compliance program, I got to reach out to all these different service providers. I'm trying to balance. I got, you know, I'm spending more money trying to do research than anything else.

And I still don't know what is going to be good for my specific situation. So they're coming to you and you're saying, we'll build everything out for you. On top of that, we also have a lot of data. So now you can interact with other corporations within our ecosystem and understand who you're dealing with at that point, which is something that these individual service providers can't provide you.

They can't say, Hey, you're good with us, but we're going to tell you who you're also good with. They can't provide that. Whereas you're kind of building this ocean where all the boats are coming into this ocean, can kind of connect with each other if needed. But at least they know, hey, if I'm going to connect with that other boat, he's been vetted.

We have the information that we would need to at least assure that this is the boat I want to engage with. Would that kind of be a good summary?

Pawel: Very good. Yes, exactly. And then, you know, like we want to open up the gates for Institutional clients. I mean, I don't, I don't understand why crypto is kind of, you know, just, just focusing constantly on this individual clients.

You know, I think, you know, we, like we hinder the growth, right? Because like how many more individual clients you would have on an annual basis? 5%? 10%? Probably not even this. Right? So we need to open up for institutional client, right? And it's like this couple, like one inch, you know, like, for example, is, you know, the only player who can kind of bring you liquidity, right?

It shouldn't be, it shouldn't be difficult, right? It should be like, you know, Oh, I want to, I don't know, buy some crypto and then, you know, put this in the staking, you know, all this stuff. It should be like, bam, bam, for institutional client to enter. Right now it's crazy difficult. Right.

Stephen: It's, it's because the compliance, the reason why they're not entering exactly, they can't use their customers money with non compliant entities.

Pawel: Exactly. And also, you know, like if someone wants to take them, right. It's almost like, how do I take them? Right. I don't have resources. I need to build the, the, the workflow for this, you know, like then you have, you end up with Excel, you know, and all this stuff, which is crazy. Right. I think, you know, it's just, just simply not sustainable. You just creating yourself huge risk.

Stephen: I love it. Paul, where can people find you? Where do I know you, you know, you posted about your, your health routine recently on LinkedIn. It seems like that's the best place for people to find you. I'm not sure how deep in crypto Twitter, where can our audience get in touch with you?

Because I think your solution is what a lot of organizations need, but they think they have to go to 15 different providers. Where they can just come to you and you can kind of set out the journey. And you're there with them for the whole journey, which I think it makes it more interesting versus just selling them a tool or solution that they can use for one or two years.

Pawel: I think LinkedIn is the easiest. You know, that's, that's probably, you know, I know that X is, is exciting, but it's kind of, you know, I'm trying to Like social media are so consuming, you know, in terms of time and, you know, focus. So I'd rather stay on boring like hell LinkedIn, you know.

Stephen: What do you mean? I create fuzz now, I'm joking.

I definitely agree. Wow. Thank you so much. I love that you took us through the founder journey. Uh, and I love that you're building something else, which, you know, at first I was like, Oh, Gatenox just seems like, you know, like, hum, they'll do your AML and compliance. But what you're building there sounds like you're building another coin firm, to be quite honest. So I'm glad that you're getting into a healthy state, uh, to continue on that journey. It was great talking to you.

Pawel: Thank you, Stephen it was a pleasure.