Yes,
Seriously. Wordpress and Paymium aside, Coinabul is a Bitcoin company that
provides more validation to the success and stability of Bitcoin. Coinabul
is the first Bitcoin to Gold resource available to the Bitcoin marketplace.
I caught up with the Chief of Coinabul Jay Shore and got a
few thoughts from him about Coinabul, Bitcoin & regulations.
1. Tell me a bit
about yourself. Where are you from? What was the tipping point for you to get
involved in Bitcoin? How big is your team?
I've got a background in computer science dating back more
than a decade, with an emphasis on web application development. We're based in
the USA, and the key figures in our team have been involved in Bitcoin for
years- I personally have always found the technology appealing from a development
and day-trading viewpoint ever since I heard about it around the later part of
2010.
2. Do you think that
Bitcoin is ready for the mass adoption and use? If No, Why not? If Yes, How can
it spread faster?
Bitcoin is certainly ready for widespread adoption. Whether
it's viable for someone who is not technically inclined to become a Bitcoin
user is relatively undetermined- as young as Bitcoin is there are a lot of
services which make it easy for new users who are not technically savvy to use
the platform, and large corporate supporters such as Wordpress who advocate for
and provide tools for widespread adoption. The main thing that will bring
Bitcoin into a more widely consumed state will be market stability, I feel-
this will let new users feel more confident, veterans less skittish, and new
businesses join in without hesitation.
3. Any big news to be
announced to the world? Something new from Coinabul which is right around the
corner?
There is nothing particularly new happening for Coinabul
customers with the exception of even faster processing times, as well as
cheaper shipping for all of our international clients. We have recently
renegotiated rates with our shipping carriers such that we are able to bring
our rates for clients down a fair bit.
4. What is your
roadmap for 2013-2014?
Mainly, our goal for 2013 is to increase efficiency as we
scale, and continue to grow as substantially as we have in 2012. This entails a
huge amount of work in various ways, which I won't get into here as it's really
quite mundane and tedious. However, I will outline some of our primary goals:
grow the amount and variety of stock we have on hand at any given point,
increase the number of employees and premises we have, decrease processing
times, and increase the frequency as well as size of orders which we process.
5. Any Partnerships
that you envision to enable faster growth of Coinabul?
We are exploring critical growth partnerships with various
entities to help us continue to improve our product offering, although I cannot
really get into that in a public medium.
6. What are the
legality aspects of Coinabul? Does Metal to BTC/ BTC to Metal rest in the grey
area of law or is it unregulated?
BTC/precious metals exchange is a very complicated endeavor
both from a legal and a logistics perspective. We encounter huge amounts of
legal constraint as a fringe service operator in a regulated market, but we
have amazing legal minds who keep us compliant within, and voluntarily above
and beyond, the bounds of regulations that we are obligated to follow.
7. What kind of
effort goes into running a growing business like Coinabul? Any challenges that
are pressed at you every day?
The primary hurdles we overcome tend to be fairly standard
in terms of a company experiencing massive and rapid growth. As a fixture in
the Bitcoin community for more than a year, we have established a huge amount
of trust which generates larger and larger daily volumes for us. While we grow,
we have to do all of the fun things that are required for expanding businesses
but on a much more accelerated curve.
8. What advice can
you share for budding entrepreneurs?
As far as advice I can give to budding entrepreneurs, I can
only recommend a few things:
Do what you love;
Stay dedicated to your projects, but if it's not taking off you have to cut your losses and move forward or reformulate your model;
Don't quit your day job until your startup requires you to do so;
Build the right team early on since you can't do every task by yourself as you scale;
Don't be afraid of change- it is innovation as well as hard work that powers your startup.
Do what you love;
Stay dedicated to your projects, but if it's not taking off you have to cut your losses and move forward or reformulate your model;
Don't quit your day job until your startup requires you to do so;
Build the right team early on since you can't do every task by yourself as you scale;
Don't be afraid of change- it is innovation as well as hard work that powers your startup.
9. Any thoughts on
Bitcoin in India?
India is a growing Bitcoin market, and I see more and more
services and users coming out of India day to day.
In a world of Bitcoin entrepreneurs, Coinabul seems to have
taken some of the biggest risks in the market and listening to Jay talk about
their viral growth, there is no doubt that they are an entity to watch as
Bitcoin covers the globe.
Maintaining 24/7 updated prices, a provision for voice based
customer service, dipping shipping costs and a well accredited team makes these
guys one of the earliest Bitcoin success stories.
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