ICO

Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Akaiito CEO Katja Krolova

akaiito-Ceo Katja Krolova interview

There are already a few well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and ETH, with more hitting the market every day. But even when cyber coins gain market presence and value in the digital world of blockchain exchanges, one enduring problem remains. Where can holders actually spend them in the real world?

Akaiito plans to attack that problem head-on. The company is creating real-world city maps of merchants and other goods and services providers who accept all kinds of cryptocurrencies and want to reach crypto-holding consumers. The startup is also providing a convenient smart-contract enabled interchange to allow merchants to set their own prices, and buyers to not only purchase such goods and services instantly but obtain bonuses for doing so.

How would this work? Simply peruse the local merchants who accept different types of crypto in the Akaiito ecosystem. Either visit them in person or online. Select what you want to pay and in what currency. Point, click. Pay. Super easy. The smart contracts do all the rest. The company is currently running a generous bounty and social media promotions campaign during the highly discounted pre and ICO crowdsale schedules. Check the website and white paper for details.

We recently sat down with Katja Krolova, the CEO of Akaiito to have a chat with her about the project as well as finding out her thoughts and insights.

akaiito logo

Katja, Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and Akaiito?

Hello. I am very glad to be here today! Thank You for inviting. I will try to tell shortly about myself and Akaiito, but short stories are not always possible in my case. I am usually getting so excited talking about Akaiito, that I can continue for hours and hours. But let me try.
About myself, I am an entrepreneur, crypto enthusiast, with strong belief, that blockchain is the next step of development for humanity. Blockchain is still at the very beginning of its road and there are so many fields, where we need to develop the crypto world and adapt it to normal, real life. Akaiito is aiming to solve this adoption problem. Akaiito is the platform, which has a very ambitious goal: to become crypto eBay, Airbnb, Fiverr and Tripadvisor. All in one for the crypto world. All the users will be able to sell own products, to rent out cars and apartments, to hire someone etc. All that will be possible with the use of cryptocurrency. As I already mentioned, participants of all the deals on the platform will be users, so Akaiito is C2C business model. The platform will ensure secure shopping by providing review and score system both for sellers and buyers. Akaiito will be a fair and trustworthy platform, cause smart contract will follow interests of both parties. So, if to conclude about Akaiito in couple words: trustworthy, safe, fair, convenient, massive, powerful.

Would it be fair to say that Akaiito is kind of the “Amazon meets Best Buy” of localized goods and services available by sort of a blockchained credit card or Paypal for all currencies?

Overly Yes, can agree with that statement, but with one correction: not localized goods. As Akaiito will be a worldwide platform, localization is not applicable here.

Your platform will automatically deal with taxes – but how will that work in an environment where buyers and sellers are in different countries? VAT charges for services, for example, would not apply in certain situations, right? And your service would be perfect for duty-free too, correct?

Seller and buyer will be able to agree on the terms of VAT charges, cause taxation will depend on seller location and therefore should be included to the final price of products. But in certain situations, for example in case of services, VAT charges would not apply. Yes, exactly, services would be perfect for duty-free.

What is the biggest problem within the industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for Akaiito to fill?

Akaiito – use cryptocurrency in everyday life

We think, that the biggest problem of the crypto world is a short-term approach of users and that is exactly what slowing down the development of the industry. What I mean by short-term approach is the way we currently use crypto. We using it mainly for trading, either with the purpose of getting quick profit or long-term profit. But trading is pretty much only one way how we use crypto. So, there is basically no real implementation, no real-world usage opportunities. During one of Blockchain Conferences where we have been participating, the speaker has asked the audience “how many of You are using cryptocurrency in Your normal, everyday life?”. Only 2 people out of 300 raised their hands. I think that describes the main problem of industry in the best possible way.

akaiito ico blockchain crypto bank

What do you think is the biggest problem Akaiito will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

Our main goal is to bring the crypto world to the next level, to open up for crypto holders new opportunities of crypto usage. Akaiito will be a platform where the crypto community can use their crypto in everyday life! As I mentioned before, the lack of use is stopping crypto from further development, so our mission is to solve this main problem.

You make a point of highlighting that you will only list and sell legal goods and sellers of them. But what about the case where an online merchant selling goods that are legal in one country is asked to sell something to someone in a country where that product or service is illegal? Ie, prostitution (which is legal in many European countries). How do you plan to filter those kinds of use cases?

Akaiito platform will be decentralized and we don’t want to be a middleman in users relations, but in that particular topic (illegal goods and services) we need to intervene from the very beginning. There will be a list of strictly prohibited products and services, which won’t be admitted for Akaiito platform. Unfortunately, for some countries where those goods and services are legal it will be a restriction, but hopefully, the community will understand Akaiito approach for that topic. Our main goal is to keep Akaiito users safe and happy.

Editors Pick: Akaiito ICO

In the whitepaper, you lay out your extensive bonus and bounty program at some length. Why? And how does this play into your overall promotions strategy going forward? Will you continue to run these kinds of bounty campaigns or is this a one-time thing for the ICO?

We strongly believe, that our bounty participants will become in the future Akaiito users, cause they started the journey with us from the very beginning and already have fallen in love with Akaiito. So our bounty program is more connected with long-term planning of Akaiito mass adoption. Bounty campaign will be available only during ICO.

Regulation-wise, what are the toughest challenges you will have to overcome?

Regulation wise there is not many challenges what comes to cryptocurrency use on the platform. At least so far. If there will be in the future, we will just solve those challenges. There are no problems, which can not be solved if there is true commitment and idea believe. Plus, we are sure, that sooner or later all other countries will follow Singapore and Japan path of accepting cryptocurrencies when they will see how beneficial it is to join the road of development.

What are the services you plan to offer that excite you the most?

If to be honest, there are fans for every Akaiito part in our team. Some of us are most excited about Rent, some of us about Services etc. I am personally a fan of Online Market part of the platform. I think the Online Market will give endless opportunities for crypto holders in sense of their crypto usage and as well will attract a lot of new people from fiat world to crypto world, cause everyone who wants to get crypto will be able to get it by selling their goods. So it means grow of crypto community and therefore crypto world development! Isn’t that our main common goal?

akaiito cryptocurrencies

What has been your happiest moment so far working on Akaiito? On the flipside, what has been the most painful, or perhaps the most regretful decision you’ve made with Akaiito?

Hmmm, let me think. There has been a lot of great moments, so quite hard to pick one. I think that happy moment for me happens every time when I look at our community! We have gone online with our project only 3 weeks ago and we already have 2 000 friends in our Official Akaiito Telegram chat, more than 12 000 followers on Facebook and interesting conversations on Bitcointalk spread on more than 75 pages. We see a big interest from the community and believe that this is the sign, that Akaiito platform will be mass adopted very quickly.
What decision do I regret? If to be honest, I never regret any decisions. I think, if any decisions are ever made, then they have been needed at that moment. Even if some decisions are turned out not so well, then this is just needed a challenge, which will bring to needed project development. I believe, that sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get You to the right place.

What is the indicator you are looking for to tell you that you have begun to achieve your mission?

Community interest. This is our most important indicator. We see a big interest and it indicated big and bright future for Akaiito in general and AIC token in particular.

Tell us more about the AIC token

What are the selling points and what it does in the system?
AIC token will be Akaiito platform currency for all transactions. So AIC token will participate in thousands of transactions daily. It’s gonna be a very strong coin because it will have real use need. As Akaiito platform will grow and develop, AIC token will get stronger and stronger.

Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

There are not so many typical days, I must admit. Every day brings so much of new people and new ideas. So hard to put together my typical day, I can only tell You what is definitely included in my day: my husband, Akaiito and coffee.

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

I personally think that blockchain technology is innovation comparable with the Internet. It is and it will in the future change so much in the world. Exactly same way as the Internet did. I think, that we are still at the very beginning of this journey. There are still so many things, which can be adapted for blockchain and therefore improved. Will blockchain change the world for better? It all depends on us, on people. I am the positive one, so I believe yes.

What’s something that you believed to be true for a long time until you found out that you were wrong, or if you don’t like that dichotomy of right versus wrong, what’s something significant that you really changed your mind about over time?

When I was younger, when I was studying in school and university I was always thinking, that every company, every business is built by the founder, by one-two people who started the company. Over the time, when I entered business from inside, including huge companies who I worked for and own company, I realized, that it is all about the team. A team of committed people, driven by common ideas and common goals is capable of everything. Of course, the founder is important, it gives the first boost to everything, but without the team, there never will be anything significant.

Finally, what other personal goals (besides your career) do you have in life? Is there anything else in life you want to achieve?

My main goal is to live an interesting life, to do what I love to do, to have inspiring people around and to motivate those people for great achievements. I think, that all that we do in life should have a meaning, should make other people happy and to change lives to the better side. For me, this is the only way how to be happy and where to aim.

akaiito team

That concludes our Interview with Katja Krolova

More Interviews to come

akaiito logo
We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

To make sure you don’t miss out on our exclusive interviews, go ahead and sign-up to our mailing list and subscribe to our social media channels.

Get in touch to let us know who you want us to interview as well as the questions you want us to ask.

You’ll get notifications on the latest exclusive articles as soon as they appear on our website – we won’t and will never spam you.