5 questions with Jack Nikogosian
Meet Jack Nikogosian, a leading specialist in WEB3 and a renowned Danish blockchain expert with a deep understanding of the cryptocurrency industry. In 2015, Nikogosian garnered international attention when he paid for an entire month of expenses using only Bitcoin, earning him the nickname “Bitcoin Jack.” In 2017, Nikogosian founded ARYZE, a fintech company that aims to make payments faster, cheaper, and smarter. Under Nikogosian’s leadership, ARYZE has won multiple awards and has been recognized as a top talent in Denmark and on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. As a sought-after speaker on the topic of crypto-currencies, Nikogosian continues to be a prominent figure in the DeFi space.
In this episode we discuss Jack’s experience of paying solely with Bitcoin for an entire month as well as the challenges he faces when spreading the gospel of tokenization.
Ewa Banaś: Hi, welcome to another episode of IT Insight Series: 5 questions. I’m Ewa Banaś and today I have a pleasure to talk with Jack Nikogosian, CEO of ARYZE and an award-winning Danish blockchain expert with vast knowledge of the cryptocurrency space. Jack has also been featured as one of the top 100 talents in Denmark in 2019 and on Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020. I’m really excited to have you here, Jack.
Jack Nikogosian: I’m very happy to be here, thank you for inviting me over.
Ewa Banaś: Could you tell us a bit more about your professional background?
Jack Nikogosian: Yeah, absolutely. So my whole journey into this, I guess fintech and blockchain and the crypto sphere, like with so many others, started with Bitcoin. I saw Bitcoin in 2013. I noticed Mt. Gox, the exchange back then—the kind of the only exchange that existed back then. I did wire some money to this Japanese exchange, I bought some Bitcoin and after a while, you know, they surged in price and that was kind of the first public hype.
That’s when I entered and saw what Bitcoin was. Of course, I had no idea what it was; I thought it was some kind of game thing like so many others, right? I played Diablo and you know, I have friends who played World of Warcraft, so I was familiar with the game currencies. But of course, when Bitcoin went from 15 to a few hundred dollars quickly, then I suddenly had more capital than just a few hundred Krona I transferred.
I jumped in the deep end of the pool, meaning all I ever did from there was crypto-related. I was in school, so all projects were done using some blockchain use case. When I graduated and had to get an internship, I started my own company so that I could work with blockchain even further. When I had to get my first real job, it was at a crypto company, and so I’ve been working in this space professionally since 2015. I ended up running the Innovation Lab for a Danish company called Coinify.
I was a part of the early days of Coinify and experienced a startup turning into a scale-up. I got my own small division with this Innovation Lab where we could just build cool stuff using crypto. What I fell in love with was the aspect of programmable money; similarly to WordPress where you could just build any web, with cryptocurrencies you can build any payment service or solution.
In the Coinify lab, I got the pleasure of working with a bunch of important industry participants – from municipalities to NGOs to fintechs to large established payment companies – because everybody wanted to build using crypto back then. We built MediaCoin and solar panel payments, like IoT device payments.
Shared for all of these use cases was that we basically had Bitcoin and then Ethereum to utilize. There weren’t a lot of stablecoins. I left that position and started ARYZE with the sole purpose of saying “we need a stablecoin” because the toughest part was not building it, it was actually selling it to the end users who couldn’t deal with the volatility. Like MediaCoin for online media where you paid as you scroll – one cent per scroll could be a five-dollar scroll the next day.
I actually went back to school, completed a Top-Up degree studying Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and as a part of that, I started ARYZE. I won a government grant and worked on it for the first year without really knowing what I was doing, and then slowly ARYZE became a real company.
We got some funding, hired people, and grew to where we are today. The mission is the same: creating a digital version of cash. Back then, I looked at an e-Krona concept; Danish Krona is already 80-90% digital, why isn’t it cryptographic?
Now, almost five years later, ARYZE has just launched the ARYZE e-Euro, e-Dollar, and e-Pound. These are full reserve stablecoins with government guarantees; essentially, we have created a digital version of cash.
Ewa Banaś: Seems like mission accomplished.
Jack Nikogosian: Yeah, and now we just gotta get a bunch of crazy young developers to build new stuff similarly to how I was building with Coinify. We’ve made money programmable, but we’re not going to build all the stuff on top of it.
Ewa Banaś: Definitely. Thank you for this background. Let’s start with a warm-up question: What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this—like being in crypto since the very beginning?
Jack Nikogosian: This is not an easy question. I have always had a nerdy personality, so whatever I would be doing would likely be in tech, but I’m not certain it would be I.T. or zeros and ones. I think I would be working with something related to exponentially growing technologies.
If I observe something which could be made better, I keep thinking of ways of making it better. Exponentially growing technologies are awesome because they have the opportunity to solve huge concerns that have only gotten bigger over decades.
I think I would perhaps do something related to biology or nature. Personally, I’ve been developing a Food Forest in my backyard for the last three years. I’m very interested in how mycelium works with roots and how nutrition is transferred between plants.
I can see a future in creating a concept where you can invest in land that farmers have to convert into food forests without them losing revenue. So biology, nature, and technology maybe.
Ewa Banaś: Definitely a nice approach. In 2015, you became internationally known as “Bitcoin Jack” after paying solely with Bitcoin for an entire month. What advice would you give to the young you who decided to try this Bitcoin challenge?
Jack Nikogosian: Don’t do it. If you believe that the instrument should be held for a long time, then you should probably hold it and not spend it, so you’re not the proud owner of the world’s most expensive tattoo or taxi ride. But then again, this was a marketing campaign to get attention towards Coinify, and it did its job. What it told me was that Bitcoin is not great for day-to-day spendings; the volatility was annoying and back then the miners were slow.
Everyone has caught on that Bitcoin is not, as the white paper indicated, a peer-to-peer digital version of cash. It grew into becoming a store of value and a long-term hedge. The month living as Bitcoin Jack validated that Bitcoin is not to be spent, it is to be HODLed.
I would recommend to a younger me: don’t spend all your coins so the only Bitcoin you have left is in your name. “Bitcoin Jack” doesn’t have a lot of Bitcoins.
Ewa Banaś: Yes, I see. That’s unfortunate, but the lesson was of most value to you, so it’s a win-win.
Jack Nikogosian: Absolutely. It would have been nice to be a billionaire, but I take the win. I am a wiser broker man.
Ewa Banaś: Okay, next question: what is the biggest lesson learned in your whole professional career?
Jack Nikogosian: I had to grow and learn with the role of CEO. One thing I’ve learned is that there is a vast difference between the understanding of blockchain, crypto, and Web3 that we have versus regulators.
Regulators are like half a decade or even a full decade behind. The way that MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) is being proposed shows it’s not written by people who can envision the future of Web3; it’s written by people who need to govern and take control.
Ewa Banaś: That is very important to remember. What challenges do you encounter when spreading the gospel of tokenization?
Jack Nikogosian: It’s funny because I don’t spread the gospel of only tokenization. I think it’s great that there is a tug of war going on. At ARYZE, we utilize the best of both worlds.
Our digital cash exists as stablecoins on open-source blockchains to tap into decentralization, but our e-Euro is entirely backed by European bonds, which you can’t hold on a blockchain; you need a safe custody provider.
We utilize infrastructure developed during the Web2 growth with open banking. This tug of war between the two poles- the traditional and the decentralized – will hopefully result in something great being invented.
Ewa Banaś: I believe you answered my question. Last question for today: your motto is “let’s just make money smart.” Could you elaborate on that?
Jack Nikogosian: We say “make dumb money smart” because cash is dumb money; you can’t do anything digital with it. Smart money means the tools to make it smart should be limitless. With traditional banks, there is a “doorman” (APIs and regulations) checking you out before you get in. With blockchains, you don’t have a doorman; it’s an open park.
Digital cash existing as an Ethereum token makes it instantly interoperable with existing dApps. Also, when we transfer digital money today, we transfer IOUs between banks. Cryptocurrencies are bearer instruments, meaning you own the certificate itself. ARYZE digital cash emulates this; it’s a bearer instrument backed by the state, but you are at liberty to hold it in whichever wallet you want.
To take a step back, smart money needs to be yours like cash, it needs to be programmable, and there needs to be no doubt about the value – you need third-party auditors and solvency checks. Bank money doesn’t even cover two of those check marks; ARYZE digital cash will be a direct one-to-one representation of cash.
This is not a new concept; Full Reserve Banking was conceptualized after the Great Depression (the Chicago Plan) and revised by the IMF in 2012. It would prevent bank runs and minimize debt. We just now have the exponentially growing technologies to make these things a reality. Satoshi made money free, and we’re just continuing that.
Ewa Banaś: I will keep my fingers crossed with your mission, Jack. Thank you for showing all your insights today. And thank you to our audience for listening to another episode. See you next time.
Jack Nikogosian: Me too. Thank you.