From having zero crypto knowledge to building crypto products, the past three years have been interesting for Chinny. This is how it all happened.
How would you explain what you do to a five year old?
I’m the product manager at Breach, a crypto publication. I’m responsible for figuring out how the audience can get the maximum value out of Breach. For example, if we are rolling out an app, it’s my job to find out the most important features they need. On the content side, I work with the team to ensure that we are producing content the audience can relate to and that they interact with it in the best way possible. The job is all about creating innovations around Breach’s value proposition.
That sounds interesting. Did you always know you wanted to build crypto products?
No. I heard about crypto for the first time in 2018, and I was very clueless about it at first. But that moment set everything in motion.
Could you tell me about how it all started?
I had two friends who were obsessed with crypto and always talked about it, especially Bitcoin. It didn’t matter how often they spoke to me about it though. I wasn’t interested at the time. For starters, I always thought crypto was for people with tech backgrounds. Also, I had other preoccupations — I had just graduated from a university in the US with an engineering degree and was exploring my options to either stay back or move to the UK. But deep down, I wanted to move back to Nigeria — I felt a sense of belonging here.
Did you move back then?
No. I moved to the UK and found work in a tech company. In the months that followed, crypto popped on my radar again. This time, I decided to bite. I started loosely researching cryptocurrencies whenever I had the chance to. Then I downloaded Coinbase. My interest waned again, and it wouldn’t return until 2019.
What happened in 2019?
One of the friends I mentioned earlier is Yele, and he and I had kept in touch and had worked on some small projects together. In August, he hit me up and told me about an idea he had been working on. He wanted to bring me on board if I was interested.
What was the idea about?
He wanted to build a social payments app for crypto. I thought it would be a good way to learn about crypto. Also, it was a great opportunity to move back to Nigeria. In September 2019, I moved back to work on this idea — which eventually became Bundle.
Fascinating. What word would you use to describe your first few months on the job?
Confusing.
Haha. Why?
There were too many crypto concepts and terms I needed to learn, and all of them seemed abstract. The more I learned, the more confusing it got. Most of the resources on the internet were too technical for a beginner. I was constantly googling concepts during meetings because it felt like I was the only one who didn’t know how crypto worked. I was in it for the long haul this time, so I read a lot more on my own. Slowly, I started figuring things out. But there was another major problem I had to navigate.
I’m listening.
My salary was paid in BNB. When I joined the company, Yele wrote a guide detailing the processes involved in converting BNB to USDT, then to Naira. The document was great, but I found Binance confusing. It was also scary using the exchange because there were warnings everywhere on the app about how one wrong step could result in the loss of your funds.
Scary stuff. How did you deal with that?
It was easy to convert my money to USDT on Binance, but everything after that wasn’t as easy to figure out. I would move my USDT from Binance to Buycoins — I thought Buycoins was easier to use. Then I would reach out to a friend at Buycoins to help me convert it to Naira.
This sounds hectic.
It always drove my friend crazy. After two or three months, he said he would leave me to figure it out myself. Thankfully, the Bundle app was live, so I switched from Binance to Bundle. This was November 2019.
And you started getting more comfortable with crypto transactions?
Yeah. I started with small amounts of money. The more I practised, the better and quicker I got at it. Then I bought Bitcoin for the first time in March 2020 — a decision triggered by FOMO. My friends, who had bought some earlier, had been talking about how the value of their investments had grown. I finally decided to take the plunge and used my entire salary that month to buy Bitcoin. I suspect I did it because I also realised that saving money in the Nigerian Naira wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
How did that impact you?
Subsequently, I was either saving my salary in a stablecoin or investing some of it in Bitcoin and BNB. In the following months, it became increasingly clear that while I had a more positive disposition to crypto, I wasn’t very interested in cryptocurrencies. It was the other technologies and applications being built on the blockchain that did it for me.
I started paying more attention to these, especially NFTs and DAOs, towards the end of 2020. I thought their possibilities were amazing, and I knew I wanted to learn more about them. I put together a list of topics I wanted to follow on Twitter and followed people who tweeted about them.
There was a new learning curve, but I had a more pleasant experience than when I first started learning about crypto.
Do you know what made the difference?
I think my interest was the defining factor this time. It’s easier to understand stuff you find interesting. Also, more people were tweeting and breaking down crypto concepts on social media, which was a departure from what was happening two to three years ago when I started researching crypto. For example, NFTs had always existed, but everyone was now talking about it. It was the latest fad, and it wasn’t a bad thing because there was so much information to consume.
That’s interesting. Did you know what you wanted to do with the information you had access to?
At the time, no. It was just about getting as much information as I could. And then, it turned out it would later become a work thing — I got another job where I needed to know about web3 and its offerings to be able to build products.
I’m guessing this was at Breach.
Yes. But before this, I was doing a couple of things at Bundle — the biggest role being the project manager for Bundle’s native coin. Then an opportunity came to work on the Breach project at Nestcoin, and I took it. Guess what was running through my head during the process that brought me here.
What?
I kept thinking: “I could have used something like this when I first got into crypto.” There’s a knowledge gap, and I believe there’s a lot of value in breaking down complicated concepts for everyday people.
It’s wild that you were clueless about crypto about three years ago. Now, you’re building crypto products.
See, it’s amazing. The best part of this is that I can use my experience as a beginner to gauge the impact of what I’m doing at my job. I keep asking myself when making decisions, “Would this feature or resource have been helpful for me when I had just started learning about crypto?”
How do you imagine your work influences your relationship with crypto?
I have an incentive to learn so much about crypto in the shortest possible time, so I have developed a more open mind. I won’t say I’m a crypto expert yet, but I’m not a beginner either, and a lot of it has to do with the jobs I’ve worked at since 2019.
I’m curious about where you see the cryptoverse in five years?
I’ve realised that things evolve very quickly. Anything I say right now could be incredibly inaccurate. That said, I think crypto is the future. There’s so much resistance now, but the world will inevitably be built on the blockchain. There’s been a couple of great strides in the past five years — so much that we are no longer focusing on Bitcoin as the only significant part of crypto. Now, we are watching NFTs change the game for artists and creators. A lot more innovations will happen in the next five years. I believe we are still in the early days.
I’m wondering, is there anything you wish you knew when you first got into crypto.
I wish I knew the way I know now that no matter how low the prices of Bitcoin and the altcoins drop, they will still go back up. I missed out on a couple of opportunities because of this.
Tell me about the biggest one.
I didn’t hold on to BNB when it was about $13, and this was just last year. Although I was getting paid in BNB, I would convert my assets to USDT or BUSD. If I had a crypto regret, this would be it.
How much is 1 BNB worth now?
At the moment? $580. Man, let me go and think about my life.
Haha! I understand. This was fun. Thank you.
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