Meet the CEO Simplifying Crypto for Everyone Markuss Jonans was frustrated when he first started investing in crypto. He grew more andmore disheartened with every tedious on-boarding process for the multiple exchanges, wallets,and tools he wanted to use. Investing in crypto was harder than it needed to be so he set out to fix that.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Markuss Jonans was frustrated when he first started investing in crypto. He grew more and more disheartened with every tedious on-boarding process for the multiple exchanges, wallets, and tools he wanted to use. Investing in crypto was harder than it needed to be so he set out to fix that.
Now four years later, he's looking to launch Do Your Own Research Exchange (abbreviated to Dyor Exchange) which aims to simplify on-boarding processes and centralize insights for your favorite tokens.
"Existing platforms lack user experience and interoperability, forcing investors to
navigate through seven or more platforms to explore, invest, and manage their
non-custodial investments." CEO of Dyor Exchange, Markuss Jonans, explained, "This complexity creates a significant barrier to entry, consumes valuable time, and results in missed opportunities for potential investors."
Dyor Exchange aims to not only simplify spending your first dollar in crypto but also how you conduct your research—hence the name. Back in 2020, when Markuss began heavily investing on-chain, he realized how fractured the research workflows were. In the traditional finance world, you can rely on sources like CNBC but in the weird world of crypto media sources like CoinDesk or The Block leave you feeling like you're the last to know. Instead, investors rely on social media platforms, like Telegram, to get breaking news or follow influencers to get expert opinion for specific niches. This scattering of information was a struggle for Markuss when researching.
"If I found it challenging, it was likely that many others faced similar issues every single day," Markuss said. "On Dyor Exchange, people can create profiles to interact with one another, sharing trades, token purchases, market opinions, and other crypto-related information through our comprehensive All Things Crypto feed."
The exchange is aiming to bring the vastly dispersed crypto information into one social hub for investors. Alongside user-generated content, the platform will be aggregating crypto-relevant information from 129 news publications and is looking to integrate X, Discord, and other social media channels. Gone are the days of needing 15 apps on your phone just to invest in a single token, Dyor Exchange is looking to save you memory on your phone.
This current complex nature for crypto on-boarding and researching is a breeding ground for scammers. Pig butcher scammers in particular, prey on amateur investors and exploit the holes in their crypto knowledge to take their money. By simplifying these elements, Dyor Exchange will make scammers less effective.
"The absence of a standardized method for researching and exploring projects within the blockchain space exposes investors, especially novice investors, to scams, pump-and-dump schemes, and fake influencers." Markuss explained, "These bad actors thrive by exploiting unsuspecting investors, as highlighted by reports of crypto investors spending 4+ billion on pump-and-dump tokens last year."
Even now, as a crypto expert, Markuss is aware that trading is more complex than it has to be. This is something that he, again, aims to fix with Dyor Exchange.
"We've made trading more versatile, allowing users to trade across various decentralized exchanges instead of being confined to platforms like Uniswap or PancakeSwap," Markuss said. "And, we take care of bridging assets from one chain to another. If you fancy a token on Ethereum but it's also available on Binance Smart Chain, we handle the bridging process through our established connections."
This all comes back to Markuss' original mission: to improve the user experience. Anyone who has invested even a penny into crypto will know the stressful task of setting up a wallet, storing your keys in a safe place, and learning how to trade on multiple networks. So Dyor Exchange has streamlined this process by removing the need to manually add networks you want to trade on and allowing users to opt-in for a key recovery service.
Four years on from when he first started investing in crypto, Markuss is preparing to launch the product that he would have wanted back then. Back in 2020, he was overwhelmed, misled, and lost. Influencers were pump-and-dumping tokens, he hustled to get into secretive Telegram chats, and FUD was flying everywhere.
Now, with the launch of Dyor Exchange, novice Markuss would have been in a much better place. "Dyor Exchange is part of a movement specifically designed with the end-user in mind—not exclusively for those deeply immersed in online activities," he explained. "It's gratifying to witness the industry moving in this direction, benefiting us all and contributing significantly to the shared goal of widespread adoption, potentially reaching the following 100 billion people on-chain."
