-
Today we are talking to Charles Hayter who is the CEO and Co-Founder at CryptoCompare.
- CryptoCompare is a global cryptocurrency market data provider, giving institutional and retail investors access to real-time, high-quality, reliable market and pricing data on 5,300+ coins and 240,000+ currency pairs.
We’d like to kick things off by asking you a couple of questions regarding your formative years.
1) Firstly, can you tell us the things which interested you the most throughout your childhood and teenage years, and what brought you the most happiness?
Being in the countryside - open spaces and Africa in particular - always had a fascination for me as well as playing sport and reading about anything.
2) Who were your biggest influences growing up, and why did they have such a profound effect on you?
I was a big fan of reading and felt a natural affinity with the books I read from the Elegant Universe which pushed me into a degree in physics as well as philosophy. This generally was trying to answer the question why - but as you get older you realise that's a fools quest and there are much more pragmatic questions with direct results - like how do we improve our financial system.
On the flipside of that I was never a fan of rules apart from the golden rule - treat others as you want to be treated.
3) Teenage years are often a turbulent time for many, so on this note, can you name a time which was tough for you, and how you managed to overcome it?
It wasn't that bad. I was lucky to have a good, untroubled youth. Just the usual struggles - first world problems of dating and overbearing parents, and trying to escape their oversight and expectations.
4) If there was some advice you could give young aspiring individuals, advice which you would really have liked to have heard yourself as a young person, what would it be?
Bertrand Russell - always look at the facts and don't allow yourself to be misled by your emotional desires.
Stoic philosophy - there are some things you cannot control so be at peace with that but don't panic or allow your instinctual elements to dominate in an adverse situation.
Roosevelt - action is important so make mistakes.
We are now going to ask you some questions which will hopefully give our readers something to go on regarding you as a person.
5) Firstly, what are the particular strengths that you feel have made you successful in your field (don’t hold back)?
Determination, Perseverance, Kindness, Fair Dealing, Integrity on the individual level and most importantly the Team we have and their operation by this code.
Believe the job of any C-Suite position is to lead by example and to place yourself last in the queue - it's an obligation and duty to the team. You have to be good at looking over the hill to see what's coming next - that means reading a lot and having an emotional tune-in to the market - its about breadth and granularity of information taken in and your judgement which comes from experience.
6) What would you say is your most controversial opinion as regards to blockchain or the crypto space?
There are a lot of people who fool themselves into various biases of self confidence with little knowledge. This can be infectious if individuals are particularly charismatic and others who follow are in need of hope. Certainly this played its part in the ICO mania but there are direct comparables to the SouthSea bubble.
7) In the course of your day you can become under the most ridiculous pressures and stresses, what is your particular way of dealing with this?
Not worrying about it. i.e. realising you can worry or you can just get on with it. You need to make yourself anti-fragile.
8) Outside of crypto/blockchain, what is your favorite thing to do?
Ride motorbikes! Have got an old Yamaha modded that is for sale but have moved onto a Husqvarana Svartpilen 701.
We are now going to ask you some creative and humorous questions, and we are sure people will love to see you what you can come up with
9) What is the most humorous thing you have seen or experienced during your time in the crypto/blockchain space?
Probably Charles Hoskinson falling off his chair at dinner the other night - although I only met him briefly!
10) If you somehow managed to meet Satoshi Nakamoto (that is he is a male person in this scenario) on his deathbed, but only had time to ask him one question, what would it be? Bear in mind that you don’t have much time at all, so make it a good one.
What is your private key?
11) Can you give three policies you'd enact if you became the president of a country tomorrow?
I tend to agree with Jordan Peterson and a lot of the writers in the Spectator and am a big fan of Nial Ferguesons, Manns and Fukuyama's dissections of history.
Communities are often an important backbone for many crypto/blockchain projects, so we’d now like to get some personal thoughts on the community side of things.
12) Personal project aside, what are some ‘communities’ in the space that you admire and why (this is not an endorsement)?
Too many to count.
13) What social-media platform do you like most and why, and are there any improvements which you feel can be made to these platforms for an even better community user-experience?
Prefer Whatsapp as it's a quick and efficient way of communicating directly with groups and individuals.
14) With the endgame being mainstream adoption, do you think crypto/blockchain communities will still have an important role to play in a post-adoption environment?
I believe that the evolution of money and going digital is about reducing frictions and dimensions.
This allows for more transactions and better supply and demand matching as well as more contracts between parties, all of which generates wealth - as explained by Adam Smith. Whether it’s digital fiat, or Hayekian denationalised commodity money or Bitcoin, there is clearly a shift as the world globalises and the nation state model comes under stress.
In our penultimate section we are going to ask you a question regarding CryptoCompare.
15) What do you feel sets CryptoCompare apart from your competitors (that is if you have any)?
What sets us apart is the breadth and depth of our data as well as our different delivery methods. We have multiple partnerships which shows the trust that our team has built on the institutional side as well as the hard work we have put in over the years.
Well that just about does it, but before we end this interview we’d like to ask you for something which we believe will say a lot about your belief in the industry, and which may inspire those who are reading.
16) Can you come up with a short argument for our readers on why you feel cryptocurrency and blockchain (or just one) has a bright future?
You can transfer anything from anywhere to anyone at any point in time, faster than ever before.
Keep up to date with CryptoCompare on:
Want to know about the best Crypto Business Account for the UK? Then look no further, and click the following the link:
https://www.iconomi.com/blog/crypto-business-account-uk