CoinGecko will be hosting our Virtual Meetup #9 on January 20 @ 8AM EST. Held monthly, CoinGecko Virtual Meetup is our live online community event where we explore different key topics in the crypto sphere and invite industry leaders to share their two satoshis.
This month, we will be discussing the State of Crypto 2021 and one of our featured guests are Alex Svanevik, co-founder & CEO of Nansen. Nansen is an analytics platform for blockchain, which combines on-chain data with a massive and constantly growing database containing millions of wallet labels. Customers use Nansen to access this data via user-friendly dashboards, direct SQL queries, or APIs.
Read on to get to know Alex better!
1. Can you share a bit about yourself with us?
My background is in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Founded my first company in 2010, but quickly moved into management consulting to learn more about business. Worked in everything from insurance to luxury retail to seafood. Later led a data science team at a large European internet group, before I started working in crypto in 2017.
Been working in the intersection of blockchain and analytics the last three years, now fully dedicated to Nansen.
2. What’s the biggest challenge Nansen faced last year and how was it resolved?
Our biggest challenge in 2020 was definitely bandwidth, as I was the only co-founder working full-time on Nansen when we launched in April. Dealing with hundreds of new customers was both extremely fun and also quite challenging. Thankfully my two co-founders came onboard full-time six months later, and we were able to hire an amazing team.
3. Describe your vision for the future of Nansen.
Our mission is to surface the signal in blockchain data. Nansen is the ironman suit you put on when you enter uncharted DeFi territory. In this first phase of Nansen, we are laser-focused on making sure our customers have the information they need in order to reach their goals as investors, crypto professionals, and teams. In the future, Nansen itself will allow customers to participate in the crypto economy at a transactional level.
4. What are your thoughts on the crypto market this year? Can you briefly explain it to us?
I think a few narratives that materialized in 2020 will strengthen in 2021, in particular:
1. Institutional interest in crypto: The macro environment is ideal for Bitcoin in particular. We have better custody alternatives than in 2017. And many have finally realized crypto is not going away.
2. DeFi: Integrations with the broader fintech space starts. L2 as a scaling solution will be rolled out (Optimism, zkSync, etc). Experimental token issuance, forking, and general aping continues.
3. Ethereum 2.0: Bandwidth has been nearly maxed out on L1 due to the product-market fit of the DeFi sector (and lack of any good alternatives). Moving forward, a whole economy surrounding ETH2 staking will flourish. ETH2 development will continue, and (hopefully) sharding launches.
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