Hearing From: Katharine Wooller, UK And Europe MD Of Dacxi
Following the FTX fallout, and with cryptocurrency under more scrutiny than ever, we spoke to industry expert Katharine Wooller of crypto exchange Dacxi.
We got to discuss the importance of making crypto credible, the industry’s “bad players”, and Katharine’s advice for women and non-binary people who want to break into the industry.
Can you tell us a bit about Dacxi and your role there?
So Dacxi is a crypto exchange, where you can change your pounds or euros into crypto. We’re a bit different from other exchanges for a few reasons. Firstly, because we don’t help traders, we help people who want to trade so it’s much more catered for wealth builders. Secondly, the majority of exchanges will use what they hold on your behalf to lend, very similar to banks. But at Dacxi, we hold 98% of your crypto offline, and it’s insured. We’re also committed to building credible crypto. Lots of exchanges have hundreds of coins, but we don’t. We have about 15 which we support and think are genuinely credible.
And what about your role?
I’ve been there for nearly three years, and I was hire number 2 — so that means I’m responsible for anything in Europe — commercials, sales, marketing, regulation, compliance, operations… I sit on the board of the UK business and I sit on the global management team. So it’s been quite a wild ride actually.
What were the biggest challenges and surprises in your career journey to this point?
I’m 20 years into my career now, and I came from a traditional finance background. But I’ve always been interested in disruptive startups, because in my opinion, they’re the most interesting to work in. They move quicker, they’re changing the world for a better place, they fail fast and hard…
And I came from property into finance, worked with a lot of hedge funds and asset managers and old school banks and I found the pace of change positively glacial. I needed something quicker. Crypto, and Dacxi gives me all of that.
We’re seeing a lot of adverse press on crypto at the moment, how do you feel about the current news regarding FTX?
FTX has a number of inherent problems, there are bad players in every industry, and the answer to preventing that is regulation.
A lot of hardcore crypto fans are saying part of it’s decentralisation means no government interference — but that’s not right, it needs to be regulated to hold a stable value. If you want your crypto to be considered a reliable worth, regulation is key. There’s over 2,000 coins on the market at the moment and they’re not all credible. We need consolidation, and regulation in the industry.
We’re still in the very early stages of crypto at the moment, and there’s a lot of growing pains. Crypto isn’t going to come in and replace everything, it needs to complement and dove-tail what is already in place for payments and I’ve been saying that for about 4 years.
What do you see as the future of crypto-currency, what are the biggest opportunities in this space?
I really do believe there’s no industry that won’t be touched by blockchain in the next ten years. A bit like when your grandma says “computers won’t be a thing” it might feel new now, but it’s going to be part of our everyday lives in the future.
Crypto specifically might feel too risky for a lot of people right now, especially with the news we’re seeing, but fast forward five years, if we have a highly regulated and credible crypto offer, people might feel very differently.
Crypto is moving so quickly, and I think it’s only a matter of time before it becomes significantly more mainstream. Every major bank has crypto in their vaults, Amazon, Uber, Twitter — day in day out more people are coming on board.
Read the full interview: https://the-heard.co.uk/hearing-from-katharine-wooller-uk-and-europe-md-of-dacxi-2/
