«We wanted to build a decentralized business», — Dmitry Budorin, CEO and founder of Hacken
Dmitry Budorin is the CEO and founder of Hacken, a company that has raised millions of dollars in investments through ICOs, the cryptocurrency equivalent of an IPO. Hacken makes money by checking cryptocurrencies for vulnerabilities, providing advice, and reinvesting in cryptocurrencies.
On the Youtube channel «Big Fish», Dmitry talked about cybersecurity in Ukraine and gave a prediction regarding bitcoin.
ABOUT THE AVERAGE CHECK AND INCOME
The average check is $30,000. For a defai-project, i.e. an ecosystem of fintech products that works without people, it is 10-15 thousand dollars. People are playing with this code, buying and selling.
The value of the code is that some of the money will earn you interest, just like it does with deposits. Only here there can be income from other coins: let’s say, you put ether on the account, and you get income in kurf.
Hacken’s market cap is $52 million. This is the number of coins in circulation, multiplied by the price. The income is $200,000 a month, $100,000 stays. We invest in new products, which is very important for long-term strategies.
ABOUT CURF
This is one of the most popular farms when you can get that coin. Traders can use it to trade on other decentralized exchanges. It’s essentially a loan to a decentralized trader. There are a lot of risks, but blockchain gives you transparency.
You can track what’s going on with the money and understand if you’re being tried to cheat. In order to gain the trust of users, projects put out their code. In general, in Ukraine cryptocurrencies — a gray area, the volatility is already less, the risks are less.
ABOUT CYBER-SECURITY IN UKRAINE
Ukraine has a very underdeveloped cybersecurity market. Mostly because those in charge at the state level are doing the wrong things. There is no driving force to shape the market. There are no laws, no rules of the game, no state order. Business owners buy cybersecurity services if legislation requires it. For example, in the U.S. it exists, because they have regulation.
Our services are ordered if you’ve been hacked, that is, the site is lying and sales are down, and if you’re missing out on profits because you’re not functioning properly in the market. We have oversubscription for our services, we don’t have time to process orders because our clients don’t live in Ukraine: the checks for our services are lower than those of similar specialists in Western countries.
ABOUT BITCOIN
There is a recurring pattern in bitcoin that has never been knocked down. Mining fees have halved. Today, more bitcoin is lost per day than is mined, its sapply is shrinking. In 2021 there was a sharp rise. The next one will happen in 2024. I think 100 will break on this rally.
It used to be that the main sapple of bitcoin was in the hands of ordinary traders. And they could make money on the decline. Now everything has changed: the big players make money on it, and the rate can’t fall down too much. Now the big investment funds and corporations have the money.
ON GETTING INTO THE BUSINESS
I fell in love with cryptocurrency, I believe in it and I want to contribute to the financial revolution. We set up a cyber center for a bank, we did cyber security, and then we ran into the bureaucracy and started our own business. The idea of doing an ICO came up.
I wanted to build a decentralized business. White Paper was easy to write: we did it in a month, designed the website and the offer. Then we won the contest and got 33 bitcoins — $180,000 at that time.
ABOUT THE SALES FUNNEL
We spent 3 years building the brand, and we have many satisfied customers who recommend us. We fixed the brand in cooperation with big players of the crypto market. We created cybersecurity ratings, which everyone started to study and watch. Now we are growing intensively: I think we will grow 3 times this year. But we are very dependent on market conditions, so we are working to create the need for our services.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTS
Hacken reinvests in b2b and b2c products. We give subscriptions to toolkits that are individually expensive, but collectively cost less. Hacken essentially connects hackers to customers. Our customer onboarding process is manual.
They come in, they want Bug Bounty. We tell them: «Go through Pentest, fix everything, and come back». We have to invest a lot of time in educating the client. We have come a long way until we reach major clients: we have implemented over 400 projects in 3.5 years. However, in the last six months we have started working with the top ones.
ABOUT THE MARKETING TEAM IN THE DUTCH
The Dutch are more responsible, their English is good, they are driveful and creative. They first invested in us, then they came to me and said, «Let us do marketing». They have KPIs, they sign up Influencers marketers, they have a growing Reddit, Twitter, Telegram.
They’re doing a lot of memes with me. It’s the hottest thing! Few people realize that Twitter is good for promotion. My posts can get 100,000 hits. What do people want? To have fun, to make a quick buck, and to have fun.
