Pauline Shangett is the Chief Communication Officer (CCO) of ChangeNOW, a user-friendly cryptocurrency swap service that offers limitless, non-custodial instant swaps among 170+ cryptocurrencies.
Pauline has extensive experience in music marketing and promotion, a career she pursued before entering into the crypto space in 2018. She has been with ChangeNOW for more than a year now where she started as the Marketing Manager of the firm. She has been serving as the Chief Communication Officer (CCO) of ChangeNOW since May 2019. From 2016-17, she worked as a Translator at SDL plc.
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Pauline is a trading enthusiast. She is also very optimistic about the potentials of blockchain technology and the fintech world. Currently, Pauline is busy making ChangeNOW as great as it can be!
CryptoNewsZ: Hi Pauline, Thanks for joining us today. As far as we know, you come from the field of music marketing and promotion, a totally different niche from crypto and blockchain. What prompted you to take the plunge into the crypto space?
Thank you so much for having me!
I’ve been kind of on-and-off interested in crypto since sometime around 2015 when my friends were talking about it a ton, but never actually had the time to delve into it further. Fast forward 3 years, I had already left my job in the social media-based concert and underground music promo company my friends, and I ran and was going to finish my graduate degree and pursue academia further (I’m a linguist by education). One day in 2018, one of my professors introduced me to our CEO, we instantly clicked, and here I am! Crypto turned out to be super interesting for me, and I kind of regret not exploring it earlier.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: You have had an exciting stint with ChangeNOW since the last one year. Please share your thoughts about it. Do you think your previous experiences have been helpful in developing ChangeNOW as the best crypto business on the block?
My work with ChangeNOW has been a wild ride so far, to say the least. Even though I’ve had some experience in marketing and SMM, next to all of it turned out to be almost irrelevant in the crypto sphere. Thankfully, I’m a pretty fast learner, so teaching myself to do everything I need for my work hasn’t been a hassle at all: it took me 1 year to get where I am right now, and I’m tackling new challenges every day while I’m on the job. All the experience I get, I use right there and then.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: ChangeNOW claims to be a ‘limitless exchange.’ How does it stand out from its peers?
It’s as easy as it sounds: we don’t have any limits for our exchanges. Anyone can come to ChangeNOW and swap as much crypto as they’d like. We pride ourselves on being fast, private, and resilient: whenever there’s a thing that’s been suggested to us by anyone, from an employee to a community member, we hop on it and execute the task at hand as soon as possible.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: How does the ChangeNOW exchange service work? Is there the need to pass through some stringent registration process to initiate trading on your platform?
No, and that’s our main shtick! ChangeNOW is completely registration-free: if you don’t want to leave a mark of your identity in our system, you have the absolute right to do so: even our KYC policies are opt-out. If a customer doesn’t consent to submit any verification documents for a selective KYC check, they can refuse, but in that case, they will not be able to proceed with their swap and will receive a refund. We respect other people’s privacy and will do our best to maintain that for as long as we can – while complying with the existing legal regulations at the same time. Maintaining that balance is our utmost priority. However, for people that would like to work with us closely and on a regular and frequent basis, we do have an account-based Premium Lounge, where our clients can get verified once and then not worry about KYC again.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: Your recent hack retention cases have certainly made quite a buzz in the crypto community, with you catching funds that have been stolen from Bithumb, Bitrue, Gatehub, and other exchanges. How does that tie in with your privacy-oriented style of operation?
It’s an interesting question. A lot of people think that preserving privacy necessarily means something bad, like covering up the crime, for example. ChangeNOW, as a company, stands for preserving privacy in a healthy way. With that said, we have a smart risk-management system built into our service, checking every transaction for any suspicious elements. Aside from the RMS, we work in close cooperation with security officials of all the biggest exchanges and prominent community activists. All of these factors, coupled with our highly competent security team and a variety of other security tools, let us stop transactions with stolen funds right away. After the funds have been retained, we work with legal teams of the affected exchanges and law enforcement officials on returning the stolen crypto to its rightful owners. This way, we have managed to catch more than 1,5 million dollars worth of crypto in just a few months.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: ChangeNOW is advertised as an ecosystem of innovative products. Please brief us about the features that you find the most remarkable. What kind of changes do you think they are bringing to the crypto-blockchain space?
As an ecosystem, ChangeNOW is aimed at making blockchain and crypto accessible to the general public – that’s what mass adoption is all about, after all.
Want to exchange crypto in an easy and safe way without dealing with accounts?
We’ve got you covered. Have an online store and want to accept crypto?
NOWPayments is just the place for you! Want to build a cool dApp, but don’t want to be bothered with maintaining a node? NOWNodes, here you go, it’s free! Would like to move your token to a mainnet or switch blockchains? We’re right here, ready to do all the dirty work for you. Basically, we want as many people to get familiar with crypto as possible, and we’re eager to shoulder all the hard and/or scary parts so that people are motivated to interact with the blockchain more. That’s our main push.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: Fiat-to-crypto purchases are temporarily unavailable on ChangeNOW. How soon are you going to re-launch the service?
We’re integrating a new on-ramp, and it will go live sometime this or next week (as of July 23rd). This is a very neat example of us listening to our clients’ wishes: our previous provider did not satisfy a lot of people, they voiced their complaints, we listened and picked a new one with much better conditions. Stay tuned for social media announcements – it’s coming soon!
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: Facebook’s Libra has been creating waves since its launch. What are your thoughts about it? Where is it heading to?
There sure are a lot of opinions about Libra, both good and bad. I, as a person with a certain degree of disdain towards Big Tech corporations trying to hop on the crypto trend, am kind of skeptical towards the entire ordeal. Facebook, for example, is notorious for mishandling user data. The fact that they’re starting to venture into blockchain seems pretty ironic to me. However, I do understand the sentiment of people who are praising it, calling it a game-changer, adoption accelerator, so on and so forth. Libra is driving a lot of attention to crypto, and, as we know, all PR is good PR.
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: The blockchain space today is replete with several promising events. As the Chief Communication Officer of the company, which of the upcoming blockchain events are you looking to participate in? What are your expectations from these events?
We’re hopping back on the road in the fall. The closest event we’re gunning for is the Delta Summit in Malta, October 2-4th; after that, we’d really like to attend the Vegas Blockchain Week at the end of October, and Blockshow Asia in November. We love going to events, making new partnerships, meeting our active partners in person, showcasing our product, and keeping in touch with the newest trends in the crypto space. The coolest thing is having people come up to our booth and tell us that they’re already using ChangeNOW on a daily basis – that’s the ultimate kind of appreciation right there. I’m also going to be doing keynotes wherever I can. If any of the readers are attending these events, don’t hesitate to come around and say hi and get some sweet merch in return!
Pauline Shangett
CryptoNewsZ: Where do you see the future of ChangeNOW in the coming years? What shortcomings need to be resolved before it overtakes others in the race?
I have a lot of faith in ChangeNOW and all our products. Right now, our top priority is occupying a place on the market as an ecosystem of services that anyone can use freely and giving our clients the most value in as neat and useful a package as possible, and we’re doing our best to achieve that. There’s a lot of upcoming products and new features on our roadmap, including the development of our token infrastructure that we’re working really hard on, and I’m really excited for everyone to see them and tell us what they think. As of now, ChangeNOW is a unique platform at the top of its game, but we always believe we can go even further, to the moon and beyond!
Pauline Shangett
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Thank you so much for your time, Pauline!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this interview – stay tuned for more!
