Meet Evelina Lavrova. She has been involved in the blockchain space since 2016, having joined the crypto token platform Waves in Russia. In 2018 she joined Waves World, one of the biggest Waves Nodes before moving to the US in 2019.
Today she works with blockchain/crypto /DeFi companies assisting them with their Marketing & PR activities. Evelina has been featured in Forbes and Thrive Global publications among several others. She has been named one of the Top 10 Females in Crypto in 2017 by Core Magazine along with cited in “Rising Women in Crypto 2020” by The Fintech Times and Wirex.
Facing the pandemic driven economic downturn while residing in a new country, Evelina was confronted like many with eking out an income in 2020. In this feature interview, she talks about the steps she took to stay afloat by combining investments in Zoom and Bitcoin
Describe what this year has been like for you in terms of bitcoin investing
This year has been extremely hard for many people including myself. In March the situation changed dramatically as I started earning a greater share of my income from investments in Bitcoin and Zoom. With everything moving online, Zoom started to grow like crazy, from 10 million users to 200 million users. It was at this point that I fully realized that Zoom could be a good investment opportunity.
What an awareness during such a trying time
For sure. And in the midst of all of this, I had just been reading in the media that New York Mayor was going to announce a lockdown of the city. So I made a very quick decision very quickly to move away. I collected all my stuff, put it in storage, and bought a one-way flight. That next morning I flew to Phoenix, AZ, and purchased some Zoom shares shortly after I arrived at my new home office. The price had already risen significantly but it was still a good deal.
And your bitcoin?
I’d already had some money in Bitcoin and my first thought was to spend it first. But because it started to rise, I decided to hold onto it and spend my fiat dollars.
So how did this impact your project work prospects?
DeFi startups initiated the second wave of hype around cryptocurrencies with many of these new DeFi companies landing in the Coinmarketcap Top 50. I assisted a couple of startups and was in conversation with another few teams.
But a key problem with many of these blockchain / DeFi startups is that they have very small niches and can’t generate enough revenue to stay afloat. They pivot often and spend all investments on these adjustments but just can’t find the right product/market fit.
So while we are seeing a lot of these businesses being launched, they simply can’t survive and build a product. It’s simply too hard to hire good employees when they are only going to pay them in the company’s tokens. It was a signal for me that they are not sustainable enough and that the market is not quite ready for these solutions.
So given your investment experiences, what would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned?
When I first got into crypto at the end of 2016 while working for an early-stage blockchain startup, it was part of my compensation and annual bonus. I put my bonus in one of the node leasing pools and started to get periodic rewards, kinda like the interest earned on a deposit account in a bank. But I held it too long and didn’t sell it in time. I should have sold it and bought Bitcoin much earlier.
Can you elaborate a bit more on this?
In other words, the price of bitcoin dropped 3 times from the maximum price of $20K in December 2017 to $7K at the beginning of 2018. But this other cryptocurrency I was in dropped 8X. So I could have earned more money if I had exchanged it for bitcoin earlier.
So in your experience what is the biggest mistake investors in cryptocurrency make?
The expectation that the price will always rise on it. Maybe they’ve too optimistic. I know some of my friends – experienced investors who bought Bitcoin in autumn of 2017 when the price was already high. Then because it dropped they lost a lot of money. Only just recently did they cover these losses.
Looking ahead to 2021, what do you see on the horizon for cryptocurrency?
I think we will see a few trends. For starters, in seeing the example of Square, PayPal, and Robinhood, and other companies, I believe that more and more big players will start to work with cryptocurrency.
This is a positive development that in my mind only will fuel the use of crypto as a medium of exchange and unit of account. As a result bitcoin and others will become more like true cryptocurrencies versus just vehicles for speculation.
We’ll also likely see more payment applications being introduced for activities like gambling and e-sports. All of this suggests some exciting times ahead as we emerge from the pandemic.
