DeFi Project ChangeX Defies Gravity and Raises Close to $2M in ICO despite Bear Market

 • Bulgarian DeFi project ChangeX wants to become a one-stop shop for managing finances by offering trading, staking, DeFi lending, and fiat-to-crypto trading

 • ChangeX’s initial coin offering (ICO) was a successful one, raising close to $2M 

 • The project has a new advisory board with experts from SoftBank, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan, and Citibank. 

Changing the financial system is never an easy task – but as the development of fintech and the rise of cryptocurrencies have shown in recent years, it is not an impossible one. 

With this in mind, Bulgaria-founded DeFi project ChangeX has an ambitious goal – to make personal finance easy and accessible for everyone by creating a world where all finance lives on the blockchain and where all the acronyms, networks, and protocols serve to empower the user, and not overpower.

The project’s co-founders Nick Iliev and Gary Guerassimov have a rich history in developing successful fintech solutions, among them xChange.bg, a Bulgarian crypto exchange. 

HydraChain and LockTrip co-founders Nikola Alexandrov and Hristo Tenchev are also a part of the team, each of them bringing seven years of blockchain experience.

The project’s CTO Martin Kuvandzhiev is one of the core developers at Bitcoin Gold – an upgrade of the source Bitcoin code which brought decentralization back to retail traders and made mining via common GPUs possible again. 

Now, ChangeX aims to become a one-stop shop for managing finances by offering trading, staking, DeFi lending and fiat-to-crypto trading, allowing inexperienced users to benefit from a safe and easy to use mobile-friendly experience.

“At ChangeX we strongly believe that the recent developments in blockchain, finance, and Web 3.0 offer a myriad of opportunities for preserving wealth and earning passive income that did not exist before. DeFi should offer equal access to everyone, but the reality is different. As less than 4% of the world population owns crypto, it is clear that there is a widespread lack of access and knowledge about these technological advancements,” ChangeX’s CEO and co-founder Nick Iliev tells The Recursive.                                     

According to Iliev, the project’s mission is to facilitate mass crypto adoption by bridging traditional finance and DeFi. “To achieve this, we’re building a mobile-first platform that simplifies the processes of trading, investing, earning, staking, growing, and managing digital assets, connecting the world of DeFi to traditional banking”, Iliev explains.

To this purpose, ChangeX’s app will offer personal IBANs for SEPA banking, a crypto debit card through which its users can spend their crypto and fiat holdings, and a lot more, he adds.

“Users of the ChangeX app will benefit in the long run from ChangeX’s flagship leveraged staking. This uniquely designed product enables margin positions for long-term staking and is providing up to 2x APR (annual percentage rate) on existing assets,” Iliev says. 

Weathering the bear market storm

Despite a bear season sweeping through the crypto markets, ChangeX’s recent initial coin offering (ICO) was a successful one, as investors gathered close to $1.9M and provided the team with a financial backing that will keep the development process unobstructed for the next 2 years. 

ChangeX launched its ICO of its CHANGE token on the HydraChain at the end of February and managed to achieve oversubscription by 180% on June 1.

“This means that customers can expect the introduction of new features to happen gradually in the ChangeX app as planned. Most recently (July 19th) the ChangeX team achieved a major milestone by releasing its native token $CHANGE on the Hydra DEX, which users can now purchase.” Iliev tells The Recursive.  

 “Within a week after starting to trade on July 19th, the CHANGE token picked up over 1,000 % in value amidst the recent market meltdown in which the global cryptocurrency market cap is down over 60%.”

Battle-tested veteran team of crypto experts

While ChangeX’s veteran team of crypto entrepreneurs has a combined track record of creating projects valued well over $600M, the project has also assembled a new advisory board with experts from SoftBank, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan, and Citibank. 

The move itself reflects ChangeX’s efforts to streamline institutional capital acquisition and continue its strategic development.        

ChangeX’s newly formed advisory board sees SoftBank Vision Fund’s Neil Cunha-Gomes, whose crypto investments include Consensys (one of the most reputable brands in the industry behind flagship projects such as MetaMask) and Elliptic (one of the most trusted crypto compliance solutions providers), working alongside seasoned experts Dimiter Gurdjilov and Stefan Ivanov, who together have more than 50 years of experience with finance, investments, and capital management. 

Stefan Ivanov is an alumni of Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development and a senior banker with more than 25 years of experience at Citibank, Banque Paribas, and Challenger Capital Management. 

Dimiter Gurdjilov has more than 15 years of investment banking, private equity and business development experience in Merrilll Lynch, JPMorgan, George Soros’ Bedminster Capital, NBGI Private Equity, and Challenger Capital Management.

“We are extremely excited to have Neil, Dimiter, and Stefan onboard as our advisory team. Together, they represent what ChangeX is about, bringing knowledge of traditional finance, cryptocurrencies, and the DeFi space – the three pillars of our project”, Iliev noted.

Looking into the future 

According to chief strategy officer Nikola Alexandrov, the world is witnessing a transformational shift in the digital banking world, and ChangeX aims to play a significant part in this revolution.

“If​ we assume that​ Revolut was a 1st generation digital asset application, ​Crypto.com a​ potential​ 2nd generation application, ChangeX is making an attempt to establish itself as a 3rd generation application ​by harnessing the powerful DeFi products and making them readily available to retail users,” Alexandrov tells The Recursive.

“We are incredibly excited to see ChangeX build on top of HYDRA, as it would put the Hydra ecosystem into the center of this user-centric application,” he adds.

Apart from being available on the Hydra DEX, the CHANGE token is also available on Uniswap, and the team has also prepared new partnerships that will come to light in the following months, together with the latest updates on the project.