Dean Karakitsos is a visionary innovator in disruptive technology development and business management with more than 20 years of experience bringing an industry-changing approach to designing and launching dynamic new technology products. With a proven history of integrating market analysis and consumer insight to capitalize on opportunities and create the products the market demands, this technology enthusiast helps companies enable corner key market niches and bolster a position as pioneers in new technology. With a demonstrated track record of entrepreneurial leadership, building concepts and businesses from the ground up to achieve award-winning success, Dean is a strong team leader. He is the CEO of Bitquery, an API-first product company dedicated to power and solve blockchain data problems using the ground truth of on-chain data. He speaks on an array of topics in an interview. Excerpts:

Conception of Bitquery

Bitquery formerly known as bloxy.info, supports different data verticals like Crypto Surveillance with its unique Coinpath® technology, Arbitrage Trading on DEXs, Smart Contracts and more. The company is powering known blockchain projects & service providers, financial institutions, crypto exchanges & developers.  Says Dean, “Bitquery extracts and presents valuable data via APIs. These APIs are delivering solutions to multiple verticals like Decentralize Finance (DeFi), DEX Arbitrage Analytics, Crypto Surveillance & Forensics across all major blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Tezos.”

Noting that pulling business meaningful data out of blockchains is hard, Dean observes that collating blockchain data at scale for various use cases is not only hard and complex but very costly, time consuming and requires deep knowledge of blockchain mechanics. “At Bitquery we serve that need by offering them a robust data infrastructure and connect-and-play blockchain data for different verticals. Blockchain data is immutable, transparent, and openly accessible. Bitquery helps in indexing that data and transforming it into useful information for businesses and open it by using various technologies like GraphQL APIs. “Today, we support more than 40 blockchains with our unified APIs.”

Flagship Products – Coinpath, DEX and Digital Assets APIs

Coinpath APIs help track money flow on blockchain, it helps you find the source and destination of the money and related parties on-chain. “It is useful for blockchain compliance and investigation firms. DEX APIs provide real-time decentralized exchange trading data. This is used by various DEX related tools to enable traders to trade on DEXs. Digital asset APIs provide different useful metrics related to tokens.”

The Blockchain Journey

Addressing a risk factor brought me to the blockchain industry, says Dean. He adds that he began his investigation on the blockchain technology in 2016 after he sold his telecom company. “Blockchain and smart contracts created a lot of opportunities, but they came with huge risks. A badly implemented smart contract could result in being hacked or ‘leak’ money. Auditing smart contracts was my first journey into the blockchain world.”

Dean says that no technology, including blockchain, is without risk. “Performance related risks, integration risks, operational risks, regulatory risks to name a few.” He urges organizations to develop a risk management framework to address and adopt this technology. At the end, blockchains will provide benefits and will open new dimensions of social and financial growth. “Blockchains will be a very important part of the digital infrastructure and will be integrated more deeply going forward.”

Leadership Traits

“People survive failures all the time. No one is immune to failure. It is important to realize that fear is a warning sign that must be understood and addressed, not ignored, or hidden. The fear of failure has very little to do with our ability, but everything to do about our perception and mindset.”

Leadership is a challenging job that involves nerves, insecurities, and doubts which makes it difficult to overcome organizational challenges, according to Dean. He urges young entrepreneurs to view failure as steppingstones to future successes. “Stay focused, leverage your fears, and take action, he suggests. This applies to most startups but especially in blockchain since the majority of blockchain projects can create or manage monetary systems and assets with real value. Just because you can ‘print money’ with your own blockchain system doesn’t mean that this money can represent real value. You must BUILD value into your chain in order to make it successful. You incorporate value by addressing a use case or fulfill a specific market need.”

The Success Mantra

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” – quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt as a reminder that life, relationships, and business come with many ups and downs, but those bumps are what make us compassionate, resilient, and dynamic people and partners. Managing these bumps is our ability to command knowledge, strategy and action.”

The Way Ahead

“Bitquery runs a massive data infrastructure with relatively a small team. “We are a bootstrapped company, and a lot of enterprise teams depend on us to provide the meaningful blockchain data for each use case.” signs off Dean.