MEET THE TEAM

I’m from the Netherlands. I grew up in a small village with my brother and my mother. I attended a kind of special school where people get educated more on an individual basis—if you are good at one thing and not so good at another thing, first, you do the things you are good at, then later you work on the others. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I started by delivering papers, washing cars, and selling baked goods for the neighborhood. I also had my own catering business while I was a student. But I soon realized that was not the right way for me to go. So I started a company with my brother, dealing in second-hand cars. We started totally from zero and it was quite hard, but we never stopped. We built up a client list from zero to 2,000, a huge database with cars and connected products like insurance. Our competitor, who ignored us for the first 10 years, had to buy us out because all the clients were walking from them to us.

I went into crypto around 2016. I read about it and I just saw a vision. This is it. This will be the future. So I put a lot of savings into crypto. I invested in many different coins. I had to trust others to be sure to choose the right project, and of course, I made some mistakes. Some projects didn’t succeed, others succeed very well. So overall, it was a very good decision to step into crypto. I even taught my mother crypto, and yeah, she makes a lot of money she didn’t even need. And she gives to charity and to the church.

How things are done in the world, in the old financial system, it’s just not OK. There are a few parties who basically control everything, like central banks and huge governments. I see crypto giving power back to the people. I see it as giving people opportunities. Did you know there are 1.2 billion people in the world who don’t have bank accounts? That’s why cryptocurrency is so important. My friends in the Philippines who were unable to open a bank account, they opened an account in coins.ph instead. With blockchain, then they could make transactions all over the world, even pay bills, anything.

Not video games per se. I do play on chess.com and I have a level of around 2000. So that’s I guess a little bit more than average, but not the top level.

I like basketball. I sometimes played when I was in the Philippines.

Cryptopia is so huge, so it’s hard to describe. But I can say it’s an honest game. On the blockchain, you can verify every transaction. That way, it keeps people honest.

We haven’t found other blockchain games that are really 100% serverless. The problem I see with a lot of games where you can make real money is that someone can switch off the server and the whole thing is gone. But our game, Cryptopia, is serverless. Another important thing is that Cryptopia has a non-custodial wallet, which has multi-sig and multifactor authentication. It’s very good for people to use and very safe. It opens up a lot of doors for them. We also have our own marketplace, so it’s not necessary to use other marketplaces. One more thing which what Cryptopia sets apart from other games is that it’s a sustainable game. We made it such that new players can always benefit, not only the first thousand who have a tile, and then they just wait till the tile gets more valuable. All of these sets us apart from other games that are not blockchain. There might come other games like Cryptopia but they are two years behind us. To create a game like this is very, very difficult. People don’t realize how much effort and knowledge and qualified people are necessary to build something like Cryptopia.

Yeah, first of all, you have to start. That sounds easy, but yeah, doing something completely new, especially when you don’t have a background in crypto or in gaming. My advice is just to start. We have an amazing community, people who are very willing to help new players to make the most out of Cryptopia.

Absolutely. For example, we have Frontier ships. And Cryptopia will be launched in phases. During the beta phase, people with early access get a ship. They can start collecting resources, which they can carry in their frontier ship. They will still have access to these resources when Cryptopia formally launches, so that’s a huge advantage. In the formal game, the resources in the game are found in the land tiles. To get the resources out, such as gold, you need to build facilities on them. These facilities can be built by the players who have resources they brought with them from early access. Another example is that, in the beginning, gold will be easy to acquire from the tiles and there are fewer players. But as the supply becomes scarce and the demand for it goes higher, it’s very likely the price of gold will rise. Players who started early get an advantage with their collected gold resources. In addition, we are launching on the Polygon blockchain. But for example, if we launch a new Cryptopia on another blockchain like Apex or Avalanche, then we need to put new resource units of gold, which will be limited. But if you already have gold from the first chain, it’s very likely that players from the new chain from gold holders in the old chain, which drives the price up and gives you another advantage. By the way, we did this using ERC 20, which has transaction costs way lower than Ethereum.

I would say I don’t think it’s a good word, “expensive”. There are a lot of possibilities to invest in Cryptopia, like an early extra ship, a land tile, loyalty cards, whatever. I don’t think it’s expensive because it’s an investment for your future. It costs money, sure. But if you invest in Cryptopia, you will make more money.

Cryptopia can be useful to other blockchain games. Those who don’t their own multi-sig wallet, for example, because that’s very difficult to build, can use the wallet from Cryptopia. If they don’t have to make their own marketplace, they can use the marketplace from Cryptopia. They may even use our whole community, because if you want to advertise, for example, on Facebook or Google or wherever, it’s very difficult to advertise crypto projects. In Cryptopia, you have exactly the audience you are looking to advertise to.

I’m an industrialist. From the beginning, I wanted to invest. I see how important it is that people are investing in Cryptopia, to give jobs to other citizens, and I want to work together with other investors and industrialists to build facilities.

We can learn the value of decentralization. Leveling the playing field for all. In the world right now, power is very centralized, so it’s easy to be corrupt and monitor people. People should have the same opportunities and the same ability to vote for policies that will affect their lives. In the near future, as blockchains become more common, it will be easier to accomplish tasks without corruption, giving power to the people.

I could eat Thai food everyday, especially chicken cashew nuts. Vegetables and sauce and rice and the whole package.