1. You have been born and began your profession in Russia earlier than constructing firms throughout very completely different regulatory and enterprise environments. How did these early experiences form your views on markets, belief, and monetary methods—and finally your strategy to entrepreneurship?
No one is born assured. Confidence is earned—one success at a time.
Mine was earned the onerous manner. By the age of 25, I had constructed the most important business financial institution in Russia from scratch, in a rustic that had no fashionable banking business once I began. That have taught me one thing that has stayed with me ever since: audacious targets are usually not reserved for different folks.
That’s why I’m now going after two targets most individuals would dismiss as unrealistic.
The primary is to disrupt the worldwide prediction market business with my Danger-Free Betting platform known as SafeBets.world.
The second is to create the world’s largest brokerage operation on crypto, commodities, shares, or forex markets by leveraging the collective intelligence of SafeBets’s skilled forecasters.
I perceive how grandiose these aims sound. Only a few folks would critically try both one, not to mention each. However I’m not pursuing them on bravado. I’m pursuing them as a result of I’ve the boldness, expertise, and credibility I obtained by attaining market dominance in Russia.
2. What was the unique downside you got down to remedy with Unicoin, and the way did that concept evolve as you navigated U.S. regulatory scrutiny and the broader “battle on crypto” narrative?
I made a decision to launch Unicoin on the finish of 2021, and the timing was no accident.
That yr, two “canine cash” that had began as parodies—Dogecoin and Shiba Inu—reached a mixed all-time-high valuation of $132 billion. Let me repeat that: $132 billion, for 2 jokes.
To me, the sign was unmistakable. Institutional cash was about to stream into the crypto sector in a severe manner—and institutional gamers weren’t going to be glad with the choices on the desk. They have been by no means going to allocate portfolios to canine cash, monkey cash, frog cash, or different meme tokens with no fundamentals. Institutional and conventional buyers would demand one thing they may really underwrite: a cryptocurrency with the transparency, governance, and asset backing.
So I launched Unicoin to be precisely that: an institutional-grade cryptocurrency—the primary absolutely audited and publicly reporting crypto firm in the USA, backed by a big portfolio of real-world property, and run by prime consultants in finance and know-how.
Not like different cryptocurrency firms, we adopted all relevant securities laws to the letter – and had handed via two exhaustive SEC investigations with flying colours.
Photograph Credit score: Courtesy of Alex Konanykhin
3. You’ve typically positioned Unicoin in distinction to enforcement-heavy crypto regulation. Trying again, what have been probably the most defining moments in your relationship with regulators, and the way have these formed your technique for constructing the corporate right now?
Buyers cherished Unicoin.
By early 2024, we had raised over $100 million in money and signed greater than $3 billion in real-estate-for-Unicoin swap agreements—outperforming all cryptocurrencies mixed within the pre-ICO stage. After we introduced our upcoming itemizing on the New York Inventory Alternate and main crypto exchanges, the message to the market was clear: a compliant, clear, institutional-grade cryptocurrency was now not an idea. It was taking place.
That’s the second the regulators made us their main goal.
Underneath the chairmanship of Gary Gensler, the SEC was on a mission to destroy the U.S. crypto business—and Unicoin, as probably the most compliant and visual firm within the sector, turned the showcase goal in its infamous Warfare on Crypto.
Gensler’s henchmen tried to bully us into shutting down our operations or shifting them out of the USA.
They picked the flawed founder.
If I had needed to be pushed round by corrupt officers, I might have stayed in Russia.
As a substitute, I selected the identical factor I’ve chosen each different time a authorities tried to run me over: I’m going to combat—for our buyers, for the integrity of American capital markets, and for the precept that regulators don’t get to destroy compliant companies to cowl for their very own failed agenda. And I intend to reveal this conspiracy in courtroom, in full daylight, with each doc and each witness the regulation permits.
I’ve litigated with the U.S. authorities 5 occasions. I’ve gained all 5 circumstances. Now going for six out of six.
4. The Unicoin Basis represents a shift towards training, inclusion, and “crypto for good.” What prompted that pivot, and the way do you see the function of foundations and mission-driven constructions in legitimizing crypto long-term?
A brand new period on the SEC has opened a path ahead for Unicoin.
The brand new SEC Chairman, Paul Atkins, is working to undo the great harm his disgraced predecessor, Gary Gensler, inflicted on the U.S. crypto business throughout years of regulatory overreach. In November 2025, Chairman Atkins introduced a long-overdue clarification: the SEC will now not deal with cryptocurrencies as securities except the issuer guarantees important managerial efforts that might lead buyers to anticipate income from these efforts.
It is a landmark determination—one which restores the unique, commonsense interpretation of the Howey Take a look at and ends the Gensler-era follow of treating practically each digital asset as a safety by default.
For Unicoin, this ruling is a double-edged sword.
On the brilliant facet, Chairman Atkins’ coverage offers Unicoin a transparent, absolutely compliant path ahead. The regulatory uncertainty that the earlier SEC weaponized in opposition to us has been changed by bright-line guidelines that we will—and can—function inside, fully and transparently.
However, the identical coverage implies that Unicoin Inc., because the issuer, can now not take part in offering the important managerial efforts that have been beforehand central to the corporate’s function.
To adjust to Chairman Atkins’ new framework whereas guaranteeing Unicoin continues to develop in visibility and worth, we established the Unicoin Basis—a decentralized governance physique managed by the Unicoin group.
Unicoin holders have elected a board of 27 administrators to steer technique on their behalf. These administrators are actually free to pursue no matter initiatives they deem simplest to construct the Unicoin model, broaden adoption, and develop the coin’s worth—unconstrained by the issuer-side limitations that now apply to Unicoin Inc.
Important managerial efforts now stream from the holders of the token, for the good thing about the coin holders—precisely as the brand new SEC framework envisions and precisely as a very decentralized cryptocurrency ought to function.
Photograph Credit score: Courtesy of Alex Konanykhin
5. With SafeBets, you’re now coming into prediction markets and AI-driven collective intelligence. What excites you most about this area, and the way does it hook up with your broader thesis about decentralization, info, and monetary participation?
Folks love playing. There’s no level pretending in any other case. It brings pleasure into their lives. A sports activities recreation is twice as attention-grabbing to observe when you may have one thing at stake
However folks don’t love what playing does to them. Playing creates habit. It destroys households. It empties retirement accounts. It drains financial savings that took a long time to construct.
That’s not an abstraction—it’s a public-health disaster taking place in plain sight, in each nation on this planet, protected by an business that income from precisely the outcomes that damage its clients.
What I’ve constructed with SafeBets is risk-free betting at giant scale.
That one phrase sounds virtually contradictory, but it surely isn’t—it’s the entire level. You get the joy, the engagement, the ability, the stakes that make predicting outcomes really feel alive. What you don’t get is the potential for dropping cash you possibly can’t afford to lose. Nobody goes to empty their financial savings on SafeBets. Nobody’s household goes to be destroyed by it. Nobody goes to leap out of a window due to a wager positioned on our platform.
And on prime of that, SafeBets creates one thing extraordinary on the upside. Individuals who genuinely perceive a site—who construct the very best algorithms, who develop uncommon data, who can persistently outperform the vast majority of different predictors—will be capable to earn tens of tens of millions of {dollars} on SafeBets.world. With out ever risking a penny of their very own cash.
That has by no means existed earlier than.
What excites me most about this area is that we will lastly give folks the upside of betting with out the draw back. The joy with out the destruction. The incomes alternative with out the danger of damage. If we get this proper, SafeBets gained’t simply be a profitable brokerage. It is going to be one of many few locations within the fashionable financial system the place tens of millions of individuals can construct actual wealth by being sensible, disciplined, and proper—relatively than fortunate, reckless, and finally worn out.
That’s value constructing.
