Spotlight on Mickael Costache, CEO of DragonBite
Describe yourself in three words?
Curious, Optimistic, Ambitious
What is your educational background?
I studied Business Administration in Monaco and also spent a lot of time in Asia and the US in partner universities as I wanted to build a truly international background for myself.
What did you do before setting up DragonBite?
I co-founded a startup in Dubai (hyperlocal delivery space) and then joined Espeo Blockchain (one of the largest blockchain consultancy and development studios in the world) as their Regional Director for the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
How did you come into crypto? (or how did you get into blockchain)
My interest in crypto started fairly early, in 2016 and while living in Dubai, I saw the blockchain space heating up with a lot of opportunities present in the market. However, there was a lack of serious service providers and at that point, I decided to partner with Espeo Blockchain to launch an office in Dubai which I then expanded throughout Asia and Africa as well. Slowly but surely, I became quite established in the industry and also started advising companies (from startups to large enterprises) on their blockchain strategies.
Where does the DragonBite project come from?
DragonBite is the result of the combined experiences of the founding team. We understood there was a huge problem to solve (hence a huge opportunity) and loved the fact that we were about to enter a gigantic and global market. Talking to our Strategic Advisor Andy and Elvan (our COO) about potentially going into this venture together, it quickly became a no-brainer as we felt we had the right ingredients to make the recipe work both in terms of technology and contacts in the industry.
What are you responsible for at DragonBite?
As the CEO of DragonBite, I have a very broad range of responsibilities ranging from strategy, fundraising, working with the team on our technology roadmap and overlooking the overall operations of the venture.
What makes DragonBite unique compared to other loyalty programs dapp?Aside from our team and its knowledge of the industry (which to me is our biggest asset), our secret recipe is our dual token system. This could be the reason why other loyalty projects failed before us. I invite you to go through our whitepaper (available on dragonbite.io) to understand the mechanism behind it but basically, DragonBite operates with BITE which is our incentive token (and has limited supply) and BITEPoint which is our universal stablecoin, pegged 1:1 with the US Dollar and backed by all the digital asset in the ecosystem. BITEPoint acts as a medium of exchange between digital assets and provides liquidity to buyers and sellers in the DragonBite ecosystem.
On top of this, I’d like to mention that our business development efforts have been very fruitful to date as we will be available in more than 50,000 locations in Asia on our launch date which is pretty phenomenal and puts us years ahead of any sort of competition.
Which loyalty program would you love to partner with and why?
We are particularly interested in working with all the large hotels and airlines loyalty programs. We also have a big interest in working with financial services companies as they are usually very innovative when it comes to loyalty. Stay tuned for some very exciting announcements!
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs looking to build on the blockchain?
Do your homework and understand if blockchain is the best technology to utilize. Too often, I had entrepreneurs (and even established enterprises) reaching out to me with blockchain initiatives that simply didn’t make sense. Don’t go for the buzzword and try instead to educate yourself on the pros and cons of using blockchain for your venture. Blockchain is a fantastic technology and solves a lot of different pain points but it does need to make sense at the product level (sometimes, a centralized solution can be more beneficial).
What is your prediction on Bitcoin’s price for the rest of the year?
I’m a strong believer in crypto (Bitcoin included) and my prediction is that we will end the year at USD 75,000+.
About DragonBite
DragonBite is a truly open decentralised Asset Management platform for customers to store and swap all kinds of digital assets in One App with One password. The salient purpose of DragonBite however, is to couple an integrated application and suite of services with a tokenized loyalty rewards system. The combination of these two services is what has resulted in the vision of DragonBite which is “to disrupt the loyalty market with innovative business models and technology”.
Website | Whitepaper | Telegram | Medium | Twitter | LinkedIn | Reddit
