ChangeNOW exposes private sending and extends to tokenized assets

Elena Dali Bey is a global growth leader who has become a defining voice in the crypto community over the past few years. Known for her ability to lead high-performing teams while maintaining a solid personal life as a mother, Elena epitomizes the modern manager who truly “does it all” with purpose.

Today, he shares his strategic vision for ChangeNOW’s latest developments and the key initiatives driving that growth.

ChangeNOW has been making a lot of noise lately. For starters, can you walk us through the most impressive product updates that have been launched recently?

It’s been a busy start to the year, honestly. The launch that has probably garnered the most attention is Private Send, a feature built right into the NOW Wallet that breaks the visible connection between the sender and receiver address on the blockchain. In practice, it’s just a switch that you turn on when converting. Funds are routed through our infrastructure before they reach their destination, so your address never appears in the recipient’s transaction history.

This is not an anonymization tool in the technical sense, as each transaction still goes through our standard AML checks. But for someone managing multiple wallets or paying contractors without wanting to expose their entire on-chain activity, it makes a real difference from day to day.

Blockchain privacy is a sensitive topic. How do you balance the demand for user privacy with industry pressure for regulatory transparency?

It’s a fair question and one we take seriously. Our starting point is a simple observation: public blockchains were designed with financial freedom in mind, to prevent analytics firms from mapping billions of addresses and building profiles on ordinary people. Tracking has become the default, Private Send is a way to fight back.

That is, it does not mean operating in the regulatory blind spot. Every transaction goes through the same checks as the rest of our platform. We’re not creating a tool to circumvent the law, we’re giving people the ability to avoid constant surveillance for completely legitimate reasons.

Another product update: Limit orders. What does this change for your users?

Until now, ChangeNOW has worked primarily on instant exchanges, when you want to convert, you get the market rate at that exact moment. Limit orders change the logic: you set the price at which you want to buy or sell, and the transaction is executed automatically when the market reaches that level.

This has been a long awaited feature for anyone who follows the markets closely. It means you’re no longer at the mercy of timing, you won’t miss an opportunity because you weren’t watching your screen. It’s a step towards a more sophisticated offering without having to sacrifice the simplicity that has characterized us since the beginning.

You’ve also launched access to real-world assets. It’s a space that’s generating huge buzz: why now and what does it actually bring to your users?

Timing comes from the market itself. Real-world asset tokenization (stocks, ETFs, precious metals) has gone from a fringe concept to something tangible in two years. Our users want to be able to exchange tokens representing shares of Tesla, Nvidia or the SP500 ETF with the same ease as they exchange BTC for ETH. That’s exactly what we give them at ChangeNOW.

The goal is to stop forcing people to choose between the crypto world and traditional markets. These assets are available for direct swap on our platform, at real-time prices, without a brokerage account, without a traditional intermediary. This convergence was inevitable, we are just taking our place in it.

You recently opened an office in Dubai. What does this mean strategically for ChangeNOW?

The choice of Dubai was a strategic step with full awareness of the current geopolitical situation. We know the challenges the region faces, but we also believe there is potential to stabilize the current situation and grow both financially and technologically.

The city has become a real focus of the crypto industry: clear regulation, concentration of serious players, access to markets that are opening quickly. Having a physical presence there means anchoring our growth in a region where things move fast and where face-to-face partnerships are built.

And this is not our only major step. We will be in Miami for consensus in May. It’s one of the unmissable events in space, and we go there with the intention of having real conversations, not just manning a booth.

France seems to be a major target for you this year. What is the strategy there?

We really care about France. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Pauline Shangett, will be speaking at ETHCC (March 30-April 2) and Hack Seasons (April 1) in Cannes to share her vision for the growth and development of the RWA sector. It’s an event that’s really growing, with an audience that sits right at the intersection of tech and business, which is exactly our crowd.

Then in June we will participate in Proof of Talk in Paris, at the Louvre Palace, on June 2nd and 3rd. It’s an event we have a real affection for because the environment is special and the conversations there tend to go deeper than at most conferences. It is our way of clearly saying that the French crypto community is a real development priority for us.

You are finally announcing a documentary about ChangeNOW. Why the documentary and why now?

We’ve been here since 2017 and honestly, we’ve been through the wringer and back. There is a human story in those years, beyond the transactions and growth charts, that we felt needed to be told. The documentary allows us to share the moments when nothing was guaranteed and the people who made it happen anyway. It drops on April 30th and is a very honest window into what cryptocurrency building actually looks like.

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The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be taken as investment advice. Before making any investment decision, do your own research.