Privacy, RWA, and the French Frontier : Inside ChangeNOW’s Bold New Chapter

Elena Dali Bey is a Global Growth Lead who has become a defining voice in the crypto community over the last several years. Known for her ability to lead high-performing teams while maintaining a grounded personal life as a mother, Elena embodies the modern executive who truly “does it all” with intention.

Today, she shares her strategic vision on ChangeNOW’s latest evolution and key initiatives driving that growth.

ChangeNOW has been making a lot of noise lately. To kick things off, can you walk us through the most impactful product updates that have launched recently ?

It’s been a busy start to the year, honestly. The launch that probably got the most attention is Private Send,  a feature built directly into NOW Wallet that breaks the visible link between a sender’s and recipient’s address on the blockchain. In practice, it’s just a toggle you switch on when making a transfer. Funds are routed through our infrastructure before reaching their destination, so your address never shows up in the recipient’s transaction history.

It’s not an anonymization tool in the technical sense as every 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 day to day.

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

It’s a fair question, and one we take seriously. Our starting point is a simple observation: public blockchains were designed for financial freedom, not to let analytics firms map billions of addresses and build profiles on ordinary people. Surveillance has become the default, Private Send is a way to push back against that.

That said, it doesn’t mean operating in a regulatory blind spot. Every transaction runs through the same checks as the rest of our platform. We’re not building a tool to circumvent laws, we’re giving people the ability to avoid being constantly tracked for entirely legitimate reasons.

Another product update : Limit Orders. What does that change for your users ?

Up until now, ChangeNOW worked primarily on instant exchanges, 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 executes automatically when the market hits that level.

For anyone who follows the markets closely, this has been a long-awaited feature. It means you’re no longer at the mercy of timing, you don’t miss an opportunity because you weren’t watching your screen. It’s a step toward a more sophisticated offering, without sacrificing the simplicity that’s been our signature from the beginning.

You’ve also launched access to Real World Assets. It’s a space that’s generating enormous buzz : why now, and what does it actually bring to your users ?

The timing comes from the market itself. The tokenization of real-world assets (stocks, ETFs, precious metals) has gone from a niche concept to something tangible in the space of two years. Our users want to be able to swap tokens representing Tesla, Nvidia, or SP500 ETF shares with the same ease they swap BTC for ETH. That’s exactly what we’re giving them at ChangeNOW.

The idea 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, no brokerage account, no traditional intermediary. This convergence was inevitable, we’re just taking our place in it.

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

Choosing Dubai was a strategic move made with full awareness of the current geopolitical landscape. We know the challenges the region faces, but we also believe that there is a potential for stabilizing the current situation and growing both financially and technologically.

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

And that’s not our only major move. In May we’ll be in Miami for Consensus. It’s one of the unmissable events in space, and we’re going there with the intention of having real conversations, not just occupying a booth.

France seems to be a major focus for you this year. What’s the strategy there ?

France genuinely matters to us. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Pauline Shangett, will be speaking at the ETHCC Event (March 30-April 2nd) and the Hack Seasons Conference (1st of April)  in Cannes, sharing her vision about 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 technical and business, which is exactly our crowd.

Then in June, we’re participating 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 setting is exceptional, and the conversations there tend to go deeper than at most conferences. It is our way of saying clearly that the French crypto community is a genuine development priority for us.

Finally, you’re announcing a documentary about ChangeNOW. Why a documentary, and why now ?

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