Stefan Che — My story

Web3 — WOL

Early awething

Wol

Co-founder & CEO 2022–2026

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At 17, I co-founded WOL, a bootstrapped OTC crypto desk, and soon became CEO.

Inspired by Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer idea, we matched private buyers and sellers of crypto for direct trades, without a centralized exchange. We earned commissions or acted as the counterparty.

Marketing, sales strategy and brand positioning were on me. I attended 100+ events across Dubai, Singapore and beyond, securing our first clients.

Networking turned out to be one of my natural strengths, and I sharpened it at every event. I trained our BD team to listen deeply, make a friend before a client and never pitch first.

Assembled a team of over 20 people

As our team grew to 21 people, I hired every key person except in AML and KYC, which my partner ran. My interviews could run three or four hours. I asked how people grew up and where they were headed, to see who owns their life.

I’m not an engineer, but I worked out the process logic with our developers and made the security calls. Our DevOps engineer built our server infrastructure under my lead, and the team shipped a processing system with automated wallets and AML screening, and a range of internal software tools.

Bootstrapped Growth

$450,000

The Cost of a Mistake

$100,000

The End of WOL

5,000+

Conclusion

Being trusted with other people’s money changed how I approach responsibility and risk.

I put in $60K from my entertainment career, my partner about the same. We grew on reinvested profits and $450K in liquidity loans I raised, all repaid with interest.

An FX error in our books cost us $100K. I studied financial controlling at CA Controller Akademie, hired a controller and a CFO, and we moved to a daily close with solid management reporting.

The desk ran on people, didn’t scale and carried AML risk. For years we planned a pivot: a VARA crypto license in Dubai, then a neobank. In 2026, as we prepared to apply with lawyers, war broke out in the region and demand fell. In August, after 5,000+ trades for 1,500+ clients, we closed WOL while it was still profitable. It wasn’t an easy call.