6 Questions for Leila Ismailova

Published

2 years ago

August 29, 2023

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Leila Ismailova began her professional career at the age of 15 as a broadcasting star in Belarus, the Russian-neighboring Eastern European country that plays home to 9.3 million citizens. She continued in the role for 10 years, she says, before reaching what she felt was a “professional ceiling” and beginning a journey that led to Web3.

“I remember my audacity as a child, just sneaking into the buildings with newspapers and magazines — it was called the House of Press,” Ismailova recalls in an interview with Cointelegraph. “I would handwrite my stories and sneak into the building — because I didn’t have a pass — by making up stories that I was someone’s granddaughter, or by just going in when someone else entered. And I would find the doors that said ‘editor’ or ‘editor-in-chief,’ and I would just walk in and give them my articles. People smiled, and I’m sure they felt I was naive, but I felt they also had some respect for me doing this work.”

Her renegade news career led to television in a matter of years. She joined the country’s First National Channel at the age of 15, where she started on a show that covered news and culture for younger viewers.

“My first audition went horribly,” Ismailova says. “I turned purple. I was thinking really fast, but they still wanted me to come for the second round.”

Also read: How brands are using digital fashion in real life

Ismailova moved to the United States in 2016, setting off what she calls a “season of migration” for her family, including her brother, Bahram, and sister, Esmira. Bahram is a serial tech entrepreneur whose inventions include Peech App and Yope, among many others, while Esmira is an author whose published works include On the Shores of Bosphorus. (You won’t find it in English yet, so don’t spend too much time scouring Amazon.)

Leila Ismailova with co-host Denis Kuryan in 2014. — *Leila Ismailova hosting the International Music Festival Slavic Bazaar in Vitebsk, Belarus, 2014. Source: Screenshot*

Ismailova’s and her siblings’ success came despite hardship. Their father died when they were children (Bahram was just 1), fighting for Azerbaijan in the country’s war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“It happened very abruptly,” Ismailova says. “Of course, no one planned for it, so we went very fast from being a well-off family living in the capital of Baku to being a very scared family. We were pretty much on our own in a country that was going through the war with Armenia and, on top of that, separating from the Soviet Union. It was a very harsh time for everybody.”

Ismailova says that experience inspired her to launch a charity during her broadcast career that offered mentoring for orphans, an activity she would like to resume in the future.

“It seemed like these girls, even though the government provided very simple basics for them to start life, didn’t have parental guidance,” Ismailova recalls. “It seemed like a lot of orphan girls were insecure because no one told them they were beautiful. Our goal was to create that guidance and to give them a confidence boost. […] For me, it was very important to do, and I was so lucky that I had a chance and a bit of influence. Right now, I miss it very much.”

1. You moved from Belarus, where you were a TV journalist, to the United States. What’s the story behind that?

I’m the only one from my family who moved, at first. I opened the “season of migration” for my family, as right after I moved, my sister moved, and then my brother. He didn’t just move — he ran away in August 2020, right after the Belarusian presidential election, when they started hunting people down. He had to run. His two co-founders were arrested.

My personal story is that I was a pretty successful TV host back home, I started when I was 15. I wanted to be a TV host because I wanted to wear beautiful dresses. I was very happy. It was my dream job! I started working early, and I think I was very hungry for success. I got all the national awards I dreamed of at a very young age, hosted all the shows I wanted to, and reached the professional ceiling back home.

2. What got you into crypto?

Well, my first stop in the United States was California — this was before I moved to Miami. I got into graduate school for a master’s program at USC Annenberg. (To be honest, I’m still struggling to connect to American society.) I’ve always been a nerd, and school seemed like a safe environment to connect to people. I started learning about entrepreneurship during the first wave of crypto in 2017, and then I invested in my first crypto… and “lost” it. I bought Litecoin at $250. But I started working in crypto only in 2020.

3. What brought you to Miami?

I felt very limited in Los Angeles with the COVID-19 restrictions, and very isolated. I couldn’t even walk my dog because they closed the parks. So, I got into digital fashion. It got me very curious about how something that didn’t exist could make someone feel so good. That was when I met my Artisant co-founder, Regina [Turbina], in 2020. We were talking, and I started helping with little things. In 2021, I joined Artisant full-time.

Things were flowing, so I quit my job and took a leap of faith — which brought me to Miami. And since I joined crypto, never have I met so many bright, prominent people with open minds. Everyone has been very welcoming, even though I knew far less in the beginning than I know now. People were willing to spend hours on the phone with me, sharing knowledge. I think the welcoming environment encouraged me to stay.

4. How do you see digital fashion evolving over the next five years?

Looking at the last bull run, I think it was awesome, but it’s over. We have this romantic notion that we’re all moving to the metaverse, and our avatars will all need clothes someday. I want to see technology become a tool that makes people more well-rounded, sustainable — wholesome.

We have this vicious circle in the Western world of buying goods we don’t need. Brands manipulate us into buying things. Consequently, we need to produce more goods, and we have this vicious circle of overproduction and overconsumption. We have a situation where fashion, the most beautiful business in the world, is responsible for 10% of carbon emissions.

We have a huge problem at hand, and I see digital fashion and technology as a possible solution. We’re moving from the notion of building digital clothes for the metaverse to looking at how digital fashion can be useful right now. Look at Dior and their B33 sneaker collection with NFC chips built into the sole. It’s an amazing technology that allows you to link them to digital assets. So, this is a very good way for brands to solve the problem of counterfeit products.

5. You recently left Artisant. Where are you going next?

I’m starting consulting jobs, and I want to start writing more. For now, I want to focus on companies that deal in digital fashion. Companies that provide digital fashion services as an agency. I have a brand that wants me to consult their team, and they do an amazing clothing line that has augmented reality storytelling built into it. I’m sort of coming back to reality. Artisant was a digital fashion brand — but there was no physical product.

Seeing Artisant grow — not just in numbers but in real people who defined Artisant as their community — meant the whole world to me. But I came to a point where I gave everything I could to the project. Technology has a huge mission in reforming the world of fashion, and I want to contribute. While I am still pondering my next big professional adventure, I know it will be fun and will serve humanity.

6. What’s your life like outside of crypto?

I love having a balanced life. I have a dog. (That’s a hobby, right?) I play chess. For me, chess is a very important game that helps me a lot in business and in analyzing situations. I also like sports. For me, it’s very important to keep moving. Yoga has been part of my life for quite some time. Since I live in Miami, I do things like paddleboarding and kite surfing. And I take dance classes. That was one of my first dreams, actually — to become a dancer.

Rudy Takala

Rudy Takala is the opinion editor at Cointelegraph. He formerly worked as an editor or reporter in newsrooms that include Fox News, The Hill and the Washington Examiner. He holds a master’s degree in political communication from American University in Washington, DC.

Politics

The big mistake Labour think Nigel Farage has made – and how the chancellor hopes to capitalise

Published

4 hours ago

June 4, 2025

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The big mistake Labour think Nigel Farage has made - and how the chancellor hopes to capitalise

Next week, the chancellor will unveil the first spending review since 2021. It will set Whitehall budgets for the remainder of this parliament and it will be a big moment for a government struggling to tell a story about what it is trying to achieve to voters.

Rachel Reeves, flanked by transport workers in a bus depot in Rochdale, knows it. She came to the North West armed with £15bn of funding for trains, trams and buses across the Midlands and the North.

Much more will be announced next week when the chancellor sets out her capital spending plans for the remainder of the parliament, having loosened her fiscal rules in the budget for capital investment.

More is coming. Next week, the chancellor is expected to announce plans to spend billions more on a new railway line between Manchester and Liverpool, as well as other transport schemes for northern towns and cities. This will be the backbone of the “Northern Arc” that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has been arguing for as a northern version to the much-vaunted Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor.

Labour will pour £113bn into capital investment over the course of this parliament and there is an economic and political imperative for a chancellor to talk up capital spending in rail and roads, houses, power stations. On the economic side, she is in search for growth and hopes investment in infrastructure will create jobs and fire up the economy.

On the politics, Labour need to show voters in their red wall seats that it is the Starmer government and not Nigel Farage that will improve the lives of working people.

Ms Reeves spent a lot of time in her speech talking about the need to invest right across the country. She is overhauling the Treasury’s “Green Book” that assesses value for money for public projects to make sure that funding decisions don’t just get concentrated in the South East but are weighted to the Midlands and the North.

She also, in reiterating her commitment to her fiscal rule to not borrow to fund day-to-day government spending (the annual budgets for our schools, councils, courts, police, hospitals), sought to draw out the “choice” between Labour and Reform, as Labour seeks to capitalise on Mr Farage’s decision last week to promise up to £80bn worth of new spending – including scrapping the two-child benefit cap and increasing winter fuel payments – while not explaining exactly how they could be paid for.

Expect to hear lots more from Labour in the coming weeks about how Mr Farage is an iteration of Liz Truss, ready to pursue “fantasy economics” and trash the economy.

Labour are gleeful that Mr Farage has opened up this line of attack and think it was an uncharacteristic political misstep from the Reform leader.

“Farage was a politician for vibes, now he’s turned himself into a politician of policy and he didn’t need to do that yet,” observed one senior Labour figure.

But if that is the sell, here is the sting. While the Chancellor has loosened her fiscal rules for capital spending, she is resolute she will not do the same when it comes to day-to-day departmental spending, and next week harsh cuts are on the way for some departments, with Yvette Cooper at the Home Office, Angela Rayner at local government, and Ed Miliband at energy still wrangling over their settlements.

Ms Reeves was at pains in Rochdale to talk about the extra £190bn the government has put into day-to-day spending in this parliament in order to see off the charges of austerity as those spending cuts kick in. Her allies point to the £300bn in total Ms Reeves has poured into capital projects and public services over this parliament.

“You just can’t say we aren’t a tax-and-spend government,” said one ally.

But this isn’t just a chancellor fighting Mr Farage, she is also battling with those in her own party, under extreme pressure to loosen her fiscal rules, or tax more, as MPs – and her prime minister – demand she spends more on welfare and on getting the UK warfare-ready.

You can see it all playing out. After a local election drubbing, the chancellor U-turned on her seemingly iron-clad decision to take the winter fuel allowance away from all pensioners.

Now, I’m hearing that the prime minister is pressing to lift the two-child benefit cap (no matter his chief of staff is opposed to the idea, with the cap popular with voters) and MPs are demanding a reverse to some disability cuts (one government insider said the backbench revolt is real and could even force a defeat despite Sir Keir’s whopping 165-strong working majority).

Meanwhile, the prime minister is under pressure from US President Donald Trump for NATO to lift defence spending to 3.5% of GDP.

Spending demands and rising borrowing costs, there is no wonder that attention is already moving towards possible tax rises in the Autumn budget.

Ms Rayner, the deputy prime minister, wrote to the chancellor, arguing for targeted wealth taxes. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, told me this week on Electoral Dysfunction that he wanted more taxes on assets and a revaluation of council tax bands so those with large, valuable homes pay more.

“We have not taxed assets and wealth properly and I’d come up with something that can be controversial but council tax has not been revalued since the early 90s so there are homes in London worth tens of millions of pounds that pay less council tax than many average properties here in Greater Manchester so I would look at reforms in that space,” Mr Burnham told me this week.

“I would look further at land taxation and land taxation reform. If you put in new infrastructure, what I learned through Crossrail, Elizabeth Line – you lift the values of that land.

“So why don’t we capture some of that uplift from that? I personally would go for a land value tax across the country. So there are things that you can do that I think can be seen to be fair, because we haven’t taxed those things fairly.

“I’ve said, and I’ll say it again, we’ve overtaxed people’s work and we’ve undertaxed people’s assets and wealth and that balance should be put more right.”

I asked the chancellor on Wednesday if Ms Rayner and Mr Burnham had a point, and would she level with people that taxes might have to go up again as she struggles with spending demands and self-imposed borrowing constraints – she, of course, swerved the question and said the priority for her is to growth the economy.

These questions will, I suspect, only get louder and more frequent in the run-up to the budget should borrowing costs continue to go up alongside demands for spending.

The chancellor, at least, has a story to tell about rewiring the economy as a means to national renewal. But with the spoils of infrastructure investment perhaps decades off, Ms Reeves will find it hard to frame this spending review as a reboot for working people rather than a kicking for already stretched public services.

Politics

Senate committee to consider Trump’s pick for CFTC chair

Published

6 hours ago

June 4, 2025

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Senate committee to consider Trump’s pick for CFTC chair

Roughly four months since his nomination and amid announced departures at the CFTC, Brian Quintenz’s nomination to head the financial regulator is moving forward.

Politics

Canada will be left behind in the global crypto race

Published

10 hours ago

June 4, 2025

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Canada will be left behind in the global crypto race

While other countries move toward integrating crypto into their financial systems, Canada is lagging, costing the country capital, talent and competitiveness. Canada’s direction on digital asset innovation remains uncertain.