Eye of the Storm: Inside Thailand’s Crypto Winter - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

hello good morning it's nice to see a lot of familiar faces today thank you for coming out right early in the morning today after a lot of various parties last night so um nice to meet you my name is proud representing zip Max today for those of you who have not heard of zip mix we started off as a centralized cryptocurrency exchange we've developed to be a lot more than that and I'll tell you all about it today but first um let's talk about the elephant in the room so um I've been here for let's say the past 48 hours already a lot of people are asking oh zip Max that's the company of the news right on the front pages of the news I'm like yeah that's us a lot of people are wondering you know what are you guys doing here aren't you a distressed crypto asset exchange as Kylie said by my friend at the back of the room just now the truth is yes um we have been over extending our reach we start off as a crypto exchange but we have introduced interest-based products into one of our products so all four pillars included you know trading buy selling buy and selling cryptocurrency including having a C5 product which is a problem child at the moment we had payment products and we have we have three products so what happened was we were exposed to some of the shall not be named players in both Singapore and in the U.S causing a lot of confidence to be hitting rock bottom for us luckily um I'm not gonna lie you know it's been tough but surely and slowly we have been recovering it's been two months since we halted our withdrawals on our exchange but thank you so much to our loyal customers some of them are in the crowd today are confident investors and lots of Partners we're actually on the path to getting back to business as usual it's not been easy there's a lot of different Lessons Learned I'm hoping to share a little bit of them with you today but we're actually seeing a lot of renewed Confidence from our user base um we're seeing a lot of opportunities to build towards the future you know there's a little bit of a smiley face there are light at the end of the tunnel our customers are also a lot more savvy than most when we started in this business a lot of them did not even know what crypto was now since you know the last Bull Run has happened a lot of them are now really ready to graduate into web 3. so before I start talking about the future let me share some of the lessons that I've learned during the past two months one is you know controlling the narrative is almost impossible the day we halted withdrawals I had my phone on fire we had a lot of press reaching out to us um we've had you know tons and tons of news about how we were owing people thousands of thousands of dollars that is not true the Press is going to write what they're going to write um sometimes there are people that are you know going to say a lot of things that are not true but people will change your opinion as long as you honor your commitments and they see that you're trying your best what happened was against the advice of actually our legal counsel we went on a live we've been doing a live every single week we've been keeping everyone updated what's going on what's Happening and we were actually the first exchange to be giving back some of the funds to be opening some of our C5 products so that people can access some of the funds second lesson learned is nothing is more important than having an empathetic team dedicated and Relentless and of course strong customer relationships when we opened our exchange job in Thailand we thought there was going to be Banker on like no way No One's Gonna you know continue to stay with us or trust us but the truth of the fact is 75 of our AUM Still Remains today and that's that's amazing like for us I mean we thought that you know maybe this was something that we would take a lot longer to recover from but I think because of really we have teams that were just calling our customers explaining to them what is happening we have emails um going out to people every single day the fact that we have such dedicated people still in our team that are 24 7 going through what it is to be a customer and also empathizing with them I think that's extremely key and the third lesson is accept that you don't know everything we try to control the narrative you know we have this Relentless team but there's still some stuff that pop out of the blue so in this these kind of moments we just have to make do what we have and do the best that we can and when it's time to Pivot we decide that we will embrace it and we would commit it and so let me tell you about what we're pivoting into Saudis Asia and Thailand in particular is becoming a significant part of the crypto world for example Thailand is number one in terms of MIT users per capita that's a fact that a lot of people actually miss out in Vietnam you know Vietnam is the number one in the world in terms of crypto users per capita Philippines is number one in the world for having the total amount of metamask users these are extraordinary facts for three small countries that are in Southeast Asia and with new money coming in from a rising middle class 20 percent of Thailand's population now own some sort of cryptocurrencies people just can't get enough and a new crypto ecosystem is emerging that is why we believe that even within us in the eye of the storm in Thailand we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel and we're moving to something very positive you know to feed the masses countless nft marketplaces are actually popping up across of Thailand um yes we have one too it's called zixo the velor logos of all other collaborators and also partners and competitors so from building metaverse bankings nft postage stamps Festival tickets Thai businesses are flocking to web 3. if you are an investor or an entrepreneur in the crowd at the moment be sure to take note this is a country that you know is often overlooked in terms of what is going on but there are so many things that are happening and um Thailand's a nice place I invite you all to come and collaborate with us on something so what role can we play in all of this well we're actually using the crypto winter to build towards the future as I've told you being you know a C5 exchange was something that we thought was going to be commoditized sooner or later and so we want to make sure that what web3 premieres when the next Bull Run comes our customers will have front row seats how we want to be not an exchange but actually a whole crypto ecosystem and to do that effectively we need to build a multitude of offerings and so we start off with like I said launching our nft platform called zixel after we are done with cleaning up the mess in the house we are going to be launching 60 plus this is where we are converging arts and internet culture as well but for the launch of sexo previously we created Thailand's first digital event actually this might be the first in Southeast Asia to be fact and one of our partners shopping malls if any of you have been to the Parisian Paragon in Thailand we've turned the whole of the middle section into a crypto arcade now a crypto arcade sounds very you know confusing to a lot of people who are not in crypto previously but an arcade is something that everyone has been before and so putting in 90s Nostalgia making sure that everyone has a chance to just play a game then they start realizing this is not too different from what they've done before they're actually web 3 games or crypto games that could be fun we've had a live performance by a band as well both in reality at the shopping mall and in the metaverse and I'm going to show you a little bit of a video in in a short period of time I'll do the videos here so this is a zip mix building called zigzo that we built in the central land as you can see here you can go in you can see a lot of our partners um their nfts are there there's even a folder Booth up there any of you who's been in the center line is probably a little bit familiar with how this looks but for those who are not it's incredible how much you can do so this was during you know the peak of a micron and um in February it was very hard to gather anyone together at a period of time um what we did was we worked with a few Partners including Grammy which is one of the biggest entertainment companies in Thailand to bring the get to Nova band in real life and also playing here we had a single ready to mingle event as part of Valentine's weekend we had a scavenger hunt and we also had a DJ from Hong Kong the event was attended by 20 to 30 000 people on decentraland imagine packing that many people in during covet that's impossible right the things that we were doing we we knew this was going to be the start of something fantastic we're also building a living and breathing community space inside our Bangkok headquarters and we call it zip town so you've come to Bangkok please do drop by and say hi to us at zip town the goal is to merge real-life crypto communities with digital once and introduce this exciting new web 3 world to anyone who is interested with a fully built Stage bar with a polio Stage bar cafe Gallery spaces you know featuring everything from metaverse textile talks and the tea treasure hunts this is how we are rebuilding ourselves and our communities and this is how we are going to be showing a lot of digital fashion catwalks the new space will soon be open to public events will be amazing and of course you guys are all invited this is how we thought we are going to come back from you know being in the depths of literally are we going to survive the next day so now seeing light at under the tunnel we're getting an injection of capital very soon and therefore we realize that we have to look forward and step into the metaverse we also have a launch pad um this empowers customer with Advanced access to new crypto projects um you'll be able to farm some of the crypto projects that you would like to have access to think you know web3 incubator but also less of a profit motive more of just trying to really bring out the great projects out customers that hold our native token will also be getting Priority Access to gaming guilds early stage idos and a curated metaverse events and air drops and as part of the mission to make web 3 mainstream we are going to be collaborating with a lot more bands if you guys are in an entertainment business please do get in touch with us we are about to be launching a collaboration that we did with Vue which is a streaming Network they were in our office actually filming in our office the other day this is the start of having real-life utility to nfts soon you can vote for what is going to happen in the next episode of your favorite series in terms of department stores we are also collaborating with a lot of department stores for example um we are partnering up with a grocery store to launch something extremely fun in November just in time for Thanksgiving not only is mass adoption for just the private sector but also in terms of the public sector we're working with governments as well and Regulators also have to be on board so as true advocates for the you know web3 aspects we have been partnering up with the Asian Pacific economic cooperation Committee in Thailand Thailand is the host for this year in November so a lot of these meetings have been happening um this is the nft from from March when we first um did the the first round of meetings for them and it's a souvenir from the Thai government to all the international delegates that are coming to visit the country for these meetings that's kind of amazing right just think about it the government is giving out nfts as a souvenir and we're extremely proud to be a part of that pivoting a product also means we have to Market a little bit differently so what marketing language should we speak in this new web3 world I know this talk pertains to be you know a lot about zipx but I hope that a few of you would also get a few ideas of how you can also Market in your own way we feel that more than ever we have a responsibility to educate ourselves and also our customers so a little bit of a show we just launched a new web3 magazine it's online it's on medium it's on mirror and for special occasions such as token 2049 and also different conferences we're printing a physical copy so you can actually go and get a coffee at the back on the way out as well well you know those gentlemen and ladies holding at the back so here take one read it and let us know what you think because this is the this is the only way we're gonna get Mass adoption by educating and by also getting people to be on board reading something that you know looks fun rather than something that is a little bit boring too Technical and hard to understand [Music] we're also pushing production quality and marketing boundaries it's about I'm just gonna let this play for a little bit first [Music] to make sure people actually watch read and engage with our materials we make them look this good and so the eye of the storm is not that bad when you have a lot of creatives in the team that are churning out great production quality it really helps to get the message across and it really helps to get people to come in and just wonder what are we doing you know what is a crypto Revolution well we realize that our Revolution doesn't have to be scary it doesn't have to be something like the French Revolution the Industrial Revolution that you guys are seeing in the video it could be something that's a little bit more colorful and extremely fun we have a lot of Retail Partners but since crypto payments are on pause at the moment in Thailand we're also thinking of building the Bridging the Gap by issuing crypto gift cards for Thailand we already have a crypto debit card that is launched with visa for Singapore but this is Adam our new retail Ambassador come to Thailand and meet him he's pretty great I've been told that my time is running out so I'll just rush a little bit um so as we settle in the new world it's important for us to establish business objectives and also build a clear set of morals going forward how our industry recovers depends not on what we've learned but how we Implement those lessons you know it's nice to say that you know we have been through all this but actually there's a lot of lessons that we have internalized and positivity is key we need to build together towards the future and also get through this winter together to help encourage new users and making for information Empower them through knowledge we've launched a range of 16 courses through seven different platforms if you guys are in the education sector let us know we want to work with you we also Envision an industry that is truly ready to collaborate to develop and to promote each other the responsibility is ours it always was and these latest events have made it extremely clear that we will need to define a clear code of conduct and at the end of the day depend on each other one of my mentors once said on stage you know you're only as strong as the industry that you are a part of because we have to build together and support each other in all this so thank you so much for coming to my talk today thank you so much for you know being in the web 3 community and let's build this together thank you