Driving Blockchain Adoption in South East Asia | KBW2023

hi everyone um because I'm the moderator of this session so I'll take the opportunity to introduce myself first uh my name is David I'm one of the partner at Mirana Ventures we invest in web tree funds and um web tree projects as well and I'm predominantly based in Singapore so very happy to have with us today uh pretty amazing panelist uh will let them introduce themselves starting with Edison before we dive into some of the questions we have this afternoon hello everyone so uh my name is Edison I am from basap um so I think you might be wondering why is that like uh I think just now on the uh like screen that's like B and SAR uh so we are basically like payment company we have like two products one for payment acceptance and one for basically like a wet Tree Bank so this wet Tree Bank is like a consumer app that allows you to spend your stable coin directly from your non custody wallet so it's something as simple as this right so it has has like a Visa card that you can basically use it to spend anywhere I've been using it in Korea to basically spend for anything from Apple Express to my hotel State and uh it's something that we have just went live two months ago and it's it's getting a lot of tractioned so um it's a Singapore based product so if anyone here is best in Singapore or wants to register for weight this year uh you can go to our website and and and uh make a make a make a request there yeah passing on uh yeah hi everyone uh I'm John for our Network and um yeah we building the layer one chain uh for M adoption and also building for the emerging cultures so right now at the moment uh we are one of the top uh aan chain in Vietnam yeah very nice to meet you yeah hi everyone my name is t I'm the founder of coin 98 uh wallet um a lot of people know us as a u you know one of the first contributor in Salona back in 2020 uh and then I think like time FES we lucky have like 6.5 million users right now across the world and then uh with um you know supporting 70 chain as well um and you know yeah I'm very excited to uh join in a SE today with like scaling the user base and like growing in Asia as well great thank you very much T So to begin the panel I ask the very generic question for to all the panelists what about southeast Asia that you find the most exciting at this point of time and if there's one country within southeast Asia you think you should spend a lot of time in where would that be okay so let let me go first um I think know what make me interesting about like southeast Asia Market is like um I think like you know everyone's in like like southeast Asia Market being known I think except Singapore um you know is it's a country that you know being known for it's just a kind of like you Emerging Markets where everyone is looking for opportunities everyone is just willing to take risk and and I think you know uh the infrastructure structure for like you know mobile phone and internet in in Southeast Asia I think it's pretty good and then like it's laid down a very good foundation for crypto where everyone's um you know the populations in in Southeast Asia is like you know a like concentrated and and you know is um it's a Young Generation over there um everyone is looking for new opportunity willing to take risk and then um you know it's just like a perfect Community for for crypto where is a new uh Technologies um you know like you know um a lot of people uh looking for opportunities um new technologies could be you know entered into crypto with their phone um so that would be the most like you know interesting for Southeast Asia uh market and then you know I'm probably bias but like I think you know I'm growing up in Vietnam like grow building co9 in Vietnam as well so I'm a bit like bullish on on Vietnam with like you know contributing a lot into the um you know the growth of um of like crypto in Southeast Asia but I think like you know I also you know um have a lot of community members in Thailand Indonesia Malaysia Philippines um this Market is also very interesting as well um so again I think like you know for me um southeast Asia is just like a young like an area that you know have a lot of young um entrepreneurs and so people looking for opportunities and and that's a like wonderful opportunity for crypto um so I guess I can uh go next so uh I I I was born in Singapore and also basically spent most of my growing up days in Singapore I think Singapore when say service Asia geographically Singapore is part of s Asia but it's kind of very different because in Singapore itself is a lot more stable it's a lot more uh I would say that things are a lot more regulated so you really can't do many things that uh even like if you were to do like it chewing gum you would get fine it's kind of like stupid but that's like how sou Singapore Market is um I but I will describe like Vietnam and also like Thailand or rest of South Asia as a place with like lots of opportunity and they are also growing very fast um the the first time that I went to Vietnam was actually like 12 years ago I as a student I backpack across the whole service Agia in three months so if you're actually planning for like a trip to you could actually do that um so so I think something that I recall back then was that Vietnam was a very different place uh CH years ago and they grew a lot in the last 10 years uh right now Vietnam is very is very busy there's lots of things going on it's very well developed and I think as a country they're just growing very fast so there's lot of opportunity there um in fact I think many crypto people are also in Vietnam um other than qu 98 and AA that's also like kyber network is also there so it's very uh vibrant place to be yeah yeah I I think you're right that we I also bullish in Vietnam because uh not not not because of I'm Vietnamese but I I think that because uh southeast Asia countries uh they are they have something interesting that they adopt very frast with many news right so every users every Young Generation like T said they can adopt they can learn self learning and everything the skill is really good and they want to adopt the new things and in Vietnam also because of Vietnam the people they are really good with mobile adoption W adoption as well as a developer SK uh developing skill and uh some something that interesting in in Vietnam that they can learn the new language very fast so I think that is in Vietnam but some other country we also have yeah like Indonesia like Malaysia and Thailand you're also good for your crypto and grab tree as well got it so it sounds like Vietnam is the choice of the self Station Market I realized I asked a very biased question I should have like cave that initially so we hear about it being a mobile friendly mobile First Market we have about a young population who's willing to take risk who is willing to try out new technologies so if there's one challenge that you think you have to deal with while working in the southeast Asia Market and you have been facing as you are growing a company growing your user base what would be that challenge and how do you manage to resolve it so maybe this time around we start with uh John yeah for me yeah all right so oh I I think one of the challenge when uh you have so many user because I think soue Asia with sou Asia you can grow the number of user very fast you're in Vietnam in Indonesia or Thailand but to educate all of them to understand your application to have bring the good user experience UI and also you bring more something good for them to use for a long time and keep them in gas with you for a long time I think is something is challenged for some project so so easily just you can allb the users but how to keep the user inside your project inside your application or inside your infrastructure so the the product Builder the Builder need to think more about because the user experience in Southeast Asia is something different they want to try the new always way need to update new thing new things every day by day so I think maybe something for my side uh so what have you done to kind of capture the users on the platform a bit more do you give them more product features do you give them like more gamification process what have you done so far I I I think that um okay we give more feature but we need also to play with each other so in Vietnam in we three we uh we have a strong partnership also like K but we also play with some web to partner that's very traditional partner to to do some go MK for we uh we trying to uh integrate our AA Network inside some Mass application like in Vietnam right now we also integrate uh AA with the top one ubai logistic application so at the moment they have 8 million users and around 100,000s 100 thousands uh drivers so we we try to do something like the right to earn for the users and also the dri driver and integrate inside the application so yeah user have more room to use Web Two users also have more room to understand what it web tree and yeah have a time to play with web threee got it thank you very much um so T I have a question for you so you have obviously expanded outside of Vietnam as well you have presence across the southeast Asia country uh what tips would you give to some of the audience here today when you're expanding outside of Vietnam and considering say Indonesia and Thailand where do you think is the easiest country to go in and what have you done that make you so successful so far I think that you know every countries that have a um so this is used to be our challenge back then when we trying to scale you know c98 you know outsides of Vietnam uh the the biggest lesson learns to me is like southeast Asia is a like it SS like a very special um you know regions where you know um a lot of countries um in this era have different cultures speak like different languages as well so um the biggest lesson learned for us back then is localization is really important um when you for every Market that you get into um you have to like understand the culture um you know understand the like um the customer Behavior how people you know what kind of um like you know protocols that you're using the most in that like you know countries and like I think like you know you better want to have some kind of local uh people in there uh in order to like grow in the market um that's where is my biggest lesson learned of the last couple years in you know when scaling in this market and um um and I think you know like for example uh talking about like different culture different countries different like user behavior um taking defi example um I think like back then when you know when defi summer kick in you want to see you know a lot of people in in in Thailand is very interested in low you opportunities so like you know probably know when you farming um transs coming out um you know a lot of people coming out from Thailand that's also the reason why you see you know back then when like lunar still a thing you go to Anchor the top traffic is always come from Thailand because like these people uh the people in these countries is very interested in low you opportunity low risk o like investment kind of thing um but in Vietnam you want to see you know they showing up in kind of like Perpetual trading protocol so they they willing to take more risk um and then if you go to like Indonesia it's more creators nft stuff and then you know we went to Philippines it's more gaming um so I was say you know the the behavior um in different countries is also very different so it depends go like scaling in Southeast Asia doesn't mean that you need to go everywhere um you have to have a very deep understand about what product that you're offering and then what kind of a user base that you're looking for from there you research you do market research and you trying to figure out what would be the market that would have that kind of like user Behavior fit in for your your for your protocols got it so when you consider user behavior and user preference do you also customize the type of product you enter the market with because for coin 8 you have a suite of different products right the wallet and stuff like that so how how have you managed to navigate it yeah I think for for the wallet side I think a wallet is pretty basic stuff but what we do customization is like you know for every Market we're trying to partner with like different types of Partners so like for example like you know if you go really if I want to scale into like Thailand Market I'd rather want to partner with like some kind of like product uh and projects team that really offered you like you opportunities to Thailand and I just partnered with them to go into the Thailand Market but if I going I want to like scaling the user base upco wallet in Philippines I rather want to work with gaming companies and then like just like enable a more use case in in that area as well and it's and then and for Indonesia more nft stuff so like wallet is a pretty I think it's pretty basic like uh you know def5 modro um that you know you can pretty much add into every single use case uh but then the way that we scale and the way that we marketing qu in this different countries is also different got it thank you very much the suggestions on localizations is extremely useful so we talked about working with different partners to enter different markets so my next question is for Edison actually so you're predominant based in Singapore right now could you share May with the audience what type of Partners been working with and when you think about moving beyond Singapore what kind of like Market entry strategies would make sense um okay so in our case because we are a payments company we are a lot more operating like a f tech company right that we have to find the licenses in every country that we go um so to us like going to Market is not just about like working with a uh team with presence there I think awareness is great but we also need to make that all these things are are are practical for us uh also it makes business sense for us so so as a cut issuer we have to look into basically what's the debit card penetration rates in the country so um and that's also where maybe some countries like say maybe say Indonesia is not using debit cards that much A lot of people prefer to use go which is like the local payment Gateway there so it might not really make a lot of sense for me to to operate in that market uh but there are also some markets that have very high High penetration rate like Korea for example I think I would wish to bring my my my my product to Korea because there's so many like Merchants that accept credit card here um so another thing that we are also looking at is that the ability to issue like debit cards are also dependent on region uh every card number that you see on your credit card it belongs to a like uh like a certain country so um in all case we can only issue for Singapore at the moment but we are actively working on Hong Kong uh to basically expend our product I know that's not part of Southeast Asia but just wanted to mention that in uh uh in here as well in case there's anyone from Hong Kong uh sing here um so yeah I think the reality is that maybe we are kind of very different because we are a payments company we are uh we have to work with like licensed player to to be is to be able to offer our products so our go to market and expansion plans will defer somewhat with like wallets out there and also like layer one chains like uh like these two guys over here yeah got it so I heard that your growth from a user and transaction perspective has been quite significant on a big on big basis uh maybe you would like to share a bit with the audience in terms of what you think You' have been doing correctly from the that contributed to growth and how do you see your growth happening more in the future okay um okay so I think that the Contex here is that because David has known me for some time uh we we previously started off with a crypto payments acceptance Gateway so that allows Merchants to accept like stable coins for their business uh so we only pivoted the Bas that very recently I think we only got the appr we applied to with Visa all the way back in February but we only got the uh approval from Visa uh in in around June so that's when we first managed to to basically Market our products because like when you apply to with a Visa directly you you cannot Market your products until you get approved so um so since like June when we got our first approval we we did our first marketing we were quite impressed with that just within a few weeks we we got like thousand plus like signups from from all over the world uh so that was very interesting for us because like to us when we when we started this we did not manage to actually get all this like with Le so early on um so but I think that like and and since then when we we live around like two months we grow on the weekly volume of like 35% every week um so it's pretty impressive in the early stages uh we are looking to scale this up like uh like uh as we go in fact we just like triple our cut holders like in the last week so just because like we want to get everyone a card in 2049 so if you actually are based in Singapore and you are also ATT 2049 you might be seeing many of B app cards like going around like the the the the country so um in fact what I think what attributed to the growth was that we did a few things that are uh interesting number one is that when you use B app topping up your card is 0% fee so this is instantly different from your crypto.com or any other debit cards that are out there I know there's plenty of like uh crypto debit cards out there but they would usually charge between 0.75% to 1% for top up in basap is 0% so it's a very cheap way to actually offramp because uh off ramping also cost around 1% in Korea it cost 0.5% in Singapore so when you offer 0% off R that's like something that users are are are happy with that uh that that significant like savings uh and in in that case we still make Revenue because as a cut issuer we make revenue on interchange fees we we take the revenue from the merchants um so it's a win-win situation because the merchants still still can accept payment from you and it's great for consumers because you you pay lesser amount in fees so this created a lot of like natural like um like naturally a lot of people with crypto who wants to spend a lot of people in Dows they that they make salary in stable coins they they like to use our product and I I think we also see many of this like Founders that they apply for all cut and they put their company expense on the card so that they can spend for the subscriptions or AWS bu because um because it lowers the operating cost of like expenses um I think other things that we found is that people like to use the card to buy luxury items so we also on the at hot basis increase like some of this like spending limits for people if they want to buy something and they know that they are going to buy like a like a luxury watch like uh like rxs right they can actually like get a temporary increase in the credit admit yeah I think just now also uh Trump I mean was also talking about it that people like to buy like luxury items with like crypto so this is like how we are thinking about it so writing the consumer behavior and preferences is important um yeah so Jo going say something oh for for me yeah yeah you talk about Mass adoption and something but for me there a few things for us we we we try to convert one of our strategy is convert the web to users to web three users because so many things web three users they got a lot and we also try to convert the Giant in web 2 to web 3 as well so right now we talk with some also we we try to talk with some very famous IP in Japanese for example or L manga IP to get attraction for the users also we both web and web uh and also in uh web to convert we try to plug inside application that I said that we try to play with some local giant local giant is very important because they know they understand the user they got many users they got a really good user experience right now so we we play with the local live chant and yeah we try to in input oura inside this for example so I think that one of the key for G Master adoption we can play with the local Giant WE convert web two to web three also understand as much as possible some famous IP some interesting thing for web 2 and also for web fre So based on that uh we can convert many Web Two user to web3 and bring the new users for your application for your project because sometime uh when some some people asking me that how to convert a user from another chain to our chain so we don't care about that we say that we can get a new user so some some users from another chain they may come later or they may can try or experience our chain later I think so sounds like your experience from converting from a web two user to web users has been quite effective for our Network I just try to understand because this is like the holy grill for a lot of projects right the conversion of web2 to web3 users is quite defate so what what do you think you have done correctly or is it because of the function of the markets they are targeting in Southeast Asia that people are generally more receptive ah yeah I think it's interesting question because uh conver to gr free users you need some strong relationship you need credit uh you need something like a strong partner as well so for us because we we get support by one of the very strong partner a big Tech giant comp a giant company for ICT in Southeast Asia and we also we have a really strong relationship with many big player and big player in the local market so that is one of our strong point we feel confident that when we talk with those we can get a deal we can yeah we can talk with more user and we can talk with more player so maybe that is something that differentiates from AA to another CH I think so got it thank you and uh since we have t on the stage as well I know that if anyone wants to enter the Vietnam market and s s Asia Market they will most likely have to work with you in some capacity so how do you usually work with new projects new Web projects trying to enter the Vietnamese Market how how can they collaborate with you and what's the engagement form it um yeah I think like you know come back to like like the previous point that I mentioned like um enter to like you know southeast Asia Market doesn't mean that you have to go everywhere um so for some of the market that like for example if you're are offering um very low you interest rates uh kind of a product uh it's very hard even like you know we can I think it's better to have um um you know is is better to have like building a um a community of like token holders um in the countries and people really believe in your Visions but um they might or might not use the the product um then that that would be a better fit than like just like trying to like spend a lot of money on trying scale of users um user base of the product over there um but if like you there's like some product that uh you really fit into um the customers behaviors of uh Vietnamese people then that would be something that we um we can help so it's really based on you know what they really need and sometimes we I mean you know sometimes like you don't even need to get enter to Vietnam Market is much better because like um it's really bad when you're spending a lot of effort and and times and and money and resources into Vietnam market and then you get nothing because like you realize that you know your product is not is not perfectly fit for the market um so like I think for every partner that want to enter to Vietnam I just want to sit down and talk like and trying to figure out what they really want in the market and based on uh our experience with the local market we're trying to give them like a lot of uh thoughts uh that we think it's my work for them and it's my you know and something uh if there's something that we think that is is might not work then we also like like disclose to them as well so I want to make sure that they have like a better understanding about local market before they start like spending any resources into the market got it so out of curiosity like which of the projects that have worked with you to enter into Vietnam Market you think it's a good success that you want to share I think salana is a very big success in Vietnam right now I think if you went to Vietnam right now I think like Sal Salona education adoption is way better than ethereum yeah you went to every every University right now you have UC Sala is that a function of the the applications that's available of Solana or is it because of how you manage to get the interest of the so that's a combination of with a lot of things um so the Federation understand how different uh how important it is to understand the the like local uh culture and um and landscap and then we have them you know uh to find the best um you know like the best people that can like execute what they want to what we believe that you know is going to help them as well and then these guys is doing amazing job based on our recommendations um and also like you know I give huge amount of credit to Salona to really spend the the the resources when they already see the results and scaling the effort in Vietnam as well so um like you know like again again you know you go to Vietnam right now you went to any like you universities you see a lot of of activities with Sala and uh I think like that's something that a is trying to like do with a similar adaption as well but like I think acept like AA Network um for for you know companies outside Vietnam and Salona is like really good use case with our help I'm a bit tempted to ask like how is solar compared to Aura network but I I I would not ask this question on stage so um J I have one question actually you mentioned about working with corporates right because the backing of the or network is also a corporate right sizeable ones what would would that be the recommended approach to enter into Vietnam Market you think or is it because or or you prefer like some other developer communities Ang girl stuff like that and what would be some of the challenges and perks of working with a corporate because from my experience I think sometimes corporates don't quite get web free or they don't really understand the technology but you seem to be doing it in a very successful way so curious to understand a bit more about that as well I I think maybe uh for corporate sometime they they don't like crypto but they like the blockchain so they like the technology beside uh behind uh the crypto uh for example if you want to enter I I want to talk about you enter Vietnam market and you want to get more developers because you know that in Vietnam right now you one of the top actually is a top one for the master adoption also for the developer as well you have an I I think that when you enter the market yeah the developer in Vietnam they can understand and they learning quite fast so if you yeah if you can understand uh the vam maret yeah you can talk with the developers I think it's be good things so maybe when some uh project I mean when some project when enter into Vietnam uh want to acquire more developers and they need to understand the the culture but they need get also play with some uh big developer pool or some corporate or some Enterprise they have many developers like IP for example if viam F right now they have 100K developers yes a huge food developers so with uh when you play with some corporates in Vietnam and they buy in for blockchain they can support you as well yeah for learning for training educate developers and you can get more developers can support for your project like ywan CH the s for appos for every kind of chance yeah got it got it and back to Edison I just wondering let's say if there's a partner or a company here project here they're trying to expand into southest Asia and then first thought was Singapore would you tell them it's a right choice or would you tell them it's a wrong choice uh I I I I think that that it really defers on what kind of like objective you're trying to get right if you are trying to get number of users Singapore is not going to help you with that number of users because we only have like six million people in Singapore you have like maybe a few times more in Vietnam so it's if you're optimizing for number of people it doesn't really make sense but if you're finding like a hit Q like a like a base I think many people many companies actually incorporate in Singapore and they have like basically they they use it as a HQ to do other things like because Singapore is just so friendly on on the regulation side you're not going to get any issues on the bank uh if they know what you're doing of course you have to be very clear with the bank to tell them that you're are working on crypto and then but currently the regulations are are are pretty friendly towards like crypto companies um so um if you also looking that but I think it really defers I think this question is not easy because it really defers on what exactly you're trying to get out of like Singapore if you're trying to find developers in Singapore is going to be very difficult yeah you have to uh I think that my my company is very rare because like all our Engineers are in Singapore but that's because me and my co-founder we are we are we're developers ourselves so we know other other Engineers but it's not the case in other countries that that if you don't know anyone in Singapore you're trying to hire in Singapore it's very hard to find Engineers so most of most of time people will start HQ in Singapore but they higher engineers in Vietnam higher engineers in uh in in Thailand or or Malaysia because that that's easy for you to to to get across to to to basic game manag developers yeah got it I I think to add on the some point Singapore probably will be a nice place for a regulatory Clarity Place uh the framework is quite established and maybe the second point will be for Capital fundraising that's probably where most of the VCS and investors are based in uh I know that times it out so I just do a really quick summary so when it comes to going to soueast Asia markets we need to take into the pros which is mobile friendly and reising kind of population very eager to learn and then each of the markets have different strategies maybe you are creative project you may choose Thailand first if you are a high kind of variability when it comes to Dex trading you may choose Vietnam first then low you Thailand but regardless of the product then there will be multiple ways whether through local place like them or through corporates and developer community so with that uh I'll wrap out the session I think we are running over a hit of time thank you so much for your time everyone I hope you have an enjoyable rest of the day as well thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] everyone