Luis Buenaventura | BloomX | 2020 Year in Review
Luis Buenaventura: We’ve always been a focus area for small- to mid-sized crypto projects, but 2020 was the first time that the major players started to make substantial resource investments here. The PH crypto market is still growing, but the community is passionate and ready to join the international arena in a big way.
December 22, 2020 — Every person you ask will say the same thing: 2020 is unlike any other year.
The cryptocurrency industry felt the full brunt of the pandemic, as evidenced by the March 2020 crash. Nine months, one Bitcoin halving and a couple of institutions later, the industry sees a resurgence in interest brought about by Bitcoin hitting and breaking the psychological all-time high at $20,000 and reaching a new one.
What is the 2020 Year in Review?
BitPinas sought the opinion of key crypto and blockchain leaders/influencers in the Philippines and abroad on what they think about 2020 in general and what they look forward to in 2021.
Luis Buenaventura is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Bloom Solutions/BloomX. Luis is also the artist behind the brand Cryptopop and has written Reinventing Remittances with Bitcoin and co-authored The Little Bitcoin Book.
BitPinas: What does your organization do and what is your role in it?
Luis: I’m one of the founders of BloomX and spend most of my time thinking about our broad crypto strategy. I also lead our trading operations and host our weekly show The BloomCast.
Please share a personal highlight for you and/or your organization this year in the crypto and blockchain space.
2020 was a really challenging year for the world in general, but the constraints of the lockdown forced us to find new areas where we could add value to the industry and our local community.
A couple of highlights:
We pivoted heavily into the retail crypto trading space this year, and performed over 20,000 trades with new customers in the months during the lockdown. We did this primarily by trading on Paxful.com and P2P.Binance.com.
We also launched the BloomCast, which is our crypto news show focusing on info that’s relevant to the local industry. We do this show every Tuesday night, and it aired its final episode for 2020 last December 15.
On a personal note, my Cryptopop art brand did 4x more sales this year than all its previous years combined. I launched the first two sets of my “Bitcoin: A Visual History” art series — my homage to the legacy of Bitcoin — and got a pretty great reception from the art collector crowd. I’m hoping to complete the third batch of that series before Q2 2021.
What do you think is the most important blockchain/crypto development in the Philippines and globally in 2020?
A lot of people will probably point to MicrosStrategy’s bitcoin treasury move as the most significant, but I actually think that from a mainstream perspective, Paypal’s built-in Bitcoin trading is more of a game changer.
Big corporations making BTC investments will have a significant impact on the price for sure, but Paypal potentially gives 350M *normal* people a convenient way to get direct exposure to crypto price movements. (Their customer base is 3x larger than all of the current crypto users in the world.)
In a world of non-stop USD printing, I think that is far more valuable in the short to medium-term, as our fiat wealth grows ever weaker.
How did the pandemic change how your organization operates? Or how you’ve changed your approach?
Our retail trading now accounts for over half of all our trading volume, and it’s propelled us into a space that is a lot more customer-centric than we’ve ever focused on previously. Our weekly BloomCast livestream is a big part of this change, as it allows us to talk to our customers in real-time and re-introduce ourselves to the community.
What is your fearless 2021 crypto prediction or forecast?
(BITPINAS NOTE: NOTHING SAID HERE IS AN INVESTMENT ADVICE. )
Bitcoin in the $50k to $60k range seems quite likely in 2021, but I’m more excited about the massive amount of international interest in the Philippines. We’ve always been a focus area for small- to mid-sized crypto projects, but 2020 was the first time that the major players started to make substantial resource investments here. The PH crypto market is still growing, but the community is passionate and ready to join the international arena in a big way.
What do you personally look forward to in this space?
We’re not quite ready to announce it just yet, but BloomX is cooking up something for early 2021 that will knock everyone’s socks off!
Follow Luis on Twitter and Find Bloom on Facebook.
This article is first published on BitPinas: Luis Buenaventura, BloomX, 2020 Year in Review
