Peter Ing, BlockchainSpace [PH 2019 Crypto & Blockchain Year in Review]

December 21, 2019 – Depending on who you ask, 2019 is another turbulent year for the crypto and blockchain industries. Globally, we’ve seen companies refocus their efforts or merge with others to survive. In the Philippines, we’ve read about more pending regulations, developments in the space, and more education drive. BitPinas sought the opinion of people who work in the blockchain and crypto industry in the Philippines, including leaders and influencers here and abroad on what they think about 2019 in general and what they look forward to in 2020.

Peter Ing is the Country Head of BlockchainSpace Philippines advocating education and adoption of blockchain technology. Peter organizes meetups and events, including the Fintech Summit this year. Peter’s BlockchainSpace is also a consultancy offering solutions like enterprise development for blockchain companies.

Can you please share the latest developments from your company/project/group this year? 

Since May 2018 we hosted over:

• 10,000 Visitors
• 65 Events
• 100 Speakers
• 3 Industry Forums/Hackathons

We continue to advocate 3 things:

1. Awareness
2. Adoption
3. Education

We do this through hosting events with industry leaders, participating at conferences and on-campus talks, hosting hackathons and workshops and providing advisory services.

Inclusive Prosperity Fintech Summit – April 6 & 7

This year we are very proud to have co-created and co-hosted the Philippines first independently led Fintech Summit with our community partner Blockdevs Asia, workspace partner Acceler8 and technology partners SCI, EOI Digital, and Oost and Voort. The 2-day event comprised of a Fintech Forum and a Blockchain Hackathon running simultaneously and culminated in project pitches from enterprise & developer teams presenting business and technical learnings from the weekend.

In 2019, we hosted over 40 events alone (more than 3 per month!) So this was a busy year for us and we had the pleasure to welcome new faces to the scene including: Token News, Holochain, Decentralize.Today, GiZ, MakerDAO, Axie Infinity, Battle Racers, Loom, Fomohunt, Paxful, Illumin8, Waves, BTSE, Urban Greens, Huawei, and the new blockchain association DLTAP.

On top of this we had the pleasure to support 3 book launches from the local community:

• Earl Dorado – Bitcoins and Blockchains for Beginners
• Luis Buenaventura – The Little Bitcoin Book
• Jay Villarante – Blockchain – A Catalyst for Good Governance in the Philippines

Please share a personal highlight for you this year in the crypto and blockchain community.

As above. Additionally, I am personally excited for the NFT (non-fungible token) space. As well as blockchain games such as our own home-grown Battle Racers where you can buy, trade, invest in-game virtual assets, there start to be some very relatable usage cases that will appeal to the more general public such as NBA Top Shots – owning history-making moments of an NBA game and most recently Nike’s patent for tokenizing shoes to prove authenticity.

What do you think is the most important blockchain and/or crypto development in the Philippines/Globally in 2019? 

As a sector overarching player, we have felt the challenges in the Philippines first-hand. We constantly strive to look for ways to support the industry and look for viable business models ourselves.

2019 was particularly challenging for enterprise blockchain companies. We were saddened to see the closure of SCI Blockchain Technologies (SCI’s Enterprise Division), MergeCommit and just recently ConsenSys.

We are however still encouraged by the continued perseverance of communities such as Elastos, Binance, NEM, and OKex.

Blockchain as an emerging technology continues to be brutal in its maturation and the sad truth about retail adoption is that it’s still primarily driven by speculation and money-making schemes such as gambling apps or high-risk high reward applications.

What is your company/project/group looking forward to this 2020 in this space?

We look forward to continuing support of the current communities in the Philippines and driving our 3 advocacies: Awareness, Adoption, Education.

What do you personally look forward to in this space? 

1. More retail applications that are not insanely complex to participate in. Seamless applications that do not require technical expertise.
2. More sustainable ways to monetize through what we love by adding value to the industry and to the community.

What do you see for the Philippines in 2020 in this space?

Based on the existing business environment:

• Continued emphasis on Education (Online/Universities/Workshops)
• Continued drive for retail adoption of Cryptocurrencies (P2P/Brokerage/Trading)
• Continued piloting of innovative blockchain business models by larger corporates and financial institutions

Hopefully, we see clearer regulation around how to deal with digital assets, many still operate in grey waters and it scares many companies and individuals from operating in this space.

Follow Peter Ing:

• Peter Ing on Linkedin and Twitter
• BlockchainSpace on Facebook and Twitter
• Blockchain Advisory Asia

This article is published on BitPinas: Peter Ing, BlockchainSpace [PH 2019 Crypto & Blockchain Year in Review]

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