NEM Philippines: The Country Can Provide Blockchain Devs to the World

As NEM Philippines successfully celebrated its first year anniversary with its partners at Punta Mandala bar and restaurant on September 1, 2018, its executives gave a short speech about the blockchain platform’s vision and direction.

NEM

According to Mr. Nelson Valero, Council Member of the NEM Foundation, the team envisions the Philippines as the number one source of blockchain talent and use cases.

In a quick interview with BitPinas, he shared that he wants the Filipino to be associated with blockchain. He envisions that every time any person in the world says “blockchain”, they will think about Filipinos and their talents. This is one of the reasons why the team is also coordinating with educational institutions like Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University to introduce the technology to the younger generations.

Read more: NEM Philippines Signs Blockchain Partnership with Ateneo’s AMBER Lab

Read more: NEM, CEZA Collaborate to Build Blockchain Hub in PH Economic Zone

Mr. Richard Tiu, Strategic Alliance and Partnership Director of NEM Philippines also gave a short speech about the shortage of blockchain programmers in the world. Even big blockchain companies still lack manpower. A company, he said, even offered USD 9,000 a month but still couldn’t find any. “We can supply them,” Mr. Tiu said. With the country’s high number of graduates, he sees the Philippines as a good supplier of programmers to the world.

“We have to step up and be the first! We have to be the first mover before everybody copies the Philippines. … We are supposed to take advantage of our English Speaking (skills).” – Mr. Richard Tiu, Strategic Alliance and Partnership Director, NEM Philippines

Representatives of blockchain projects built on the NEM platform were also present in the event and gave a short speech.

LoyalCoin

According to COO Paolo Bediones, the loyalty platform project LoyalCoin was initially supposed to be built on another platform but was soon convinced to build it on NEM. Today, LoyalCoin is one of the flagship blockchain project originating from the Philippines.

In addition, he also shared his thoughts about blockchain and cryptocurrency in the country.

“The Philippines, we are geared to be the thought leader in blockchain and cryptocurrency. … Blockchain and cryptocurrency is a great equalizer. Now, if you have a great idea, great team of developers, you have a proper use case, and a sound business model, you can actually make it in this kind of business.” – Mr. Paolo Bediones, COO, LoyalCoin

In terms of regulation, Mr. Bediones was proud to say that “the Philippines is one of those rare countries” where its regulating bodies, such as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are “not just curious but ready to embrace the concept of cryptocurrency and blockchain.”

C Estates

A tokenized real estate exchange, similar to the usual exchange but instead of trading stocks and crypto, C Estates trades properties.

Mr. Eli Becislao, Project Manager of C Estates shared that before talking to NEM Philippines, they only had the concept in mind and also thought about putting it on a different platform.

“You don’t choose your platform because you’re biased, because you love this token, you love this coin. You choose your platform because it’s appropriate for your business.” – Mr. Eli Becislao, Project Manager, Cestates

Since the company’s tokens are now a NEM mosaic, Mr. Becislao shares his experience, saying that the NEM platform is  “easy, not time-consuming, easy to integrate, easy to deploy, and you cut a lot of expenses”.

KryptoFootball

KryptoFootball is a non-fungible token project running on the NEM blockchain. A trading card game that can give its owner rewards based on the player’s performance in real life. Each “asset card” is created differently and represents one football team or one football player. These asset cards can be bought and owned by participating in the game’s Crypto Auction House.

CashCart

CashCart is an online global shopping platform that uses the NEM blockchain and ProximaX to handle its storage. According to Mr. Fruvy Rivera, Founder and CEO, the project started eight months ago and is still on Beta. The team hopes to launch it by October this year.

Mr. Rivera added that they just recently finished working on its own e-wallet and invites other NEM partners like LoyalCoin to do interoperability in its system.

The BitPinas team was able to talk to Mr. Rivera and he said that the company is not there to compete with big online shopping sites such as Lazada and Shopee but to give customers an alternative option.

Learn more about CashCart: NEM & ProximaX Adoption Project: CashCart