While South Korea and Japan may be Asia’s top adopters of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, Vietnam is slowly rising. Vietnam’s two major cities, Saigon and Hanoi, are gradually becoming technology hubs of Southeast Asia. Bitcoin Vietnam, the first exchange in the small nation, was established in late 2013. The successful start-up has been working hard to bring quality blockchain education to the Vietnamese people and assist in running popular meetups in Saigon and Hanoi. The meetups have hosted talks from experienced programmers, miners, and investors. Bitcoin Vietnam assisted in organizing Blockfin Asia, in early 2017. Speakers included the well-known Andreas Antonopoulos. The company also has a remittance service that allows Vietnamese citizens to quickly receive money from abroad at a much cheaper rate.. They also manage the first Bitcoin ATM in the country, located in Saigon.

I recently had a chance to speak with the head of business development, Lennard Mulder from Holland, about the past, present, and future of Bitcoin Vietnam.

Can you talk about your introduction to Bitcoin and blockchain technology?

“Right before I left to travel to Vietnam which is about one and half year ago now I had a friend introduce me to Bitcoin, which is how most people get introduced to blockchain technology. At first I was kind of more interested in the price, but it took me a couple days and a couple of conversations with a lot of friends to make me realize that this was actually a huge thing.”

“I had never really thought about centralized powers, and the financial system before I discovered Bitcoin. I was really blown away by the fact that I hadn’t given much thought to those topics. I quickly realized that I had a lot of work to do. I had to read up on everything because because blockchain touches on so many subjects. It touches on economics, sociology, philosophy, politics, even psychology to some extent.”

“When I first got to Vietnam, I worked as an English teacher to pay my rent and buy food, then the rest of the day I would just spend researching. I’d watch videos on Bitcoin, read articles, join forums, and discuss with friends.”

“When I became quite knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies, I reached out to Bitcoin Vietnam and asked them if they needed any help. Now I’ve been working as head of business management for about one year.”

Describe the company and the blockchain community when you first arrived in Vietnam and how it has developed?

“There wasn’t really any meetups in Hanoi at the time, whereas in Saigon, there was already pretty well known community which had been running since 2014. There was only five people working for Bitcoin Vietnam, now we have around ten, and we extended to Hanoi.”

“The founder, Dominik, is from Germany and he is married to the C.E.O, and they both live in Saigon. We have a chief software developer from Germany as well, and four Vietnamese employees. Then it’s my colleague and I, who is also from Holland. We are the Hanoi representatives, but most of the company is located in Saigon. ”

-Andreas Antonopoulos at Blockfin Asia-

What are the demographics in Vietnam interested in blockchain technology?

“It’s mostly young people. As with every new technology the younger people tend to pick it up faster. Vietnam has a very interesting demographic, because forty percent of the population is below the age of twenty five so they’re very prone to be open minded to new technologies like Bitcoin and blockchain. There’s people that have referred to Saigon as a so-called Silicon Valley of Southeast Asia . There’s so many start-ups and a lot of fintech interest, also a lot of blockchain interest.”

Are you concerned about government regulations in the future?

“No, not really. The Vietnamese government is actively seeking advice from us. They’re not trying to cease communication and just ban or over regulate. They’re trying to create what you’d call a sandbox, a way of testing out regulations. So they’re pretty open minded about the blockchain ecosystem. They want to create a regulatory framework that actually protects consumers and customers.”

“The news in early November about “Vietnam banning Bitcoin” was a misinterpreted statement from the State Bank of Vietnam. They stated that Bitcoin is not a legally recognized form of payment, but actually what it was was just a restatement of the law it was already unrecognized, but not illegal to purchase and hold.”

How popular are the Bitcoin ATMs in Saigon?

“They are pretty popular especially to new investors, it’s a really nice way to to get into the system. A lot of people are worried about Bitcoin and it’s impossible to have any value because it’s invisible, so how can it how can it be worth something. If you show those people that you can send your Bitcoin to a machine and the money rolls out of the machine, that amazes them. We also plan on adding ATMs in Hanoi in the near future.”

Are there many blockchain based projects in Vietnam?

“There’s a lot of startups that are using blockchain technology because it allows for an ICO. It’s basically a way of funding your project through tokens, and a lot of people buy into it because there’s so much hype.”

“A company tries to get investments from from the public by creating tokens and then selling them and later have a use case on their platform. This a way for a lot of startups to raise millions and millions of dollars, and most of these start-ups raise all this money without an actual working platform. If they fail to create this, and there is no actual usage for the tokens, they become valueless and investors lose their money.

“Bitcoin Vietnam tries to educate people about blockchain technology.”

Do you have any advice for those wanting to get into a blockchain related field?

“Right, so if you’re if you’re a programmer I would definitely, definitely research cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, because in my opinion this is going to play an even bigger role in the future.”

“Digital currency exchanges are always looking to get like more user friendly front-end interfaces and faster backend software.”

“Ethereum is a very interesting platform to to learn how to code on it has its own programming language called Solidity.”

“Many blockchain programmers will learn the theory and eventually start writing decentralized applications. The more people turn their energy towards blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and developing decentralized systems the more use cases we will come up with.”