Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Anson Zeall: Blockchain in Singapore and South East Asia

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

We were joined by Anson Zeall, who is one of the leaders of Singapore’s blockchain and FinTech community. We discussed how the Singapore ecosystem evolved, why it became a popular place to locate cryptocurrency project, its current regulatory framework. We also dove into some of the projects he is currently involved in including one involving tokenizing cows! Topics covered in this episode: The evoluation of the Singapore blockchain ecosystem and role played by ACCESS The favorable mechanics of Singapore’s regulatory regime Singapore’s experiment to tokenize the Singapore Dollar on Ethereum How Anson’s startup CoinPip uses Bitcoin as a payment rail in South East Asia Sentinel Chain and its efforts to provide financial access to the unbanked The upcoming Singapore blockchain conference De/Centralize Episode links: ACCESS: Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Startups, Singapore CoinPip Sentinel Chain InfoCorp - Rebuilding Inclusive Fintech Singaporean Dollar Tokenized Through Ethereum’s Blockchain by the Monetary Authority of Singapore Singapore Becomes Favored ICO Destination for Blockchain Cow Token White Paper De/Centralize 2018 This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/225

This is Epicenter, Episode 225 with guest Hansen Zeal. This episode of Epicenter is brought you by Shapeshift.io, the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to swap your digital assets. Don't run the risk of leaving your funds on a centralized exchange. Visit Shapeshift.io to get started. Hi, welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and startups driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution. My name is Sebastian Kujo. And my name is Brian Fabian Crane. We're here today with Anson Zeal.

He is the chairman of the Association for Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Startups in Singapore. So also Access. It's quite a name. But yeah, basically an association for kind of blockchain startups and companies in Singapore. He's also the CEO and co-founder of CoinPip, which is a blockchain startup out there. And they're co-founder of Infocorp, which is doing some interesting things about another kind of blockchain project out there. So Anson is joining us today to talk a bit about some of these projects, but also about, you know, blockchain in Asia, what's going on there, what's going on in Singapore.

We know, of course, everyone reads about that, lots of activities over there, but it's something that we have not covered a lot on the podcast. I really look forward to diving a bit into that. So yeah, it's good to have you on the show, Anson. Thank you for having me. So I guess being started there, right? So you have been involved in the blockchain space also for quite a while. How did you originally end up becoming involved in the blockchain industry? So my background is in computer science. I've been working at a accounting software firm for quite a while.

And then I founded my own hedge fund. And then 2013 got to know about Bitcoin whilst playing a game. World of Warcraft back then. And then I was quite shocked. I thought it was just another sort of gaming currency. But once I actually read the white paper, I was actually very interested in it. So being in computer science and also in finance, Bitcoin was just right at the intersection, fintech for me. So from then on, it was a lot of work, working as a startup and working, talking to the government, engaging with the government.

It's been, yeah, it's been quite a while already. So at that time, I guess you lived already in Singapore. Was there anything going on? Were there activities? So the startup activity was already brewing. So I am originally from Hong Kong. And then because my family is here in Singapore, so we moved over here. But we were already comparing the different startup ecosystems.

Because as a hedge fund perspective, we're seeing a lot of, of activity, a lot of money going into startups, instead of going into stocks, especially back then with all the Facebooks and all the Googles, raising all the funds. I thought we should have a look into this space. So we have seen that the Singapore government has been really pushing for a lot of different grants, a lot of VCs coming into Singapore, back then even in 2013, before fintech became big. So innovation was basically the key for Singapore, whereas in Hong Kong, I don't really see it only until recently. Hong Kong has always been a hub where fund management, traditional companies, gateway to China, that was all the main marketing words.

But where Singapore, it's innovation, lead the Singapore to become a very different sort of Singapore to the old generation. That was what I was marketed, and they do walk the talk here. And just so to clarify, but at the time in 2013, what was there in terms of startups? I mean, I do remember there was a company called 8Bits, you know, in Singapore. Can you talk a bit like what was there? Were there different companies? What was the kind of activity?

What was the interest? Like meet up, startup, like specifically around Bitcoin and blockchain? Yes. Back then, there were a few companies, including Ibid. So, IPB was actually not the first Bitcoin exchange back then, now cryptocurrency. Bitcoin exchange back then. There was actually another earlier one started by a local here. And the activity back then was actually very, how do you say it?

Even the government thought, oh, this is nothing that big, let these guys have a look. But Ibid was trying very hard to talk to the government to explain to them the next, the big potential. of cryptocurrencies. This was back in 2013. But the government here was still, I guess, not even at the learning stage. They was just thinking that it was just another sort of startup trying to come to us to explain what it is. Little did we know that they started learning quite a lot until in around March 2014. That was when the central bank here, MAS, first issued a note announcement saying that we will start looking and regulating virtual currencies. That was the term that they used. But in terms of regulating, it's mostly on the anti-money laundering

and the counter-terrorist finance sort of a framework when regulating, not as a currency itself. So back then, even when Access, which started in May 2014, when we spoke to the government, then, they were still in a wait-and-see mode. I know they were already researching, but they were not really seeing any big implication affecting the financial system here in Singapore. So back then was just all research and even when the hacks happened in elsewhere, for example, in Mount Goggs and many different exchanges, Singapore only just issued notices. But it was very obvious in 2015, things were ramping up. Governments now are doing, the Singapore government now is doing their own, trying out their own

is Singapore dollar, which is the project Ubin. So definitely they're using this project to understand the blockchain ecosystem even more. But to answer a question back then, it was the entrepreneurs that started trying to approach the government first, but the government was only just starting to see a glimpse of it, but they weren't really active back then in 2013 and 2014. Okay. So it sounds like the Singapore government and sort of has a, you know, a very hands off approach to regulating these new technologies and more of a proactive approach.

At least that's the impression that we get from here. Is this historically how they've also looked at fintechs in the early 2000s? Are there similarities to how these authorities are handling sort of blockchain with regards to other technologies that may come before it? You're right. So Singapore is a very pro-business sort of country. Even in their recent national budget, how they explained where the money will be spent, the whole stance was being very pro-business, pro-innovation.

And the managing director of the central bank here already said very clearly that innovation will always front-run regulation. So in terms of if you compare to other central banks, yes, the fear here doesn't set in quickly. They're not fearful of new change. they just want to make sure that when there's new systems or new innovation that comes in once it becomes very big, then they want to make it more orderly. But if there's people trying out new things, they're very happy for people to try things out, as long as it follows the framework that what Singapore wants to do.

Do you have any insights like in the sort of coming from Europe, that's a very interesting standpoint, right? like from the European perspective. Can you talk about maybe what economic or cultural reasons are behind this sort of approach? Yes. So if you think about it, Singapore was basically, if you know the history just in short, was sort of like a breakaway from Malaysia back in the 1960s. So Singapore does not have any natural resources. The only thing that they had was nearly less than three.

million people. So people were the only resources. So how the founder of the country, Mr. Likwon, you founded it, was trying to make sure that people do work hard, protect the country, need to find new ways of attracting more capital. So now that our founder has just, of the country has just passed over in 2015, now the new leaders of this country are trying to push it to the next level by saying, what can we do, that is different. So Singapore is doing things not on the perspective because they want to take advantage of it,

but it's more like they have no choice. No choice, what I mean by that is they have to innovate. If they are just staying still, doing nothing, only plain old investing. They basically say Singapore would not have another chance. They would not get a bailout. So the point here is that if they see an opportunity, it works well,

Singapore would want to take advantage of it. So that's why it links to the part where we're saying innovation definitely has to trump regulation. Because if regulation comes up in front of everything, then they can't see any new sort of innovation that may help the country in the long run. Interesting. And can you also talk about the role that Singapore plays? I mean, historically, Singapore has been positioned very much as a trading hub and as a hub for commerce, you know, dating back centuries.

Now, with the rise of fintech and these other technologies, can you talk about, you know, Singapore's particular role as a hub moving forward? So it's actually on the national agenda for fintech to grow big. But as we know, fintech has many different legs. Blockchain is only one of them. So there's like crowdfunding, robo advisory, even a bit of cybersecurity.

So the whole fintech league is, what the government here wants to push. Because they see it's just the next evolution to themselves, because they are the financial center in Asia, one of the financial centers. So the next step, obviously, to the government is to push financial innovation, which is fintech. So blockchain definitely is one of the pushes,

but it's also the reason why access, for example, doesn't merge in a very blunt way of saying, with Singapore Fintech Association is because blockchain is not only just, it's not only fintech. You can go into insure tech, gaming or whatever you want. It's just a, it's just a platform. Where Singapore Fintech Association is focusing on the different areas of fintech, and only blockchain is a subset of the whole, whole layer that they have. So basically, what Singapore wants to do is they're trying to push the next step. After now the financial, after the financial crisis, we have seen the fund flows into private investments much more.

Even, for example, the sovereign wealth fund here called Tamasek, many of the investments are basically large unicorns. And they are seeing that the IPOs and all that would definitely be delayed, would definitely grow less. And seeing how things are moving, they are also looking into how the crypto space, people using the crypto space to raise money, and and not just looking at the old ways of doing things. So basically not only for capital fundraising, but also how to make Singapore as a smart nation, which is also their main agenda as well.

So Singapore has this reputation that it's a favorable place for blockchain startups. In terms of regulation, can you speak a bit about, you know, what are some of the, you know, are there particular regulatory policies or what are the kind of approaches that Singapore takes? So I need to, because everyone is saying the same thing, so I need to get the context right. Singapore looks like it's a very favorable place for blockchain startups. The main reason is because, for example, when they talk about their securities and futures act,

what is concerns as a security, what's not, they will say ABCD is a security, but EDFG is not. They will be very clear in their actual legislation. Unlike the US, US has this line that we all know, if it smells like a security, looks like a security, it is a security. This stance is very different with the US where they are being much more blurred in thinking what a security is.

They can even blanket the whole thing. So it's just that for Singapore, they are very active in saying what a security is. And therefore, if people know and clarified, to know what it is. And for example, all the utility tokens that come in will not be within as long as they don't function as what the Singapore law says.

However, however, even though they are being very upfront with the legislation on the Singapore Securities and Futures Act, they have been very clear in saying that anti-money laundering law frameworks and policies must be in place for anything virtual currencies. So most of the access members that did ICOs, actually nearly all now, would have to do white listing, have to do KYC, not like the very first ICOs where you just put in an address and then you can start putting in your investments. This is a no-no now because if you just do that, it's very hard to fulfill the AML standards that Singapore wants. So Singapore is happy to see new innovation.

I'm in very close chat with Central Bank colleagues to the point where we even use WhatsApp to ask questions so that they can get the information very quickly from me even with enforcement agencies as well so we're at that level when we're speaking but obviously when we have something more serious we have to sit down and meet with them face to face but yeah the thing about Singapore which I find

super interesting is that they will actually come down to the grassroots to meet with the people to understand what's going on. Not many central banks are actually like this. So the main difference, as you can see, is one, they are very clear in what they say it. For example, what security is. They would not blur the line. And two is, once there's something new that comes about,

they actually come down to talk to you. So that's why we, in terms of WhatsApp casually, just to understand what's going on, We talked to the central bank, talked to the enforcement very normally on WhatsApp. You talk to the regulars on WhatsApp? They actually do. Because Singapore has a very different way. MES is not just the central bank.

MES has many different arms where in a way in U.S., there are many different regulators that you need to approach. Whereas in Singapore, once you approach MES, MES is yes. Then basically everything is a goal. Okay, so within MES, there are many different pockets. For example, there's the FinTech ecosystem, FinTech and Innovation Group, which deals with all the fintech developments. And within that, there are three groups.

There is the ecosystem development. There's the regulation development, so developing new regulation, and there's a compliance. Okay, so the compliance is obviously compliant with all the new regulations that come about. So what I'm trying to say is it's basically a one-stop shop. Once you can talk to them, they understand from the top down, then everything can be very smooth. So obviously the trade-off is because they are the everything,

it sometimes can take longer to go to every single level to get what you want. But on the other hand, like the US, there are many different regulators you need to go to. if you have one regulator that says yes, maybe you can go with that regulator and start doing your startup according to that regulation. But unlike the US right now

is many different regulators have different regulations and different definitions of what blockchain is. So this has become a very challenging point for the startups there. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's a very great point.

And just as you bring that up, right in the last days, there were, you know, I think the SEC, saying basically everything is a security at the same time like FinC and says, okay, token sales can be money transmission, CFTC is saying their commodities, right, and all of them being mutually exclusive, right? So I think the US is actually going to become a bit of a nightmare to run any kind of blockchain startup. And it's interesting the point you made about securities too,

because Switzerland is actually a similar thing, right, where they have kind of, you know, pretty clear rules. okay, this is security, this is not a security. And of course, that's that I think was also one of the main reasons why a lot of Project state token sales from there, right? Because they could basically have this clarity that, you know, okay, it's not a security. And also that people don't like later change their mind or that you have some kind of certainty

if there's a particular decision made. So yeah, that's very interesting. So today at this point, Singapore is still like a popular place to do at open sales, and do you think that's going to remain like that? There's a lot going on behind, but in the long run, yes, I'm pretty sure from our dialogue and all the conversations, they are very, I see it as quite a positive thing that they want the startups here to stay in terms of their blockchain startups, even the ones that do ICOs and stuff. They just want to make sure people are doing it properly that don't violate

the existing regulations. So, because this is, this is an opportunity. Because for Access, more just for last year, the Access companies that did ICOs total to around $220 million of ICOs that was raised. And these are just Access members that did ICOs. And because Access has a very, I will call it a unique position. We're very different from the Chamber of Digital Commerce, even though we're partners. We focus on grassroots. We focus on the startups and be the voice for the startups.

Whereas, for example, CDC, they're focusing on the large corporates and working with them to get the blockchain in a layman way, to say, legitimize, but through the large corporates. We're doing it through the startups that were super small. Now after they do ICOs, they became pretty big now. And from then, that's how we speak to the government. And government, not only the MES, different parts of the government are seeing that crypto is a very good potential for Singapore as well. That's really fascinating and encouraging.

So what would you say, I guess, to say an American or European looking for a favorable jurisdiction to launch their ICA, like, What kind of advice would you give them if they're considering Singapore? So first is Singapore, definitely, if they want to be based here, for example, must understand the laws. That still is the most important thing. So if you want, for example, most Europeans would still consider Switzerland as a base for doing ICOs. but what I'm seeing in the long run where Singapore would move towards to

will be quite similar to Switzerland in a way where the guidelines that come up from the government will be the guideline that everyone would be working towards. So to answer a question if Americans and Europeans want to come in definitely we all welcome all the international

startups, international blockchain startups Singapore is here to become like an ambassador which I'm not not trying to be. But what I'm trying to say is it's actually very like comparing to the jurisdictions even in Asia. I think Singapore still is a very favorable place. As long as you follow what they say, look at all the announcements, look at the legislations, and just follow the rules here, basically. So should people contact you directly? Should they want to base themselves? Well, they can be part of the community at access. We welcome everyone. We have foreign membership. We have local memberships as well.

and then we have a group for all the different members. I have to say our members are super helpful, especially for the ones that did ICOs in helping out the ones that are doing. So we do welcome everyone. And for example, when the Chinese banned the ICOs back in September, we do have many more Chinese members joining access as well. So in a way, the more countries that different countries ban,

seems like it's more favorable for Singapore. But at the same time, we need to make sure Singapore is the start-ups here are doing the right thing when they are doing the ICOs and post-ICOs as well. So let's talk about Access a little bit. So you're the chairman of Access. Now, how many members are part of this organization? So we have over 190 members now and over 100 corporate members in total. Just as a comparison, the first year, we only had 10 members.

No one wanted to join. No one actually cared what crypto was. And obviously, in 2017, the number of members actually increased exponentially. But so we are the voice for the whole community. So, for example, when governments here, especially MAS, when they need to issue consultation papers, this is the first step before they actually put a pass a new law in the parliament. they would usually ask different industries to give comments. So what access has done is we have given comments,

aggregated all the comments from our members, and submitted it to different regulators to tell them what our association, what our members think. So we are the voice for them. We are also basically trying to get the education up for the laymen, working with different partners, local partners here. And obviously, as a whole, promoting, promoting to everyone the use of blockchain, good use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

So you said 190 members, so that's 90 startups, right? So 100 enterprise and then perhaps 90 startups, is that right? Yes, around now. It's reached 100 now. Yes. So they are individual membership as well. Okay. And so these startups, when they come to you, are, so you mentioned there were Chinese startups that had started flooding into Singapore after ICOs were banned there. Are they mostly Singaporean companies, or are you seeing a lot of influx coming from outside of the country? So setting up a company in Singapore is actually relatively easy. So many of the, even the Chinese startups, set up as a Singapore company and then get a local membership. Unfortunately, Singapore is a finance center, it's a business center, anyone can open a company very quickly as long as they follow the rules.

So once they have a company set up, then they can just apply as a local company. But we know that they are actually from China setting up their new basis here. And so you said that you had a number of partnerships with the digital change of commerce. And I believe you're personally also a member of the Singapore. Fintech Association and you have a partnership with them. Yes. You know, as an organization that is sprouting up in this new space, you know, I assume the Singapore Fintech Association has been around for quite a while and they probably

had to deal with a lot of the same things that you're now dealing with in terms of dealing with the regulator specifically. Can you tell us like what you've learned from them and sort of what types of insights they're providing you as an organization? Actually, it's the other way. Singapore Fintech Association is actually much younger than us. They started back in November 2016, 2016. Yeah.

Yes. So it's more like once they first started writing up the Constitution access, actually gave input to them. So what happened was that there was many different associations. Like there was a Fintech Consortium, there was NICT consortium, there was NICS money. there were many different fintech associations and what we wanted to do as a community is basically consolidate all of them.

So yes, fintech associations has been around for a long time but a single united association only started back in late 2016. But the things that they're going through now, obviously because fintech is the national agenda, they're working more closely with the government relatively to what access is on many, many different matters, how they're interacting with the government

were learning as well, because I'm also on the board of the Fintech Association as well, which I'm helping to lead the blockchain agenda there. So to answer your question, the things that they're learning, for example, how the expansion is done throughout the globe, like Fintech Association has done more than 40 MOUs with multiple FNACPERS. FinTech associations and I think even non-fin tech associations as well. So from there, all that I'm learning also is where I'm passing along to the access community there. This episode is brought to you by ShapeShift, the world's leading trustless digital asset

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was that Singapore had tokenized the Singapore dollar. Can you talk about, you know, what happened there, you know, what kind of was that project? and what do you think will come out of that for the future? So that project is called Project Ubin, U-B-I-N. I don't know where U-B-N came from, but I know some places in Singapore is also called Ubin, so like some small parts of the places they can go in Singapore.

But anyway, so that project is not mainly as E-S-S-Sing dollar that is made from that project is not for mainstream use. It's to test for financials. settlement between different financial entities. So in a way, what will come out of it, it's still not clear. But the central bank, like the chief fintech officer, Senator Mulhanti has said, we will see more mainstream use in, we will see more big use cases for Project Ubin around 2020.

So they're still taking their time to do more research and understand what's going on. But yes, the e-sync dollar that they tested was a chain done on top of Ethereum. So, but what are the use cases that will happen? We're not sure yet. But e-s-sing dollar right now is not for retail use. Okay, but there was use of that between financial institutions or? Yes, so they've got multiple banks to come together to test the use of it. Yes.

So are they actually in alpha beta mode to test between? Yes, I believe they are. But it's still very tightly knit between the banking institutions themselves. Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's still a pretty interesting and pretty cool kind of first attempt. Although I do think is that maybe for that kind of use case, it could happen quite quickly, right, to have some kind of settlement-type thing between institutions. I mean, personally, my feeling is for, you know, actual kind of cryptocurrency that, like,

end users will hold issued by central bank, then it's probably quite far away. Yes. I mean, in the way, I've been thinking, like, the question, what happens if every central bank issues their own digital currency? So number one in my thought is definitely it won't be just restricted to banks, okay, because that's the whole point. They want to reach out to more than just the banking institutions. So if all the different central banks started issuing their own,

maybe very soon different fintechs can connect to the different central bank currencies and do something with it. So in a way, it's actually a much better environment for fintech overall, but it can, in my view, it can actually hurt banks if banks don't continue to add value. because I'm pretty sure these digital currencies, you may need to apply a license or something similar, but definitely it won't be just restricted to banks in the long run. Cool, fantastic.

Well, so beyond Singapore, of course, there's a lot of activity in different countries as well in Asia. At one point, we heard a lot about South Korea, Japan, China. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, What do you think is most interesting which country and that people may not be aware of in terms of what's happening there? Well, I think most of us in the worldwide community has been reading the news in China. For example, when we say the Chinese are banning ICOs, kicking out all the exchanges. But the trend is very interesting where these Chinese exchanges are coming out after the ban and growing even bigger than before.

as we have seen for Binance, OKX and all that. But overall in Asia is a very, very interesting story where we cannot combine a whole Asia as one whole ecosystem. Because China's problems are very different to, for example, Southeast Asia's problems. Most of the Chinese today are a bank. Now, if they don't have a bank, they definitely can use Ali Pay or WeChat Pay to make payments or to store value. Japan is also the same.

Japan has been looking at decentralized currencies, actually back then since 1999. So I was at a workshop with the Asia Development Bank, which the top levels in that bank are Japanese ex-central bankers. And they were saying when Bitcoin came into the scene, it had the right ingredients. They were already in the process of, trying to legitimize Bitcoin, even when Bitcoin was already around 2009.

So that was Japan. In Korea, as we all know, super tech. Anything tech? Basically, it will get into the hands of the Koreans. Whereas this part of the world in Southeast Asia, Singapore is like an oasis. Nearly the whole country is banned. We have more mobile phones per person than in the whole region. outside, when you just step even into Malaysia, you have at least 40% that don't have bank accounts.

And when you step in the whole region, Myanmar, Cambodia in total, there's over 70% or percent that do not have bank accounts. So that's why blockchain is a use case. Governments here are actually very favorable because they do want to connect all the unbanked. Whereas in China, they already have a very big banking system or a fintech system already in place. they will have a different mindset into thinking how to treat the cryptos and the blockchain companies. So you can say all the way from China down towards India, it's like a spectrum of very developed countries, fintech-wise, and down to super not developed, which is Southeast Asia and India, for example. So we basically, even in this region, we learn from the Chinese.

A lot of Chinese come here to do the talks. We go to Shanghai to meet them. Definitely, they have a lot of new ideas. And they need a test bed to test all these financial inclusion projects. Hence, that's why many of them, even from Japan, are coming into Southeast Asia. Even pre-blockching days, many Japan VCs are investing in Southeast Asia already. Interesting. So this sort of ties into our next topic, which is specifically,

your activities and the different companies you're involved in. So we'll touch on each of them. One is CoinPip. So you're the founder and CEO of a company called CoinPip. And you're also involved in another project called Sentinel Chain. So we'll also talk about that. And these two projects sort of tie into this idea of helping the unbank, but also payments. So can you describe maybe starting with CoinPip and what's problems you're sort of? solving there. Like, in the, in the, in the context of this, of this region, what does the payments infrastructure look like, you know, especially when you cross borders going from Singapore to like Malaysia or Cambodia or China or any other country in the region? Yes. So this part of

the world, Southeast Asia, the payment landscape is super fractured. For example, you cannot have like PayPal using in all, uh, all the different Southeast Asia countries. Uh, Because many people don't have bank accounts. And if you want a PayPal account, you need a bank account to get verified. So many different entrepreneurs are trying to find a way to link up the different countries. For example, we have Uber's competitor Grab, which is the largest car sharing company in Southeast Asia. To me, now I consider them as a fintech company more than a car sharing company. because they have a wallet that can be used throughout the whole region

and partnered with the different banks working with them. And also listening to Roy, when I worked at Roy, the CEO of Infocorp and Sentinel Chain, it was very obvious to me that the banks are having a hard time to link up the whole region because the tech talent is different, very sparsely different, the languages are different, it's very hard to link everything. So what CoinPib was trying to do and then Sentinel, it's actually part of this whole story. CoinPip was trying to serve the underbanked, what wasn't really the unbanked. Because especially one use case is the travel industry, there are many travel sharing sites.

For example, there is room filler, another company similar to Airbnb called Rumorama back then. they need to send very small payments into Indonesia, Thailand, and so on. Because many of them don't have one, the PayPal accounts, so you actually have to wire the money to them. But the amounts can be as small as $30. Okay, so $30 U.S. dollars. And then if you actually do a bank wire $30 U.S. dollars, it's not possible because the fees is already $30. So what CoinPIP does is we leverage on cryptocurrencies as a rail, working with a deal, different exchanges. We are able to leverage on all the different exchanges, including monetizing

on the arbitrage, obviously, and then charging the customers on a very low rate. For example, if they want to send $30, we can do it. We only would charge 30 cents. Definitely, you can't do that through the banks. And many of the payments are of this sort of amounts. And what they only have is a bank account and not extra payment services or added value services on top. And what types of customers do you have? Are they mostly like small businesses or where are they located geographically? So to be honest, most of CoinPips customers are actually Singapore-based international customers. So most of them, for example, are companies that exist maybe in Japan, but they want to take advantage of the Southeast Asia market.

And so they set up a company here in Singapore, and then we are basically helping them in a way to deploy capital. So the money that they sent to us, we help them send to their employees in different parts of Southeast Asia, even amounts as small as even $100 sent to their employees, and also send to their partners. And the people that are, the companies, yes, they are usually small businesses and high growth startups,

especially in the travel industry. Because the travel industry has a big problem with foreign exchange, where most of the recipients, like the partner hotels, boutique hotels, travel experiences, they want to receive local currencies. They do not want to take the risk of a foreign currency. So we are able to help them convert into local currency and send straight to their bank account. But the problem with, obviously, for CoinPip is we can only target people with

with bank accounts, but they're underbanked without the services. Here's where Sentinel then comes in where they can target people without the bank accounts. Cool. Yeah, I mean, that's such a, you know, straightforward and good business, right? We recently did an episode with Elizabeth Versiela, right, of Bit Pesa, right? It's quite a similar model, it seems. So there is another project called Sentinel Chain. Can you talk about that? Yes. So I know Roy for quite a while. He's been with us since quite early access days. All he talks about, which I love about it, is financial inclusion. Because he has been working. He was the director for doing the payments infrastructure for Singapore. He was also the advisor for the payments, local payments infrastructure for Thailand. And then he was telling me about all the different problems that he's facing.

He wants to unite the whole region, even that's what the ASEAN countries want to do. But he's saying that from top down, it is very hard to do. In order to actually unite the whole region, you need to go bottom up. And the cheapest way, or the most efficient way to go bottom up, is to leverage on blockchain technology. So one of the main use cases here is actually a big population here is also the farmers. So one of the main use cases where I explain to people what Sentinel does is basically where farmers today in this region, most of them do not have bank accounts. They either have their normal local cash or they may have a few livestock, for example, a cow,

a pig, a goat and so on. So what usually happens today is like this. a farmer needs to farm and harvest, let's say it takes them 12 months. But on the 12th month, they usually don't get the harvest because there may be rain, the soil may turn bad, something goes wrong, and then there may be delays. It's during the delays, that's where the farmers get into serious debt. So what usually happens is they either go to a loan shark to borrow more money at a very high interest rate, or they have to sell off their livestock at a very low rate, at a market rate.

because there's actually no market there to do the exchange. Okay, or even get a like, bring the livestock to someone and they can lend you money. There's actually no facilities today. The only thing they can do is if the cow, let's say, is worth $500, they have to sell it for a very low price. Even at a discount of at least 50%, for example. So what this project is trying to do, especially this use case, which is one of many, is that we can actually actually make tokenize the livestock. For example, we use the cow as an example. Say the cow is worth $500. We make 500 cow tokens out. Okay. But the farmer only needs 250. So instead of selling

the whole cow for the cash, the buyer now can just buy 250 tokens. What he then gets is portion of the milk, portion of the profits from that cow. So this is a collateralization process. And then afterwards, let's say all the harvesting is done, he gets back all the money, he can buy back all the tokens up, and then he can start the whole process again. He doesn't need to pay the profits to the buyer. But now what we're not only trying to do is just to help the farmer, but we're linking all the different local communities within Southeast Asia to the whole network that can communicate with the crypto world. So basically what we're trying to do is bring the crypto money to help. help the unbank. And this is the project that, as I see, because we already have projects on the ground that are doing it, that can actually make this happen. So this project is being launched

by a company called Infocorp. And so what are the other types of use cases? You mentioned that this is one use case of many. Can you talk about some of the other applications for Sentinel Chain? Yes, so one of the main things, if you understand, explain the context. When we say fintech, we usually just link to payments, which is not true. There is payments, there's wallets. We also need loans. We also then also need insurance as well. So it's like a whole triangle of services, add value services,

in order to actually provide the whole framework for them. So what we also, what this Sentinel Chain offers is a B2B marketplace. And we already have some partners that are in insurance, for example, Crowdo, banks that can help out on the loans. And we also have community projects that can happen. So not only just for collateralization, crowdfunding, insurance, payments, cross-border payments as well. But basically, these are only all the use cases that we only, can think of right now. The thing is because Sentinel Chain is a platform for all the B2Bs,

meaning that later on, if another financial service wants to come in and want to target the farmers or the unbanked, they can think of new services and just join our community to serve these unbanked people. Okay, interesting. So we'll link to the, there's actually a white paper called the cow chain. Cal token, yes. Cow token. which I was skimming through earlier and is sort of interesting.

So can you tell us about the sort of state of that project? You know, where are you at and what's the roadmap? Okay. So right now we have the projects already on the ground working in BMR. So you can see on the sentinel hyphen chain.org that site we did a demo on how we used the RFID tag on the livestock. on the actual cow itself. So we're developing all these tags. We already signed and we're used with the different community owners to get this project started.

We also have a project in Singapore itself where if you come to Singapore, you'll see many of these buildings built by people from Bangladesh, from Myanmar, from India, for example. We have this term calling them construction foreign workers. So there's this dormitory that we work with. with in the west part of Singapore called the Tuas Dormitory, where we are going to make the whole dormitory cashless. So dormitory is not just for sleeping. What they do is all the shops, it's like a whole ecosystem there, but just that once they finish work, then they actually will go and travel back there to sleep, to sleep and daily things. And so one of the use cases

is one of when this whole ecosystem becomes cashless, and let's say at home, they have a family member of the farmstead needs to collateralize a cow. Then instead of just sending money to them, or a project that's someone they may know of, basically they can leverage on the sentinel chain, send from the Sentinel chain from Singapore, into Myanmar, for example.

Because the main part of Sentinel chain is that we can actually create multiple small local chains for different communities. And for example, there may be different communities within Indonesia. So there may be three different local chains. And those three different local chains can connect to our major main Sentinel chain, send the tokens over to someone in Myanmar, for example. The whole point of what Roy wants to do is to make every transaction across, at least across Southeast Asia, to be free.

Once it's free, then basically you will have much more commerce done within the whole region. So in short, to answer your question, what projects we have? It's the Tuas Dormitory, which is going on. Myanmar, which is working with the MOU signed with the insurance and with the different community owners there. We also have projects that were looking at. working to work into in outside of ASEAN as well, Bangladesh, for example. Great, interesting. There's one topic I want to touch on, which is sort of unrelated, but

you wrote in your blog that, I think it was on the coin pick blog, that you felt that public blockchains were not necessarily the right solutions for financial inclusions, and that I think you wrote that private blockchains would be served for the last, sort of the last mile, right? So between the blockchain, the public blockchain and the user. Could you expand on your reasoning behind that? So a use case for me, myself, would be good for public blockchains. I can hold Bitcoin, ether.

I actually don't mind the volatility and don't mind spending just based on the public chains. But the thing is, when someone earns an income of $500 or less, which is for most of the countries here, the rural parts of the countries in Southeast Asia, movement of a single dollar can be quite a lot to them. And so when I say private chains, it's basically having the denominated currency being linked to that local national currency. currency. So for example, it's a E-Indonesia rupee where it's backed by real Indonesia rupees. That can be connected to the public chains. Because once it's like this, then they don't need to, they already don't have a bank account. So they also need to onboard themselves with real, like, digital currency, and that's already education costs there. And then if they have to deal with volatility, that's another step for them to take. So that's what I mean.

Like for financial inclusion, for the unbanked, public chains are still too volatile. I know, to me, okay, I know a lot of people, I will spur a lot of arguments here today. Because a lot of people have said that Bitcoin in the long run will become less volatile, or even cryptocurrencies in general in the long, long run. I actually disagree. We have stock markets here for like over 400 years, we haven't seen that being actually less volatile at all. By definition, because public chains are by the public to actually price what the token is worth, you're bound to have volatility, unless maybe something like base coin or tether or something like that. But if it's a free floating coin, you're bound to a volatility.

And volatility may be very too, maybe too sensitive for the unbanked. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that's absolutely true, right? If you have small amounts, then of course, the only way that you could have, you know, real mass adoption from public cryptocurrency would probably be some kind of stable coin type thing. Well, I think volatility is reducing, right? It's not as high as it used to be, but it's, of course, still very high. And I agree with you that it will remain, you know, substantial and probably more than what many, you know, relatively poor people can tolerate.

So before we wrap up the show here, I want to talk about a conference, and that conference is decentralized Singapore. And so this is a conference that where I'll be speaking and where Anson will also be speaking. And so decentralized is a conference that's being organized on April 5th and 6th, it's happening in Singapore. And it will showcase the blockchain ecosystem in that country and also in the region.

So, you know, who will attend entrepreneurs from the region, also investors, regulators. And what people can expect to learn there is some of the regulatory aspects, sort of the market dynamics, the applications that are being built in that region will be talks about blockchain. I, blockchain and financial inclusion. And so if you want to attend that conference, again, it's happening in Singapore on April 5th and 6th. You can go to decentralize.sg. So it's decentralized spelled with a Z. And you can use the code Epic 10. That's EPIC 10.

And you will get 10% off early bird tickets and the early rib pricing ends on March 15th. So if you're interested in Singapore, maybe you know, you're considering Singapore as a place where you'd like to do business and you want to get more involved and understand the ecosystem a little bit better, you know, this is a great opportunity for you to learn more about that country and how potentially you could start your business there. So do attend if you can. It would be great to meet some of you there. And, Anson, I'm also really looking forward to meeting you at the conference. And very good food in Singapore as well. Great. I'm looking forward to that is rough. And I've never been to Singapore. In fact, I've never been to Asia. So this will be

a very interesting experience for me. I've been learning all about singlish on YouTube. And hopefully I'll be able to speak a little bit of English after I leave. Great. So thank you so much for coming on, Anson. It was a great conversation. And again, looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. So thank you so much for joining us. We really really release new episodes of Epicenter every week. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts on iOS or Android. You can also watch the videos on YouTube. And if you're interested, we would love it. If you would join our community on Gitter, that's

epicenter.tv.tv slash Gitter. More and more of you have been joining us there and there's starting to be some conversations. So we're excited about that. And if you want to support the show, of course, the best way to do that is to leave us an iTunes review. It helps people find the show and we're always happy to see your reviews. So thanks so much. And we look being back next week.