Turning the company’s vision into reality is not a cakewalk. Without the right strategy to fuel the growth of the company to reach its objectives, staying afloat and churning a profit is nearly impossible.
Digital transformation is already having a massive impact on the world’s economies today. Blockchain and Internet access have given rise to new ways of delivering financial services and promote financial inclusion. While the rapid growth of financial technologies enables modern economic activities to be more flexible and smart, Bitkub is established to further improve the efficiency of the payment systems and strengthen our position to become Thailand’s most trusted financial partner and leading digital asset exchange platform.
For billions of people across the globe, yesterday’s world isn’t succeeding well enough or fixing problems fast enough. Too many of us are still stuck in poverty and locked in a limited future of the physical world where all values are kept. People need intermediaries (brokers, banks, etc.) to enable them to transfer anything of value which makes it very expensive and inefficient. However, we are now starting to get a glimpse of a more successful world along with new technology - a world of digital asset. We can perceive a fully digital economy that is a 24/7, 365 days a year phenomenon where digital tokens are traded instantly, and all value can flow freely, held and distributed via peer-to-peer networks rather than centralized hubs. Any asset will be placed on the spectrum of liquidity and made tradable that will effectively turn the world into a single massive stock market (i.e. open financial web) without boundaries of geography. A tokenized world that will create an unprecedented level of financial access, privacy, and security.
Now, we can think of a purely digital currency world as an island (lacking any links to traditional finances), the physical world as the mainland, and Bitkub as a network of bridges connecting the digital island to the mainland. By building strong and quality bridges, Bitkub will enable a safe and convenient travel to and from the island, driving more and more people to migrate to the new digital economy. And how we plan to make this transition happen across all industries is our strategy.
Although everyone is committed to a growth-driven world economy, the migration to a new financial structure won’t be won without the fight. Our strategy is to address the major hurdles to widespread cryptocurrency adoption creating strong and quality bridges, building one brick at a time, and it involves 2 phases. Phase One:
1. Enabling access to the network
Since the world mostly runs on government-issued fiat currencies (like dollars, euros, Thai Baht, etc.), a great way to encourage people who are not yet into cryptocurrencies to enter the fields is to introduce an easier way to exchange cryptocurrency from their local fiat money. Digital currencies cannot overtake fiat to become mainstream and create a network of users unless we use the existing resources that are already familiar to mass consumers. Providing convenient payment methods such as bank or wire transfer, credit cards, and debit cards to buy and sell digital currencies is practically inviting masses to participate in cryptocurrencies. However, tapping to these traditional payment channels requires a certain degree of compliance from the cryptocurrency companies. If we want to create more convenient payment options to enable people to trade cryptocurrency in large amounts, we should comply with the existing laws. And the key for blockchain and cryptocurrencies to leap towards mainstream acceptance lies in compliance.
2. Building a Strong Bridge
In the early days, many people see the potential benefits of using digital currencies and want to buy bitcoin, but they didn’t have any convenient means or bridges to the island. There were only a few exchanges available on the cryptocurrency market for traders but these bridges were quite raw with many bugs and had not survived due to difficult technical implementation and high cost.
a. Compliance
A most critically important factor in building a bridge is making sure that we have a solid bedrock firm enough to anchor the bridge on both ends. That’s why a common language between the old and new payment systems must be built to ensure the growth and success of cryptocurrencies. This linkage is directly reliant on cryptocurrency exchanges’ ability to implement effective compliance programs. But we have to find ways to strike the right balance. Bridges always collapse for exactly the same reason – not being able to balance the force acting on them. Too much compliance where only a few people can comply means less people can migrate to the digital island and slows the process of adoption. However, having too little compliance can put investors at risk and may halt down our operations. We don’t want to move fast and break things. Thus, achieving the right balance will encourage more people to come on board rather than leave.
To implement consumer and investor protection, anti-fraud and anti-money laundering measures, we comply with the existing laws. Most of our staff work on compliance in some form and our company has been taking a proactive stance to meet local regulatory standards. Once registered and licensed, we can begin establishing banking relationships and provide more “on-ramps” for mass adoption. We will enable institutional investors to enter the gates of cryptocurrency trading (bitkub.com). Financial institutions are going to be buying and selling big quantities creating more liquidity and higher trading volumes in the market. This will make a major wave in the cryptocurrency pools encouraging larger, traditional investors to join the market.
b. Open as many pay-in/payout options as possible (building many bridges to speed up the migration process)
The good thing about cryptocurrency and blockchain is that we can build and scale our financial operations very quickly, given the technology available to us at the moment. We get to ride on the back of the credit card system, the cloud computing system, the pre-existing bank branches, the transportation network, and the pre-existing telecommunication networks. For instance, while banks spend a great amount of money and time to invest in banking infrastructures across the country, we should focus on building front-end customer-facing applications. We don’t want to compete with banks on CAPEX, instead, we should tap on their existing infrastructures to allow more pay-in and pay-out options (such as e-wallets, banks, and non-bank options) for our users to gain access to our cryptocurrency exchange (bitkub.com). All of that would have been billions of dollars of CAPEX. But the heavy lifting was already in place, thanks to the previous generations of companies. Bitkub can now create a global transaction network within the digital island (with a few million dollars of capital). This would allow Bitkub to scale our financial operations faster than our previous generations of financial companies put together.
c. Adding More Coins / Creating New Coins (Tokenization of assets)
Another element in attracting people to the digital island is to create more coins and digitize as many assets as possible. While our cryptocurrency exchange platform, Bitkub Online Co., Ltd (BO), serves as a bridge between the fiat currency world and the digital currency world, Bitkub Blockchain Technology Co., Ltd (BBT), on the other hand, will help build and digitize new assets and create a tokenized world. Adding more coins and tokenizing assets will present a huge platform for the adoption of digital asset transactions. The more goods and services people can exchange cryptocurrency or digital asset with, the more value it has and the more reason to spend it on a regular basis.
Moreover, while we continue to move forward with this digital transformation, understanding the digital world may remain a challenge to the masses due to its complexity. Our Bitkub Blockchain Center Co., Ltd (BBC) will serve as a map or directions to the digital island promoting a better understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency, how to use it, and its benefits to both business practices and societies. This will increase people’s willingness and desire to adopt and embrace change. Furthermore, our Bitkub Capital Co., Ltd (BC), which is a venture capital fund for blockchain businesses will act as a digital asset mutual fund, and serve those people who are willing but don’t have the time to invest in digital properties.
Phase Two:
Once people are already doing businesses and living in the digital world, we have to:
1) Create digital asset wallets that are interoperable
We will create a global transaction network supported by digital currencies making the transfer of value frictionless, secure and more efficient between consumers and merchants using an interoperable wallet. Payments using digital asset will bring extra convenience to shoppers and accelerate the velocity of value in circulations. Think of digital wallets as "roads" in the digital economy that people can use to travel easily around the island. Imagine if everyone is already using digital tokens and have 1,000 different tokens in their wallets that are interoperable with any payment network, they can buy goods and services anytime and anywhere with any type of digital asset they owned.
2) Decentralised Exchange Protocol (DEX)
Once the digital asset wallets are already in place, the last step is to create a decentralized exchange protocol allowing different coins of different value to be exchanged in a frictionless manner. This system will enable users to auto-exchange points inside their digital wallets instantly at a very minimal or no cost. For instance, real-time auto-exchange of points can happen between credit card points and gaming points, or air miles with any digital currencies. In other words, different points of different value will speak the same language.
Conclusion:
Digital currency exchanges play a pivotal role in the evolution of an open financial web (web 3.0). We are on our way to digitize and create a better transaction network for the entire world whether it is for currency, asset or anything of value. And just like the internet, the impact of this transformation will be huge.
Our efforts to satisfy regulatory requirements play an outsized role that links to the traditional financial system. However, a well-regulated and compliant digital asset exchange is not easy to build, for there are a lot of moving parts, internal and external factors, and parties to take into account for the whole financial ecosystem and digital asset exchanges to mesh well and work together. Challenging it may be, but for our group, Bitkub, to be among the elite of bridges, spending a great deal of budgets and time in compliance is necessary. And we will further work at every level to strengthen our pillars and keep our bridges accessible to everyone.
This is all for the future where every payment or asset transfer in the world will be as fast, cheap, and global as sending an email. We believe the world is changing. We are on the front lines of this groundbreaking evolution and here is our secret master plan to get there.
Topp
Founder and Group CEO of Bitkub