The latest episode of United Gamers Guild’s CrypTalk podcast series had Hassan Ahmed, Regional Director for Southeast Asia for the crypto trading platform Coinbase Wallet. During the show which was hosted by Jay Perillo, Hassan Ahmed does not only introduce the platform to future Filipino users but also shares his own opinions and thoughts in the growing Filipino crypto market.
Being one of the largest in the region, Hassan Ahmed states that the Philippines is the ‘most interesting crypto market in the world’ and cites some very great reasons. In the interview, Ahmed stated that he was exposed to the Philippine crypto community during his tenure with Coins.ph, a local mobile wallet and digital exchange. Ahmed add that the Philippines is “the only market that has 3 crypto use cases at scale” which includes trading, blockchain based remittances, and play-to-earn.
He also adds that with these use cases, the Philippines is further ahead than most markets, and that “there is no other market that has adopted crypto digital assets or web3 in a way that the Filipino community has”.
Together with play-to-earn games, Hassan Ahmed also states that the Philippines has gotten a lot of things right when it comes to the crypto market such as balancing investor and consumer production and as well as financial access through programs being generated by the country’s local bank. The existence of digital wallet platforms like GCash and Paymaya also helped in increasing accessibility which in turn helped users get “comfortable with the notion of digital assets and digital currency”.
Despite these milestones though Hassan Ahmed believes that the Philippines is still yet to achieve its full potential. While there is already a plethora of users in the country, Ahmed says that builders need to be encouraged as well to participate in the ecosystem. Ahmed cites Vietnam as a major example of how builders are participating in crypto and web3 with its great development scene and young population actively creating projects such as play-to-earn games.
According to Ahmed, this encouragement could also be enabled in the Philippines, by allowing more opportunities for core engineering courses like Solidity, hands-on training, and fusing that with the country’s pool of gaming talent.
On Play-To-Earn
On the subject of play-to-earn games, Hassan Ahmed still sees games like Axie Infinity, Pegaxy, and Thetan Arena as promising games for the local market although he did add some “mid-tier alternatives” like League of Kingdoms.
Axie Infinity gets the bigger share of the highlight though as for Ahmed. For him, Axie Infinity is the one that started it all and most of the games are “still taking a lot of its playbook and inspiration from the bootstrapping method that Axie had invented” specifically pointing to breeding mechanics which he says is a “great way to get these gaming and economies off the ground”.
Still, while a lot of existing and even upcoming play-to-earn games utilize breeding as its first main utility mechanic for the in-game economy, the question still is what comes after that. Ahmed points out that together with the challenge of building a game that people would want to play, another big challenge for any developer is the gaming economy itself.
For Axie Infinity, Ahmed believes that there are “avenues to increase utility or figure out demand and supply syncs to get it to a certain price floor” and also says that the AXS token has more purpose or will have more purpose once the Axie Infinity metaverse also expands.
Together with these insights Hassan Ahmed also talks about Coinbase as a whole and their future in the Philippine market and for more of that be sure to check out the full VOD of the podcast episode here:
If you liked this conversation, check out all the previous Cryptalk interviews!
–Ian Tayao
–Rob Luna and Jay Perillo
–Metadhana
–AkosiDogie and Banoobs
–Ruwwev, Lunatic, Ch4
–AcadArena’s Kevin Hoang
Also catch the Axie Pro Tournament 2 live stream replay on our facebook page!