Start of the trip
Manila Day 1 : Hangout with local programmers, Philippines mobile industry and theft(!)
May 14th (Wed)
At 11:20am, 37coins team finally arrived at Manila, Philippines after two days of travel from San Francisco. Songyi, Johann and Jonathan will stay for 10 days and Jinyoung for 22 days for market research. We plan to talk to the local partners and see how 37coins will fit into market needs in Philippines. Out of the heavy traffic from the airport, we unpacked and took some rest at the hostel in Makati, the financial district of Manila and also known as “The Wall Street of Philippines.”
At the hostel, we ran into Marc Robinsone(@Marcrobinsone), a local computer programmer and tech enthusiast with whom we instantly hit it up over passion for technology and bitcoin. Marc works for startups in the States and also coordinates technology education in small islands. He provided quick preview of Philippines — Philippines has 7,000 islands with diverse culture and languages. (over 100 languages) Top 5 economic districts of the country are Manila (capital), Cebu, Ilo Ilo, Davao, Dumaguette. He told us especially Dumaguette area has a growing number of startup companies for its open-minded and innovative government, recommending us to visit there if we have some time.
We hanged out with Marc for lunch and coffee afterwards to continue the conversation. After a light lunch at the mall, we went to Commune, a local-owned cafe with a pleasant atmosphere that services locally grown coffee. It is said to be a popular place for startup people.
While we were all immersed in the conversation about bitcoin, Marc’s bag got stolen in the cafe! Although his bag was sitting next to him, nobody noticed the person who snatched the bag away. His bag had so much valuable stuff — passport, mobile phones and documents besides cash. (so sorry Marc!) We all decided to be extra careful about carrying our stuff around.
After the incident, we headed with Marc to the mall to do some phone shopping. While Marc was browsing, 37coins team was looking for the old version of Nokia phone for product testing. We noticed a number of Nokia phones but did not find the one that was old enough. What we found interesting was dual-SIM phones that can hold two SIM cards, which also could be found in $10 phones.
On our way back to the hostel through a series of shopping malls, we found a kiosk machine for automated payment. Top mobile operators (SMART, Globe) offer mobile money service— one of the examples is Gcash from Globe(http://www.globe.com.ph/gcash) as shown in the photo of the kiosk above. People load the credit into their mobile phone and they can use it like money in the vendors that accept it. It is not that popular in Philippines at this moment, but mobile money is starting in the country. And we wish to see bitcoin in the options in the machine in the future ☺
At 8pm, we had a dinner with two team members from buybitcoin.ph at the night market near the hostel. Sam Kaddoura(Co-Founder/CEO) and James Florentino(Developer) joined us for conversation about bitcoin community in Philippines. Buybitcoin.ph is one of the five bitcoin exchanges in Philippines where bitcoin market is growing fast. James told us that he started his interest in bitcoin as he got paid from International companies — he saw bitcoin as more useful tool than Paypal to receive payments Internationally. But besides global transaction, they hoped their service could be a tool for domestic remittance for the sporadic country.
It was our first day in Philippines, but quite productive day. We were all tired from jetlag and long travel, but happy to meet all those great people who wants to bring innovative changes to the country.
p.s.
Thanks Marc for the photos!
