Following the crypto buzz: Unboxed meets Asia

Recently Unboxed CEO Tadas Deksnys and CBDO Donatas Smailys completed their three weeks long trip in Asia visiting Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong. In the first of our series of short articles about their adventures on the roadshow trail, Donatas shares some of the main takeaways from the trip.

We just got back five days ago and my head is still somewhere between Seoul and London, but what I can say is we had our minds blown.

The first thing that struck us was how much of the population, especially in South Korea (but not only) was crypto savvy. In fact, some locals in Seoul even told us that 1 in 5 of the cities population is already a retail contributor to Crypto. There is a real buzz about crypto/blockchain in lots of the places you go. And that level of excitement seems stable, not like the crazy peak of 2017. This makes Asian markets key for ICOs, especially when the US is becoming increasingly problematic (does anyone know exactly what the SEC’s position on tokens actually is?)

The real problem is just navigating the sheer scope of the market (there are 500 + crypto funds in China alone).

What we learned is that the best way to connect with the Asian markets is to go and build your presence there country by country. You need to meet people on the ground, working remotely will definitely not deliver you the results you are after. Localisation is key. And that requires repeated visits. Having strong local partners is a must. You need to build offline and online local communities. And with so much local competition, nevermind the the rivalry from foreign players, getting that much needed local traction is essential.

Little things like translating your material locally, so it sounds natural, educating your audience through local social networks, media channels, and search engines, deliver real value. You need to penetrate cultural barriers, and that requires being adaptive and having those strong local partners I was talking about.

These are just a few of my first thoughts, next time I’ll be going into more details about just how much our trip to Asia challenged us to question a lot of our basic business assumptions. I’ll be talking about community and about Oracles. Cool stuff. Look forward to speaking to you then.

Make sure to follow Unboxed Network on Medium and social media, as we will be sharing the rest of our team adventures in Asia!