Philippine Blockchain Week Highlights: How blockchain can improve the lives of Filipinos

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The Philippines continues to make its way as one of the blockchain hubs in Asia, and the Philippine Blockchain Week (PBW) held at the Marriott Grand Ballroom, Newport World Resorts in Pasay City, pushed this initiative with its five-day event in November.

Various personalities and global leaders all gathered to discuss the importance of blockchain technology in digitizing the Southeast Asian country – even local celebrities, athletes, filmmakers and government officials were present during the week-long discussions.

One of the keynote speakers and moderators at the event was NFT.NYC co-producer and co-founder Ian Utile, whom CoinGeek’s Claire Celdran interviewed on the sidelines of PBW. Utile believes the Philippines could lead Southeast Asia in blockchain adoption because its young population is already invested in games to make money.

“You have all the technical connection, the young people…[who are already] playing to earn, Utile said. “It makes me feel that there is a lot of promise for the future of blockchain here in Manila as a city, the Philippines as a country, and Southeast Asia as a region.”

nChain’s Chief Product Officer Gareth Roberts also joined the event as a speaker on Day 1 of Blockchain Week, discussing how the country can adopt the technology and bring it to the mainstream.

“I think the most important point we agreed on [the panel discussion] was that we need to build useful and user-friendly applications,” Roberts answered when asked about the first panel he was on.

“It’s really cool here because we have this great blockchain to work with. We have Bitcoin SV. We have huge computing power, so we’re very well positioned to build apps that actually enable people’s lives,” he added.

As for what nChain can do to help propel the Philippines to become a blockchain hub, Roberts has this to say:

“nChain is pretty much full-capable for the lifecycle of an IT project, and we kind of have the visionary kind of people on board to help our partners … figure out what they should transition to the blockchain and how it can deliver them value.”

Social media influencer and one of the masterminds behind Project Nightfall Philantrophy Agon Hare also joined CoinGeek on the sidelines of the event and shared their plans to build headquarters in the metaverse.

“So metaverse is not a good word today because a lot of people are skeptical, but we think that’s the future,” he said. “On the blockchain, every single transaction is tracked. That’s why we’re so passionate about our philanthropy about it because we have nothing to hide.”

BSV thought leaders including nChain’s Country Director and BSV Blockchain Association’s Ambassador for the Philippines, Nicholas King, also attended the Blockchain Week. He expressed how the event proved that education is one of the key solutions for blockchain adoption in the country.

“Education is really one of the main functions of the Bitcoin Association. We have spoken to a number of educational institutions [here]. We have spoken with Ateneo; we have spoken to Enderun; we talk to people like Mapua. And these organizations are very keen to engage with us, so we will provide them with all of our teaching materials that they can map onto the curriculum and offer that [to] students as a way to educate themselves on blockchain,” King revealed.

“The job opportunities with blockchain that we are going to create here are absolutely huge and we need to educate the people because this is a leading technology,” he added.

Elas’ co-founder Mohammad Jaber also traveled to Manila for the event, where he said he is happy to find new people to connect with and talk about the country’s digitization efforts.

“We [want] to understand how things work here in the Philippines with older technology. What are the pain points with the processes and systems they use and how can we leverage blockchain technology to provide tailored solutions,” said Jaber.

“The ultimate goal is for us to improve the lives of people in the Philippines without them realizing that they are necessarily using blockchain technology,” he noted.

In closing, Philippine Blockchain Week co-organizer and founder of SANCTUM, DreamsMaker and UNITY Rico Pang thanks all the participants for their warm welcome.

“As the first Philippine Blockchain Week, I think we did a pretty amazing job in such a short time,” he said.

“We are so excited about the Philippine market because there is so much talent here. And they are not aware of the potential of this industry yet. So we want to educate and create more awareness in this industry both to the public sector and also to the private sector and, of course, for the general public about this technology who can actually learn and use them to upgrade their skills and put them to use in real life and to solve their problems,” concluded Pang.

See: Blockchain Social Manila: Digitization through blockchain will turbocharge growth in the Philippines

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