Crypto will reach the mainstream in Thailand only when people stop noticing it, according to Didi Wiboonma, Chief Communications Officer at Thai exchange Bitazza. "In an ideal world, I would love to see people accepting crypto without knowing that it's crypto," she told Licensed to Shill host Takatoshi Shibayama, head of APAC at Ledger.
Wiboonma joined Bitazza's founding team in 2018 from a non-bank, non-tech background. The exchange received its Thai SEC licence in 2019 and began operating on Christmas that year, months before the pandemic. She says she approaches the industry through the people who use its products, and most of her argument rests on that lens.
Her account of Thai adoption starts with lockdown. With people stuck at home and the government reluctant to hand out direct financial support, licensed platforms offered an entry point of roughly 350 baht. "So crypto was hope," she said. She argues the bigger draw was access, since crypto gave ordinary Thais their first exposure to assets outside the country's borders.
The speculative wave that followed cost many people money. Wiboonma acknowledges that DeFi and NFT projects collapsed and that sunk-cost thinking kept users hooked, though she prefers to believe most failures were "good intentions, bad executions". That is a generous reading from someone whose employer operates in the same market.
She is more candid about regulation. Wiboonma praises the Thai SEC for moving quickly after the 2017-18 ICO period and says Bitazza works closely with anti-money-laundering authorities and police. She concedes that protective rules have come at a cost. "I know it's killed some of the innovation. Let's be real here."
Bitazza's current bet follows her thesis. The exchange has launched private crypto services for high-net-worth clients exploring business uses, and is building a tourist wallet that lets visitors top up with crypto and pay through PromptPay, the Bank of Thailand's QR payment system. She frames it as a mass-adoption product built on Thailand's strength in tourism.
The full episode is available on the Blockhead Licensed to Shill podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to Blockcast on your favorite podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple .
Blockcast is hosted by Head of APAC at Ledger, Takatoshi Shibayama . Previous episodes of Blockcast can be found here , with guests like Daren Guo (Reap), Yat Siu (Animoca Brands), Kean Gilbert (Lido), Joey Isaacson (Nook), Kapil Dhiman (Quranium) Eric van Miltenburg (Ripple), Davide Menegaldo (Neon EVM), Anastasia Plotnikova (Fideum), Jeremy Tan (Singapore parliament candidate), Hassan Ahmed (Coinbase) and more on our recent shows.
