Crypto has given Thailand a way to build and export its own talent and brands, according to Didi Wiboonma, Chief Communications Officer at Thai exchange Bitazza. "It's okay to be Thai. It's okay to be in a Thai business," she told Licensed to Shill host Takatoshi Shibayama, head of APAC at Ledger.
Shibayama framed the conversation around Thailand's economic position. He described a country caught in a middle-income trap, too expensive to compete with low-cost neighbours such as Vietnam and not yet innovative enough to match Singapore or Taiwan. Tourism makes up around a fifth of GDP, he said, which left the economy exposed when COVID closed borders.
Wiboonma joined Bitazza's founding team in 2018, and the exchange began operating under a Thai SEC licence on Christmas 2019. She argues the pandemic is what made crypto matter to ordinary Thais. With people stuck at home and limited direct government support, licensed platforms offered an entry point of roughly 350 baht. "So crypto was hope," she said. For farmers and ride-hailing drivers, she says, it was the first connection to assets outside the country.
Her economic argument centres on Thailand as a destination for talent. She says the country has become "a real destination for crypto natives and fintech companies", pointing to large industry conferences like DEVCON and Money20/20 arriving to Thailand and links that to the digital nomad visa. She frames it as part of a longer shift from volume tourism toward higher-value visitors.
Shibayama argued that premium visitors are not enough and that Thailand needs businesses that can be exported. Wiboonma points to homegrown brands such as Techsauce and Wonderfruit and places Bitazza alongside them. "We are premium, we are local, we are small, but we are homegrown." She says the exchange had 220 staff at its peak, half of them women, and that crypto has opened leadership roles to Thais that foreign-run corporates rarely did.
The pair closed on Asia's place in the industry. Wiboonma noted talk of the region "finally doing East to West". Shibayama argued that Asia has long refined Western ideas into better products, and that its mix of developed and underbanked markets makes it the better testing ground for crypto's practical uses.
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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.
