In 2022, the Philippines officially made known its goal to become one of Asia’s fastest-growing blockchain and digital asset hubs. Events, meetups, and conferences surged high last year in an effort to educate the public about blockchain technology, spread awareness and increase adoption.
According to the 2022 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index, the Philippines ranked second in the world for crypto ownership and use. Blockchain and crypto professionals educated Filipinos during the continuous lineup of Philippine blockchain events last year, and these are worth recalling as a new year starts.
The Philippine Blockchain Week 2022
Dubbed by many as the biggest blockchain conference of the entire year, the inaugural Philippine Blockchain Week is a week-long blockchain convention that took place on November 28 to December 4. The Philippine Blockchain Week aims to become an annual event that will further educate Filipinos about blockchain technology and how it solves real-world problems.
“We have gathered experts from the blockchain ecosystem to discuss this technological advancement and how companies and people can benefit from it. The Philippine Blockchain Week also lets investors and businesses network and explore opportunities in the Philippine market,” said Dito COO and Philippine Blockchain Week Lead Convener Donald Lim during the press conference.
Over a hundred esteemed speakers that specialize in financial technology (fintech) and blockchain shared how this disruptive technology has the power to boost the country’s economy and create more jobs. Emerging innovations that would benefit from blockchains, such as Web3, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse, were the key technologies these industry leaders highlighted during their respective talks.
The Global Blockchain Summit 2022
The Global Blockchain Summit was held in the province of Bataan. The two-day blockchain conference (October 26 to 27) was participated by government officials, renowned professionals within the academia, business leaders in the private sector, and other stakeholders in the blockchain industry.
The event was a bid to shape Bataan as the Philippines’ digital and blockchain hub. According to Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, Undersecretary at the Department of Information & Communications Technology (DICT), Bataan is the “perfect place to start the initiative.”
This is because Bataan’s Governor, Jose Enrique Garcia, was shown to be supportive of initiatives that seek to digitalize the province. Batapa pointed out one of the key developments in the province is called the “Bataanverse,” a system where services and transactions exist within a digital economy.
“That is not really a far future,” Batapa told CoinGeek. “That will happen. It’s happening with all these metaverse technologies that companies [are] promoting.”
The Inclusion and Digital Transformation (INDX) Summit
Organized by FintechAlliance.Ph, the INDX Summit 2022 ignited efforts to accelerate financial inclusion in the Philippines. This conference gathered thought leaders in the fintech and banking world to talk about the digital transformation of the Philippines. Specifically, the event shed light on fintech’s issues, impacts, and innovations.
One of the most controversial panels was the one about the Philippines’ digitalization. The young, tech-savvy generation of the country, which is widely known as the SMS and social media capital of the world by Asia Foundation, begs the question of who shall lead the digital transformation of the Philippines.
Southeast Asia Department at Asia Development Bank Jose Antonio Tan III, Chairman of Asian Bankers Association and President of RCBC Eugene Acevedo, Maya Philippines president Shailesh Baidwan, and other panelists echoed in their sessions that it should be a partnership from both private and government sectors.
The benefits of blockchain technology are all-encompassing. It not only makes possible the building of better digital payment systems, but it also acts as a foundation for other emerging technologies, such as the metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). And this is something that the world is slowly starting to realize, and blockchain education and awareness are key to this process.