Cryptocurrency adoption in the country seems to be on the fast track as Coins.ph has recently celebrated opening their new office in BGC. With over 150 employees, Coins.ph is looking to bolster itself as the country’s top centralized exchange and digital wallet.
“The Philippines a global leader in the adoption of digital assets, ranking 2nd in the world in the 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index by US-based firm Chainanalysis. Also, in a recent report by global blockchain company ConsenSys, it found that 76% of Filipinos had at least some level of familiarity with NFTs,” said Jen Bilango, Philippines country manager of Coins.ph.
She added: “We at Coins.ph are at the forefront of driving this adoption and are constantly innovating to ensure our customers have access to world-class products and services that allow them to access opportunities in Web3 and blockchain-enabled services.”
Bilango said that she has always been a strong supporter in pushing innovation in the country and making sure the Philippines has made its mark in the global scene.
“We’ve been receiving a lot of international partners who wants to list with us,” Bilango said. “We have the widest number of tokens listed in our platform, and they wanted to get to know more the Philippine market. I think this place could be where – I think, I believe – this will be the place where international companies will get to interact and get to know the Philippine community. We wanted to foster relationship building for web3 companies, fintech, and blockchain.”
Jen Bilango, Philippines country manager of Coins.ph
One of the innovations Coins.ph taut is the Coins Pro, a currency exchange platform where Filipinos can trade over 50 cryptocurrencies with the Philippine peso. Coins.ph promises that trade in their Pro platform has lower fees. According to the support page of Coins.ph, the highest trading fee they have is .3% and said it would continue to go lower as daily trading volume increases.
For the remainder of September, as part Coins.ph’s celebration, users of Coins Pro will have zero trading fees for USDT/PHP and USDC/PHP trading pairs.
CEO of Coins.ph, Wei Zhou thinks the cryptocurrency landscape in the country has tremendous interest and enthusiasm. Though, because of the bear market that started in 2022, where every cryptocurrency price has gone down. Because of this, Zhou said interest has dampened, especially for people who have jumped into the market between 2021 and 2022.
Wei Zhou, Coins.ph CEO
“But I do believe,” Zhou said. “When the price recovers, or stabilize a little bit, what’s when interests do come back. I expect 2024 to be a really strong year.”
Another feature Coins.ph puts on the limelight is the Coins Arcade, a center for Web3 games, where players can earn cryptocurrencies for games they play. Unlike other Web3 games where you will need external wallets and learn how to connect platforms, Coins Arcade has their own Web3 Wallet built into the app, which makes it easier for users to collect rewards.
Above all what makes Coins Arcade interesting is that users will have some confidence the game they are playing is legitimate.
“We built the Web3 Wallet to make it easier for Filipinos to access the broader Web3 ecosystem and decentralized applications in a secure and user-friendly manner. Currently, Web3 services are difficult to use, you have to create various wallets to play different games or swap tokens on several chains. Users are solely responsible for securing seed phrases which, if lost, results in the loss of whatever digital assets are in that wallet, forever,” said Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.ph.
The recently opened Coins.ph office has over 150 employees.
“With a Coins Web3 Wallet they no longer need to think about this, and can more easily and safely access Web3 applications in the app. The first use case is Coins Arcade, and by the end of this month, we’re happy to announce that we’re launching token swaps via Coins Web3 Wallet too,” Zhou added.
Coins announced plans to go global. Zhou mentioned they are building a partnership with Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, to become a global remittance partner.
“If we can get that product into Coins,” Zhou said. “And then a lot of the players in the remittance industry into the different distribution points in pawnshops, I actually think we can get the adoption to be much deeper and wider.”
“Many might not know that Coins has had operations in Thailand for a few years now, and we’re looking to enter new markets in the near term. As a regulated company, we’re securing licenses to operate in the countries we will expand to. What we share with our stakeholders in government is a mission to drive an inclusive financial system as well as robust and safe digital asset adoption as we’ve seen here in the Philippines and hope to see soon in other parts of the world as well,” said Zhou.