Blockcast.cc: Hi Ethan, Please introduce yourself Eg your background, experience.
Ethan: Hi thank you for having me. I am Ethan Ng, the CEO of BiKi.com Southeast Asia. I guess this is 10 years in the making with my experiences in scaling startups and in the digital marketing aspects of the financial industry leading me towards the role of being the CEO of a rising blockchain exchange. Before this, I was the Marketing Lead of Huobi Global, leading the team into market expansions in different markets, organizing over 20 meetups, 40+ live streaming episodes and more than 1600 attendee conferences.
Blockcast.cc: Could you share us more about BiKi, what is the main objective for now?
Ethan: BiKi is a Singapore based exchange, officially launched in August 2018 in the peak of the bear market. BiKi’s main objective is to help projects to grow.
By October 2018, we understood that many projects are lacking knowledge in the surroundings of the token launch and so we began assisting projects with not only launching the tokens, but also with PR and community management.
By December 2018, such projects were in a better position and so we found that with the additional assistance for these projects to stand on their feet, we found out the perfect model for BiKi.
This was proven to be extremely effective, leading BiKi to be one of the fastest growing exchanges in the world, ranking at top 20 on sites like MyToken, Feixiaohao, Coingecko and most recently, CoinMarketCap, where we made the debut on our 1’st year at 16th position.
Blockcast.cc: There are so many exchanges, why BiKi?
Ethan: Well firstly, BiKi helps in continuous exposure and branding for projects. As BiKi’s users are active traders who are demanding to know what the updates are for listed projects, BiKi provides ongoing exposure in the form of news publications on top Chinese crypto news media Jinse.com and Bishijie for example as well as spreading of information to 200,000 strong wechat groups.
Every time a milestone is achieved by the project, we get ahead of them and publicizes the news to the community, rather than having radio silence after buying a token, our users are made aware of the milestones of projects, and our projects get continuous branding and exposure to our strong market resources.
Secondly, we help with community building initiatives for projects to have their own WeChat Chinese communities. Active traders in the BiKi community for a particular token already bear key interest in the project’s updates. They already have the desire and demand to join a community to learn more about the project and connect with like-minded people. BiKi can see who these traders are from our exchange site and reach out to them to form and grow a WeChat group for the project, becoming the first few users in the Chinese market for projects, penetrating the high barriers to entry. There is no longer a need for projects to hire marketing agencies or grow hackers to potentially grow its numbers without having quality traders who are truly keen about the project.
BiKi can guarantee the members in their brand new Chinese community are truly keen about trading the project token. BiKi even organizes a mandarin AMA with Chinese communities prior to listing, to create influence in the Chinese market, introduce the project, and for potential traders to ask the projects any queries to deem if the project is worthy to trade for themselves.
Finally, BiKi literally helps projects penetrate Chinese market boundaries and grow. Many projects have been around for several years, wandering the crypto space and yet achieving little accomplishments as they have not much direction or goals. In the end, their resources like time and money is wasted. With BiKi’s help, projects are picked up and placed in Chinese markets, a market for one of the world’s hottest crypto space and fastest growth for many blockchain enterprises due to its nature.
These projects listed with BiKi can learn what the Chinese market is like, ride the bandwagon to fast growth while quickly pivoting their business model to improve. From there, they can learn the success model for their businesses. As BiKi has survived the crypto winter, experiencing the worst of the economy, and pivoting for ourselves, we know how the process goes and want to help projects with it.
Blockcast.cc: What’s your accomplishments to date?
Ethan: BiKi grew to 1.5 million registered users, 130,000 daily active users, 150 listed projects and 220 trading pairs in less than a year. And most notably in Q2 of 2019 we had a revenue of USD 15 million. We have 2000 community partners actively promoting our brand to over 200,000 active wechat users daily.
We have received USD 10 million worth of investments combined, from Huobi co-founder Du Jun’s personal investment, ChainUP, FBG Capital and Genesis Capital Zhu Huaiyang.
We have organized several private events and parties, all of which have a full house turnout rate. In Beijing for BiKi’s 1 year Anniversary Event with the motto “All for Partners” and the theme to “Empower and Connect all members in the blockchain ecosystem”, international supporters and partners of biki have come to Beijing to attend the event. In Toronto, Canada, BiKi organized a VIP lunch for over 80 industry specialists including VCs, news media, OTC merchants and even Brock Pierce, Director of Bitcoin Foundation came down to support our exclusive event. In Singapore, over 500 attendees came to our exclusive consensus week afterparty at Ce La Vi, Marina Bay Sands, making it the most well received afterparty of coindesk consensus week in Asia, and 50 of the VIPs of the event came to our Yacht Party the next day, to personally form relationships and pool network resources with us.
We have been mentioned organically on Forbes as first in ten blockchain companies to look out for in 2019. This has been a pleasant surprise for BiKi and motivation and validation to spur us to work harder.
We were also mentioned as top 5 promising crypto startups in 2019. And top 10 blockchain projects to look out for in asia. As well as 1st in 4 digital asset exchanges worth a look
Blockcast.cc: What is your latest updates in your roadmap and what can we expect from BiKi in this year?
Ethan: I was invited to speak at codex top 50 innovators in London, UK, to answer the question: Is the crypto winter over for good? And conclude with a bold prediction about the future. I am very honored to be invited there as the Codex top 50 innovators have a history of influential industry specialists, including NASA, IBM and Oracle as speakers in previous years.
BiKi has also begun globalization initiatives to areas in the western markets as well as Malta, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and more. And as we spread our influence to each of these regions, we will also create new networks and partnerships, forming the BiKi Partner Nodes, who will be a base for us in a particular region and refer us projects for listing. They benefit from being connected with our resources in BiKi’s industry circle, which is growing vaster every day.
Blockcast.cc: What are your views on the current crypto and blockchain market and BiKi’s role in it?
Ethan: We believe that blockchain industry adoption will increase in the near future, mixing fintech and traditional financial industry to innovate into a new financial industry that correlates a lot more to users needs from the unbanked to the institutionalized.
Through this adoption process, we believe that exchanges will be at the center of this values facilitation. We have seen hundreds of exchanges sprouting to seize the opportunities of this industry, capitalizing on profits.
However, we still hear projects in need of real partnership help to grow their token holders, not just a medium of exchange.
We built BiKi with the intention to be an exchange that provides value to our projects, and helps them even after listing. We can easily chase the numbers as a fintech company but we know what is missing is heart. We see ourselves not merely as a center but as a heart of the crypto industry where we not only do crypto exchange, but we literally facilitate meaningful connections to partners, users and friends, addressing their needs. And in this aspect, we believe this is the best way of acting on our motto of “Bringing Crypto To The Mainstream”.
Blockcast.cc: Can you provide a quote or what you believe in for the readers? Eg “I believe in blockchain, it can change the world.”
Ethan: I believe blockchain will begin its vast influence and adoption in developing countries. Citizens from these regions will be the first to widely adopt and tap into cryptocurrencies. Venezuela, Brazil, Zimbabwe for instance will have breakthroughs in the crypto market as their local currency lacks value that crypto is able to provide. They need a form of security and assurance in the value of their money and since their own currency cannot do that, they can only turn to Bitcoin and other crypto, sparking a mass adoption from these regions, into the first world countries.
Blockcast.cc: What are your thoughts about the role of exchanges in this industry?
Ethan: As the cryptocurrency industry progresses on, we experience the ebbs and flows of trends over the years. Analyzing the trends of exchanges, we notice: First generation exchanges like Mt Gox have come and gone, second generation exchanges like Huobi and Binance flourished in the crypto bull. Third generation exchanges like Fcoin have unique features like trade mining, growing rapidly but uncontrollably, eventually leading to a bubble burst. And right out of the crypto winter, we are experiencing the fourth generation of exchanges like BiKi are taking on a new role in this era of 2019.
