Current Problems

The blockchain and Crypto asset industry has grown exponentially in Indonesia over the past 5 years. Globally, the growth is also significant. The market rose from only a few billion in 2016 to over 3 trillion at the peak in November 2021.

On the other hand, billions are also lost every year. In 2018, $1.7 billion was stolen, in 2019 $4.5 billion was stolen, and in 2020 $1.9 billion was stolen. From a little bit complex cybersecurity attack such as bridges attack, dusting attack, or 51% attack, to a much simpler case where people send some of their funds to strangers or even fake accounts online, to get a higher return to claim their random giveaway which later turns out to be they were getting scammed (1).

While education can contribute to a much broader aspect, minimize the loss and raise awareness among the participants, when it comes to blockchain technology itself, cross-border payments and settlements are considered the most prominent blockchain use case. According to the IDC Worldwide Blockchain Spending Guide, it accounted for 15.9% of the $4.67-billion blockchain market in 2021. With the expected growth of the global blockchain market from $7.18 billion in 2022 to $163.83 billion by 2029, the segment of blockchain-based cross-border payments is anticipated to show a corresponding increase.

Juniper Research estimates that B2B cross-border payments on blockchain will account for 11% of the total B2B international payments by 2024. The main driver for the popularity of blockchain payment solutions is their ability to provide fast, secure, transparent, and cost-effective processing of cross-border payment transactions.

Despite this rapid growth of the overall market, Indonesia hasn't been able to develop such a product that was able to catch and maintain the demand. Even with 4%-4.5% population already knowing about cryptocurrency, since 2015 there are only about 152 crypto projects traded in Indonesia and not many uphold the sustainability to achieve the goal of facilitating cross-border payments through blockchain infrastructure and using its native cryptocurrency or even other cryptocurrencies in general. It's not only because of the capability of the platform to provide such features supporting that activity which integrates the web2 payment with web3 currencies but also before PoS (or even moments before Ethereum PoS merge) the infrastructure of cryptocurrencies has yet matured. The combination of this with the regulatory process within our region, the available talents, and the budget provided the chance (whether it's from angel investors, venture capitalists, or investment bankers) to bet in this uncertain and new industry (at least for the research purpose), in our opinion contribute to why the development is so slow across the region (2).