Dominik Weil is one of the co-founders of Bitcoin Vietnam, together with Nguyễn Trần Bảo Phương. CoinFox contacted Dominik to find out more about bitcoin in Vietnam.

CoinFox: Many news sites tell that bitcoin is banned in Vietnam. Apparently, it is not the case. What is the Vietnamese Government's stance on bitcoin?

Dominik Weil: This is correct - and I really appreciate, that you are looking into elucidating this topic further!

The issue here was/is, that the State Bank of Vietnam published a statement on Bitcoin in late February 2014, where it declared among other things, that Bitcoin is not a legal tender in Vietnam.

The problem here was, that some journalists interpreted the statement as "Bitcoin must be illegal in Vietnam!". If that would be the case, then Bitcoin would be illegal all around the world, since Bitcoin is not a legal in any country around the world at this time (and potentially never will be). Legal tender status would mean, that it is the official currency of a country; e.g. you are guaranteed by law to be able to settle your debts with it. Would anyone expect, that the SBV is declaring Bitcoin "legal tender" in Vietnam?

The legal status of Bitcoin in Vietnam is not really that much different than in a lot of other countries at this time. We know that some government agencies are looking into it (State Bank of Vietnam; Department of Public Security) and are doing our best to enhance knowledge / reduce potential misunderstandings of the responsible authorities regarding Cryptocurrencies. Otherwise it is currently not really a "hot topic" inside the ministeries since Bitcoin is at this stage just too niche in Vietnam; the authorities have other more pressuring issues to solve.

CoinFox: On your site, you state that you are a fully registered bitcoin brokerage service in Vietnam. Was it complicated to get official registration? In general, is it difficult to be a bitcoin start-up in Vietnam?

Dominik Weil: Not at all - the whole registration process took us barely a week and we were ready to go. Nevertheless - the issues you have operating a Bitcoin business in Vietnam are quite different from the circumstances in the Western hemisphere. You definitely need to be able to stand some heat & willing to take risks.

CoinFox: How many customers do you have? Are you content with the pace of your development? What do Vietnamese mostly use bitcoin for?

Dominik Weil: Right now we have over 7500 registered users and a total trading volume of over 1100 BTC since launch. Vietnam is as of now in its very early days regarding Bitcoin adoption - so the actual revenue numbers are quite modest, which is to be expected. For sure one would hope to see a faster development, but patience remains the key here - things are moving into the right direction, but it is taking time.

Otherwise: We are a fully bootstrapped startup - so things take naturally longer, since our founding team is still occupied with their bread & butter jobs in order to pay the bills. Still we are in a pretty comfortable position, since this structure allows us also to endure a longer ongoing contagion in the Bitcoin space without running out of money at some point and eventually fold - like we have seen it happening with quite a few other former hopeful Bitcoin startups this year already.

Regarding usage of Bitcoin: We have a broad range of use cases observed so far - quite a few people are buying BTC to actually pay for stuff online, a few also invested larger amounts into Bitcoin as a long-term investment (even if that is due to the price movements in 2014 & 2015 not that popular right now)... - others are using BTC to send money back home to Vietnam - or just selling of Bitcoins which they have generated by mining and/or obtained for selling goods & services online.

CoinFox: To use your remittance service, Cash2vn, customers need to have a bank account. Do you plan to make the service available to the unbanked, too? Are there many people who use bitcoin for remittances in Vietnam?

Dominik Weil: Yes, this is definitely on our roadmap. We have already tested some potential channels to offer services for the unbanked, but for now we are focusing our limited resources on some other projects with higher priority. The advantage you have in countries such as Vietnam is, that there is already an existing financial infrastructure in place to offer services to the unbanked part of the population - in which you can more or less easy plug your services in by the time. We already see some people using Bitcoin for remittances to Vietnam, but in the overall view its still quite modest numbers so far - Bitcoin is still in its very early innings.

CoinFox: Many people say that bitcoin is dominated by males. What is the situation in Vietnam?

Dominik Weil: Here Bitcoin is also dominated by males. Otherwise - what makes me quite happy to observe - I have to state that we have MUCH more participation of female people in Bitcoin here in Vietnam than in the West. If I look at the numbers of our exchange, probably around 20% of our clients are female, which is from my experience a much higher relative number of female Bitcoin users, than you will find it on the exchanges in the West. Also if you look at our local meetups here in Saigon - we have an average participation rate of 30-40% females showing up at the meetups. 

The "average woman" in Vietnam is much more interested in managing money / investments / business opportunities, than in the Western world. So this difference in mentality and mindset explains in my view a lot, why we have a much higher interest in Bitcoin in the domestic female population than you may have it in the West.

CoinFox: What are your plans for future development?

Dominik Weil: Right now we are working on bringing back the live trading exchange VBTC which will serve as the necessary liquidity pool inside Vietnam. Once this process is completed, we are also looking forward to offer some merchant solutions for Vietnamese business', since the Vietnamese e-commerce sector definitely has to catch-up with more efficient online payment methods (most online purchases are still paid via cash-on-delivery, which is a pretty inefficient way to obtain payments for the merchant).

Otherwise we are in general looking forward to integrate our solutions with more and more partners as well as from the local "traditional" economy - as well as international partners in the Bitcoin space.

Alexey Tereshchenko