How Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies are Transforming Southeast Asia

While this process slowly progresses in the US and Europe, Southeast Asia has embraced the blockchain revolution.

From Cambodian blockchain-based micro-lending programs to Thai Bitcoin Cash beer gardens, Southeast Asia is already a hotbed of blockchain-based innovation.

With astoundingly high mobile phone usage and existing widespread acceptance of cashless payment solutions such as LINE pay and wePAY, Southeast Asia is ground zero for distributed ledger disruption.

Blockchain technology presents the opportunity to dramatically disrupt the current banking paradigm in which, according to data published by Oliver Wyman and the Asian Development Bank, only provides financial services to 62% of people worldwide and only 27% of the Southeast Asia's 600 million people have bank account access.

High smartphone penetration, combined with a lack of existing banking services, led to the creation of a financial ecosystem reliant upon solutions such as LINE Pay and wePAY, mobile-based payment solutions used extensively throughout Southeast Asia.

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for over 52% of all mobile payments worldwide, making Southeast Asia the perfect ecosystem for real-world cryptocurrency adoption to propagate.

Thailand-based payment solution and alternative banking blockchain platform OmiseGo already enables Southeast Asian crypto enthusiasts to transact in cryptocurrency, notably partnering with Alipay - the largest mobile payment platform in the world - allowing over 450 million consumers to transact via OmiseGo.

Payments aren't the only element of the Southeast Asian economy that is currently being disrupted by blockchain technology.

International transfers from Southeast Asia are also shifting toward cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency adoption may be progressing slowly internationally, but the Southeast Asian economy is already pushing toward a decentralized world in which payments, loans, and international transfers via cryptocurrency are an everyday occurrence.