Last month, the BitcoinVN team flew to Kuala Lumpur and then to the capital of Malaysia, Putrajaya, to give the people a perspective of their ASEAN neighbor. We also learned about what’s going on in the blockchain scene in Malaysia as well as around the region from the many companies that were in attendance.

First thing to note is that Malaysia and Vietnam are completely different countries despite their proximity. Vietnam is a relatively homogenous population while Malaysia, besides the ethnic Malays, has a lot of ethnic Chinese and Indians. Adding to the mix is the number of people from similarly Islamic countries who are visiting, studying, or working in Malaysia and coming from the Middle East and Africa. Vietnam is a predominantly non-religious and non-English-speaking country with a small ethnic minority population. Vietnam also has a larger population and two main cities for doing business.

Bloconomic’s conference itself was quite small compared to other conferences we attend back home in Vietnam. And the number of Malaysian companies there, too, was small. Of note, we met with a homegrown (at least now) blockchain called Trivechain. This project is somewhat like an Ethereum blockchain, supporting games and other DApps on a smart contract platform which can also support such things as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO). Their chain is mineable and also supports the idea of masternodes like Dash and some Ethereum clones.

But would I choose to move my blockchain business from Vietnam to Malaysia? Not quite. Malaysia is a nice country and in many ways more developed than Vietnam. But, besides Trivechain, there were too few blockchain companies representing Malaysia at Bloconomic. There were other blockchains, like Elastos, but they were visitors to the country just like they were recently visitors to Vietnam for a road show to Ho Chi Minh City.

Bloconomic did have support from the public sector and this was encouraging. Giving a keynote speech was YB Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan, Minister of Entrepreneur Development. Besides his entourage, there were also busloads of students from a nearby university where we met students from places like Afghanistan interested in blockchain.

It’s encouraging that they are able to have such a large blockchain conference there in the capital of the country and with the attendance of country ministers. Malaysia has the potential to grow a lot in the blockchain industry the same as Vietnam. We look forward to bridging the two countries and more in the future.