Navigating the New Zealand cryptocurrency ecosystem as an entrepreneur

Date: 05/09/2024

Host: Kevin Whitmore, Business Innovation Advisor at Callaghan Innovation

Guests: Harry Satoshi, Harry has been involved in the crypto space since 2017. He was Easy Crypto NZ’s first employee, founded Cryptocurrency NZ, the NZ P2P Marketplace and secured ownership of NZ’s largest crypto groups on Facebook, Reddit, & Discord. He has also helped orchestrate hundreds of crypto meetups across the lands of NZ.

Webinar Length: 55:14

[00:00:00] Introduction and Session Overview

Kevin: All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to today's learning session. So we've got Harry Satoshi today from CryptocurrencyNZ, and we're going to talk through navigating the New Zealand cryptocurrency ecosystem as an entrepreneur. So, yeah, keen to have a chat, obviously great to have Harry involved and seeing what, what things he's aware of in terms of the retail space in New Zealand and also bringing this to sort of a business lens as well in both the, the crypto blockchain space as well.

We're recording this session today, so just be aware of that. And we'll make this interactive. So if you've got any questions feel free to jump in. We'll make it a bit of a dialogue. Otherwise there'll be more of a formal Q& A session later on after presentation. Otherwise take it away, Harry.

Harry: Awesome. Cool. Thank you, Kevin.

[00:00:58] Harry Satoshi's Journey in Cryptocurrency

Harry: My name is Harry Satoshi and I'm a cryptocurrency enthusiast from here in Christchurch. I'm absolutely stoked to do this presentation today. I'm going to be pretty casual, just covering a couple of key concepts in entrepreneurship. I'm just doing a little bit of an overview of the New Zealand Bitcoin and crypto scene and industry.

And yeah, ideally the primary objective is just to prompt you guys into thinking about potentially how you might approach your venture or your next venture. And just help you understand the sort of drive behind, you know, crypto investment in New Zealand. So yeah, thank you, Web3, for giving me the opportunity to do this presentation.

And without further ado, let's kick off. So just a bit of introduction of myself. I'm 25. I'm a fourth year student at University of Canterbury. I'm studying BCom, doing my Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Human Resource Management and Innovation degree. I discovered Bitcoin in 2017. I threw everything at it and rode three market cycles.

So I've been around for a while and I've definitely learned the hard way. Couple of good wins, couple of good losses, but it's definitely given me a little bit of experience. I've been working full or part time in New Zealand's crypto industry for about seven years. I got my break in when I was 18 years old as Easy Crypto.

Z's first employee and digital marketing manager. So I learned, yeah, quite a lot of things during that process and definitely honed in and refined my skills and my, my interest areas. So in 2020 I saw that New Zealand didn't really have that much of a structured community or a lot of educational content out there.

So I launched CryptocurrencyNZ and then in 2021, I saw that there wasn't much of a. A peer to peer trading core in New Zealand. So I launched the New Zealand peer to peer crypto marketplace. In 2022, I saw that people, especially, you know, older non technical people, preferred to actually have that human interaction and someone to actually talk to instead of a robot or a chat box.

So we launched Crypto Consulting NZ and when I started uni or since I started uni, I've also been involved with the University of Canterbury Cryptocurrency Society. So that's sort of my background. Definitely very focused on New Zealand trying to help lay infrastructure in this country. It's been really awesome is, you know, there's actually not that many of us doing this sort of thing.

So it's really small. You can actually make a difference, which is cool. And I'm sure everyone here has figured that out in their own right with their own projects. You know, the scene here is actually malleable. You can shape the country to your own vision. That's how early we are in this. So, so yeah, my own journey I was 18 when I decided that I didn't really want to do the whole rat race thing.

And I started looking at, you know, new ways to, you know, generate wealth or create value, you know, looking at technology and emerging technology. Cryptocurrency came into the equation. I love New Zealand, so I was looking around the New Zealand crypto scene and this was during the 2017 you know, 2018 bull market and I figured, you know, instead of selling gold, sell pickaxes and, you know, actually contribute to the infrastructure.

So I started working for Easy Crypto well actually I looked around the New Zealand scene, looked around all the options, looked around the industry just to see, you know, what's going to unfold from this, what's the future in this country and I looked at, I signed up for like Binance. A bunch of different not Binance, Bitprime a bunch of the different service providers.

And I basically gauged that, you know, Easy crypto really was the best service in most streamlined you know, NZD Crypto on ramping service. So I went and took a big punt on that and started offering them free work and then luckily managed to secure some part time work. And then that turned into full time work.

And I ended up basically going on this crazy, crazy journey of moving overseas and digital nomad ing and the pictures on my screen right now are just a couple of pictures of sort of my style of work.

I'm really into digital nomadism and remote, remote work. So this is a bit of a, something of a chronological story of, you know, my computers somewhat representing going from zero to one. Yeah, I've really enjoyed my experience and yeah, New Zealand is a great place to be operating. So, in terms of New Zealand, this is where we are at.

Middle earth, these mythical, beautiful, ancient lands. New Zealand was the last country, the last large landmass on earth to be discovered, right? So if you think about human migration from Africa all the way to the Pacific, this is the final frontier, you know, and New Zealanders are pioneers. And I think there's a, you know, a comparison you can make to this new digital you know, frontier of web3, blockchain, crypto, Bitcoin.

Obviously New Zealand was a major target for, or a major interest area for, you know, gold miners a couple hundred years ago. That's pretty much happened all again in the 20, in the year 2000s but with Bitcoin, right? So this digital gold rush is definitely taking people's interest for sure. So, operating in New Zealand, you've got a couple obvious natural entrepreneurial advantages, right?

So we can't overlook those. First and foremost, New Zealand's population is at 5. 2 million. So it's small enough you can actually make a dent. You can actually shape the country to your liking. You can contribute and make change. You know, if you live in China or in India, you might feel like you can't really do anything, but this country's, you know, perfectly sized, I think, to actually be able to contribute and change it.

We're politically stable. We have relatively streamlined regulations. Those are obviously always evolving, but yeah, New Zealand's a pretty, you know, not very, not too volatile of a nation. We've got great support for entrepreneurs if you know where to look for it. So this is obviously grants, entrepreneurial networks funding initiatives.

You've got Web3, you've got universities investing heavily in entrepreneurship. You know, it's a, the culture here is pretty friendly towards entrepreneurs in my opinion, but. You know, starting out, you might not see that, but the deeper you get into it and you build your networks, that definitely is a great culture for entrepreneurial activity.

Another massive advantage is that it's still early days here in the NZ Bitcoin crypto story. So, you know, if you think about, you know, this, this big you know, the currency wars of the 21st century, you know, the, you know, central you know, fiat currency versus decentralized money versus, you know, centralized you know, digital currency.

CBDC's, you know, this narrative, this story, it has not unfolded yet. We're so early days. You know, I like to think about what New Zealand is going to look like in 30, 40, 50 years from now when, you know, that story really has a lot more content in it. But yeah, definitely putting a, putting a pin in 2024 and realizing, Hey, we're not late to the party.

This is just the beginning. You get to zoom out sometimes I think, and, you know, ultimately be optimistic. I think long term we're also standing on the shoulders of giants, so. Obviously, Bitcoin was not developed in New Zealand. I did not do it. That's my confession. But we do have access to that technology.

So we get to leverage international innovation and bring that technology here into, into New Zealand. However, as Kiwis, we are largely responsible for laying the local infrastructure. So yeah, we've got access to all these beautiful things, but we have to still build our on and off ramps. We have to build our, you know, payment services, all that sort of thing.

We have to educate the local population and drive forward innovation, recognition, awareness, community, all that sort of thing. So a couple other natural advantages. We are the world's easiest place to start a business. So that should not be overlooked. The process is very streamlined. You can register your LLC within, you know, I think 24 hours or less with relatively minimal bureaucracy.

So, you know, we sort of take that for granted, I think a little bit, but yeah, really streamlined process. We are ranked among the least corrupted nations on earth. So I think we're number three on that. And, you know, that's a really, really beautiful thing we have here in New Zealand, that we've got quite a lot of trust in our institutions.

Obviously it's not perfect. But generally people act in a transparent way, knowing that they are accountable to their actions. And this obviously is a bit of shady stuff here and there, but generally compared to the rest of the world, it's really good. We're ranked also as one of the most peaceful nations on earth.

So, property rights, all that sort of stuff generally you can start a business and you're going to be all good. We're also ranked highly in terms of societal attitudes towards entrepreneurship. And so sort of eight wire culture, you know, we value you know, doing the things our own way and, you know, building up the Kiwi way.

So I think that's definitely something that's good. However, of course, we've also got a little bit of, a bit of tall poppy and, you know, it's not perfect here in the country, but it's definitely pretty, pretty bloody good. So we're also ranked high on the Human Development Index. We've got a high quality of life, work life balance, all that sort of thing.

Just things that contribute to your entrepreneurial journey. You know, you don't want to, you don't want to burn yourself out too easy. And New Zealand seems to have a default culture of balancing things, but we also have a productivity issue, of course. So yeah it's not black and white.

[00:09:49] Entrepreneurship and the New Zealand Crypto Landscape

Harry: So what is entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is the process of seizing identifying and capitalizing on opportunities to create value for others. So it's sort of like arranging chaos into order for profit or for value creation. So the term entrepreneur originates from the French word, and I'm definitely going to butcher this, entrepreneur.

I think. Which means to undertake. So entrepreneurship is like undertaking your unique vision. You've got this great grand idea for how you can bring about change or create something that will create value for others. And, you know, obviously we all have a lot of ideas, but entrepreneurs are ones who actually undertake that vision and you know, they bear the responsibility and and the risk for those, those ventures.

So. Yep, it involves the creation, organization, management, and marshalling of people, purpose, resources, ideas, vision, and strategy, and of course, management.

And of course, you know, the way that it kind of works in this world is you either create your own dreams or someone will pay you to create theirs. So entrepreneurship is a really beautiful thing in that you really can establish your own story, your own control of your own life, your own sort of destiny, really.

And it's about looking at the world as something you can actually alter, you can actually change. It's not fixed, you know, everything is in motion. So definitely, yeah, correct mindset is very important. So a couple of interesting perspectives. This is a quote I really like and it's man's or woman's insatiable quest to arrange chaos into order.

So the world is very chaotic, obviously. Markets are chaotic. Nature is chaotic. Entrepreneurship is about creating order within this chaos. Based around a strong vision, value proposition, or mission to create values, value for others. So it's like building, building structures around people, processes, and purpose to create value and deliver value to people in exchange for profit.

Or if you're a social enterprise, you know, your intention is to create social value instead of profit, of course. And then yeah, entrepreneurship is the act of recognizing opportunities and then transforming them into viable business ventures. So remember these don't have to be fully fledged companies.

Any small operation that turns a profit, whether it's you, I don't know, selling I don't know, potatoes, whatever it is, that is a venture. So I don't think the entrepreneurship is just about launching Facebook or Google or, you know, easy crypto or Binance. You know, you've got to start from somewhere, start from the ground up.

And if you're a young person, you know, that's, that's typically the way that it goes especially on your first couple of benches. So all of this is the process of going from zero to one which I like to call entrepreneurial metamorphism. So going from caterpillar to butterfly, just, you know, finding an opportunity, seizing it.

Actioning and creating something of that project or that idea, manifesting it into reality. And of course the entrepreneurial journey is growing alongside that and honing in your skills. So now just to touch on a little bit of entrepreneurial theory that I think is quite relevant. So this is Knight's theory of uncertainty.

So in Knight's theory, risk is the consequence of uncontrolled or uncontrollable change. And so of course, there's always risk. You can't always have complete certainty when you're operating in any uncertain or unstable or innovative emerging space like the crypto, Bitcoin Web3 industry. Knight saw that profit for the entrepreneur is the compensation for bearing that risk and uncertainty.

So, so the general gist is that risk takers and innovators are rewarded when entrepreneurs are willing to step into the unknown. Because obviously you can't see the future, but you can do a good job predicting it, or you can try. So, entrepreneurship is like punting on your vision for the future, bearing the uncertainty, and watching reality unfold, and then you know, benefiting from the profit of that.

So, it's almost like, here is reality, here is your vision, your vision might not be reality, but you're just sort of hoping those two things line up, and if they do and the world shifts towards, you know, demanding your sort of offering you know, then, then it pays off. You know, you really don't necessarily know what people want.

You know, I think it was a beautiful Henry Ford quote. It was if people, if you ask people about cars, they would have asked for The faster horses, I think people, what they want. They would have said faster horses. There we go. Thank you very much. Yeah, great. Great, great for sure. So yeah, we've gotten absolutely no idea where we're going to be in 20 years, you know, 30 years from now, it'll be inconceivable with just on the brink of this massive AI revolution.

Truly the future, you know, you can try and predict it, but it's, I think in 20, 30, 40 years from now, you just wouldn't be able to, you know, hindsight is 20 20. So, the corridor effect is another really important theory here. This was coined by Robert Ronstadt suggesting that entrepreneurial opportunities often emerge and become apparent only after initial decisions to enter a venture has been made.

So this is the idea that entrepreneurs don't always start with a fully formed idea, and as you move through the corridor, new pathways open up. I've got some really good examples of this in the New Zealand crypto scene later on in the presentation. But it's definitely really relevant theory, but you can't expect to go from here to here instantly.

You've got to go down the corridor and as you go through doors, other opportunities open up, you learn new things and then continue down that corridor. So it's like this unwinding potential trajectory in many different directions that you can go in and it's a really cool concept, I think. So yeah, this is the process of opportunity, discovery, experience, and learning.

And another really good quote here is, You're more likely to action yourself into a new thought than think yourself into a new action. And what that means is, you know, you can sit there all day trying to think about what you could do, or you could just do it, and that will lead to new ideas. So it's the corridor effect in a nutshell.

It also emphasizes incremental progress, innovation, and personal growth. Cool. So, I also thought I'd touch on the difference between social enterprises and for profit ventures. So for profit ventures obviously driven primarily by financial gain and profit generation. Whereas social enterprises seek to create social value, address social issues, improve communities with profit being a secondary or a means to achieve that.

So, yeah, social enterprise is a business with a specific social objective as its primary objective. And yeah, obviously you can have a matrix of these two things. So it's not black and white, you know, in 2024, the potential for your business model and how you do things is more open than it's ever been before.

I personally find it a lot more meaningful and enjoyable to have some sort of, you know, social value creation, social need, you're addressing some fundamental purpose that you align with, something you care about, something that matters to yourself and others, not just how you can sort of exploit a loophole where I am.

Particular commercial, you know opportunity. Obviously that's extremely important as well, don't get me wrong. But I think in the crypto space, just as we're so ethos based and we are here to, you know, try and, you know, reform monetary standards, you know, and that sort of thing. having people at the core of your decision making and valuing them and their social sort of needs.

I think that's a really beneficial thing. And it also opens you up to so many more types of business models. Like, if you're just valuing and measuring your success by profit, I think you're almost limiting yourself. If you're going out and, you know, defining your success by how much social value you can create.

It really opens up this whole nother, you know, universe of potential value creation and, you know, success. So, yeah, definitely, I definitely encourage social enterprises but again, it's a matrix. So just to touch on now, the New Zealand Bitcoin crypto landscape, specifically the people in the country.

So 5. 2 million people. This is some older stats from a couple of years back. But in 2024 or 2022, roughly 7. 5 percent of NZ adults already own crypto. So that's a, that's a lot. It's about half as much as Nigeria, but it is pretty decent up there on the rankings. So we're a pretty tech savvy country.

We're doing a good job. That's, that's, that's really impressive in my opinion, so far, as I believe we're still, you know, quite early days. Another 38 percent of Kiwis plan to own or invest in crypto. So, Easycrypto recently did this really good survey report, where they discovered about 50 percent of New Zealanders are inclined to adopt Bitcoin or other digital currencies.

whether as an investment or for utility or XYZ. So as there's a, that's a tremendous number. That's really, really bullish, really optimistic. So yeah, 50 percent of the country has some favorable you know, perspective when it comes to adoption and using crypto, whereas yeah, another 55 percent rejected which is interesting.

You know, I've had a lot of conversations with people and it's definitely interesting to pick their brains on why they're rejecting this technology. it. You know, you've obviously got this sort of bell curve of adoption with any technology and, you know, you're going to have laggards for sure. So I wouldn't let that sort of stray you away.

So the news on Bitcoin, crypto, Web3 landscape the Web3 ecosystem map is far better than I could possibly explain. So definitely recommend checking out that. Great resource. Thanks guys for putting that together. Needed to be done. But in my neck of the woods, this is sort of the picture that I get.

So you've got in the crypto space, like the big local titans, you've got easy crypto, obviously a massive dominant force. Binance, you know, international, almost cloud based exchange with no, you know, central headquarters sort of omniating, you know, around earth and they've come to New Zealand and they've got a, you know, an operation here, obviously.

So Binance is a strong, a strong force within New Zealand. On, you know, relatively on par with easy crypto and to some degree, obviously, because people use easy crypto as an on and off ramp, and then they use Binance to, and other DEXs to access, you know, those, those sort of, you know, other projects you wouldn't go to get you've got cryptocurrency NZ, so it's us, a little bit more about us later, but we're basically just sort of community social infrastructure.

Yeah, with Web3NZ you guys are doing great work, blockchain NZ, obviously New Zealand sort of Industry body. They're really cool. Pay It Now is a big one. Immersive. There's a bunch of other projects. I shouldn't even put I felt bad putting this together because it's not really a full accurate representation, but this is my sort of neck of the woods again.

So you've also got many remarkable individuals, let's just remember that. You know, entrepreneurship isn't just about launching organizations or massive companies. It's just venture creation, creating capital, partnering with people and making value where it wasn't before, arranging chaos into order. So in New Zealand, you've got, you know, a lot of miners, you've got peer to peer traders, you've got legal consultants, tax people, blockchain developers.

We've got a fair bit of those. They seem to sort of orbit around Auckland. Interestingly enough we've got investment firms with some gaming projects, which are really cool. We've got a big NFT digital art scene. So that sort of I'm not sure how, how hard that fell off, but it definitely did fall off after the NFT craze.

But they're definitely still, still yeah, knocking around for sure. A lot of community and events, you know, relatively speaking, still early days. You've got some payment infrastructure services, you've got some DAOs, and then you have had a fair few memcoins launched out of New Zealand. So it just sort of touches on a bit of the landscape here.

But yeah, there's so much that happens that you don't hear about, so it's hard to, you know, kind of accurately represent all of them. Awesome. So the motivations of crypto users and investors. Why are people actually here? What is the interest? What is the drive? So, the biggest picture I put up is obviously the stonks, the investment side of it, people want to turn a profit, they want to make money.

So, that is no secret, the majority of Kiwis in the country are invested in Bitcoin and crypto just to make bank, okay? So that's, that's just the reality of it. And then you have, you know, a lot of people just speculating. And then you've got all the other more interesting things. So, For one, you've got the ideological people who are interested in the sort of the ideas behind Bitcoin, crypto decentralization you know, innovating the monetary supply, you know, disruption, all that sort of stuff.

You could do a whole presentation on that. You've got the philosophical and the ethical people they're really interested in. You got the technology guys, you know, innovation novel ideas, you know, creating, you know, new systems, all that sort of thing, leveraging international technology. So it definitely is a massive tech, tech interest in this beyond just investing.

You've also got the practical utility people. So people who are buying it actually to, you know, make payments, do cool things. Send, you know, stuff overseas, whatever it is we're in a minute. You've got the autonomy, responsibility, independence people. That's cool. A lot of people just want to learn, develop, grow.

You've got privacy enthusiasts, you've got the freedom guys, and that's, you know, a beautiful part of this scene. It's sort of underpins everything, just wanting financial freedom, sovereignty autonomy. And then you've got the, the sort of the revolutionaries, which are a lot of the time very, you know, sort of at the forefront of disruption and bringing in new technology where others possibly wouldn't want to go.

So, you know, the crypto scene and the ethos is really interesting, fundamentally backed by, you know, this, the sort of, you know, desire to revolutionize finance. And then there's everything part of, you know, everything on top of that, all part of the full expression of, You know, what people are going to be interested in.

But yeah, I can't stress enough that the majority of Kiwis, the average Joe who owns Bitcoin they just want to turn a profit and they look at Bitcoin as a story of value and an investment. So what are the drivers of growth for this industry and retail demand in the country? So obviously you've got increasing global adoption and increasing global recognition of Bitcoin.

So that's always seems to be moving, moving up very slowly. There's some great statistics out there, but I think currently it's hard to tell exactly because you can't tell how many of those wallets are authentic, but I think it's somewhere between like 400 million potential users or something like that.

My stats are not perfect on that, but yeah, crypto adoption is definitely increasing, you know, especially watching from 2017. Watching, you know, two, two cycles or three cycles since then two cycles you can definitely see awareness, recognition understanding of this technology has increased, you know, it's a household, household name, no doubt whereas it wasn't back in the day.

So technological adoption and innovation is definitely driving growth. We've got a high tech savviness population, right, and a growing startups and obviously, you know, looking at Web3NZ coming into the picture within the last year, that is a really good signal that there is more interest and sort of, you know, governmental or professional awareness of this technology and this industry spawning.

So you've got favorable regulatory environment, progressive regulation. You could talk a lot about that, but it's not really my interest area. Legal certainty. So in China, they've tried to ban Bitcoin about 20 times or something. On off, on off, on off, on off, on off. That's not a a great environment to want to operate a you know, an enterprise.

So, New Zealand, stable country, pretty certain that this technology isn't going to be banned, you know, tomorrow. I'd be very surprised at this point, but we'll, we'll let that unfold. So we've also got a strong local entrepreneurial spirit, eight wire culture. We're very resourceful. You can definitely expect more people to be entering this industry.

And you do see that every day. You see people posting up all around the community saying, Hey, looking for work, looking to innovate, looking to do cool things. So that is a really good signal. We've also got a supportive ecosystem. Cryptocurrency NZ, blockchain NZ, web3NZ, you have these networks to leverage for your own success.

So don't look beyond those. We've also got access to global markets and technology. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel here in New Zealand. We don't have to do everything from the ground up. We can take the most cutting edge technology from all around the world and leverage that in our own venture creation.

So I think that's pretty cool. We've got rising local interest in alternative investment, especially young people. They're looking at, you know, I can, I can speak to that for sure. You know, you look at property, You look at, you know, stocks and you look at you know, bonds and it just does not really seem that appealing.

You know, people want a high risk investment. They want something that's going to change the world. They want an opportunity, you know, generational wealth opportunity. You know, access to the property market, for instance, is, you know, geez, you know, the average house is like a million dollars in New Zealand now, but that's not really a good deal for young people to jump in and get a mortgage for 30 years.

I'm not a financial advisor or anything like that. For me personally, not appealing. Whereas digital, you know, can't print, you can't print land and you can't print Bitcoin. So we've also got increased local awareness, community and education. So yeah, Bitcoin is definitely becoming something of a household name or definitely well beyond that.

But yeah, still early days. So behavioral patterns of investors, as we know, the crypto markets are very seasonal, you know, bear markets, bull markets it's volatile. So volatility definitely will impact your venture and your, you know, just, just everything basically from, you know, new user signups, order volumes, meet up attendance price volatility, website traffic, influence of the media, public perception, your marketing success and engagement.

Forum engagement, project launch success, you know, we see with our meetups and all of our group engagement, there's definitely like a, a sort of fluctuation of interest depending on prices. It's so interesting how you can correlate those stats to whatever price Bitcoin's at. And obviously Bitcoin is the spearhead, the mothership.

So understanding Bitcoin's role, I think, and interest, but still there's a baseline, you know, sort of resistance of interest, which is great. But anyway, Hodlers is definitely a, you know, People are going to buy, people are going to keep accumulating. The ones who get it are just going to keep using it.

So it's almost like the tide comes in and out and you're just collecting people as it goes. So yeah, early days diversification, risk appetite, personal interests. Yeah. People are gravitating towards the technology. But again, bull markets, bear markets, it's very seasonal. And I've included this picture just to illustrate it really is like the tide coming in and out over and over and over, but it's almost like it slowly comes in more every single time.

So yeah, just on the note of like developing through winter markets, you're gonna, it's gonna suck a little bit when no one cares about crypto or Bitcoin for like a year, every four years. It's a really good time to build though, just make sure that you can sustain it somehow. I don't know, going studying or something's a good strategy or, I'd say that's what I found at least.

All righty, so what are the key concerns of NZ crypto retail investment? Obviously the safe acquisition and trading of assets. You want to, you know, buy Bitcoin legitimately and safely. So it's a major concern. People just want to get it from wherever on the internet to their own wallet. So it's first and foremost.

Obviously tax obligations is something of concern, you can do it yourself or get an accountant.

[00:28:40] Scam Prevention and Security Measures

Harry: Scam prevention is very important. Your bullshit radar must always be turned. There's so many scams we deal with this literally everyday. We've spoken to like all the banks, they deal with every single day.

You know, you get people getting scammed, probably dozens of Kiwis realistically. I've been to a local police station here in Christchurch, and literally every single day someone rocks up you know, talking about a crypto scam, so, Pretty, pretty unfortunate. You know, this is just the sort of double edged sword of being in New Zealand that we are targeted by, you know, international scammers.

You can't trust anything, you know, we're in the day and age with AI, the deep fakes, text to speech, you know fabricating documents, all that sort of thing. It's just, honestly, it's ahead of the curve. And the average old person is lamb for the slaughter. So it's a really interesting age that we're headed into in terms of trust, but KYC obligations, privacy, security deciding your, you know, what, how you want to do that.

Financial advice, receiving and giving it, just be careful what you tell people to do, obviously. And do you listen to that's important. Personal security, safe storage, backing up keys, obviously, you know, if you don't actually back up your wallet. Correctly from the get go. You never owned any of your coins.

It was just temporarily something that you could access on your computer. So yeah, I don't have to tell you guys that you, you guys never just and using local services, in my opinion is a key concern as well because, you know, it's not about just supporting your local. Of course that's a great thing, but you actually get an improved experience, in my opinion, when you, when you shop local, just access to local customer support regulation community, there's accountability.

Also often we get people hitting us up who have decided to use some obscure, you know, I don't know, random exchange from overseas and no one else is using and it just sucks that, you know, a small portion of all Kiwi crypto users get captured by the first ad that pops up when they search Bitcoin on Google.

So yeah, shopping with local is very important.

[00:30:33] Challenges for New Crypto Ventures

Harry: So what are the challenges for new crypto ventures? So we're just going back to the entrepreneurial stuff now. Market demand and conditions, obviously, big challenge. You gotta figure out that one. It's definitely a very strong force. Currently we're in a pretty good market but it will see states of you know, massive volatility or lack of interest from the mainstream.

So, yeah, learn to deal with that. We've also got the AML, KYC CTF, sort of regulatory compliance. So that's all sort of anti money laundering, counter financing of terrorism. That's really strong you know, non negotiable here in New Zealand. So you're going to want to deal with that. If you're transacting anything with New Zealand dollars to crypto on and off ramping, there's particularly regulation.

We'll talk about that soon. NZ's crypto banking situation is also a massive a massive issue right now. So we'll talk about this soon. Very, very interesting. You've got evolving regulations. There's a bunch of new stuff coming out right now to do with compliance. Security concerns. Obviously, you don't want to get hacked.

You don't want your user, you know, data to be leaked or sold on a darknet. So, you know, that's definitely a concern if you're going to be managing people's information. Scams and fraud, phishing links deception, manipulation, all of that. Obviously, we are definitely the target of that. That's just the way it is here.

But that will also breed resilience. So it's not all bad. Public perception and trust. In my opinion, I don't think New Zealand media has done much of a service to this industry, which is a shame. There's definitely a lot of negative perception on crypto and Bitcoin, but then again, people tend to read headlines and not the actual content.

And in good time, I think people will become educated, but you definitely, you know, you can't, you can't win everyone for sure. So. You don't have to bother going around trying to convince, you know, never Bitcoin people to join your side. Just honestly don't bother. It's not worth your time. Have conversations though, of course, but yeah.

Don't focus on it too much. Focus on the people who want your service. Cool. So technology and infrastructure, scalability, obviously is important. We'll talk about that soon. Talent acquisition is another challenge. So actually finding people who have similar interests, similar skills, interested in you know, participating within your organization, that can be definitely a challenge as it is a small a small world here in New Zealand.

However, you can tap into things like university clubs, universities, internships. There's definitely people around for sure, but it's just sometimes difficult to find. And alignment to decentralized ethos as well I think is a big challenge because like this space fundamentally is, you know, built on that ethos and, you know, to those people who do value that ethos, basically everything that does not, Align with that as a bit of a sideshow.

It's just a bit of like a, a little sort of parallel universe of activity that does not truly matter. So I think, you know, you've got to sort of do your best to align to that. And that is a challenge that you will, you will have to, you know, make your own No decisions on. So things you should read up on NZAML, KYC law, I think it's really great.

Decentralized ideology is a good one as well. And definitely learn the customs and the local culture. We definitely do have our own way of doing things here in New Zealand. It's very cool that we're this removed little island nation that, you know, we genuinely do have our own way of doing things here in New Zealand crypto.

So. Yeah, it's cool. So regulatory compliance and KYC AML. So basically if you are a New Zealand, you know, crypto service or individual who is, you know, holding user funds, exchanging between NZD, arranging transactions, here's the list on my screen. You are obligated to comply with, with AML regulation, which requires you to collect KYC or do KYC with your customers, know your customer.

Which means they have to, you know, verify the real world identities, provide, you know, information, all that sort of thing. So i'm not going to talk too much about that as it's not really my field of interest but it is a bit of a compliance hellscape and I think you've got to have like a compliance officer Two years experience and all this sort of thing.

So it definitely is something of a You know, it's, it's very real for sure. So my personal strategy is to just not align my projects with anything that appears on this list as I just do not want to deal with this. But that also gives a lot of freedom but each their own, you know, it's very broad, do it, do what you gotta do.

Obviously you have the, you know, IRD here, you've got the FMA, you've got internal, you know, the what is it, internal affairs DIA. So yeah, a couple of regulatory bodies, government agencies in New Zealand taking interest in this stuff and you definitely can get information from them for sure.

Kevin: Yeah, and I think also we, we try and bring those government agencies into these talks as well to give us their views on the way to do things properly and also some of the lawyers as well to provide legal advice where some of us that aren't as legally capable can, can get upscaled and get the right advice as well.

Harry: For sure. And you definitely want to do it right and do justice to it. Especially just the processes around user information management. Be very, very careful. There's a couple of textbook examples in New Zealand history of that going sour, which we'll touch on shortly. So, so the NZ crypto banking situation, I might plug Kev here in a second, cause he, he knows far more about this than I do, but it is a major issue new enterprises, new ventures trying to, you know, actually gain banking services, which is essential for transacting between New Zealand dollars, the national currency, and, you know, your users.

So, You know, it's interesting whatever you want to attribute the reasons to, whether it's banking sector risk management which is definitely very real as we've touched on with just the absurd amount of scams they get. Some of them just don't want to deal with crypto. You've got Westpac who block crypto transactions a lot of talk in other places.

But, yeah, the other side of it is like, is it anti competitive behavior? And, you know, I'm not here to say the raw is really not my area, but there definitely are some major concerns. And, you know, the question is does this throttle innovation? Absolutely it does. And I think there's some interesting conversations, especially from Janine Grainger is the cryptos founder about banking as a human right, You know, we've got this national, these national currencies, fiat currencies.

And if you can't actually use them because the private market, you know, there's, banks, you know, just a couple it's like, I think it's like 26 banks in New Zealand, but most of them were sort of like obscure random bank of, you know, India sort of, you know, affiliates there's about, what is it? There's four or five major banks in New Zealand.

And they've got such an important role in our society. Obviously, you know, money, you know, that's how we create social bonds with each other and, you know if they can sort of block people from using crypto or from engaging in business or creating ventures, that's a serious problem. So I definitely think that as a conversation, which is going to become a lot more prevalent, someone should definitely do something about that in my opinion.

But yeah, maybe if you want to jump in, if you've got anything interesting to add.

Kevin: Yeah, I'm just, I've just added the link to our debanking paper from last year. So we required a bit of investigation. So Janine's comments are in there as well. Obviously, yeah, this is an ongoing thing in terms of blockchain NZ are also doing some work in the space in terms of working with government to potentially put more clarity around.

around this. But yeah, it is, it's an evolving situation. As much as possible, we're looking to work with the banks to try and alleviate any concerns that they have and put some structure around it. We're proposing a compliance pathway process so that we can assist where there are challenges around the technology and the unknowns to put a process in place so that some of those risks are mitigated and banks get better assurity around the businesses that they're working with doing the right things so yeah, it's ongoing.

It is frustrating. Both sides kind of have. Sort of points to make and now it's about pulling everybody together and seeing how we can move forward.

Harry: Yeah, sure. I think that again, as a testament to how early days it is, you know, the banking system trying to figure out, you know, where they stand with crypto and how they're going to integrate it or use it or you know, customers, all that sort of thing.

We're still early in the story, so it's gonna be exciting to see how that unfolds. So, so just a bit of a case study. So obviously you've got these banking issues and you've got compliance sort of obligations. So a textbook example of that in New Zealand is, you know, throughout the years, we've had many attempts of local Kiwis entrepreneurs to lay out, you know, Bitcoin ATMs across the country.

Pretty much all of those have shut down due to either banking issues or KYC, you know, AML obligations. So you're seeing now these two competing international. You know, ATM sort of conglomerates now rolling into New Zealand, you've probably seen a bit of news on it recently, they've launched like 250 ATMs all across the country or at least that's sort of on the agenda I've seen them everywhere, it's pretty incredible, but that is just a testament to what happens if, you know, we have a sort of unfavorable environment towards particular sectors of the crypto you know, landscape, international players are going to come in.

And, you know, we want to keep industry in New Zealand. We don't just want to have Amazon of crypto come to New Zealand and sweep up all the opportunity. We want local businesses and we want entrepreneurs having opportunities. So the ATM scene is definitely an interesting example of that.

So We've also got the New Zealand dollar Crypto on and off ramping landscape. So it's obviously, you know, a very sort of fundamental pillar of crypto New Zealand. Everyone has to transact Bitcoin to New Zealand, New Zealand dollars to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to New Zealand dollars. That's sort of the interface.

And then once you're in Bitcoin or once you're in crypto, you can, you can do whatever you want in Defi. But there's that interface. So this is a bit of a map. Obviously easy crypto is the massive player in New Zealand, about 200, 000 users. They do a brilliant job of delivering those services. You've got Binance who have come in over the last couple of years.

I think they've had some issues with banking and all that sort of stuff. So the primary on and off ramping is through their peer to peer platform, but they're definitely a major player. You've got PayItNow, which is definitely a force as well, good service, and KiwiCoin, which is a little bit more sort of obscure and low key.

But I believe they do, you know, NZD to Bitcoin. So then over here in the graveyard, the Easy crypto graveyard, you've got a couple of services which you know, had great success over the years, but they've ultimately fallen off pretty much all left in the wake of Easy crypto really. So like part of the, part of my own journey from 2017 to 2024 is having watched, you know, the industry unfold.

And it's just so interesting seeing, you know, these, these big, you know, organizations these structures just slowly fall off. while Easy Crypto has come to dominate the market. So we see a Bitprime, Christchurch based, very easy, you know, Easy Crypto like, you know retailer they fell off due to some, you know, some valid volatility and, you know, and whatnot Vimba or mine, BitcoinSaver as well another easy crypto like sort of retailer, Dasset, TheExchange, NZBCX and obviously Cryptopia and, and LocalBitcoins, which isn't strictly Kiwi, but that was another major sort of on and off ramping.

So the scene has definitely centralized, you know, there's, there's massive powerful forces there used to be a lot more options. And then of course, you've got New Zealand peer to peer crypto marketplace, or just general peer to peer services where you can buy and sell crypto between individuals.

Kevin: And we've also got Lightning Pay. As well, it's up and coming as well.

Harry: For sure, for sure. Yeah, there's definitely a lot going on this end. I shouldn't, this definitely is not like, you know, the whole picture, but just, you know, my sort of neck of the woods. Great.

[00:41:47] Navigating New Zealand's Crypto Community

Harry: So, navigating New Zealand's crypto community.

I think this is a really important thing to consider and understand, sort of, where the people are at. So I thought I'd do a little bit of a run through of what's going on. So first and foremost, I'm just going to hover over this little mystery, man. And that represents all the people who don't use social media and don't care about engaging in local groups.

You know, I remember about 200, 000 Kiwis use crypto. The New Zealand crypto community is about 20, got about 20, 000. So about 10 percent of people seem to be, you know, sort of interested. And obviously this is not an accurate representation but. You know, you're always going to have like, you know, within a decentralized autonomous organization, you're going to have members, but you're not going to, you know, only 10 percent of people vote.

So that's just the nature of how people are interested in things. So you've got the crypto New Zealand community group. That's the big Facebook group here in New Zealand that we run. There was a lot of Facebook groups back in the day, but it all sort of centralized under this. You've got a couple of good discord groups.

Cryptocurrency NZ one is good. Crypto airdrops community is another one. You've got Louisa's crypto woman, Australia and New Zealand. You've got some niche interest groups like NZ crypto miners, NZ peer to peer crypto marketplace. You've got, you know, Reddit forums you know, r slash NZ Bitcoin. You've also got the BitKiwi community.

So it's sort of an up and coming you know, Bitcoin only focused maxi sort of commune. Definitely a cornerstone of the community and you've got the meetups, of course, which is like the physical realm of crypto community in New Zealand. So I definitely recommend getting involved with those. So that's just a bit of a layout of the scene, but I think if you're an enterprise or an entrepreneur in the grassroots, definitely get involved with the communities for sure.

So, classic examples of NZ crypto entrepreneurship. Your easy crypto, massive success story from Alan, Janine Granger.

2018 they came in they undercut everyone in terms of prices, made the process streamlined, fast order turnaround speeds, easy onboarding, all that sort of thing, and now they dominate New Zealand. They expanded to Australia and South Africa. Yep. which, you know, had varying success compared to easy crypto.

So it's a bit of a bit of a story there in terms of, you know, securing your home market and then expanding overseas. You know, should you continue focusing primarily on your home market? Another classic example is a Cryptopia, which was the massive exchange based here in Christchurch. They had the opposite problem.

They basically, you know, started as a hobby, then scaled to 2 million users in a relatively short amount of time during the bull market. The founders saw great opportunities to offer high exchange services, large selection of coins, and basically this was before Binance and before DEXs were mainstream.

So during the bull market, the company grew so fast, they like had an absurd amount of new user signups, technical difficulties and they were ultimately hacked and they had their bank accounts closed. So Binance is a pretty textbook example of you know, suffering from your own success and just been, you know, prepared to scale in contrast to easy crypto extending to Australia and South Africa.

So you've also got like, you know, smaller ventures of individual Kiwis doing cool things. So entrepreneurship is not just about obviously launching Facebook. This is a textbook example of a good friend of mine. I took his details off at request last minute as I didn't want to dox a guy. Basically, this person was an avid PC gamer.

And when he started learning how to build his own computers, he started building more and selling his gaming PCs to other Kiwis. He kept developing this business, had excess hardware in stock, and because he had heaps of GPUs, he started putting those to use with Ethereum mining. So he ended up building this massive scale Ethereum mining operation in his mum's garage when he was like 18 years old.

And this is, this is a real picture. I'm going to say massive, you know, I mean massive to, you know, to me and as a hobbyist. It was absolutely awesome. So this is just a classic example of, you know, this is entrepreneurship. This is just seizing good opportunities and taking action, taking risk and capitalizing on them.

So that guy props to him. You've also got Tying House. So this is a really interesting one. I won't go too deep into it as we don't have too much time. It's a new type of venture if you will, right? And so entrepreneurship and decentralized autonomous organizations a friend group decided to put their decision making and coordination on chain and put, you know, sort of injected a bunch of Ethereum into that and ended up, It's going, Buying or leasing the central warehouse where they're through all these awesome events and stuff.

So it's not necessarily entrepreneurial about creating companies. It's just about creating value, social value. So DAOs are a new way that you can do that. But yeah, definitely recommend looking into TimeHouse. So coming up with ideas. So we're pretty much almost in. This is my recommendations.

Go explore the NZ crypto community, gauge the current landscape, go have a look, see what's happening. Consider your, the interests, the basic interests and advanced needs of users. So actually trying to understand what people need and what they want. You also want to zero in on your own passion and interest areas.

Definitely do something that aligns with your values that makes everything much more interesting and meaningful. Having an ideas notebook is a really cool thing. You'll be happy about that later. In the ideation phase, preemptive value creation and service to others. You don't necessarily have to turn a profit to sort of, you know, investigate the feasibility of a project.

You can just go out there and do things and have fun and just see what people care about or see what works and, you know, don't take it too seriously. It doesn't have to be a registered company off the bat. Eureka moments. So incremental upgrades and the corridor of fit Eureka moments, obviously.

Those brilliant times where you just get such a, such an awesome little glimpse of light into a cool concept or a strategy and then implementing those strategies long term. And obviously the corridor effect, you know, reality unfolds in front of you connect with like minded individuals build a network, be around driven individuals.

Obviously that's that's, you know, it's the clear ones. And also explore intrapreneurship, which is teaming up with existing projects and developing within you know, small startups, all that sort of thing. You don't have to, you know, go by yourself. You can, you can definitely look at projects that you care about and see value in and then build within.

So here's a couple of random and free ideas. Don't take this too seriously. You can create an investment DAO with your mates. That's a really cool concept. I'm definitely going to be doing that over the next couple of years with mine. P2P trading obviously is a really cool option in New Zealand as there's like 8 percent margins in the P2P sort of community.

So it's definitely an opportunity to earn profit. Bitcoin mining operations are also a cool thing. Just find a cheap source of power, so potentially if you're like a student in a dorm, see if you can tap into the mains or something don't take this advice seriously. And I also asked ChatGPT, absurd ideas, and it gave me some really random stuff, but, you know, in the age of artificial intelligence, it's definitely great for, you know, figuring out what's what's going.

Just tapping into AI, you know, we are in this You know, it's a real age of progress with this technology. And the truth is that it's going to get to the point soon, whether it's in 10, 15, 20, 25 years, that artificial intelligence can identify opportunities in a market. They can build brands, they can build logistic networks, they can do infrastructure, they can do your marketing, they can do your finances, they can do your AML.

So. This is really crazy. You know, with AI, you can, you can even tell it to code your website now and it'll do it in a flash of a second. So it'll get to the point where people have got their little Neuralink you know, bloody headsets or chips in their brain and they're running their businesses completely remotely, just walking around or doing whatever.

And if you've got AI out there building projects for you, you know, what is the sort of key value proposition of being a human if value creation isn't our exclusive sort of domain? So definitely think about that. Prepare for the future. Stay on the edge of it. Yeah, you definitely want to sort of be on the side of artificial intelligence, I think, if you can, and not just be sort of you know, a consumer.

Lessons learned from NZ's crypto story. So. I think, yeah, acting with integrity is really important expecting transparency and doing justice to the movement, expecting that whatever you do, it's probably going to be spoken about down the track or it's going to be looked into if things go wrong.

So, just make sure that you do things in a really decent way, I think. Yeah, start at the grassroots, engage with local community from the ground up. You can't, you know, there's so many interesting examples of New Zealand crypto businesses who come in really professional, really clean. They look so good, but no one's actually using them because they never connected with the users or the grassroots.

So you've got to build a user base and be open to feedback and actually engaging in discussions is a really good way to do that. Actually showing up instead of just this assumed presence that, you know, you're sort of building with your brand. Be prepared for change, volatility, crypto winters, criticism, feedback.

So KYC compliance is a non negotiable unless you can outright avoid it. So that means, you know, exploring crypto to crypto sort of enterprises. Or just anything that means you don't have to have a compliance officer in a compliance process, but, you know, each their own, obviously, and that's, it's not as simple as that big projects require a big investment and KYC is part of that.

So transparency builds trust and education reduces fear. Definitely be straight up about what you're doing, show your fees, you know, don't assume that people are going to trust you because, you know, X, Y, Z, you want to just be transparent, I think. Don't run a pyramid scheme or a scam platform. I think it's really important.

We've fallen into that trap a couple of times in this country. Collaboration is extremely powerful. Building a correct team of like minded individuals. You don't have to do everything by yourself. This is really insane. It's like, if you could ask for anything, if you've got a genie in a bottle, what would it be, would it be a million dollars?

Not for me, it would be 10 good men or women, just 10 people, really solid, a solid team to be able to actually do some awesome things with. So like build, find that team of 10, just create, you know, a network. Be around like minded individuals. I think that's really important. And I think this is the final slide.

So lessons learned as well. Real world use cases actually matter. All right. So the age of selling hype and speculation and hope is, is definitely over right now, I think definitely. So you're going to, you're going to want to actually deliver something of value and not just sell a narrative and a story.

I think we're crypto space. So yeah, you'll get called out for it and people will just think your project's bullshit. You know, if you're trying to say that you got all this stuff and all this stuff and you're probably not going to deliver on it and people know that by now so just be honest and have integrity.

You should align your values around crypto ethos or else it's a sideshow. So it's just kind of my like injection of my five cents do what you want to do. But, you know, again, within this sort of Bitcoin revolution, fundamentally, if you're not aligned with those values, you really are just noise, I'm afraid to say, so you want to stay, you know, on track, but again, there's a whole world of innovation and opportunity beyond just revolutionizing the monetary system.

So giving credit to that too. This is Crypto. So mission driven projects , you can do incredible things when it's not just about money. When you're measuring your success based on, you know, a social value that you're creating you've just got, yeah, there's much more sort of value and loyalty towards that.

So your project doesn't have to be local. DeFi, Web3 is a global space and it's still early days. I like to focus on the local scene, but you know, don't get me wrong. There's so much things happening internationally, go bloody crazy. And yeah, actually show up in local communities and groups. Don't be just, don't become disconnected.

We've spoken about that and leverage local networks like cryptocurrency and Web3NZ, Incredibly useful. We're having this conversation right now because of Web3. Blockchain is good for a token cryptocurrency as well. So definitely like throw yourself deep into the community, see who's operating, see what's going on, see what the conversation is, check out the culture.

I might just add one more here and then we'll wrap up, but You know, just with your marketing and stuff, don't, you don't have to come in cold selling, you know, you don't have to come in like ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, you just engage with people, start conversations, people are keen to talk, obviously you're going to get a lot of noise and people just, you know, sort of saying random things and asking random questions, but.

I think easy crypto did a really good job in those early days of actually fronting up and discussing their service and talking about their offerings and talking about what people want. And because of that, they, they had a remarkable launch. So yeah, on that note, thank you very much for Listen to my presentation.

I hope we can all together contribute to building a world class NZ crypto ecosystem in our beautiful little corner of the world. And yeah, if you've got any questions go for it, but otherwise I wish you the best with your ventures. And if you ever need a hand, don't hesitate to reach out.

Kevin: Awesome. Thank you, Harry. We're bang on time. So what I might suggest is I've got a bunch of questions. I might send them through to you. If you're open to that. And we could do a sort of a written response to some of these questions, just, just being respectful of people's time, because obviously we're, we're narrowing in but there's lots of stuff that came off the back of that, which is really cool.

So it'd be really good to to send those through if, if that works for you. No problem. Cool. Should we send them, what's the best way to reach you? Should we send them via email or via we could do it through a Web3NZ post as well. Is the other option?

Harry: Yeah, either or. Feel free to ping me at harry cryptocurrency. org. nz.

Kevin: All right. And yeah, otherwise, Thank you very much for today. That was really cool. I can see some follow up sessions falling off the back of that as well, just because you've got so much content there and there's, there's lots to discuss. So thanks very much, Harry, and we will follow up with some questions and hopefully do another follow up session later on as well.