Looks like they'll heat things up in ASEAN. I was fully expecting Malaysia or even Indonesia to organise themselves ahead of the Philippines, even though mainstream adoption (at least from what I can tell) is actually very much embedded in urban Philippines. Of course, this is probably because of the initial push from the PEZAs, not least from the Cagayan EZ.
Is this going to be the first one outside of Cagayan with this specific licence, which if I recall will have over 10 exchange licenses issued already. All of these are sort of FDI, though, wonder when the first local exchange will come up. The central bank there definitely seems a lot quicker to decide, while those in Indonesia and Malaysia are playing cat and mouse, despite the change of leadership in the latter.
As far as PDAX, there's no clear date as of yet. But we still have our coins.ph trading platform to used as a "playing ground" for less experienced Filipino traders. Yes, it seems the BSP or Central Bank of the Philippines really wanted to push crypto/blockchain in the country ahead of many ASEAN nations, they wanted to be the first around the region to be the central hub. Indonesia and Malaysia are somewhat conservative though, perhaps undecided on still in the gray area, but sooner or later will they follow this trend among ASEAN neighbors so crypto is really a boom in the region.
Yeah, coins.ph has been a sturdy player, and Luno has been making its moves in all three countries, going so far as to have talks with both the central banks of Indonesia and Malaysia. But they've been strangely quiet this year after running user research in Indo and Msia, I can understand with the political changes there coinciding with the bear market, but with both also having formed informal "blockchain associations" I really thought they would move first. Adoption seemed to have started early there, with volumes at LBC peaking in 2016 and maintaining high levels in 2017. My personal feeling is that the FDI (including crypto related) was much higher in PH, and the existing close relationships with US