The First Cambodia Blockchain Summit 2025 Sets New Milestone for Cambodia’s Digital Future
The Cambodia Blockchain Summit (CBS) 2025, co-organised by the Faculty of Digital Economy of the National University of Management (NUM), Startup Grind Cambodia, and the Cambodia Blockchain Community, successfully brought together over 1,000 participants, 20+ speakers, 20+ exhibitors, six workshops, and two panel discussions for the one-day event at NUM.
The summit provided a unique platform for blockchain professionals, investors, startups, and policymakers to engage in meaningful discussions and explore the future of blockchain in Cambodia.
Held on March 30, 2025, at NUM, the summit featured a series of keynote addresses and panel discussions where industry leaders, such as Thomas Schings from RGX; Dr. Daiju Aiba from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC); Saing Sab from IG Tech Group; Serey Vathana Tum from the Techo Startup Centre; Max Thornton from Satori Giants; Chhay Lem Lim from Serey Platform; Sreng Nearirath from DFDL; and Sek Socheat from NUM, shared their insights on blockchain’s crucial role in Cambodia’s economy and its future potential. These discussions highlighted how blockchain could drive economic growth, enhance financial inclusion, and fuel technological innovation across various sectors in Cambodia.
In addition to the panel discussions, attendees participated in several hands-on workshops led by experts such as Khuon Sophorth from Morakot Technology, Pak Maneth from dreamsLAB, and Dr. Steve Peters from wallet79. These workshops offered participants the opportunity to deepen their understanding of blockchain technology while exploring its practical applications. The summit also featured a mini fair where over 20 exhibitors showcased cutting-edge blockchain solutions, providing attendees with a glimpse into the transformative potential of blockchain across various industries.
Building Cambodia's Blockchain Community
Bringing together all key stakeholders was a key goal of the summit, in order to begin building a concrete blockchain community that can work together to bolster the technology's further adoption and development in the Kingdom.
“Our initial purpose of organising a summit is we want to build the blockchain community here, but the first step is to find out who are the stakeholders, because we're not sure how many blockchain developers there are and who are all the stakeholders here,” David Shelters, an independent consultant to the blockchain summit, told B2B Cambodia.
He stressed that the summit was intended for a mixed audience of both blockchain enthusiasts, who are not necessarily practitioners, and professionals who actually develop, utilise and work with blockchain in their company or organisation, to bring multiple perspectives together for a better awareness and understanding of how blockchain can impact people's daily lives.
“Most people are familiar with blockchain from a cryptocurrency perspective, but what we want to do is identify case studies, business case applications, where we can go and actually solve local problems that Cambodia faces,” Shelters added. “There's fundamentally some things that we have to improve on to really fully optimise the technology; we need to have infrastructure in place, we need to have favourable policies in place, but we also have to have fundamentals, like more digital literacy and financial literacy.”
Blockchain is a very viable technology, but… there's some fundamental underlying issues that we have to also address to fully take advantage of the technology. There's a fundamental change of thinking that has to happen too, and we hope that this is just the beginning with this summit.
“I think Cambodia needs more of these summits, because blockchain technology is so important, and it's also so unrealised," added Chhay Lem Lim, Founder of the Serey Platform, which co-sponsored the summit. “What Cambodia really needs is clear regulation about blockchain and crypto, because we cannot just overlook this technology anymore, it's so important. But secondly, we need education, crypto education, and through these kinds of summits, people get exposed to knowledge on blockchain and its capabilities and, and this is also a way to to protect the people, because there's a lot of scams in crypto, and the more educated the people are, the better they can protect themselves.”
Blockchain Adoption, Regulation and Real World Applications in Cambodia
Thomas Schings, General Manager at RGX, the main sponsor of the blockchain summit, spoke to B2B Cambodia about the growing interest in blockchain among young Cambodians, however, he noted that the market unfortunately remains quite male-dominated.
“We definitely see a growing interest in the market, a lot of especially young Cambodians, are eager to learn about blockchain, and also some of them are eager to invest, the new industry is definitely picking up. But we see, like today, at this Cambodia Blockchain Summit, a lot of young companies, a lot of startups, unfortunately, very male-dominated," shared Schings.
As a fun fact, currently, we see also on RGX, the majority of users are between 25 and 35 [years old] and 80 per cent are male, but adoption is growing, and so we, as an exchange, and generally for the blockchain industry as well, are very happy to see this trajectory of people learning about blockchain, understanding the systems and gaining more trust, which I think is really important.
Reflecting on the current regulations in place in Cambodia and how they support blockchain adoption, Schings noted that the regulatory sandbox established under the Securities and Exchange Regulator of Cambodia (SERC) continues to be the main regulatory environment available to companies like RGX, however, there have been some new updates like the Prakas issued by the NBC at the end of 2024 announcing banks would be able to deal with certain crypto business transactions pertaining to stablecoins.
“There's still quite some unclarity on which stablecoins may be allowed, so we haven't really seen this happening in practice yet with the banks, but we see a lot of development from the regulatory side as well,” he added.
Exploring the main real world applications and use cases for blockchain in Cambodia, one of the main examples of blockchain's utility emphasised at the summit was its ability to secure trust in the digital economy.
“In the last 10 years, we have observed huge progress in the digitisation of the Cambodian economy, but there are still challenges in the current digital network, especially in that we lack a system that secures trust,” said Dr. Daiju Aiba, an expert from JICA attached to the NBC, in an interview with B2B Cambodia.
He added:
Blockchain provides a decentralised and consensus mechanism in the digital market, the system actually provides secure transactions between participants in the market. So in that aspect, blockchain will improve the digital economy further, and also adapting such a technology, we can reduce cost in transactions, especially in the payment market or in the borrowing or lending market.
Aiba also highlighted how blockchain-backed technology can help to improve financial inclusion, citing the NBC's Bakong payment system as a prime example.
“There are many people left behind in the formal financial sector, but blockchain-backed technology might improve such issues…for example, currently, digital wallets are introduced in Cambodia, and now people in rural areas have started using digital payments because of the current introduction of the blockchain-based technology, Bakong, which was introduced by the National Bank of Cambodia.”
He also posited that blockchain technology can potentially help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access financing through loans:
Currently, small and medium enterprises, mainly rely on the land title for borrowing money, using their land title as collateral, otherwise they can't borrow from formal financial institutions, but the blockchain might improve this situation by allowing the financial institutions to use movable assets as collateral, such as receivables or payables…. so the blockchain could further facilitate the development of financial products or financial methods, like using movable assets as collateral.
Inspiring Interest in Blockchain for Cambodia's Digital Future
Reflecting on the success of the first Cambodia Blockchain Summit, Bill Sokhy Chea, Lead Organiser, said: “What an incredible day! CBS 2025 wasn’t just an event – it was a movement. Seeing so many passionate minds come together to explore the future of blockchain in Cambodia was truly inspiring."
He added:
CBS provided ample opportunities for blockchain entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and other stakeholders to connect, collaborate, and explore potential partnerships aimed at advancing the industry. A massive thank you to our sponsors, speakers, exhibitors, volunteers, and most importantly, the community, for making this possible.
The success of CBS 2025 was made possible through the support of its main sponsor RGX; co-sponsors and partners, Bybit, Rising Giants, Serey Platform, OMOHUB, dreamsLAB, BookMe+; and collaboration with leading tech communities, media companies, blockchain companies, and academic institutions.
With Cambodia’s digital economy on the rise, CBS 2025 has set a strong foundation for fostering blockchain innovation, education, and investment in the region.
Parts of this article were sourced from a supplied press release.