Saad Ahmed, head of Asia Pacific at Gemini
Saad Ahmed, Head of Asia Pacific at Gemini, says Southeast Asia’s (SEA) digital asset landscape offers diverse opportunities shaped by unique regulatory frameworks and use cases.
Unlike the US’s unified market, SEA is a collection of distinct ecosystems. Singapore stands out with clear regulations and a sophisticated investor base that integrates digital assets into portfolios. In contrast, stablecoins are popular in the Philippines as a hedge against inflation, while Vietnam thrives as a hub for gaming and GameFi innovation.
Gemini’s focus in the region is on enabling access to these evolving opportunities. “Whether it’s meme tokens, gaming tokens, or AI tokens, Gemini provides the infrastructure to support the community,” Ahmed explains.
Operating primarily in Singapore, which holds in-principle regulatory approval, Gemini benefits from established payment systems that ease user onboarding and trading. However, inconsistent regional regulations pose challenges, particularly in markets lacking local payment rails, such as the Philippines and Vietnam.
As a result, Gemini’s growth outside Singapore relies on organic user discovery rather than targeted marketing. Despite this, the platform attracts users across the region, including from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia.
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In an interview with e27, Ahmed discussed Gemini’s milestones in Singapore and what the company has in store for SEA.
The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
How do you approach the different regulatory frameworks in the countries in which Gemini operate?
To be fair, it is a challenge, right? Unlike Europe, where there is one regulatory framework.
In a market like Asia, there are two things [that you need]: Number one, clarity around regulation. I think that makes it much easier for us to operate, having clear ground rules on what exchanges need to do or what any Web3 firm needs to do.
Number two, there are differences in nuance in what the regulations in each market apply. It is a challenge, not just for us but for the industry as a whole. That means we need to really pick and choose our focus markets which is exactly what we are doing in Singapore.
Gemini has been able to build a strong ecosystem here in Singapore. We are actually figuring out an expansion to other parts of the region, and we will be able to share more about that in due time.
As a player in this industry, do you have any aspirations about where regulation and policy should be headed?
If I had a magic wand, I would want consistent regulation across all markets. This would make it easier for global players to operate. We would not have to set up operations in specific countries and comply with just that particular market or customise products for one set of users here and another set there.
If governments and regulators across the region could come up with one regulatory framework, I think that would be much better for the industry and ecosystem as a whole.
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In the past year, traditional banks are finally embracing digital assets. What are your thoughts about this trend?
What has happened over the last year has been a significant shift in how digital assets are perceived by the traditional finance industry. And I think the catalyst for some of that would have been the Bitcoin ETF approval [by SEC] in January.
You have players such as BlackRock and corporations that have been around for decades entering the space, and it lends credibility to the asset class. It means the asset classes are here to stay.
It is much more compelling as an asset class for them to stand behind, and with their relationships and power, I think we will see this asset class continue to grow.
The other thing that has happened with ETFs is that there used to be a more complex undertaking for financial institutions. They had to find an exchange or an OTC desk where they would buy the asset. Then, they had to find a way to custody the asset, but that has changed.
How exactly does Gemini work with the different players in this ecosystem to build a healthy and robust ecosystem for digital assets?
Our primary business in Singapore is the exchange.
We have relationships with market makers and trading firms that trade on our exchange. We also have a huge retail community that trades on the exchange. We work with financial institutions and banks providing the on- and off-ramps to our customers. What we have not done enough in the past, but we are starting to change, is to work with builders and list projects with a lot more velocity than we have previously.
There have been some challenges with that, but now that is changing. You might have seen that we listed three new tokens last week. This week, we are going to list another.
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We will continue to engage with the community of builders here to determine what they are building and how we can list them on the exchange to give them access to our customer base. Obviously, they have to go through the due diligence and assessment process to ensure that the projects we are listing are the kinds of projects that we want our customers to have access to.
So, after all these years in Singapore, what are the most important milestones that Gemini has achieved?
From the time we started out, we obviously have had ups and downs,, as any crypto firm would. At the end of the day, the market cycle drives a lot of the momentum for a company like ours.
However, my personal focus over the last year has been threefold. Number one would be building a leadership team for Asia, which we did not have before. In the last six months or so, we brought on a new head of compliance, a general counsel, a head of consumer growth, a head of strategy, a head of institutional sales, a head of trading and then, folks on the marketing team. So, that has been something that I have focused on: to build a core leadership team here that is going to help build a strong foundation for us to grow in the rest of Asia.
The second has been international expansion. Due to historical reasons, a lot of our business is concentrated in Singapore. But over the last few months, we have been identifying the markets that we want to enter. We are establishing and incorporating entities in a couple of new markets as we speak.
Lastly, one of my other objectives was to make sure we are driving our licensing process forward. You might have seen the announcement, we received our in-principle approval from the MAS, and we are confident that we will be able to drive towards a license from the MAS within the next few months.
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Given the regulatory limitations on marketing your platform in Singapore, are you going to use a new approach for your upcoming initiatives?
In Singapore, we have started looking at other ways of engaging customers that we can do within the regulatory guidelines. This includes hosting events with customers and engaging our VIP customers by having account managers, reaching out to customers and figuring out how we can help them.
We are exercising our growth muscle in those areas within the constraints that we have to work within. But in some of the new markets we are launching, we do not have some of those restrictions, and we will be able to consider doing more ATL or performance marketing in those markets.
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Image Credit: Gemini
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