Disclaimer: This article is merely based on the author opinions. Statistics will be cited at the end of the article
Crisis doesn’t always come without warnings, there are warnings along the way before crisis creep on and makes the situation worst.
This also happens with Bitkub, as their new year resolution. In this article we will be discussing about how Bitkub manage with issues, how those issues become crisis and what are the solution Bitkub do to solve them.
Bitkub is a one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Thailand, they provide Thai people trading application and a decent website. People have seen adverts about them all over Bangkok and internet. Khun Top, the CEO, and Bitkub is often mention in the conversation of bitcoins. They even have a tagline “Think of Bitcoin, Think of Bitkub,” which is quite catchy and easy for people to remember. I admired all of their marketing campaigns; they were very effectives.
However, they are not aware enough about the power of marketing, it could be your best friend but your worst enemy when you aren’t prepared. As marketing campaign going on, Bitcoin price also begin to rise since December. Attention of Thai investors are shifted to Bitcoin, and what you think of when you think of “bitcoins”? You think of Bitkub. Also, Bitkub Facebook page was counting down on Bitcoin price and create the excitement of Bitcoin price to hit 1 million baht. Which create trend of people start to sign up for Bitkub and result in a delay in KYC or Know Your Customer process. Make cutomers to wait for a week for just verifying yourself. This could be count as first warning Bitkub received, they should be doing something about how much people are pouring into their service.
On the 2nd of January 2021, bitcoin price touches 900,000 baht and it went crazy, everybody now wants a piece of Bitcoin, everybody now believe that Bitcoin is a thing, and everybody went to Bitkub. Bitkub’s application was ranked 1st free application in Thailand apple store. And that’s when the first time that Bitkub trading system went down. They announced their plan that they will be closing all trading platform from 3AM to 5AM on the 4th of January, and immediately inform that every user that log in that period of time where the website went down would get free credits of 500 baht. Which is pretty fast considering it is their first time fixing these kinds of issue. They show understanding that customer could lose their money if they done anything wrong, they even choose period of time of the website closure to be in the middle of the night where people are asleep. However, on the next day the system went down again, because of bitcoin price at that time went up and hit 1 million baht. The system, again, immediately falls apart, which leads to an instant closure of all platform on the 3rd of January from 3PM to 4PM. They also cancelled the previous announcement of the website closure on the 4th of January, and sincerely apologized about the situation.
However, people continue to complain about the systems, how the system were very slow, the KYC process, and even wrong amount of money that is showed in their wallet. As a result, for every problem each people faced they give 500-baht free credit each, with no expiration date. This would only be an issue for the company if there are no further problems.
This article wouldn’t happen if there is no crisis, if this is the end of the story…
On the 16th of January, again for the third time, BitKub website went down and again they immediately close the website for improvement. For the third times within two weeks makes this issue emerging into crisis. When the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand tell Bitkub to fix the problem immediately within 5 days’ time. This could lead to a crisis since if they don’t succeed in fixing the problem then it would mean the end of Bitkub. Even they succeed to fix the problem, but if they don’t manage the crisis properly then people could already lose trust and would want to move to other exchange website and could create loss in the company, or even worse, company could go bankrupt.
Let’s see how Bitkub managed to survive from this deadly crisis.
Firstly, they instantly close down the website so that they can scale it up properly. They use social media, their trusty tools, to inform their customers about what they are doing. Actually, Bitkub always inform their customer through Facebook page and all of their social media platforms, creating trust for the customer to know what is going on. Even if you are not following their social medias, they would email every customer the same content as the social media. This will reassure all of their customer to believe that Bitkub is not going to just disappear with all that money that they held in hand. They also use these tools to inform their customer about the progress of the system scaling. They admit all the blames and inform customers about fake news that customer might have seen from other media.
Secondly, they instantly create what they called “Bitkub Customer Protection Fund” to compensate their customer for 100 million baht. The question is, will it be enough to compensate such things called opportunities for people to get their money. It is not important whether it is enough to compensate or not, but the thought and the amount of money are just enough to get people understand their situation. As well as understand Bitkub point of view, and how hard they are trying to cope with the problem.
While these were happening, they constantly go on a Facebook live, where the CEO of Bitkub, also known as Khun Top, explaining the situation in detail and show us what they are doing and even answering question from comments. The call center of Bitkub also worked really hard, as the company inform that we could contact the call center, or email to Bitkub customer service anytime if there are any problems. This shows the sincerity of solving problem and trying to maintain people trust.
Moreover, after both Bitkub mobile application and website came back to life, they offered us more compensation in form of trading fees. All customers got one week of free trading, which means we don’t have to pay for any fee when buying or selling coins. Customer who thinks that they deserve more compensation can email to Bitkub customer service showing evidence of what they loss, and the Bitkub Customer Protection Fund will contact for furthermore compensation. In which they would calculate the amount of money that each customer, who contact them personally and showing evidence, and let the customer choose to whether receive the compensation as money or fee credits.
After the war ends, Khun Top once again came out and talked to us describing all the things they were doing, updating how they could solve the problem within couples of days. They hired more employees, they instantly grow from 200 people company to a 500 people company, which is an instant grow for startups company like this.
Overall, I think that Bitkub has done very well management of the crisis they encountered. The sincerity is there, the compensation is there, and they are very willing to satisfy all of their customer. However, I think that during the couple’s days of website maintenance, there are a lot of ups and downs in the cryptocurrency world, I can’t deny that what they have compensate me is enough for the loss of my opportunity during that period. What they could’ve done better is to actually have an actual due date for the website maintenance, so that people could be more prepared and planned out, how they will deal with the situation with less opportunity loss.
After all, I don’t have any mean opinions toward Bitkub, along research that I made, I can see sincerity and how hard they are trying. All left is for Bitkub to show their ability to be better in the future and that there should not be another problem like this anymore.
Thanks for reading
-mkm
Citation: https://mgronline.com/stockmarket/detail/9640000005272
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