Quiet Power Plays - Ron Nguyen on Marketing

Vietnam has recognised crypto assets and launched a regulated market pilot. Legal clarity creates a route into the market, but operational readiness determines who can use it.

Retail forex is facing regulatory extinction in Vietnam. State Bank of Vietnam is tightening the grip and how the 2026 Law on Digital Technology Industry shifts capital into legal crypto assets.

Leading an 18-person team taught me how to manage expectations. A quiet routine at home taught me what marketing actually is, building trust before anyone needs you. Now I’m helping fintechs enter Vietnam the insider way.

Most founders think a well-placed article or a viral tweet is enough to earn market trust. It isn't. Three years running PR for Web3 and crypto projects taught me trust is slower and less forgiving than that.

I built a full operations stack for BlockPR in late 2025, a sales tracker, a weekly content rhythm, automated reporting. The systems were real. What I underestimated was the discipline it takes to actually run them.

CFD trading in Vietnam isn't illegal on paper. In practice, it's treated as if it is. That gray zone shapes everything about how the surviving brokers market themselves, and it isn't the loud ones who last.

A client asked if we could run Vietnam end to end. That question exposed the edge of what PR could solve, and became the starting point for 43to.one.

In 2024, a well-funded enterprise client seemed like the account every agency wants. Then the scope started moving, quietly, one reasonable request at a time.

Why I chose not to build BlockPR around cheap Web3 marketing volume, and what Vietnam’s 2023–2024 crypto campaigns taught me about trust.

A lesson from working at a crypto exchange taught me why deliberate legal risk can cost far more than a failed campaign, and how I apply that lesson at BlockPR.