Web3 PR Beyond Singapore: How to Earn Media in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand

Most Web3 PR strategies for Southeast Asia are really Singapore strategies. A Forbes Asia mention, a Cointelegraph piece, maybe a slot at TOKEN2049. That covers the English-language gatekeepers and the expat crypto crowd. It does not touch the 17 million Vietnamese holders, the 22-plus million Indonesian crypto accounts, or the 56,000-plus Thai community following Bitcoin Addict Thailand on X.

These three markets are not smaller versions of Singapore. They each have a distinct local media stack, distinct regulatory sensitivities right now, and distinct community behaviors that determine whether your pitch lands or dies in an inbox. A Singapore-only playbook misses all three.

I've spent six years running APAC PR campaigns, including earlier as APAC Lead at CoinMarketCap and now leading APAC PR and Partnerships at Myosin. I've placed projects across Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese-language media. The lesson that keeps repeating: local language is the credential.

I said it bluntly on X a few weeks back:

hate companies who do geo based pay v/s talent based pay!!! south east asia is one of the greatest hub for talent

Shilika Jain on X, 10 Sep 2026

The same logic applies to PR. Southeast Asia is not a cost-reduced market. It is a high-velocity market with its own information architecture. Treat it accordingly.

Why 2026 Is the Right Moment for This Expansion

The regulatory calendar has created a set of live news hooks that do not come around often.

Vietnam passed its Law on Digital Technology Industry in June 2025, which took effect on January 1, 2026, formally bringing crypto assets under government oversight for the first time. The government's first regulated crypto market pilot started accepting exchange license applications in January 2026, with five companies reportedly clearing the first qualification stage by early Q2. Vietnam's deputy Finance Minister publicly targeted Q3 2026 for the first official activity in the regulated market.

That is not background context. That is a news cycle. Any protocol with a genuine Vietnam story — local users, a Vietnamese team member, a liquidity integration with an emerging licensed exchange — has a real editorial reason to pitch local Vietnamese media right now.

Indonesia's story is equally strong. As of July 2026, Indonesian crypto accounts had reached 22.93 million, according to OJK data, with transaction volumes hitting IDR 171 trillion across the first seven months of the year. Regulatory oversight transferred from the commodity regulator Bappebti to the financial services authority OJK in early 2025, a structural shift that makes Indonesia's crypto market look increasingly like a conventional financial market to the press outlets that cover it.

Thailand just approved rules for spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, effective October 16, 2026. That is the biggest crypto regulatory development Thailand has seen in years, and local media is hungry for expert commentary on what it means for projects operating under the Thai SEC's licensed exchange framework.

Three markets. Three live regulatory stories. Three separate press ecosystems to understand before you pitch any of them.

Vietnam: The Venture-Media Complex

Vietnam's crypto media landscape is not organized like Western markets. The dominant model is what analysts call a venture-media complex: media and VC money merge into one funnel.

Coin68 and its parent ecosystem are central to this. Blogtienao, founded in Ho Chi Minh City in 2017, is one of the top three crypto media outlets by website traffic in Vietnam alongside Coin98 Insights and Coin68. IVY Group partners with over 50 KOLs and independent outlets including Blogtienao, effectively operating as Vietnam's only structured crypto media consortium.

What that means for your pitch: in Vietnam, you are not just pitching a journalist. You are pitching an entity that may have investment interests, KOL relationships, and community management arms all connected. That is not necessarily bad. It means the path to coverage is often through relationship-first engagement rather than cold pitching.

A few practical points:

• Pitch in Vietnamese. Not a machine-translated brief. A proper Vietnamese-language pitch written by someone who actually reads Coin68. Google Translate pitches get spotted immediately and kill credibility.
• Telegram is the primary crypto community channel, not Zalo. Zalo skews toward stock investors and faces government surveillance concerns that make the crypto community wary.
• KOLs carry more weight than editorial coverage for retail reach. Vietnam's crypto community makes decisions through community proof: 76% of Vietnamese crypto holders report making decisions based on recommendations from friends or community figures, according to Kyros Ventures research. A respected local voice endorsing your project moves more than a Coin98 write-up without community follow-through.
• Facebook groups are not outdated in Vietnam. The crypto conversation lives disproportionately on Facebook and Telegram. English-only campaigns routed through X and Discord miss most of the market.

The regulatory moment also creates a specific editorial angle for Vietnam right now. Projects that can speak to compliance, licensed exchange integration, or what the five-year pilot means for their category will get editorial traction that pure product pitches won't. Local editors want stories that connect global protocols to the domestic regulatory moment.

One thing to hold in your head: Vietnam's OG community is skeptical of hype. Post-2022, users are more focused on fundamentals and faster to call out red flags publicly. IVY Group's editorial standards reportedly include prohibiting writers from covering tokens they hold. Credibility is earned by showing up consistently, not by buying a placement.

Indonesia: The Exchange-Anchored Ecosystem

Indonesia's media landscape runs on a different logic. Rather than venture-media complexes, it operates through exchange-anchored ecosystems: exchanges and large infrastructure players fund media, own local brands, and shape information flow from investment through to listing.

Coinvestasi is the reference outlet. It describes itself as reaching 4 million-plus users monthly and operates as the media arm of Indonesia Crypto Network (ICN), which also runs the CoinDesk Indonesia license and the Coinfest Asia event franchise. If you are pitching Indonesia, you are very likely pitching Coinvestasi at some point.

Cryptonews.co.id (running as cryptonews.co.id in local URLs) and BeInCrypto Indonesia round out the tier-1 local media stack. BeInCrypto runs a proper Indonesian-language editorial team, not a translation feed, so it operates with some editorial independence from the exchange ecosystem.

Practical considerations:

• Content must be in Bahasa Indonesia for anything targeting retail crypto investors. English coverage gets syndicated but does not drive the community engagement that converts to users.
• The regulatory angle is OJK, not Bappebti. Supervision transferred to OJK in January 2025, moving crypto under the same regulatory roof as banks and securities. Pitches that reference Bappebti as the current authority signal that you haven't done your homework.
• Coinfest Asia is Indonesia's largest Web3 conference, run by ICN. If you're planning a regional event presence, this is the anchor event in market. Media presence there is earned through Coinvestasi relationships.
• RWA tokenization is a live editorial beat in Indonesia right now. The Project Wira report estimated an $88 billion market potential for asset tokenization in the country. If your project touches RWA, Indonesia is a priority pitch market, not an afterthought.

The exchange-anchored media model also means that sponsored content is more normalized here than in Japan or South Korea. That is not a shortcut to earned coverage: it is a different budget line that sits alongside earned outreach. Don't conflate the two. A paid placement in Coinvestasi does not mean you've built editorial credibility; it means you've bought a placement.

Indonesia also has a scale difference that founders underestimate. With a population exceeding 280 million, 185 million internet users, and a crypto user base that has doubled within two years, this is not a niche market you cover with a single Indonesian-language press release. It needs a sustained presence.

Thailand: The SEC-Shaped Story

Thailand's press environment sits between Vietnam's community-driven model and Indonesia's exchange-anchored one. It is more institutionally influenced than Vietnam, but the media is not as concentrated around exchange ecosystems as Indonesia.

Bitcoin Addict Thailand is the reference outlet and community hub. It describes itself as Thailand's largest crypto media group and community, with a following of over 56,000 on X and a network that reportedly manages around 90% of all KOLs in Thailand. It also runs the largest ICO and trading community through Telegram and Facebook. Bitcoin Addict's parent organization holds SEC-licensed digital asset fund management credentials in Thailand, which gives it an institutional positioning that most regional crypto media outlets don't have.

The Thai media landscape is also shaped by Bitkub, the country's dominant licensed exchange. Unlike in Vietnam or Indonesia, Thailand's SEC has been comparatively explicit about licensing: exchanges that operated without licenses (including major global names) were shut down under the amended Digital Asset Business Act effective April 2025.

What that regulatory strictness means for your PR:

• Compliance framing is not optional in Thailand. Coverage that doesn't address Thai SEC licensing, or worse, implies your project is accessible to retail Thai users through an unlicensed route, will not run on reputable Thai media. Thai editors are not trying to get their publication shut down.
• Thai-first messaging wins. Regional brand language that feels "imported" consistently underperforms with Thai audiences. This applies to the editorial tone, not just translation. Locally natural phrasing, Thai-first messaging, and locally positioned spokespeople matter.
• LINE is the consumer channel. Thai users' primary messaging app is LINE, not WhatsApp or Telegram (though Telegram is used in the crypto community). Event announcements, community updates, and secondary distribution often run through LINE channels that require specific local access.
• The ETF news hook is live right now. Thailand's SEC finalized rules for spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs on October 8, 2026, taking effect October 16. Any project with an institutional or asset-management angle has a live editorial hook to pitch Bitcoin Addict and Thai financial media simultaneously.

The Three-Country Sequencing Framework

Running Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand simultaneously without three separate agency retainers is possible, but it requires a specific sequencing logic rather than a simultaneous blast.

The framework I use is: regulatory hook first, then media placement, then KOL amplification.

Step 1: Identify your regulatory hook per market. Each of the three markets has a live regulatory story. Vietnam's first licensed exchange launch, Indonesia's OJK transition and RWA wave, Thailand's new ETF framework. Your pitch does not need to be about regulation, but it needs to connect to the regulation narrative in that market to earn editorial real estate. A DeFi protocol can comment on what licensed exchanges mean for on-chain liquidity. An infrastructure play can tie to what OJK's regulatory sandbox means for interoperability.

Step 2: Translate for intent, not words. This sounds obvious and gets skipped constantly. Machine-translated pitches are caught immediately. Each market pitch should be written by someone who reads the target outlet. For Vietnam, that means Coin68 and Blogtienao. For Indonesia, Coinvestasi. For Thailand, Bitcoin Addict. The framing changes by market. A restaking story is a yield story in Vietnam, a security infrastructure story in Indonesia, and a compliance story in Thailand.

Step 3: KOLs amplify, they don't replace. Local KOLs in all three markets are more influential than editorial coverage for retail reach. But credibility flows from editorial to KOL, not the other way around. A KOL amplifying a Coinvestasi article carries different weight than a KOL posting without any supporting coverage. Run them in sequence: editorial first, then KOL amplification within 48 hours of the article going live.

Step 4: Time your three-country push across four weeks, not one. Launching all three markets in the same week means you can't react to how each piece performs. Week one: Vietnam (highest adoption, most community-reactive). Week two: Indonesia (highest user count, exchange-anchored follow-on). Week three: Thailand (institutional angle, SEC-compliant framing). Week four: cross-market syndication and KOL follow-through across all three.

What a Singapore-Only Strategy Costs You

The existing SERP for Southeast Asia Web3 PR is full of agency lists and generic "localize your content" advice. None of it tells you that Vietnam's media is a venture-media complex, that Indonesia just transferred regulatory oversight to OJK, or that Bitcoin Addict Thailand holds an SEC license.

Those details are the difference between a pitch that lands and one that marks you as a foreign project that didn't bother to understand the market.

I've run APAC localization across Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam for clients including work through Myosin and prior campaigns where a single owned data report traveled into Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese editions without a separate pitch per market. The core lesson from those campaigns: one regional narrative with three local execution layers beats three regional campaigns every time. You don't need three retainers. You need one operator who actually reads the outlets.

That is what a fractional APAC PR engagement covers. If you're planning a Southeast Asia push in the next 90 days and want to map out which markets hit first and which press angles have the best chance of landing, book a call.

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