Malaysian Chinese: The Crypto Story Hiding in Plain Sight

Written by Yanz & June

When people talk about the main players in the crypto world, the spotlight usually falls on Silicon Valley tech bros, Wall Street capital, investment firms from Singapore and Hong Kong, or developers from mainland China. Malaysian Chinese barely get a mention.

They haven't made it onto Fortune covers like Sam Bankman-Fried, or been hailed as "the richest Chinese" like Changpeng Zhao. They don't do big flashy interviews, and they'd rather fly under the radar on Twitter.

What you'll find underneath might surprise you,

• CoinGecko, the world's largest cryptocurrency data platform, originated in Kuala Lumpur.

• Etherscan, an essential navigation tool for the Ethereum ecosystem, was developed by Malaysian Chinese engineers.

• Virtuals Protocol, driving the trending "AI+Crypto" narrative during the current bull market, was built by a Malaysian Chinese.

• Jupiter, the liquidity hub powering Solana’s ecosystem, also originated in Malaysia.

These aren't side projects or nice-to-have features. They've become the backbone of the entire industry, and in many cases, they're driving the next big wave of innovation.

Without Malaysian Chinese contributions, crypto would look pretty different today.

The Builders

In 2014, the collapse of Mt. Gox threw the crypto world into turmoil. Amid the chaos, Bobby Ong and TM Lee decided to start something new. With just $100 in seed money, they founded CoinGecko.

One had a background in economics, the other in programming. They met by chance, but shared the same belief: the market needed a transparent and reliable data platform. That conviction gave rise to CoinGecko in the middle of a crisis.

“Our goal was to build a company that could serve people everywhere,” the founders later reflected on their initial vision. The vision proved prescient. Through its Trust Score algorithm and comprehensive coverage of emerging markets, CoinGecko rapidly became an indispensable daily tool for investors.

A decade later, the platform monitors over 17,000 tokens, while its API powers leading products including Trezor and MetaMask.

The Malaysian Who Saw Ethereum's Future Before Anyone Else

Around the same time, another young Malaysian, Matthew Tan, turned his attention to Ethereum. He had been running a blockchain search engine called Blockscan. When Ethereum introduced smart contracts, he quickly spotted a critical issue that almost everyone else had missed: existing blockchain explorers could only handle simple peer-to-peer transactions and were unprepared for the complexity that smart contracts brought.

Recognizing the enormous opportunity, Tan made a bold decision. He transformed Blockscan into what would become Etherscan.

"This is no longer just about transferring value from point A to point B," Tan realized. "There is so much more that a search engine needs to display."

With that conviction, he completely rebuilt the two-year-old Blockscan into Etherscan, redesigning its architecture specifically for smart contract complexity.

Today, Etherscan has grown from a simple tool into the standard for the Ethereum ecosystem, essential to almost every Ethereum user. With the multi-chain era and the launch of BscScan, PolygonScan, ArbiScan, and other products, this Malaysian entrepreneur has established his dominance in the blockchain explorer space.

DeFi Giants: Pendle and Jupiter’s Rise

By 2021, the afterglow of DeFi Summer was still present. A young innovator named TN Lee focused on a complex problem: how to make yields more predictable and tradable.

With a computer science background and strong understanding of financial derivatives, he introduced what seemed like a radical idea—yield tokenization. He split future yield into Principal Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT), allowing users to trade each component independently.

What appeared simple actually required years of work. In 2021, Pendle Protocol officially launched.

That same year, another young developer, Siong, focused on Solana. He saw both its high-performance potential and the challenges of fragmented liquidity and excessive slippage. With his team, he built Jupiter, a trading aggregator using smart routing algorithms that automatically find the best path for swaps.

Starting from nothing, by 2024 both Pendle and Jupiter had become success stories in their respective ecosystems. Pendle became a leading DeFi protocol with total value locked (TVL) exceeding $10 billion, while Jupiter became Solana's liquidity hub, often processing over $1 billion in daily trading volume, with its token market cap once exceeding $10 billion.

The Malaysian Mafia

The entrepreneurial wave didn't stop at DeFi. It spread into the next big thing: AI.

In 2024, Weekee Tiew, who used to work at Boston Consulting Group, decided to bet on AI. This wasn't his first rodeo though. He'd previously built PathDAO, a gaming guild that hit a massive $600 million valuation before getting crushed in the crypto winter. After that brutal crash, he spent months trying to figure out what to do next. Finally, he made his move and launched Virtuals Protocol, a platform where people can create and launch AI agents.

In January 2025, Virtuals Protocol's token, $VIRTUAL, reached a new all-time high market cap exceeding $4.5 billion, establishing it as one of the leading projects combining AI and crypto.

It wasn’t until this breakout moment, when Weekee Tiew appeared on numerous podcasts, that many were surprised to learn the project was actually founded by Malaysian.

Virtuals is not alone. Pendle, Jupiter, Aevo, and Drift all have Malaysian roots as well.

On Twitter, a consensus has emerged: this cycle belongs to Malaysian entrepreneurs, it is their bull market of innovation.

The Bridge Builders

"I have many Malaysian friends who rarely speak up on social platforms."

While the big-name entrepreneurs grab all the headlines, way more Malaysian Chinese are working behind the scenes throughout crypto, acting like the glue that holds everything together. They're scattered across the whole ecosystem, connecting the dots between different markets and cultures.

Malaysian Chinese are natural bridge builders.

Cova, a Malaysian Chinese with five years in crypto, discovered this unique advantage only after years of working with professionals worldwide.

"I think Malaysian Chinese are born translators. Most of us speak at least three languages, not counting dialects: Chinese, Malay, and English. Some can add Japanese or Korean as well."

From kindergarten, they grow up in an environment where Chinese, English, and Malay blend together daily. Many also bring additional dialects like Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka. This multilingual ability helps them excel in team environments. They can identify Western trends, stay current with Southeast Asian markets, work smoothly with international teams, and connect effortlessly with clients worldwide.

This linguistic talent proves especially valuable in crypto. Weekee Tiew, founder of Virtuals Protocol, can explain how Virtuals integrates AI and crypto to Western audiences on English-language podcasts, then present the same vision directly to Chinese users at offline events. His multilingual ability lets him serve developer communities from different cultural backgrounds simultaneously.

Cova believes Malaysians and Singaporeans also adapt to cultural trends more quickly. "For example, with U.S.-driven projects, their meme culture, or even niche cultural trends from smaller countries, Malaysian Chinese and Singaporeans tend to understand and integrate them especially fast."

The cultural background of Malaysian Chinese works like a master key, opening doors to multiple international markets.

They Conquered Crypto, But No One Knows Where They’re From

Yet this natural multilingual advantage also brings an unexpected side effect: the blurring of identity.

When Malaysian Chinese manage Twitter accounts or launch crypto projects, they face a crucial decision about whether they should communicate primarily in English or Chinese. This choice determines their audience reach and market scope.

A typical example illustrates this clearly. Unless someone mentions it, you wouldn't guess that the well-known Chinese-speaking KOL @Wolfy_XBT is Malaysian Chinese. Similarly, popular English-speaking KOLs like @ahboyash and @sandraaleow are also from Malaysia.

In order to gain broader recognition in global markets, many Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs tend to downplay where they're from. They want their products to feel "international" rather than tied to any particular country.

It's a smart business move, but it comes with a downside. Most users have no clue these game-changing products actually started in Malaysia.

When checking Ethereum transactions on Etherscan, few would guess it was founded by a Malaysian Chinese team. When trading tokens on Jupiter or analyzing Pendle's yield strategies, many assume these products came from elite teams in Europe or the United States.

Their "invisible" identity shows how well Malaysian Chinese can adapt globally, but also reflects the complex challenge they face in balancing identity recognition with market positioning.

Behind this identity blur lies an even bigger problem: brain drain.

Many Malaysian Chinese ultimately leave their homeland in pursuit of greater achievements. Malaysia continues to nurture talent, but various factors such as policy environment, market size, or level of internationalization often push these individuals abroad.

They succeed on the global stage, yet few know their origins. This "invisible success" proves how adaptable Malaysian Chinese are in today's globalized world, but it also shows what they have to give up along the way.

They are the best bridge builders, but also the ones whose stories get lost in the shuffle.

The Change Makers

Diligent, grounded, and content are common traits among most Malaysian Chinese. They rarely promote their achievements on social media, preferring to let solid work results speak for themselves.

This humble approach runs deep in their history.

Back in the late 1800s, waves of Chinese immigrants moved from southeastern coastal China to the Malay Peninsula during what's called the "Nanyang migration." Facing a completely unfamiliar environment and culture, they relied on hard work and ingenuity to survive within the British colonial economic system. Even when they achieved business success, the colonial government's divide-and-rule policies consistently excluded Chinese from political power.

After Malaysia's independence in 1957, "Malay supremacy" principles and the New Economic Policy imposed further restrictions through quota systems. These policies limited Chinese opportunities in education, employment, and business. University admissions were capped, government jobs were restricted, and starting businesses meant facing multiple policy barriers.

Years of institutional pressure forged a unique survival mindset among Malaysian Chinese. Since they couldn't change the system, they doubled down on what they could control. They learned to thrive in tough situations, let their results do the talking, and roll with the punches.

An Uphill Battle for Trust

"Malaysian Chinese have always been held back by policy, so most people just keep their heads down and focus on making money."

This resilience has turned into a secret weapon in crypto's cutthroat world. When markets tank, they don't panic but stay cool instead. When projects hit roadblocks, they don't whine but find workarounds instead. When opportunities pop up, they don't make a big show of it but just get to work instead.

But their path hasn't been easy. They're trying to prove themselves through execution, chase their dreams while turning a profit, and show the world what Malaysian Chinese can really do. It's been an uphill battle all the way.

Early Malaysian crypto projects had a poor reputation, with many suspected of market manipulation or pyramid schemes. As Cova noted, Malaysian Chinese founders often get written off by potential partners as "ponzi operators" before they even get a chance to prove themselves, making it much harder to build trust in business relationships.

This bad reputation didn't come from nowhere.

Grinding Until They Made It

Back in Malaysia's early fintech days, loose regulations left plenty of room for bad actors to operate. Scammers took full advantage, using "blockchain innovation" as cover for illegal fundraising and outright fraud. One after another, these so-called startups burned retail investors, not only destroying people's savings but also poisoning the well for Malaysia's entire tech ecosystem.

What made things worse was how fast bad news travels compared to good news. Now when people hear "Malaysian project," they don't think cutting-edge technology but instead think "watch out for scams." This reputation has become a constant headwind that every Malaysian Chinese entrepreneur has to fight against.

But the tide is turning. Projects like CoinGecko, Etherscan, Pendle, Jupiter, and Virtuals Protocol are crushing it on the global stage, slowly flipping the script on how people see Malaysian tech.

"I think these no-nonsense builders have proven over the past few market cycles that they're not the scam artists people thought they were, but real teams that can build world-class products," said one Malaysian Chinese industry insider.

Through bull markets and bear markets, this quiet crew has just kept grinding. Building companies, connecting markets, chasing their dreams. Some until they make it big, until they are recognized, or simply, until they succeed.