Why Do We Need Decentralized Ecommerce? Or Do We? with Michael Michelini

Michael Michelini dives into the future of ecommerce and asks the big question: why do we need decentralization — or do we? Broadcasting from Bangkok, he shares reflections on building resilient communities, avoiding hype in the crypto space, and why decentralization matters more than ever in a changing world of tariffs, regulations, and uncertainty. Plus, he previews the upcoming Cross Border Summit 2025 in Chiang Mai and shares behind-the-scenes updates from his travels across Asia to push the movement forward. If you’re serious about the future of global business, this is a must-listen.

• 2025.CrossBorderSummit.com — Annual Cross Border Summit 2025 in Chiang Mai
• Hamza.market — Innovative products and ecommerce tools by Hamza
• Decom.network — Building decentralized ecommerce solutions

Thank you Mike for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 460 of Global from Asia. It got me in Bangkok sharing about do we need decentralization in e-commerce? Let’s tune in, keeping it real. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Micheli.

Thank you so much for watching or probably listening to, but I’m still here, my studio with lights on me and tripods and backgrounds. I prefer audio. Maybe you can tell. But this show is done in. Video form. I was down in Bangkok. It was my birthday. Uh, maybe if you’re on our newsletter, you got some insights about that.

We had a big party and it was also Southeast Asia Blockchain week. As you know, may know we are doing a startup, bringing together a web two e-commerce or the normal e-commerce with Web3, [00:01:00] blockchain and all that stuff, and putting it together, and I’m keeping it real. Today I’m sharing in front of a small group, a live audience in Bangkok at the Rec survivor group.

About wrecked people that lost a lot of money in crypto and a little bit skeptical. And I guess the hard questions at the end, I keep it all real here for you, but do we need this blockchain, e-commerce, decentralized e-commerce? Is it good enough as it is with Amazon and Lazada and Shopee? Maybe we don’t need this, right?

Maybe we don’t. Maybe I’m doing this for no reason and we just keep the way the world is going right now. I’ll share a little bit about the story, some insights, some money lost, some money made. In today’s episode, I hope you enjoy. Do you enjoy the podcast? Global For Amazing? Do you enjoy all the community events that we do?

The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chang Mai this November 3rd, fourth, and fifth, 20, 25. I have amazing speakers, amazing people getting together. [00:02:00] We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers are shakers and the deal makers come.

It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets, and we have been selling out every year. So I recommend checking out earlier, cross border summit.com. Uh, disclaimer, you might get wrecked. Okay, but we wreck survivors. I think the point of getting wrecked is hopefully you get wrecked, uh, less than you win, right?

So I know Jeanette says she got wrecked. Um, we’ve all been wrecked, but I think the point is staying in the game, right? So I’m even up, honestly, even after 400 grand lost in anchor, I’m up. But next slide. So Hamza is about building a fairer game. Um, maybe we should be a non-profit too. You know, a lot of investors think we’re not thinking much about money, but I, I.

I believe, you know, I’m building this, um, not for you guys, no jets allowed if you’re a [00:03:00] jet or what’s, what did Milton call it? Paper, hands paper. Hes, maybe, maybe you’re not the right place, but we’re trying to build a more fair game. So, so Milton, I’ve been selling on Amazon, eBay since 2004. eBay oh four, uh, Amazon 20 2006.

Um, yeah, I’m a seven figure seller. I, I make a lot of money on Amazon still. But I don’t like Amazon. I sell on it because I kind of have to. Next slide or I could click. So the problem mostly is the seller side. I’m a seller and I hate, I hate Amazon, but I have to use it ’cause that’s how I make my money.

And uh, I guess buyers don’t seem to have a problem right now, right? Buyers like Amazon, that’s what they all tell me. Do you like Amazon? No. But uh, in society, I believe this Donald Trump stuff. Just came out like a couple days ago. I think there’s gonna be less choices for buyers and society. You know, the big ones are gonna survive and the small ones are gonna die.

Covid did it. Donald Trump is doing it [00:04:00] right? It means basically when this stuff happens, it kills the small and just the big ones survive. And that means you’re gonna have less choices. That means prices are gonna go up and you’re gonna have only these multinational corporations that can survive Donald Trump and survive Covid.

Those are the only products you’re gonna be able to buy. The small guys are gone. So you’re gonna get less choice and get stuck buying from, you know, all these conglomerates. Next slide. So a solution is, uh, infrastructure for public good. So dcom and various front ends. Right front ends. Uh, hams is a front end, but we want you to maybe build your own front end, but we’re making the first front end called Hamza market.

And what Hamza, I’ll share you what the name means later, but the idea is separating a data layer. And separating like dispute layer from the application layer. The problem with web two, as you all know, is they have all your money. They have all your data, they have all the power. We’re just a pawn in their game.

We’re just a check box on a [00:05:00] TOS that we had to check to get an account. We had no choice. You check that box, you know, you check that box when you signed up. Basically that box you checked means you own nothing and you’ll be happy. All right. That’s what the box check means. You own nothing and you have to accept their terms.

Oh, you don’t have to accept their terms. If you don’t accept the terms, you can’t sign up. That’s what they say. But you check that box. So it’s confusing. Everybody’s confusing. And I’m, I’m kind of, people keep saying Hamza, um, but my lawyers don’t let me do what I want to do and I’m doxed. So, um, Hamza, the front end is not gonna be a token ’cause it’s a security.

All right. But. Hamza is a front end marketplace that will actually, you know, earn the profits of the sales. And dcom is a decentralized commerce, decentralized e-commerce or decentralized commerce, um, is a public goods protocol. So that’ll be the token. And Hamza is a one of the marketplaces, but the [00:06:00] name Hamza is, I think it’s an Indian person’s name or, uh, uh, middle Eastern person’s name, first name, and last name for.

Dr. Hamza discovered an underground river when he was a professor in South America that flows underneath the Amazon River that is wider and deeper than the Amazon. This is though the underground Amazon River. Yeah. Is that where journey to the center of the Earth came for? Maybe. Maybe. So. It’s questionable.

It’s, you can sign. It’s on Wikipedia, so it’s real. Right. I think maybe I could pay off Wikipedia and to say that if I wanted. Or I could pay off Wikipedia. Well, I’m not rich enough or powerful enough, or I’m not WEF, so I maybe can’t change Wikipedia, but it’s on Wikipedia, so it must be real. But there’s questions ’cause it’s such a slow road moving river that uh, it might not be really a river, but it’s slow moving water underneath the Amazon.

So that’s the name next. So how big is the market, [00:07:00] right? I mean, it’s the whole. Commercial market. So big market. I think that’s enough. Next slide. Um, lots of crypto degenerate. Look at this room and they all have crypto. They don’t wanna take off, off, uh, off ramp and they can just buy physical products, um, instead of off ramping or another one, you know, I mean, I use these crypto cards too, but the difference of us with a crypto card is you still have to pay Visa, MasterCard.

I, I mean, I, yeah, I have a crypto card I use and that’s good. But what we’re trying to do is be completely on chain. Uh, I’ll show you some more technical stuff later, but, um, you know, I, I, I don’t accept the solution as a crypto card because you’re still stuck with Visa, MasterCard. I think they’re more evil than a lot of the other ones, right?

They have per, you get a haircut, you use a credit card, they get 2%. You buy your groceries, they get 2%. You know, it’s, it’s, they get 2% on [00:08:00] everything. Next. So here’s a little bit more technical for you. I hope you can understand. So we’re separated it to make dcom as an infrastructure where you have your escrow, smart contract, dispute resolution, uh, product catalog moderation.

So we’re not gonna be Silk Road. I know Ross got outta jail. I wish I could meet him one day, but. I don’t think I wanna take his place in jail. Maybe I’m gonna go to jail. They said on, uh, that podcast, jail’s not that bad. Those guys are in jail. So maybe this recording will show me and I’m in jail. I’ve accepted that even though I have two kids, I hope I don’t go to jail.

But we will have moderation. So the idea is the, uh, governance here of what can be sold on Hamza will be at the Hamza layer and also the decom layer will have another moderation of catalog where, um. You know, if you wanna kill somebody and you list, make a listing to kill somebody, I don’t think we’re gonna let you have a listing to kill, to do hits on people.

We’re not gonna pri [00:09:00] drugs. I don’t know. I mean, Bangkok is legal, so why can’t you sell drugs right in in Bangkok or in Thailand, but in, uh, certain re certain places, wherever. You know, that’s the idea is it’s gonna kind of be moderated that way through the token holders and data hosting and indexing. So this is at the, the decom level, and then at the Hamsa level or the front end, you can have your own front end, which we’re gonna be a framework.

You have the front end U ui, right? And then the wallet will go to these different, the seller, the buyer, and the governance from the application layer. So you’ll have a governance model as a buyer or seller, you’ll have a seller, admin, and of course a, uh, marketplace to buy and sell. And this is all live now.

Um, Hamza market. admin.hamza.market for seller side. Seller side right now is not public. It’s, I have to add you manually. I have to whitelist your wallet buyer. Uh, anybody can buy it. There’s about seven sellers and a little bit more technical that [00:10:00] usually I don’t talk about. I usually have somebody on a team, but similar idea, but, and I’m talking to some other partner projects to maybe help on the swapping, but you know, we’re gonna accept bitcoin soon.

Right now we’re Ethereum, U-S-D-T-U-S-D-C, and right now the seller’s forced to accept any of those three. Um, Roberto was at my party a couple days ago. He sells air filters. He doesn’t want E, he likes Bitcoin, but he’s gotta accept E for now. But in the future, it could auto swap to the tokens that the sellers want to receive.

So if the seller wants a certain currency only, it can auto swap. But for right now, we’re not doing this. And the idea is it’s a two or three multisig. Buyer, seller. And then right now it’s our team as the third signer. But the long term is the signer is a pool of arbiters approved in a dcom network that’ll be assigned to your case.

So if there’s a dispute about receiving the product, product quality catalog dispute, it’s going to this pool of [00:11:00] judges that are approved through our community. And I have a great team member, some of you met Bo, that’s taking care of that. So of course we’re trying to give lower fees and more ownership to the, to the user.

So. I dunno if you know, but a lot of you don’t know. Amazon takes about 50% of the PR of the price. So if you pay $20 on a Amazon, the seller gets about 10. Yeah. I mean, so it’s nice for buyers. And now Donald Trump’s taking his cut, right? I don’t know. Versus re strategic reserve. We’re gonna have less fees is our main pitch on this slide.

But it’s not just about fees, it’s about ownership. It’s about rewards. Of course there’s gonna be airdrops and everything else we’ll be sharing later. Next slide. Yeah. And another idea is if, uh, you know, if Mark wants to have us, uh, excel in Pepe, maybe Pepe can give, gimme some tokens, right? So maybe if certain projects want to accept their token on our platform, we could charge some kind of fee for that.

That’s another model. But of course, seller fees and [00:12:00] potentially, uh, community partnerships next. So also, I’m. Global from Asia, Jeanette’s here and, and nap. Um, global from Asia is a community of sellers. I, I started, but we’re growing this as a network and we have a conference. Um, we have other partners we’re looking for and if you wanna partner with us, Mark’s and our advisor and, uh, we’re looking for more people to work with.

Next. This is the allocation. I think we’re 90% sure this is true, but this might change. We’re fundraising now, $500,000 at 6.25 million valuation. Um. A billion market cap, uh, a billion, uh, token. And, uh, you know, you can see this some advisor pool reserves community, but you can see like our team is 15%, right?

So I, I hope this is a fair, but you can tell, uh, lots of community actually this is also community. Early seller is not, not jeters, not paper hands. These are merchants. I should change this to [00:13:00] merchant, not jets. Jets don’t get 10%. Uh. Sorry, jets if you’re watching, but this is merchant, so we’re gonna give rewards to early sellers like Roberto and others.

We haven’t figured out the exact breakdown, but we’re gonna incentivize merchants that work with us in early days. Uh, and then liquidity and investor. So we’re doing 5% presale right now. I don’t know if I can li list that five se 5%. Um, with liquefy there, you can, we’re doing 5 million, 5% right now. Presale at, uh, 500 k.

Us next. And then, um, yeah, I mean it’s kind of technical and of course this is public on links.dcom.network. I mean, just, he’s literally pulling us off the site. Uh, but you can see our unlocks and bridge rounds here next. But yeah, we’re all about DAOs. We’re all about, you know, community owned. Um. [00:14:00] And, uh, anybody heard of hats?

Protocol, hats, protocol, do xyz? So, BO is, uh, a great team member. I think maybe Anastasia knows him, but he’s helping a lot with the hats integration. So the idea is it’s not just one big DAO that does everything, but basically we’re really trying to make this truly decentralized. I know people have bad experience with DAOs, but we’re not doing it like one big Dao and every proposal has to be submitted to this big Dao and everything’s voted out.

We’re gonna have these sub DAOs. Um, and really try to break it down so that people can work on specific parts of the organization. So that’s like dev guilds and policy guilds and, um, I’m not as experienced on this part, but we’re trying to basically break it down so that people have votes and power on more specific parts of the process.

Next roadmap. Kind of hard to read and, you know, I hope I’m not born you too much to death, but. Basically we have [00:15:00] a working product, bootstrapped and we’re raising 500,000 right now, um, to try to kind of do more marketing and maybe Anastasia maybe can help us with marketing, maybe talking to her. Um, and I think we’re kind of at Face and David, Chris.

David, okay. But, uh, you know, we need a lot of money for marketing, I think Right. Marketplaces. But, uh, we have a great dev team, mostly in Chang, my Thailand, where I am. And, uh, it’s kinda hard to read and I don’t wanna bore you so you can read this yourself, but the idea is we’re trying to be a truly open protocol so people can build their own marketplaces.

You know, I’m not trying to make another Amazon, I’m not, I’m like the guy in the Gladiator movie’s like, are you really going to take Rome and give it back to the people I am, man. Like, maybe you don’t believe me, but I’ve been wrecked enough. I don’t, I don’t, uh, I don’t mind. Um, well, or actually maybe [00:16:00] I, sorry.

Birds are fake. Birds are fake. John is our CTO Cord Dev, uh, Polish American in Chiang Mai. That’s me, e-comm guy, 20 years. Um, Andres our legal dude, and Alex maybe saw him at the party on we, he’s in Bangkok. He’s kind of our communications and, uh, business guy next. I think that’s it, but that’s it. Um, I don’t have a qr.

I should have put a QR on here, but I’m in the group and, uh, I’ll be around. So I hope this is inspiring and uh, thank you.

Good job. Do you enjoy the podcast Global For Amazing? You enjoy all the community events that we do. The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chang Mai this November 3rd, fourth and fifth, 20, 25. I have amazing speakers, amazing people getting together. We’re pushing the limits.

We’re making things happen. This [00:17:00] is where the movers are shakers and the deal makers come. It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets, and we have been selling out every year, so I recommend checking out earlier cross border summit.com. Alright, that was me in Bangkok. I try to keep it real, maybe too real.

I, I, that’s what I deserve is what I put on. Maybe one day it’s gonna bite me in the behinds, but. Maybe I’ll be dead. Maybe I’m dead. You know, I think stoicism, maybe I think about it too much, but you know, we gotta live each day like it’s our last, you know, we gotta push our limits, push ourselves, make things happen.

And that’s what I’m doing. Hamza and dcom, and you know, this tariff stuff, the art of the deal, Donald Trump style tariffs. I’ll probably talk about that soon. Talking to some people. I know it, it’s a hot topic, but I think that’s even why. You need these things, you need decentralization even more because one person [00:18:00] can change the world.

Right? And good ways and bad ways. I believe in the community. I believe in the crowd. I believe in decentralization. Um, a little bit annoyed with what I still see in crypto with the scams. And there’s scams all the time. So it’s made us reflect. We’re not hyping this up, we’re building, we’re creating. And I hope you’re interested, you know, to be a seller, to participate.

Well, let’s talk about the Cross-border Summit. We’re still very early, still a lot to build, a lot to do. This is, uh, this is it for now. I’m heading into, uh, Singapore, Cocho, Canton Fair, and Hanoi for more. We’re also gonna upgrade to gear, so I’ll be doing even more fun stuff for sharing with you. Thanks for watching.

I appreciate all of you. See you later. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our [00:19:00] website@ww.global from asia.com. That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.