{"id":356926,"date":"2025-12-18T21:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356926\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T21:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:59:15","slug":"why-the-united-arab-emirates-has-set-its-sights-on-digital-finance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356926\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the United Arab Emirates has set its sights on digital finance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n With nearly 3 million users\u2014 around a third of its population<\/a> \u2014 the United Arab Emirates has the world\u2019s highest cryptocurrency adoption rate, by some estimates.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the Gulf nation doesn\u2019t just want to buy digital currencies \u2014 it wants to become a crypto capital.\n <\/p>\n

\n In addition to rolling out one of the world\u2019s most comprehensive crypto regulatory frameworks and the launch of a dirham-backed stablecoin this year, the UAE last week authorized the first global license for Binance<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange, within Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a special economic zone in the Gulf nation\u2019s capital.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOur global users now have the assurance that we\u2019re subject to the regulatory oversight of ADGM,\u201d Binance CEO Richard Teng told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n The city\u2019s push on cryptocurrency in recent years has made it \u201ccompelling\u201d for companies like Binance, said Teng, who is a former CEO of ADGM\u2019s Financial Services Regulatory Authority. \u201cIt has a very pro-business environment,\u201d he added. \u201cThe regulators here started to regulate crypto about seven years ago \u2026 (it has) the fastest-growing capital markets and fastest-growing financial center in the world. So, it\u2019s a very enabling environment for us to help ourselves here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The UAE\u2019s sovereign wealth funds, estimated to control assets worth $2 trillion<\/a>, are investing heavily in decentralized digital finance models in a bid to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels, reduce their reliance on the US dollar, and streamline banking and cross-border transactions.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe have a very thriving crypto and blockchain ecosystem growing up in Dubai and Abu Dhabi,\u201d said Ronit Ghose, head of future of finance at research group Citi Global Insights.\n <\/p>\n

\"Ronit<\/p>\n

\n While the UAE is leading the charge, other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are also exploring digital finance, with Saudi Arabia focusing on blockchain and Bahrain one of the \u201cfrontier states\u201d in its adoption of crypto rules, Ghose told CNN at Binance Blockchain Week, a global conference of crypto leaders and investors hosted in Dubai in early December.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got the leadership of particularly the UAE and also Saudi, who are forward-looking, they\u2019re relatively young in mind and spirit, and they want to adopt and embrace these new technologies,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n But not all countries in the GCC are embracing crypto: Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have taken a more cautious approach, with the latter two placing bans on cryptocurrency and stablecoins.\n <\/p>\n

\n The crypto market is notoriously volatile<\/a>: Bitcoin hit an all-time high on October 6 of $126,000<\/a> per coin, before crashing below $81,000<\/a> seven weeks later. Long-time crypto critic Peter Schiff, chief global strategist of asset manager Euro Pacific Capital, told CNN that cryptocurrency\u2019s value relies on speculation and is concerned that government support for cryptocurrencies risks legitimizing what he views as a pyramid scheme.\n <\/p>\n

\n He believes that the best use for blockchain is to tokenize gold, a real resource with intrinsic uses, rather than cryptocurrency or stablecoins, the latter of which relies on the value of a real-world currency.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cTokenized gold would be real currency. They talk about Bitcoin as \u2018digital gold,\u2019 but it\u2019s not \u2014 it\u2019s got nothing in common with gold,\u201d said Schiff, who debated tokenized gold and stablecoins at Binance Blockchain Week with Changpeng Zhao, Binance\u2019s co-founder and former CEO. Zhao was pardoned by Trump earlier this year for money laundering violations<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ghose also acknowledges the extreme volatility of crypto but sees government intervention as essential for mainstream adoption.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe always have to do things that are regulated: it\u2019s not a nice-to-have, it\u2019s a must-have,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With nearly 3 million users\u2014 around a third of its population \u2014 the United Arab Emirates has the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-356926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}