the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has joined Dubai in stepping up its efforts to attract crypto-focused businesses as it seeks to become the leading cryptocurrency center in the Middle East.
In a recent interview with Blockworks, the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, Shorafa Al Hammadi, said the government of Abu Dhabi had set itself a deadline of the end of this year to “ease passporting between digital cryptocurrency exchanges to ‘normal’ instruments.”
The emirate is already among the global leaders in developing a crypto-friendly regulatory environment, having established an initial framework in 2018, according to the CEO of Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, Emmanuel Givanakis. “At that time, the industry was already talking about needing to come under a regulatory umbrella, and we came out with what we think is a fairly comprehensive framework,” Givanakis told Blockworks.
Abu Dhabi’s neighbor and fellow emirate, Dubai, is also keen to attract digital-assets firms and last week revealed that it enlisted Binance to help it develop an “international virtual asset ecosystem.” Binance announced on Dec. 27, 2021, that it has also received approval for a license-in-principle in Bahrain.
Two regulated digital asset exchanges — Matrix Exchange and Midchains — are already operating in Abu Dhabi and a third, DEX, is due to commence full operations soon, according to Al Hammadi.