Abu Dhabi Establishes MEA Blockchain Association.

A new blockchain body has been created with the backing of industry heavyweights in Abu Dhabi. These industry leaders include people from Binance and Crypto.com, as well as the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the region.

A new blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused association have been created within the free economic zone of Abu Dhabi. The organization’s goal is to foster the development of blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystems across the Middle Eastern, North African, and Asian areas.

The Middle East, Africa, and Asia Crypto & Blockchain Association (MEAACBA) was officially formed on November 8 in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). The ADGM is a free economic zone centered in the city’s central business district that is subject to its own set of civil and commercial rules. The zone was created with the intention of fostering the expansion of fintech businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to the information provided on its website, the non-profit organization will work toward the goal of facilitating regulatory solutions, creating commercial opportunities, and investing in education in order to assist the expansion of the business.

Jehanzeb Awan, the founder of an international risk and compliance consulting firm with headquarters in Dubai, will serve as board chairman and take the lead in directing the activities of the association.

Richard Teng, who is the regional head of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Stuart Isted, who is the general manager of Middle East and Africa for cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, and Ola Doudin, who is the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis, are some of the other people who are supporting the association.

Awan expressed his desire that the organization will “produce wide-reaching benefits for this extremely dynamic and exciting environment” and expressed his hope that it will bring about a collaborative and community-based strategy to further industrial growth in the MENA region.

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“The industry will benefit from the Association as it will provide a coordination mechanism between regulators, government agencies, banks, legal, tax, and advisory firms to address the most pressing challenges,” he added. “This will allow the industry to address the most pressing challenges more effectively.”

ADGM’s chairman Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi also remarked that the arrival of MEAACBA would help to a much more “progressive financial sector” in the region. He said this when stating that MEAACBA would be joining ADGM.

The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), which is the financial regulator of ADGM’s free economic zone, published a set of “Guiding Principles” on its approach to navigating the regulatory complexities brought to it by the digital asset industry in September. The launch of MEAACBA comes at the same time as the publication of these “Guiding Principles.”

It is argued that the principles are “crypto-friendly,” yet they nevertheless conform with some of the tough international criteria on anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) that were established by the United Nations.

A recent analysis found that the Middle East and North Africa area has the most rapid growth in the bitcoin market anywhere in the world. The volume of transactions in MENA reached $566 billion over the course of a 12-month period beginning in July 2021 and ending in June 2022, representing a 48% increase over the preceding 12-month period.

In many of these emerging regions, the use case for cryptocurrencies has taken the shape of the preservation of savings and the making of remittance payments in order to combat the impacts of inflation in economies that are highly unstable.

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