The UAE has changed dramatically since the first time I visited here in 1998. Buildings were just going up in the Internet and Media city district, but now skyscrapers fill Sheikh Zayed road and the surroundings, Dubai Marina, and the Business Bay area. Even as I became a regular visitor of the Emirates later, I marvel at the pace at which Dubai has transformed into this futuristic metropolis, signifying its spirit for creativity and continuous innovation. Such foundations are what I believe make it the perfect home for Crypto Oasis, where it’s set to become the leading Blockchain Ecosystem in the world.
I started as well in 1998 to work in Switzerland and recognized the high maturity of the economy and – for a quite small country – the very high density of world market leaders in different industries like banking, insurance but also in pharma, commodities and nutrition, to just name a few.
My time in Zug, a small but very innovative Kanton next to Zurich, started in 2005 when I worked as a Management & IT Consultant and subsequently ventured into other businesses through our first company Inacta in 2009 and a few years later the Lakeside Business Center, a coworking space my business partner Marco Bumbacher and I set up. Back then, we had no idea what Bitcoin was. However, as Zug was quickly becoming a Blockchain hub, with firms such as Bitcoin Suisse and Ethereum flocking to Zug in 2013 due to its favourable regulatory climate, we noticed more and more people asking about Blockchain companies at our coworking space.
This prompted us to be a founding member the Crypto Valley Association (CVA) with enthusiasts of the nascent Blockchain space.
The CVA is an independent, non-governmental association established to take full advantage of Switzerland’s strengths to build a Blockchain and cryptographic technologies Ecosystem. Through CVA, we’ve helped Blockchain startups navigate in Switzerland’s business environment.
For the UAE we signed the partnership with Ahmed Bin Sulayem as the representative of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) during the World Economic Forum 2020. DMCC, of course, is one of the leading free zones in the world and has licensed over 20’000 companies since its inception in 2002. With the additional focus on building an Ecosystem of Crypto firms, we understood that this would be an excellent opportunity to expand what we have established in Switzerland. We partnered with DMCC to open the Crypto Centre and onboarded more than 250 Blockchain related companies in the first 12 months after inception. DMCC is the place of inception for Crypto Oasis, however the Crypto Oasis Ecosystem extends to other economic zones, emirates and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
The UAE and Switzerland have several parallels that characterise them as global Blockchain powerhouses. For instance, both exhibit regulatory certainty. As early as 2018, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), has launched its framework to regulate spot crypto asset activities, including those undertaken by exchanges, custodians and other intermediaries. Dubai has recently passed a Virtual Asset Regulation Law, with its own regulator called Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA). Furthermore, there are also favourable tax laws between the two locations. Zug has a competitive tax regime and a very knowledgeable finance department to understand the Cryptocurrency industry, while the UAE has always had a progressive approach for taxation.
The growth potential of Blockchain in the UAE is enormous, and it is exciting to see organisations embracing the technology. The growth is supported with the fact that, Dubai since the 1990’s, has been nearly doubling its population every 10 years, and you can bet that our industry, call it what you may: Blockchain, Crypto, Metaverse, and Web3 ; is outperforming this growth massively.