We looked at two landmark documents pertaining to cryptocurrency legalization in Europe: the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) and a similar paper from the central bank of Great Britain. These massive and extremely substantive pieces consist of hundreds of pages outlining the European vision of cryptocurrencies’ role and place in the modern world and…

Lightning Labs announced Tuesday that it is building infrastructure that would allow users to send money worldwide at a low cost and almost instantaneously through the Bitcoin network. Taro protocol, which will enable stablecoin transactions, is based on Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade launched in November 2021. According to Decrypt, the company raised $70 million in a…

Areije Al Shakar, the senior vice president at Bahrain Development Bank & director at Al Waha Venture Capital Fund of Funds, revealed her thoughts on Wamda. Banks and financial regulators in the Middle East have been slower to embrace cryptocurrency than Europe and the US. Before the pandemic, the Middle East’s crypto market was still…

According to the new Gemini study, one-third of Emiratis and Israelis own crypto. Meanwhile, globally crypto ownership is the highest in Brazil and Indonesia. Also, nearly 40% of global respondents first bought cryptocurrency last year. New York-based crypto exchange Gemini published the “Global state of crypto” report following what it said was a pivotal year…

Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, is recruiting over 100 positions in the UAE and is helping to shape Dubai’s new virtual assets’ regulations, its MENA regional head said. As Reuters reported, Binance’s activity in the Gulf state has boosted in recent months as the UAE tries to style itself as the world’s…

The Qatar Central Bank (QCB) is currently exploring a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and digital bank licensing, a top official said. The Middle Eastern nation is also weighing issuing licenses for digital banks as it seeks to digitize payments. The Qatar Central Bank intends to soon reveal its direction on CBDCs, Alanood Abdullah Al…