Bittrex CEO: Dubai is going to do fantastically well

Stephen Stonberg, CEO of Bittrex Global, praised the efforts of the UAE authorities to poise a crypto-friendly positioning of the region. Helped by the region’s status as a tax haven, Dubai is poised to benefit from the growing cryptocurrency market in the Middle East, he said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Stephen Stonberg, Bittrex CEO of the digital assets exchange, told Bloomberg that the UAE and Dubai are “doing all the right things, and they’re going to attract a lot of regional projects.”

“It’s a great place to set up your token project or run a cryptocurrency exchange,” he added, pointing to the region’s status as a tax haven.

Being the region’s financial hub, Dubai has already undertaken certain moves to widen blockchain use within the city in recent months, as its regulators push toward the acceptance of blockchain-based technologies. That’s why Stonberg believes Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds will also make a bet on blockchain.

By an agreement signed this May with the Securities and Commodities Authority, Dubai Airport Free Zone started offering and trading crypto assets within the free zone.

In 2020, the Dubai DMCC freezone opened an exchange for sugar trading based on blockchain, while the first in the region Bitcoin Fund has listed on the Nasdaq Dubai exchange last June.

“I think Dubai is going to do fantastically well,” as it adopts cryptocurrencies, claimed Stonberg. By his words, Bittrex is preparing to expand its presence and increase the number of clients in the region.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies have surged again in recent weeks, while Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has softened his tone regarding the crypto, boosting investors’ sentiment.

“A lot of the institutional money going into Ethereum and Bitcoin is probably really the driver for the market,” noted Stonberg. “It’s not so much as retail froth.”

Recently, the Dubai Financial Services Authority, the financial regulatory agency for the Dubai International Financial Centre, initiated a few crypto-related regulations, intending to adopt a ​​regulatory framework for diverse digital assets in 2021.