Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri, the Economy Minister of UAE, said that cryptocurrency and asset tokenization will be key to the country’s plans to double its economy, as currently estimated to be the 34th-largest in the world in 10 years.
It has been reported that Al Marri was joined on the panel, titled the “Arrival of the token economy, from art to real estate,” by artist Harry Yeff and WEF executive Sheila Warren. While much of the conversation centered on the current nonfungible toke craze, Al Marri’s comments centered largely on forthcoming tokenization use cases and their regulation.
However, Al Marri said that the country has ambitions to grow its gross domestic product by 7% yearly, which would put it on track to double the size of its economy by 2030. Tokenization will be a key cog in this effort, as “Tokenization compliments information-based economies.”
Al Marri further said that the country has several ambitious projects underway, including a study being conducted with the WEF on funding small and medium-sized enterprises with a government-run token platform, possibly as part of a “regional token exchange” that is “in our agenda.”
Will the UAE be able to double its economy in the next ten years? The minister of economy, Abdullah Bin Touq Al Marri, said that crypto and asset tokenization will be key to executing this plan. https://t.co/7eHs3ANTgy (Reporting via @blockanalia) — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) April 7, 2021
Likewise, the minister said that the goal is to protect investors as well as the larger financial system without stifling innovation. He highlighted two pain points in particular: lack of “harmonized regulation” and lack of sufficient regulation.
He noted that jurisdiction and regional regulations need to work together in order to prevent cloistered bubbles of innovation and to ensure that new asset models, such as fractionalized ownership, benefit all.
He asked:
“How can we bring fractionalization to a level where everyone can benefit?”
Also, he noted that fractionalized ownership can lead to real-world-meets-blockchain bugaboos.
He asked:
“If an apartment has fractionalized ownership, who pays the upkeep fees? If there’s a fractionalized painting, what happens when the painting gets stolen?”
Thus, he concluded:
“We understand the challenges as such, but we are experimenting, and allowing the UAE to be a site of experimentation.”
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: Lupicinio