Dubai has made yet another major move in its bid to become a global digital currency hub. The Dubai World Trade Center (DWTC), an event and exhibition venue, has announced that it’s becoming a comprehensive zone and regulator for digital currencies.
Established in 1979, the DWTC is a 38-story skyscraper in Dubai hosting about 500 events every year and welcoming about 3 million people from across the globe.
In its announcement, it stated that the move was in line with the government’s effort to create new economic sectors. The Center will be designing a comprehensive ecosystem for the digital currency sector as part of this.
It will seek to partner and work with stakeholders from the private sector on the initiative. This will create “an attractive environment for the sector, and enforce rigorous standards for investor protection, Anti Money Laundering (AML), Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) compliance and cross border deal flow tracing.”
The Center will be relying on a recent approval by the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) for digital asset trading on its free zone. The SCA announced that it will allow the Dubai World Trade Center Authority to issue licenses for digital asset operators within its free zone in September. According to the SCA, the move followed a directive by the Ministry of Economy which has been pushing for cooperation between regulators.
The move is one of many in Dubai as the city seeks to become the Middle East’s blockchain and digital currency hub. As CoinGeek reported two months ago, the Dubai Financial Services Authority introduced a regulatory framework for investment tokens. Dividing them into security and derivative tokens, the regulator revealed that the new law would apply to any person that seeks to issue, trade, or hold the investment tokens, while promising to formulate more regulations to cover exchange tokens, utility tokens, and more.
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