"The UAE Is a Class Leader in the Crypto Space," Says Witkoff Insights from Binance Blockchain Week 2025 in Dubai.

"The UAE is incredible in the crypto space. The US has gotten a lot better, but the UAE has been leading the way for a very long time because it doesn't let small things slow it down. The US is now figuring out how to get to a 'yes' more quickly, just as the UAE does. The UAE is certainly a class leader in this space," said Zach Witkoff, co-founder and CEO of World Liberty Financial, a USD1-backed digital finance firm that plans the tokenization of RWAs, including potential projects like Trump Tower Dubai, at a Binance Blockchain Week session entitled "Digital Money at Scale."

Moderated by David Wachsman, CEO, Wachsman, a global comms firm for blockchain, fintech, and emerging technologies, the panel took a deep look into how stablecoins move from early adoption to global, real-world scale.

Avery Ching, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs, a blockchain technology company building a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain for global on-chain finance, said, "We have made a lot of progress on the regulatory side for stablecoins, but there is still a lot of work to be done on the adoption side."

Reeve Collins, co-founder and Chairman of STBL, said, "We need more trust and more institutional investors using stablecoins, because governments need to see how powerful and valuable it is to move money this way. The key question is who captures the value of a digital dollar. Today, it's centralized financial institutions — but tomorrow, that value can go directly to users."

On the roadblocks to real-world assets (RWAs), he added, "The real difference now is the regulatory landscape, which has shifted. Traditional assets can now be tokenized and put on-chain, and that creates incremental utility — you can simply do more with them. Yields go up while the risk stays the same."

Regarding institutional adoption of stablecoins, Collins noted, "The shift in regulation has been a tailwind for stablecoins. At scale, everything comes down to trust — and now we finally have the trust required to scale."

The discussion takes place as the UAE is advancing a regulated stablecoin and digital-currency framework as part of its wider financial innovation agenda.

In August 2024, the CBUAE enacted the Payment Token Services Regulation (PTSR), formally classifying stablecoins as "payment tokens" and establishing a regulatory framework for their issuance, custody, conversion, and transfer. The decision highlights that the UAE is positioning itself as a regulated, crypto-friendly jurisdiction, aiming to integrate stablecoins into mainstream finance under robust oversight.

In November 2025, the Digital Dirham, the central bank digital currency issued by the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), was used in a government transaction for the first time, with a transfer between the Ministry of Finance and the Dubai Department of Finance settled via the mBridge platform in under two minutes.

This milestone forms part of the Digital Dirham pilot under the CBUAE's Financial Infrastructure Transformation Program, which aims to accelerate digital-payment adoption and strengthen the UAE's position as a global financial-technology hub.

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