Stablecoins are rapidly moving from crypto innovation to mainstream financial infrastructure. Joining us now is Ramana Kumar, President of the Stablecoin Ecosystem at the ADI Foundation, to discuss building an ADI Chain-backed digital economy, the role of the digital dirham, and support from the UAE Central Bank. Ramana, thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much. Great to see you again — I think we've known each other for about ten years now.
You've just become President of the Stablecoin Ecosystem at the ADI Foundation. Tell me more about the vision and what building a stablecoin ecosystem actually looks like in practice.
So if you look at ADI Foundation — a lot of people ask why we are creating a separate blockchain when there are so many public blockchains available. But ADI Chain is the only sovereign institutional blockchain backed by ITC and backed by Abu Dhabi, built specifically for institutional purposes. The speed is around 15,000 transactions per second, and the core focus is payments, trade finance, transaction banking, and institutional flows. We wanted to build something sovereign. We worked with IFC and FAB to launch the first stablecoin on ADI Chain — the digital dirham stablecoin. And we are expecting many more stablecoins to follow. We've already had discussions with multiple countries in Africa. In simple terms, we want to build the largest non-USD stablecoin flows in the world. Today the stablecoin industry is predominantly dollar-denominated. But you're living in a country that is a hub of remittances, a hub of global trade flows. Why not make the UAE the base for all of this cross-border activity? Our aim is to build an economy anchored around the digital dirham and other stablecoins.
I want to talk about the digital dirham specifically and how the UAE Central Bank's support ties into that.
We are very fortunate to live in a country where regulators were ahead of private players on stablecoins. The UAE was the first country in the world to introduce payment token regulations — around two years ago — and has already issued four stablecoin licenses. The regulation is clear: what you can do, what you can't, how it works. The digital dirham stablecoin is fully compliant with that framework. It's owned by a stablecoin company backed by IFC and FAB — so when people ask where the cash backing is, the answer is FAB. It doesn't get more credible than that. The digital dirham has its initial license and has now received new approvals to expand and partner with regulated exchanges. The growth is just the beginning.
In the past 12 months, stablecoins have moved from crypto infrastructure into boardroom conversations. What has changed?
Three things. First, regulation — central banks calling this a legitimate instrument has given the industry credibility and enabled licensing. Second, genuine use cases. Cross-border payments where banks pre-fund nostro accounts and fees are opaque — that model is being replaced by stablecoin rails. Merchant settlements are being transformed — Mastercard and Visa are already talking about settling in stablecoins, giving merchants real-time payments instead of T+1 or T+2. Retail remittances to the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Indonesia — stablecoins make those instant. And then on top of that comes the real world asset story, trade finance, and capital markets. This is a tool that will bring enormous efficiency to the system.
You've helped shape digital banking and payments in the UAE through Magnati and Paytm. What are the key stablecoin use cases today — and what are the ones we're not thinking about yet?
Banks are already engaging. Some have become partners. Some are investing directly into stablecoins. Some are going to stablecoin companies and asking how to enable specific use cases. Payments will continue to reshape — we went from mail order to telegraph transfer to cash to electronic to digital payments, and blockchain is now reshaping that model again. But the next stage is asset tokenisation — when a bank underwrites and holds an asset on its balance sheet today, how do you allow retail investors to own a piece of a highly rated banking asset once it's tokenised? That's a huge opportunity already emerging. Tokenising shares, tokenising bonds — a lot more will evolve that we haven't fully thought through yet. Capital markets have already started looking at it. I have a few ideas I'd rather not share just yet.
When you look at Abu Dhabi, it really does have both the top-down vision and the bottom-up infrastructure coming together.
We are very fortunate to live here. There is a massive transformation happening in the blockchain and stablecoin space. In a few months, we will be talking about the proliferation of the dirham stablecoin and stablecoins in general. It's coming fast.
Thank you so much. Really great to see you and thanks for coming on the show.
Really nice to be here. Thank you.
