Stablecoins are moving from the crypto fringes into the heart of financial infrastructure. The UAE is building fast, with multiple dirham-backed tokens now in the market. Joining me is Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta, Chairman of the Middle East Stablecoin Association. Welcome to the show as always.
Thank you for having me.
For a CEO or viewer outside the digital asset world, what is the single clearest use case for stablecoins today?
There are two things every CEO should understand. For the first time in the history of money, money can itself be programmed — and that is throwing up an amazing set of business opportunities. Previously, money was just a means of exchange. But now it can have loyalty points built in, your partners embedded, it can literally do different deals, be lent out, and enable a much better treasury operation. And we are just starting. If you look at the rate at which proper banks are issuing their own stablecoins — not just non-banking financial institutions but corporates — it is definitely becoming part of the financial infrastructure. Not just stablecoins either — tokenised money market funds, tokenised deposits, CBDCs. The world is becoming so exciting.
The UAE has approved four major dirham-backed stablecoins. Does the market need four competing AED stablecoins, or will we see consolidation?
I can foresee a future not too far away where we have almost every company issuing some kind of digital money — because they can be hugely customised to your own particular needs. A bank can take an AED stablecoin and build other banking products directly into it — it becomes a bank digital currency. So I am actually expecting a huge number of stablecoins to be issued over the next three to five years. And yes, the market can bear it. This is a hotbed of innovation and new business models are coming. We have seen nothing yet.
Beyond payments, what other stablecoin use cases are emerging?
Commodity trading, settlement and financing on stablecoins. Investment flows. Intercompany transactions. The merger between tokenisation of real world assets and stablecoins. And more importantly, as we will see soon, all these different kinds of digital money are starting to show up as different tools in the toolbox. You do not have to worry about individual Lego bricks. The magic happens when you bring them together and create your own structure — very fast — because the central bank, the regulators, the technology, and the supporting ecosystem are already there, agile, mobile, and absolutely hostile to any forms of inefficiency.
As an ex-regulator and as chairman of MESA, what is your non-negotiable priority in all of this?
Investor protection — or consumer protection — has to be number one priority. At the end of the day, this is money. Money is completely dependent upon confidence and trust. So without question, whatever we are doing, it has to be regulatory approved, it has to be legal, it has to be compliant. Under no circumstances can anyone in this association ever say you can cut corners. That is the path to doom. History tells us that when you play around with money and do not make it safe, it kills the economy.
Thank you very much, Doctor Dasgupta.
Thank you very much indeed.
