From Hype to Mainstream: AI and Tokenization Enter a New Era of Regulation in the UAE

Joining me in the studio to break it all down, Akshay Chopra, Managing Partner at 237 Ventures and co-chair of the MFTA Payments Committee.

We have Akshai with us today.

Welcome to you to Wall Street, to Mina.

Thank you for having me.

It's great to be here.

Yes, thank you so much.

First of all, let's start with what is actually changing now the financial institutions in.

Let's talk about what's really happening on the ground and how is it changing this fast.

One of the things that I love seeing the most is many things that were considered hype and you know, the shiny new things a couple of years ago are becoming boring and mainstream and that's a good thing because it means that they're going from shiny new toy to something that's adding value.

Also, it means that they are uh getting regulated, that people are getting more serious about um how they're applied in the financial system.

And this could include various applications of AI.

This could include various forms of tokenization and the web 3 applications in general.

All that is becoming mainstream and regulated, which is great to see.

Yes, that's great, and we're going to ask more about that also regulation in the.

You are also a vocal advocate for responsible AI and financial services.

What does that?

Mean and also why does it matter now?

So if you look at how AI can be applied in financial services, there's 3 layers, so to speak.

One is what we call the productivity layer, really simple stuff like, um, you know, summarizing emails, coding, um, analyzing basic data, those kind of things.

The second layer would be things, uh, like process AI as we call it, so compliance, customer onboarding, etc.

And the third layer, and where it gets really critical, is what we call decision AI.

So things like credit decisions, uh pricing decisions, customization, that kind of stuff.

Now at that level, it is critical to be very careful about how we apply AI because AI should not be the one who decides whose dreams get funded or which transactions that could be life saving, um, you know, suppose you.

Sending money from one place to another to fund the medical treatment, AI should not block that unless we know exactly that it has good reasons to.

So there's responsible AI and AI governance becomes important when AI is itself making decisions.

Yeah, I think that's very interesting now, especially the decision making with AI, the three layers thing.

The big question I think everyone is asking now is can AI.

Replace fintech professionals since it's making decisions as well.

So you know, one cliche that you see going around a lot is that AI won't replace people, but people using AI will replace people, and that is now.

Yeah, but, but that said, I actually do believe AI will also replace a lot of people.

There's no question about it.

And um the way I recommend my advice to professionals, FinTech and beyond, is that you should aspire to be in the top 1% of responsible AI uses in your profession.

And responsible AI uses is not just AIUs.

So I'm not saying be the top 1% who puts everything on chat GPT and gets an answer, right?

That's not responsible.

But when you're responsible, you are putting a filter on what should I put and not put on AI, what should I trust and not trust with AI, and where should I challenge it, right?

And if you're doing that, you're, uh, using AI to benefit you, to grow your own.

Intelligence, but at the same time you're not leaning on it so that it's causing cognitive atrophy.

How can you be the one in the 1% that you talked about?

So essentially you need to train yourself not only in the tools, but also in being able to judge when the tool is not right, when you should not use it, and you should use your own skill set.

So it's about the mindset as much as it is about technical skills.

Use your logic.

Yeah, you advised the UAE government's new Economy Academy.

Now how should people working in finance right now prepare themselves, do you think?

So I would say there were, there are two things you should always keep in mind.

The first is you absolutely need to apply AI tools, understand them, read up about them, watch tutorials, go for lessons.

There are so many great courses in the UAE to get literate about AI tools because that is the guaranteed way to become outmoded or obsolete in this market, that you don't know how to use AI.

So that's number one.

You need.

To be AI literate, there's plenty of resources out there that can help you.

But the second thing is, while you're working on AI literacy, also build your own literacy in your subject matter.

Also build your own skills, because what you don't want is that you went so deep into AI that you forgot to build the non-AI side of skills, your charisma, your, uh, soft skills, your, you know, technical skills.

So you have to do.

Both of those in parallel and if you can, then you're in that 1% of responsible AI.

Yes, and you become very dependent on it and we see that now even in everyday, everyday life.

So this AI in the AI section, let's say, how are regulators in this region too supporting AI adoption while also keeping it responsible.

Many markets, what you find is regulators falsely believe that there is a choice to be made between innovation and safety.

Right, and so they believe that you can't have both.

And so they go too deep into just safety in the UAE and in actually in many of the markets in our region.

It's, it's encouraging to see that, you know, the regulators aren't falling prey to that.

Um, they are doing both things.

So if you see that there's a lot of great initiatives to build, um, AI data centers, to build AI use cases, applications, models, that's happening.

But at the same time, the regulators are being very crystal clear about what is.

Safe AI.

What does AI governance look like and what are, what are the standards that need to be set to make sure AI happens in a safe way?

So I, I, I actually think that is a very proactive and a good stance for a regulator to have.

OK, let's move over to tokenization now, which is like a big deal now, and, and the GCC and UAE in general, and you sit on the board of tokenization of real world assets.

What is it?

Let's start with that and why is everyone talking about it.

So a tokenization of an asset essentially means that you digitize its ownership and you do that with the aim that it will help me, it'll make it easier for me to sell it if it's an illiquid entity.

It'll help me to raise capital against it and to, you know, fractionalize its ownership.

So there are some really good use cases for, uh, you know, fractionalized and tokenized assets, and we're seeing.

A lot of that here, like even in the UAE for example, you're seeing the government experiment with tokenized real estate in the global financial markets.

There's a lot of tokenization happening for trade finance, for receivables, for private credit, and those kind of things.

So there are some real use cases, but there's a lot of hype as well.

OK, the question is, can you tokenize anything now in real life?

What is exactly now being tokenized in UAE?

So can you tokenize anything?

The answer is yes.

Should you tokenize anything and everything?

The answer is no.

And as we kind of saw with that whole NFT craze a couple of years ago, right?

So you should tokenize something when it satisfies a few different criteria.

The first is, is the ownership of that asset already clear, right?

So if something has a complicated ownership, um, tokenizing it will not help.

Or if I tokenize a public park, which is public commons, doesn't help.

Second, when I tokenize it, does it help?

What is the business case?

What is the, you know, problem that it's solving?

Is it helping me sell it more easily?

Is it helping me raise capital against it, administer it better?

And if you see that there is really a, uh, answer there, excellent.

And lastly, once I tokenize the asset, is there any demand for it, right?

And you, you can, as I said, you can tokenize everything, but if there's no demand, if there is no real business problem that is solving, and the ownership is unclear, there's no point.

Oh, OK, because it started with real estate.

Now, did it expand beyond that?

Yes, in fact, uh, if you look at some of the most successful examples of real world to organization that we're seeing, they're actually in the financial markets in things that are generally less liquid and more uh hard to create a fractional market around.

So something like a trade finance, right, when there's huge receivables around the markets when. ship around private credit, which are large ticket, less liquid, those kind of, you know, institutional flows, institutional holdings, tokenization has actually started there in a big way and in my mind that's examples of things where it really solves the problem.

Yeah, so stablecoins also gaining momentum globally.

How are they actually being used in payments today?

So already, like as of 2025, there was, I believe, $400 billion of payments already using stablecoin layers.

Now, again, $400 billion is actually a drop in the ocean if you look at the global, uh, you know, payments volume, but it already shows that this is not a theoretical construct.

This is not a good to have.

This is happening.

There's hundreds of billions of dollars already passing through stablecoins, and what stablecoins essentially achieve is while having the stability of a fiat currency, they can provide lower cost, higher speeds for transactions.

OK, regulation here is the UAE regulatory framework, uh, keeping up with all of this to organizations, stablecoins with very, very fast progress we're seeing now.

So one metaphor I love using for regulation is in, in far too many countries, the regulators are driving a car while looking at the rearview mirror, right?

So they look at what happened in the past and how do we fix it in the future.

Uh, in this part of the world, both UAE and Saudi and some of the, you know, more mature markets here, the, uh, you know, the regulators are definitely looking ahead.

And um, you know, if you look at this part of the world, for example, in UAE, if I wanted to build a crypto business that's about trading, then I will go to VAa and get a specific license there.

If I wanted to build a um payments or a stablecoin business, I would go to the central bank and get a retail payments payment services license.

So there is a specialization that's developing in the regulators here as well, which actually makes it easier in some ways for uh the founders to know exactly where to get which license.

So they are looking ahead 100%.

Yeah.

Last question, and I want to talk to you about that.

You wrote a book called After Us about life beyond super intelligent AI.

What is the one message that you want the audience to take away today from that?

So I wrote a work of fiction, and the reason why that's relevant is I believe that AI is going to impact all our lives in ways that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of and unfortunately.

Many of us just leave it to, you know, the white papers and the technical experts to tell us how it's going to impact your life, but I actually think everyone must start already thinking about what could my life look like, um, you know, 1015, 20 years if AI continues and it might even become super intelligent.

So it's in your hands and it's kind of your duty to think about the evolution of your own life.

I definitely need a copy of After Us.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Akshai.

Thank you for having me, Robert.

Thank you.