One of these famous crypto supporters is Filip Karadjordjevic, the Hereditary Prince of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He claimed that some Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), could soon adopt Bitcoin (BTC), as he said on a Bitcoin Reserve podcast on July 6.
According to him, most of these monarchies follow Sharia law, which includes, among other things, a financial system that does not accept the concept of debt. Therefore, they might be open to accepting a pitch for Bitcoin as the perfect money in line with this system.
“According to their readings, to the Quran, is actually that Bitcoin is their perfect money. It’s just a matter of time until someone pitches that to them, or they pitch it to themselves, and they get on board. Maybe you’ll see an Arab monarchy or an Arab country here or there adopting Bitcoin a lot sooner than you think.”
@PrincFilip1 mentions some Middle Eastern monarchies might adopt #bitcoin sooner than we think 👀
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Link to podcast: https://t.co/VlAx2WYYNy pic.twitter.com/26G0GiLi8r
— Bitcoin Reserve (@BTCReserveHQ) July 6, 2022
The Middle East shows interest in crypto
As it happens, some countries that the Serbian Prince mentioned have previously expressed interest in cryptocurrency. According to Chainalysis data, the Middle East is one of the world’s fastest-growing crypto marketplaces, accounting for 7% of global trading volumes.
In fact, Mubadala Investment Company, one of the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds, had already made a $240B investment in the crypto ecosystem by December 2021.
In mid-March, cryptocurrency exchange Binance was granted a Virtual Asset License allowing it to do business in Dubai or, more precisely, to provide limited exchange goods and services to pre-qualified investors and professional financial service providers.
More recently, in late April, another crypto exchange – Kraken – got authorisation from local authorities to launch a regulated crypto trading platform in the UAE, with regional headquarters in Abu Dhabi.