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Wed, Jul 16, 2025 | Muharram 21, 1447 | Fajr 04:10 | DXB 
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Are you ready for the new financial ecosystem taking over the world?
You might soon be able to use Bitcoin as collateral to buy a house
Sometimes, I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe.
I’ve been learning about crypto since 2017 and investing in it for the past two years. And until last December, I’d met almost no one who really understood what was going on in this space — let alone anyone who was actually in it.
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That changed at the Bitcoin MENA conference last year, my first such event, where I found my people. Speaker after speaker echoed what I’d been sensing, but still wasn’t sure about: that a new undeniable and unstoppable financial ecosystem is emerging. All while the majority of people remain oblivious.
I get it. I’ve been here before. In the late 1990s, I took a basic weekend HTML coding course back in Canada. No one in my circle was doing anything like that, and I wondered if I was a bit crazy — but if I was, then my fun fellow classmates were, too. I didn’t pursue HTML, and regrettably didn’t invest in any web projects, but I left with enough of a clue to understand what was happening a few years later as newsrooms started going digital.
It’s a situation that feels very familiar now. And everywhere I look, daily, there are signs of a paradigm shift.
The meme that made me laugh out loud this week featured a sketch of a guy on an old-school phone, saying: “I’d like a wake-up call.” Underneath, a woman replies: “There’s only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin.” That’s it. That’s whole joke. It’s brilliant. Too bad there’s no one around for me to show it to.
The use cases for Bitcoin and the range of tokens go far beyond buying low and selling high. The US Federal Housing Finance Agency just announced that crypto can now count as a borrower asset in mortgage applications — as long as it’s held on a regulated US exchange. That means you might soon be able to use Bitcoin as collateral to buy a house.
This signals trust in crypto — and in the exchanges that hold it. The best of them may become banks in their own right, just not the kind we’re used to.
Institutional investment is flooding in. In April, major US firm Cantor Fitzgerald announced a $3.6 billion (Dh13.2 billion) crypto venture with Tether and SoftBank, based on the way Michael Saylor’s company Strategy acquires Bitcoin for investors using traditional financial tools.
Strategic asset
More and more traditional financial analysts and CEOs are starting to describe Bitcoin as a long-term strategic asset. Even with the recent geopolitical tension, which would have sent it crashing in the past, Bitcoin dipped briefly below $100,000 (Dh367,300) — before becoming poised for a new all-time high.
What’s happening right now is that the global financial system is moving on-chain. Crypto isn’t fringe anymore — it’s foundational.
In the UAE you can now pay for your taxi fare in AE Coin (AEC), a regulated stablecoin backed by the dirham. The Dubai Department of Finance has partnered with crypto.com to allow people to pay for government services with digital currencies. Here in the UAE, blockchain events regularly draw huge crowds. The country is known for being a global crypto hub — one that is years ahead in both infrastructure
and regulation.
This is how adoption works — bit by bit, until one day it’s everywhere.
In the US, the Senate recently passed the Genius Act, a bipartisan bill creating a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Trump called it “pure genius”, saying it would make America the leader in digital assets.
There is a huge runway for stablecoins, which serve as a bridge between the traditional and digital financial worlds. As Citi reported recently, the stablecoin market could hit $3.7 trillion (Dh13 trillion) by 2030. To put that in perspective, the total crypto market cap as of now is about $3.45 trillion (Dh12 trillion).
The biggest players? Circle (which issues USDC) and Tether (issues USDT), which are quietly evolving into some of the largest financial firms on the planet.
Across the globe, momentum is building in other areas too. In just a smattering of signs: Bhutan is now the world’s third-largest Bitcoin holder. Coinbase is buying BTC weekly. Ethereum ETFs are setting records and one month after Coinbase joined the S&P 500; on the index that tracks the 500 largest publicly traded US companies, it was the top performer.
In seven years, I’ve watched crypto go from being dismissed as a scam to all of the above. And still, most people don’t know about it — and don’t seem to want to.
If you’re still reading, congratulations. You’ve answered your wake-up call. You’re in the smart money minority. And lucky for you, this is really just getting started.
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