- Zach Witkoff runs World Liberty Monetary
- Trump household holds 60% stake in WLF
- Witkoff says UAE ‘is a category chief’
The US remains to be taking part in catch-up with the UAE on crypto regulation, based on the CEO of Trump family-backed World Liberty Monetary (WLF), at the same time as Washington races to reposition itself as extra crypto-friendly.
US president Donald Trump has reversed his nation’s beforehand hostile stance, set beneath Joe Biden, and ordered regulators to construct a unified federal framework geared toward making the US “the crypto capital of the world”.
However Zach Witkoff, WLF co-founder alongside Zachary Folkman and Chase Hero, stated the UAE stays far forward.
“To be trustworthy, I wouldn’t say there are too many hiccups in the USA, however the UAE has been main the best way for a very very long time as a result of they know methods to get to ‘sure’ shortly,” Witkoff advised Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai.
“The US is getting there, however the UAE has been doing this for just a few years and is actually a category chief.”
WLF is 60 % owned by the Trump household. President Trump has moved swiftly to shift coverage, making a White Home crypto activity power, establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and rolling again enforcement-led regulation.
The 2025 Genius Act, the nation’s first federal stablecoin legislation, gave clear guidelines for dollar-pegged tokens, whereas a reorientated Securities and Alternate Fee and a collection of high-profile trade summits have additional signalled Washington’s pivot towards nurturing the sector.
The UAE, in the meantime, has constructed one of the world’s most complete regulatory regimes. Dubai’s Digital Asset Regulatory Authority, Abu Dhabi World Market and the central financial institution now license and supervise exchanges, custodians and different crypto companies.
A federal legislation handed in 2025 prolonged oversight to stablecoins, tokenised belongings and decentralised finance, requiring all companies to be licenced by September 2026.
“The UAE isn’t just crypto pleasant,” stated Lucy Gazmararian, founder of Abu Dhabi-headquartered fund supervisor Token Bay Capital. “It’s constructing the complete financial system on crypto rails and infrastructure.”
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The digital belongings market stays beneath stress: greater than $1 trillion has been worn out since early October, days after Bitcoin touched a document above $126,000.
Regardless of the selloff, which left Bitcoin at near $93,000 on Wednesday afternoon, sentiment on the summit remained upbeat. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of blockchain-based funds firm Ripple, predicted Bitcoin might hit $180,000 by the tip of 2026.
The UAE’s minister for AI and the digital financial system, Omar Sultan Al Olama, urged policymakers to remain targeted on long-term fundamentals.
“If the expertise works, it really works regardless of the worth of a single Bitcoin,” he stated.
