Public Chains, Public Gains: Blockchain for a Better Society

amlaykumat. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to Abu Dhabi finance week here in the heart of the capital of capital. Abu Dhabi is not just shaping the future of global finance. It is shaping the future of public infrastructure. A future where trust, technology, and societal impact come together to build systems that serves people, protects communities, and empowers nations.

Our session explores a critical question around how can blockchain evolve from a private sector innovation into a true public good, one that strengthens transparency, inclusion, and trust across society. From secure identity and healthcare records to public finance and social services, blockchain is emerging as a foundational layer for citizen centric systems that puts individuals in the center. To help explore this further, we are joined with a visionary leader who would be sharing with us how we can shape global conversations around financial inclusion and public purpose technology. Huie, thank you for being with us today. Thank you very much Ra.

It's a real pleasure to be here at Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Uh I've had the chance to be here for the last few years and I have seen the amazing growth of Abu Dhabi Finance Week. So really happy to be here with you today.

Thank you. Huie. So Huey, blockchain is often is is often celebrated for its potential to make public services more transparent and accessible. So where do we see blockchain delivering the most immediate realistic and high impact value for governments and societies today and how can we make those use cases credible?

Yeah, thanks a lot for uh this important difficult question. Uh perhaps let me ask the audience uh because we have quite a few people here. Who is involved in a blockchain and digital assets in the room? Okay. So quite a lot of people so I have to be careful with my answer.

Uh because I guess that you know if I ask any of you in terms of what is important in terms of impact a lot of what you're working on is really important. So let me take a step back and know not even talk about blockchain. Let's talk about the world and where we are today. We're in a world where it's really clear that technology and innovation are important. And when we think of technology and innovation actually they have had a huge impact on growth of our societies of our nations for pretty much the last 200 years since the industrial revolution.

It was actually the theme of the Nobel Prize uh in economy a few weeks ago in terms of innovation sustaining economic growth. So we know that technology innovation really really important. If we think of here in Abu Dhabi, if I wanted to innovate, what would I do? If I wanted to be an entrepreneur, for example, I would launch my company, I could use my UAE pass, for example, to register for my company. I would create a website.

I could receive payments, digital payments. That seems really obvious for pretty much know all of us here in the room whether we're here in Abu Dhabi in London, Singapore, New York seems obvious that know all those steps are steps which are important for most of the world. However, for emerging markets this is not really possible. This is not really possible because these concepts of digital identity, digital payments, digital health are not really there. In other words, the infrastructure which is important to be part of the digit digital economy is not really there.

So if we go back to your question in terms of what is really important and what is most impactful my view is that having a strong digital infrastructure is really important for all nations including emerging economies to do really well. This is actually what we do at uh ADI Foundation. And uh for those of you who don't know ADI Foundation, actually Abu Dhabi Finance Week is really important to ADI Foundation because exactly a year ago ADI Foundation, which we had a logo somewhere here, ADI Foundation was announced here at Abu Dhabi Finance Week. So that was a year ago. This year actually was also a really important milestone.

Two days ago, we announced the main net of ADI foundation. In other words, our technology infrastructure. Partnerships with amazing companies like Empessa, Mastercard, Franklin Templeton, for example, were announced. Uh, a lot more, you know, will be announced if you're interested in exactly one hour. Actually, AJ Batia, who's the principal council member of ADI Foundation and the CEO of Cirrus, will be on stage at ADQ Arena and we'll be talking about it.

So going back to your question infrastructure really important to make it a bit more concrete because it might be a bit more conceptual. Uh here we are at Abu Dhabi finance week and we talk about finance when we talk about finance over the last 10 20 years we've done amazing progress in terms of finance mobile payments for example Empessa has done incredible strides for mobile payments in Africa all of us know we can pay now with our mobile phones for example even know our smart watches that's amazing there's still a lot to do actually there's still a lot if we think of remittances in some countries We're still having to pay, you know, four 5% of fees. It takes a few days. So, we're not there yet in terms of digital payment. And we're not there yet in a world of AI where we'll be using agentic AI to pay for a flight ticket from the Silicon Valley to here for example.

So, what is the future of mobile payment? This is one of the projects for example at ADI which we're working on which is a stable coin the DARM stable coin in collaboration with IHC and FAB which is about the future of payments and here it's about making sure that citizens and companies can have their lives simpler in a world of of digital. So those are you know some of those um I think know impactful initiatives which you can think of

100%. And uh speaking of announcements uh our chairman his excellency just announced a a very exciting uh uh announcement at his opening remarks for finteh which will be shared towards the end of our session today. So uh uh carrying on about scaling blockchain for civic users uh obviously it requires more than pilots it requires national readiness. So from your perspective what will what will it take for blockchain to become a true part of national infrastructure especially in regions like the UAE who are actively positioned to lead this transformation.

Definitely. I think before answering your question, I'll take a step back and talk about why are we talking about blockchain because I don't want not to push blockchain for everything. No, it has a certain usage. Blockchain is an amazing technology for system innovation, for collaborative innovation. Uh I'll take an example.

So, if we wanted to, let's say, organize a big party for all the people in the room here in a pre-blockchain world, what we could do is that I could start with an Excel spreadsheet, add people to the list, send you via email this Excel spreadsheet, you'd add some people, remove perhaps, know some people, send it back to me. If we're starting to be 10 people to organize it, it's a mess. It's a mess because I don't know whom you have added, etc. So, that's the world pre-blockchain. The world post blockchain is doing exactly the same thing but with Google sheets.

So with Google sheets you would see who I have added who I have removed the same for you and we could be hundreds of people to organize this big party. So blockchain really important for what we call system innovation collaborative innovation which at the level of a country or large systems it's really important. So now that we have said that no blockchain important know for whole countries to innovate what is important so I've had the chance to work with a lot of different ecosystems in Europe, Middle East and Asia and that tends to be five pillars that always comes back. First one leadership second one regulation, third ecosystem, fourth capital and last but not least talent. You asked the question about Abu Dhabi and the UAE.

I think that across those five different pillars, we're extremely privileged in terms of leadership and not just about blockchain, leadership for the country in itself, there are very few countries that have this long-term vision of building the country. Vision 2030 for example in terms of the announcement that was done yesterday in terms of creating this cluster for fintech insurance digital and alternative assets. It is another initiative here ADGM you know where we are. So leadership is definitely exceptional here in um in the country regulations really important for blockchain digital assets. I think again we're extremely privileged of having regulations or regulators who are extremely involved in terms of regulations.

Again here uh FSR as a regulator CBEE var um all those regulators are extremely involved in terms of not just saying yes or no but involved in the development of the ecosystem. capital the capital of capital I don't think I need to say more in terms of capital talents so talents uh and perhaps know I'll start with know what you've been doing at ADJM academy but the exceptional work that you have had and two days ago with the se ceremony here of know bringing together you know all those people talent is a really important part of the ecosystem you know ADGM academy what you've been doing is incredible ADI foundation that's also one of our objectives of not just bringing exceptional no talent from outside to Abu Dhabi but raising homegrown talent the same that we do at CTF. I think that talent is a really important part of the of uh the strategy and I'll finish on ecosystem and ecosystem I you know I've had the chance to be in Abu Dhabi for a few years and I think that know 40,000 people Abu Dhabi finance week I think that says it all. Abu Dhabi has managed to create this whole ecosystem of very diverse types of perspectives. Okay, we have very large banks UBS, HSBC, Standard Charters, we have web three, we have technology companies, we have regulators, governments.

So ecosystem is bringing all of this together. So if there was a place for the future of blockchain, I think there would be. Abu Dhabi is the place to be and Abu Dhabi is investing deeply in talent development, collaboration, research and forwardinking uh policy. Here we we're talking if we talk about the from a regional perspective around the world uh we're seeing a lot of uh a powerful convergence between AI meeting uh blockchain and a few countries are doing it exceptionally well but the opportunity really is global. So from your perspective, how do you see blockchain and AI reinforcing each other and what would it take for nations not only the early movers but everywhere to build this capability effectively and responsibly?

Yeah. So AI I think that know in all discussions we're talking about AI. You might see I have an AI pin. So I love AI. Uh that's to celebrate actually uh our certification of AI in finance in 2018.

So for a long long time we've said AI single most important technology impacting all of us uh which I truly believe but there's the what I would call AI paradox you know if you think about it first who in the room uses chat GPT Gemini cloud deepseek pretty much everyone uh so I think no congrats to all of us who are part of the 1 billion people who use chat GPT which is crazy if we think about it. Chat GPT and LLMs have done in three years what took 12 years for the internet to do. Fastest growth of any technology ever. So AI has never been so accessible. On the other hand, and that's the other part of the paradox, if we think of who's winning the AI race, who's winning the AI race?

We're thinking of the US, of course, of China, and there are very, very few other countries that have the resources and strategy for it. The UEE has it, but that's pretty much it. There are not that many countries. So, we're talking about a technology that has never been so accessible. And on the other hand, it seems that only a few are benefiting from it.

I'll give you an example that's what I call the hidden trend. The hidden front is happening in the most competitive environments in the world which is the Silicon Valley. Before generative AI, it used to take 10 years and 500 employees for those startups to reach a hund00 million of revenues. Today, companies like Cursor, Lovable, Replet, they do it in one year with 50 employees. In other words, they do it 10 times faster with 10 times fewer employees.

In which world can you be a 100 times better than the best of the best?

That's AI. That's the multiplier effect.

100%. And this is where Abu Dhabi sees enormous potential, not just in adopting emerging technologies, but also in integrating them into a unified, secure, and future ready national infrastructure. Huie, I have a final question to pick your brains on and uh I hope it's not a difficult one because uh I would prefer if you try to choose uh rather than combine all the options together. So uh if blockchain is truly going to deliver public good at scale, what is the single or maybe you can choose to most important uh ingredient we must get right? Is it technology, the governance, the collaboration, or the trust?

And why?

So you're forcing me to choose. It's a bit like know asking a parent, you know, who's your favorite child? So you can't really choose that. And um so the way we think about it uh at CTF and we teach about it actually you know we have those three pillars. So after that I can pass not tell you know which one amongst the three but the three pillars are technology regulation and governance and talents those three are really important and they're not independent in the sense of you cannot really develop technology without having really good no talent at the same time no governance and regulations are really no core no to it so I would say if I had to choose the easiest one is technology everybody's focusing on technology at the moment you know there's huge amount amount of money uh resources which are being put in clouds sovereign AI etc.

LLM. So technology is almost a no-brainer. Everybody's putting a lot of resources in there. Uh the second one, regulations and governance. And I would say, you know, here an amazing example of regulation and governance.

Again, that's something that no regulators, central banks know, is really important. So they're spending a lot of time. I would say perhaps today the unloved child, you know, could be talents. No, we tend to forget a bit no on talents. But the reality is that in order to create a thriving ecosystem, it has to be about people.

And this is where we're seeing the difference at the moment. The difference between those who are doing really really well and those who are falling behind is not on technology or governance. It's more about the people side. So if I had to choose one, it would have be to be talent

100%. And I think it's a nice way to sum it up. What we've heard today is uh very clear that blockchain is not a technology story. It's a trust story and it is not about decentralization. It is about public benefit and it is not just transforming systems but it is transforming societies as well from a an individual perspective.

And here in Abu Dhabi uh we are building these platforms, we are building these partnerships, we are building the talent to lead this transformation uh forward. This is why ladies and gentlemen I am proud to uh mention that ADGM Academy and ADI have joined forces uh under the ADGM academy tech center initiative to launch a center of excellence uh known as the uh future tech 4.0 which is a landmark initiative dedicated to building the next generation of blockchain leaders, researchers, policy makers and innovators. Together, we are creating a world-class ecosystem that empowers talent, accelerates adoption, and positions Abu Dhabi at the forefront of blockchain for public good. On behalf of Abuhabi Finance Week, we thank you all for being part of this journey here in a city that is shaping the technological future of the world.

Thank you.