The Wealth Today

Some events you attend. Others stay with you long after the room has emptied. The Middle East Stablecoin Association Forum was one of those for me. There is something special about seeing conversations, ideas and relationships that existed for weeks in emails, calls and WhatsApp messages suddenly become real. At one point, I looked around the room and thought: We did this. ❤️ What people see on the day is the finished product; the stage, speakers, conversations and an event that hopefully flows effortlessly. What they don't see is everything behind it. Choosing a topic. Debating it. Changing it. Finally agreeing. Finding the right voices. Coordinating internal and external stakeholders with different priorities and schedules. Working through approvals. Making sure what goes out is accurate and compliant. Following up on the tiny details that can quickly become big ones. And then doing it again when something changes. 😊 When the work behind the scenes is done well, people shouldn't have to see the machinery. They should simply experience what it made possible. My own journey with MESA has been unexpected. I came in as a corporate treasury practitioner after being invited by a colleague to help out in the Treasury Committee, then along the way, I became more curious about stablecoins and trying to understand what this emerging world could mean for the treasurer managing liquidity, risk, payments and controls. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like I was simply volunteering and started feeling deeply invested in what we were building. The Forum made me realise just how much that had changed. Seeing regulators, financial institutions, practitioners, technology providers and the wider ecosystem together, sharing perspectives, challenging assumptions and asking what responsible adoption actually requires made those behind-the-scenes moments worthwhile. But my favourite part was the people. The conversations between sessions. The introductions. The laughter. People finally meeting after months of seeing each other's names on screens. That, to me, is how a community begins to become a community. To everyone who made the Forum happen, whether your work was visible or quietly behind the scenes, thank you. And to the MESA leadership and wider team, thank you for trusting me to play a part in building this community. There wasn't much time to take it all in. Almost immediately, attention shifted back to the ACT Middle East Treasury Summit which was on the 22nd and 23rd of September. Details to follow soon as I'm still in retrospect. But somewhere between one event and the next, I had a quiet moment of realisation: Look how far we've come. ❤️ And there is still so much more to build. I won't add more traffic onto people's timelines by tagging them, I'm sure they have had enough tagging to last a decade. Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA The Wealth Today #MESA #Stablecoins #CorporateTreasury #DigitalMoney

Last week, Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA held its first Annual Event, hosted by The Wealth Today, and I think many of us are still absorbing what happened. The turnout was overwhelming, the rooms were full, the conversations continued well beyond the panels and a week later, my LinkedIn feed is still buzzing with Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA updates, takeaways and conversations. That says something. In just 18 months, MESA has grown from an idea into a licensed NPIO under the DIFC, with a stellar Board, six committees and subcommittees led by committed Chairs and Co-Chairs, and an increasingly strong industry and regulatory voice. Structured, compliant and purpose driven. Because if we advocate for governance and regulatory clarity, we should probably practise it too. And no, we still don’t particularly care for matcha 😉. Give us stablecoins, programmable money, tokenisation and financial infrastructure, though, and apparently, we can talk for days. What made the Annual Event special was that it wasn’t built around panels for the sake of panels. These were working conversations. Regulators, former regulators, policymakers, industry leaders, technologists and lawyers identifying friction, challenging assumptions and discussing solutions. Less conference, more think tank. I had the privilege of co-moderating the opening panel with regulators, former regulators, policy experts and industry leaders. And perhaps there was something fitting about two lawyers opening the day . Because the lawyer’s role in this ecosystem is changing too. We are not simply interpreting regulation after it is written, we increasingly sit at the intersection of law, policy, technology and markets, translating between regulators and industry and helping turn innovation into frameworks that can actually work. As a MESA Board member, watching what has been built in 18 months was incredibly special. The Annual Event was a milestone, but the packed rooms and the conversations still continuing a week later tell me something more important: MESA is no longer just building an association, it is building a voice, and we are only getting started. A huge thank you to Matthew Nyman, my co-host, and to our fantastic panelists, Wai Lum Kwok, Bryan Stirewalt, Maha Al-Saadi and Bhavin Shah for making the opening conversation such a meaningful one. A special shout-out to our Chairman, Bhaskar Dasgupta, The Wealth Today, our MESA Board members, all our MESA members, and everyone who joined us and contributed to the conversations. Here’s to everything we build from here.

Great to be part of the Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA and The Wealth Today last week, joining the panel on supervision. With more than $300bn in #stablecoins now in circulation and even the relatively small non USD segment reaching around $1bn+, up nearly 90% YoY, discussions are increasingly moving beyond the potential of stablecoins to questions of #scale, integration and #supervision. Thanks Ilham Tamimi and Bhaskar Dasgupta for being such a gracious moderator and host and to fellow panelists Souzan Esmaili Abdallah Mukalled Erica Badocco for the fantastic conversation.

What excites me the most about Web3 industry, is how fast it moves and how it changes every 6 months. Last spring this year during the conferences season the most dramatic change was that Institutions have joined the industry. And everyone spoke about stablecoins and how they are going to transform the industry. Less than 6 months passed and stablecoins are not anymore the meat and potato of the discussion even at the Middle East Stablecoin Forum held by the Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA last week. Industry professionals moved on: staiblecoin now - is just a backoffice technology rails, a "middle asset" used as a collateral or settlement mechanism. What are the current "hot topics"? - Tokenized deposits. Banks don't want to loose their deposit base. Tokenized deposits would allow provide an alternative product to their customers with a need to pass to Web3 - Digital money convergence. CBDC, Stablecoin, alternative payment token or RWA? The question is not anymore which asset class is to be chosen as the core technology to upscale, but what digital money architecture is going to be more fit to your specific business or your specific product. In the nearest future we will see different combinations of Web3 asset classes converge in the same product, often on the back side - completely invisible for the end customer - Treasury and custody infrastructure for Web3. Shifting from experimentation to institutionalization opened up a lot of technical discussion on how risk management, compliance or back office is to be re-defined within the heritage organization to fit the new reality. Special thanks to Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta and the Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA and The Wealth Today teams for the flawless organization and attention to details. Really sorry for missing the Central Bank's keynote held by Paul Kayrouz as nearly everyone mentioned it as remarkable and inspiring. As always, was happy to see everyone finally offline. Ramana Kumar A Geza B. Dr Anish Shivdasani Juliet Su 苏丽 Dishang Patel Umair Ahmad Alexander Feenie Niina Golikova Rukshan Karunarathna Dmitry Ishutin #Dubai #UAE #stablecoin

Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA Annual Event 2026! What an amazing event it was! From the welcome from Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta to the key note from Paul Kayrouz of Central Bank of The UAE to all the engaging panels and discussions from experts in the field- it was an event not to have been missed! I was pleased to represent HSBC and participate in the Tokenised Money and Digital Assets 2030 panel moderated by Dishang Patel of Rakbank alongside industry experts - Tony Ashraf of BlackRock , Reece Merrick of Ripple and Amith Rajan of Mashreq Corporate & Investment Banking Group. This is a fast moving space and it is critical that we get together and discuss the best outcomes for the industry. The Wealth Today Ilham Tamimi Kokila Alagh Kristiina Lumeste, Ramana Kumar A Matthew Nyman Lukasz Dec #UAE #Stablecoin #tokenisation

On 17 September, Universal joined the Middle East Stablecoin Forum 2026 in Dubai, bringing together regulators, banks, issuers and digital asset leaders to discuss the next phase of stablecoin adoption across the region. Julien OLIVIER, Director, Head of MENA Trading at Aquanow, represented Universal in a fireside chat with Ramy Soliman, Co-Founder of MESA, exploring what a UAE-regulated USD stablecoin can bring to institutional settlement. One point from the conversation captured the USDU story particularly well: “My house, my rules.”- Julien Olivier USDU was built in the UAE for the UAE’s regulated digital asset ecosystem. It is issued by Universal from ADGM under FSRA regulation, registered with the Central Bank of the UAE as a Foreign Payment Token, and backed 1:1 by liquid USD reserves held with regulated UAE banks, Emirates NBD and Mashreq. Those reserves are independently attested every month. For institutions, that local foundation matters. Regulation, reserve transparency and banking relationships are not separate from the infrastructure, they are part of what makes regulated stablecoin settlement work. Thank you to Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA and The Wealth Today for bringing the ecosystem together, and to everyone who joined us at the Universal stand. #USDU #Stablecoins #DigitalAssets #MESC2026 #UAE Alessia Monarca Ravi Bhatia ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Universal Digital Intl Limited (“Universal”, or the “Firm”) is established in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (“ADGM”) and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (“FSRA”) to conduct the regulated activity of “Issuing a Fiat-Referenced Token” with Professional Clients as defined under the FSRA COBS rules only. “Universal is registered with the Central Bank of the UAE as a Foreign Payment Token Issuer.”

A look back at the Middle East Stablecoin Forum 2026 in Dubai. The discussions explored the regulatory, licensing and compliance frameworks shaping the development of stablecoins and digital assets across the GCC. #Sherlocq #Stablecoins #RegTech #RegulatoryIntelligence #DigitalAssets Bhavin Shah Kokila Alagh Matthew Nyman Wai Lum Kwok Bryan Stirewalt Maha Al-Saadi The Wealth Today Middle East Stablecoin Association - MESA