UAE beats US on crypto rules, says CEO of Trump-backed site

• Zach Witkoff runs World Liberty Financial
• Trump family holds 60% stake in WLF
• Witkoff says UAE ‘is a class leader’

The US is still playing catch-up with the UAE on crypto regulation, according to the CEO of Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial (WLF), even as Washington races to reposition itself as more crypto-friendly.

US president Donald Trump has reversed his country’s previously hostile stance, set under Joe Biden, and ordered regulators to build a unified federal framework aimed at making the US “the crypto capital of the world”. 

But Zach Witkoff, WLF co-founder alongside Zachary Folkman and Chase Hero, said the UAE remains far ahead.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t say there are too many hiccups in the United States, but the UAE has been leading the way for a really long time because they know how to get to ‘yes’ quickly,” Witkoff told Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai.

“The US is getting there, but the UAE has been doing this for a few years and is certainly a class leader.”

WLF is 60 percent owned by the Trump family. President Trump has moved swiftly to shift policy, creating a White House crypto task force, establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and rolling back enforcement-led regulation.

The 2025 Genius Act, the country’s first federal stablecoin law, gave clear rules for dollar-pegged tokens, while a reorientated Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of high-profile industry summits have further signalled Washington’s pivot toward nurturing the sector.

The UAE, meanwhile, has built one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory regimes. Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, Abu Dhabi Global Market and the central bank now license and supervise exchanges, custodians and other crypto businesses.

A federal law passed in 2025 extended oversight to stablecoins, tokenised assets and decentralised finance, requiring all firms to be licenced by September 2026.

“The UAE is not just crypto friendly,” said Lucy Gazmararian, founder of Abu Dhabi-headquartered fund manager Token Bay Capital. “It’s building the entire economy on crypto rails and infrastructure.”

Further reading:

• New tax rules may reshape UAE crypto landscape
• Solana is Middle East’s latest crypto craze
• My day at a ‘Become a Crypto Millionaire’ seminar

The digital assets market remains under pressure: more than $1 trillion has been wiped out since early October, days after Bitcoin touched a record above $126,000. 

Despite the selloff, which left Bitcoin at close to $93,000 on Wednesday afternoon, sentiment at the summit remained upbeat. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of blockchain-based payments company Ripple, predicted Bitcoin could hit $180,000 by the end of 2026.

The UAE’s minister for AI and the digital economy, Omar Sultan Al Olama, urged policymakers to stay focused on long-term fundamentals. 

“If the technology works, it works regardless of the price of a single Bitcoin,” he said.