MENA based Flat6Labs, an early stageventure capital firm, has selected Jordanian blockchain startup Konn Technologies, a fintech company that offers blockchain-based solutions among the 24 tartups in its StartMashreq growth track program supported by the International Financial Corporation. The program aims to help startups from Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq to scale their businesses. The selected startups operate in various sectors, such as fintech, healthtech, e-commerce and agritech. Five of them are co-founded by female entrepreneurs, working in edtech, energy tech and proptech. The startups collectively generate an annual recurring revenue of $20.8m and have raised a total of $38.5m. They also create around 700 direct jobs across the three countries. “We are delighted to partner with Flat6Labs to support these promising startups from the Mashreq region, especially those founded by women,” said Abeer Shalan, Senior Operations Officer at IFC. “Mashreq startups can demonstrate res

    USA based Meer Energy, Co-Founder Abdullah Han , was one of the speakers in June 2023’s 10 th Arab China Business Conference, in Riyadh KSA, under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, where he met with positive feedback for his concept of developing a Blockchain AI Bitcoin and carbon credit mining datacenter in the country. In an interview with LaraontheBlock, Han explains why he participated at the Arab China Business Conference and how his business model was received. According to Han, Meer Energy a US based company for Bitcoin mining which utilizes flared gas to power its datacenters is working to expand its business model which includes Blockchain, AI datacenter as well as Carbon Credit tokenization to the Middle East, African and Asian region. Han believes that the future of industrialization will be driven by blockchain and AI (Artificial Intelligence) and this requires energy and hashp

  CoinMENA announced on LinkedIn that residents and citizens of Iraq can now use CoinMENA to trade crypto safely and easily. This will be the 8 th country in the region supported by CoinMENA. CoinMENA is a crypto broker licensed from Bahrain. As per Dina Sam'an, Founder and Managing Director of CoinMENA, “We are committed to being the simplest and safest way for investors in MENA to trade in digital assets. Adding Iraq to our list of supported countries brings us closer to our goal of providing premium financial services, built on crypto rails, to the entire MENA region. We are excited to welcome the people of Iraq to our community and look forward to providing them with the best crypto trading user experience in the region.” CoinMENA currently serves clients in Bahrain, UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Egypt and now Iraq. Prior to this CoinMENA launched the CoinMENA University, a free educational platform offering over 100 articles and numerous videos to educate those inter

  The TRIPLE A January 2023 crypto ownership country report  noted that the number of cryptocurrency users has increased since January 2022. In January 2023 there were 420 million crypto owners globally; this is up from their previous report in January 2022 where they had stated there were 300 million crypto owners globally. In the Arab world biggest growth was seen in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, and even Iraq.  More interesting is that if we compare the percentage of crypto owners in the Arab world between January 2022 and January 2023 in some countries the increase is exponential. For example in Jan 2022 2.38% of Moroccan population owned crypto, by January 2023 this number had increased to 4.9% an increase of more than 2% in one year. The same goes for Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon were the increase was also significant. Country Jan 2022 Crypto Ownership % Jan 2023 crypto ownership % Crypto Ownership Population 2023 Morocco

  When Huda Kattan, an Iraqi American beauty Blogger launched her blog in 2010, she didn’t imagine that in 2022, she would head one of the fastest growing beauty brands in the world with over 50 million followers on Instagram and a net worth of 500 million USD. Her success actually started in Dubai UAE, when Huda and her sisters Mona and Alya created a collection of false eyelashes under the Huda Beauty brand name which later launched at Sephora in Dubai Mall. Recently Huda was invited to speak at Gary Vaynerchuk’s Web3.o and NFT conference Veecon, at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.   Only a handful  of women were present at the event, including Mila Kunis and Eva Longoria, Kattan spoke on her recent investments into NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) and how few women are involved in the crypto space. Kattan currently owns hundreds of NFTs, including those from the project   World of Women NFT . As per their website, WoW’s vision is to build an inclusive web3 through its collection an