The UAE virtual asset regulatory authority has published its new virtual asset  rulebook for, the virtual assets transfer,  and settlement service.   This comes after the Central Bank of UAE published its guidelines for AML CFT compliance for financial institutions in relations to VASPs in the UAE. As published in the rulebook, VASPs providing VA Transfer and Settlement Services must comply with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements issued by the Central Bank of UAE which apply to the VASP, which pertain to the end-to-end enablement of payments, remittances and/or other related services as may be amended from time to time. As per the transfer and settlement service rulebook document, VASPs providing VA Transfer and Settlement Services must ensure that they comply with all legal and regulatory requirements for such services, inside and outside of the UAE. VASPs must ensure at all times that any transmission or transfer, and/or settlement being unde...

  As per a recent Chainalysis blog report, MENA based crypto users received $566 billion worth of cryptocurrency in one year from July 2021 to June 2022. As per the news, this is a 48 percent increase from 2020-2021. In addition Turkey, Egypt and Morocco once again lead not only in MENA region but globally. All three countries are in the top thirty list of countries with most crypto savings, usage of crypto for remittance payments and permissive crypto regulations. These could be caused by these countries’ fiat currency devaluations and the huge remittance market in Egypt for example. This is why Egypt has become the fastest growing crypto market in 2022, while Turkey still remains the largest crypto market with its citizens receiving $192 billion. The report also notes the role of countries in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), and cites the example of Saudi Arabia which is the third largest crypto market in MENA, while UAE stands at fifth largest. This is especially true...