Middle East
Sovereign wealth, energy transition, and geopolitical fault lines converge here in ways that ripple far past the region itself. The economies built on oil are racing to build what comes after it.
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Sep- 2026 -7 SeptemberCapital
Standard Chartered puts Bitcoin and Ether on FX rails in Dubai
The UK bank's DIFC unit now routes deliverable spot trades through the same electronic systems institutions use for foreign exchange, with DFSA-licensed custody already in place.
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7 SeptemberPower
UAE builds Hormuz bypass as Gulf trust fractures over Iran
Presidential adviser Anwar Gargash warned that restoring regional confidence could take decades, while the Emirates expands eastern ports and rail to shield energy exports from strait disruption.
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5 SeptemberCapital
Uzbekistan is quietly rewriting Central Asia’s fintech map
With 39% of adults still unbanked, Tashkent's $1 billion strategy and September 2026 open-banking launch aim to displace Kazakhstan as the region's financial technology hub.
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Aug- 2026 -30 AugustCapital
A UAE spy chief now controls a US crypto bank issuing dollar stablecoins
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE's national security advisor, holds 49 percent of World Liberty Trust Company through his investment vehicle, placing a foreign intelligence official over dollar-backed…
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29 AugustCapital
SBI pays $270M to make Indonesia Ajaib’s yen stablecoin gateway
Japan's largest financial conglomerate acquires a 20% stake in Indonesia's 20-million-user investment platform, deploying its regulated yen stablecoin beyond Japan for the first time and signaling structural confidence in a…
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27 AugustTech & AI
U.S. freight forwarder faces first enforcement for smuggling AI chips to China
Apex Logistics, a Singapore unit of Kuehne+Nagel, is under investigation for 47 shipments of Nvidia servers, while Taiwan indicted nine people for diverting 130 B300 chips through falsified documents.
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27 AugustCapital
Sinaloa Cartel’s crypto millions now wash through Cambodia
A joint U.S.-Cambodia raid in August 2026 seized $7 million in digital assets and exposed the cartel's first direct financial hub in Southeast Asia, signaling a structural shift from trafficking…
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24 AugustCapital
Chinese fintech is betting billions on AI payments before the market exists
Lianlian DigiTech's adjusted operating profit surged 147 per cent to RMB156 million in H1 2026, even as reported net income collapsed 99 per cent—a deliberate trade-off to fund an Agent…
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21 AugustCapital
Capital.com got a UAE crypto licence. The service doesn’t exist yet.
Capital Vault Virtual Services received a full virtual-asset licence from the UAE Capital Market Authority on 20 August 2026, authorising spot crypto custody and dealing, but with no launch date,…
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20 AugustCapital
UAE stablecoin reaches retail wallets but cannot buy groceries
Bitcoin.com integrated USDU, a central-bank-registered dollar token, on August 19, but UAE rules restrict it to digital asset purchases only, capping retail adoption.
