Home » Interviews » Middle East has fully embraced BSV blockchain, Jimmy Nguyen tells CoinGeek Backstage
The Middle East has become a global leader in blockchain adoption, with governments in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and others investing heavily in the technology. With these governments more interested in what the technology can do and not speculative trading, the BSV enterprise blockchain has greatly resonated with most, and the region is becoming one of the most important BSV hubs. As BSV Blockchain Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen told CoinGeek Backstage, the BSV blockchain revolution in the Middle East is just getting started.
“Our entire mission with BSV is to grow a blockchain that scales massively and is used at a mass level for huge amounts of not just payments but data transactions,” Nguyen told CoinGeek’s Sarah Higgs.
This mission has matched perfectly with the Middle Eastern countries’ movement towards digitizing their economies, both in the public and private sectors. The governments have especially taken a keen interest, making it clear that they want to use blockchain at a national level, Nguyen said. The UAE, for instance, has set a goal of having 50% of all government transactions on-chain by 2030.
“It marries well with our BSV message of ‘let’s make a blockchain that’s useful for everything, for everyone, for all kinds of data and payment applications,” Nguyen told CoinGeek Backstage.
The BSV community has put great effort in the Middle East, with the BSV Blockchain Association leading the efforts, spearheaded by Nguyen and others such as InvoiceMate’s Muhammad Salman Anjum, who is the head of the BSV Hub for the Middle East and South Asia, and Ahmed Yousif, the Middle East lead for the BSV Blockchain for Government Initiative.
And as Nguyen noted, the region has embraced BSV:
“I’d say the reception for BSV is very good here because the people who are interested in blockchain care about utility. You have less of the crypto trading frenzy. Because of that, our message resonates really well,” Nguyen stated.
The Middle East also doesn’t suffer from the same gatekeepers to the blockchain industry as some regions such as North America and Europe. As Nguyen noted, these regions have entities that have invested hundreds of billions of dollars to keep the prices of digital assets high, caring little about utility. To these entities, a blockchain that scales unbounded with the tiniest fraction in fees is an enemy, and they have pulled no punches in their attack on BSV.
In his presentation at the University of Dubai, Nguyen focused on what BSV startups are doing right now, not on promises that other blockchains make for the future. According to him, this makes it easier for the audience to grasp what blockchain does from a practical perspective. He also picks startups that resonate with particular challenges facing a specific audience.
There’s a lot of interest in academic credential certification in the Middle East. In his presentation, Nguyen focused on how BSV blockchain can make it easier to store these credentials on-chain and make it possible for anyone to verify them.
“I knew that is an important topic here. We have a project going with the University of Sharjah,” he said.
The BSV Blockchain Association has funded a research development project with the University of Sharjah, where university students do research and write a paper about academic certification tracking using blockchain. They also get to work with InvoiceMate’s Anjum on a prototype of an application that tracks academic and professional credentials.
This prototype will most likely be ready for presentation at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai, which starts on May 24. You can grab your ticket for the event here.
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