Dr. Marwan Alzarouni, Dubai government
Meet one of the high-energy drivers of Dubai's blockchain strategy.
You might be thinking a book called Arabian Crypto is going to be full of finance types and tech bros.
Yes and no. We’re certainly profiling people who are like that. Crypto is after all about new forms of money.
But the rulers of the UAE aren’t interested in operating casinos. They are looking to build their country into the global leader of prosperity. (Gee, is that all?)
Blockchain technology is a tool, and people like Dr. Marwan Alzarouni are helping identify how, where, and why to deploy it.
Marwan is a techie (his doctorate is in smartphone forensics), a genuine nerd, but he’s not a financier. He is CEO of artificial intelligence at the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.
Yeah, tourism. Healthcare. Government services. Real stuff like that, not banking or capital markets.
He studied computer science in the US in the early 1990s, and returned to Dubai to work on developing the Internet. His specialist knowledge of digital forensics landed him a job with the Dubai police department. The police sponsored his PhD in Australia to understand smartphones, and Marwan returned to set up a unit called the Dubai Electronics Security Center.
Marwan was impressed by Bitcoin and knew it was something that authorities needed to understand. He began to teach people about the tech. At first his students were police who needed to understand how illicit networks like Silk Road operate. Soon, though, he attracted investors and private participants who needed to learn things like how to protect seed phrases and private keys that are central to bitcoin encryption. He hosted conferences and invited guests from overseas to share what they were doing in crypto.
Marwan privately lobbied the Dubai government to investigate blockchain’s possibilities for itself and for business. He saw it as part of a broader effort by the city’s rulers to digitize civil services. In 2016, he was appointed an advisor to Digital Dubai, a government agency responsible for all matters related to the city’s information technology, data and statistics, digital transformation, and cybersecurity. He led the effort to include blockchain as part of this strategy.
To learn more about Dr. Marwan Alzarouni and his work on behalf of the Dubai government in developing a society-wide blockchain strategy, check out our book, ARABIAN CRYPTO. Subscribe to get a free advance copy! All we ask in return is a review when the book is officially published. Deal? Cool, go ahead and hit this pretty blue button:
Hello! This is quite interesting, I'm trying to learn about the UAE's crypto landscape myself. Have you interviewed Dr. Alzarouni before? I'm interested in knowing his opinions on the up-and-coming payment tool.