Ola Doudin, the Jordanian founder of the Dubai-based start-up BitOasis, bought her first Bitcoin three years ago.
She was living in Amman, having quit her job in London’s finance industry in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash.
“I was 23 or 24” when the markets collapsed, she says. At Ernst & Young, where she worked in IT risk and assurance, “a lot of people were being laid off. I couldn’t make sense any more, [of] what I was doing, why I was working”.
She decided to move back to Jordan just as the Arab Spring uprisings were sweeping the region and soon began working on entrepreneurship initiatives with Aramex founder Fadi Ghandour. It was 2013 when she picked up an issue of Business Insider that covered Bitcoin, and thought: "What is this crazy thing that everyone is talking about? This is something transformative, if it actually works".
She spent months reading up on the digital currency in scientific journals and on Reddit and connecting with other enthusiasts on Twitter.
In Amman, however, there was no obvious way to get hold of Bitcoins at the time. Individuals around the world were selling directly to others, but Ms Doudin couldn’t find anyone in Jordan, or even in the UAE or Lebanon, to buy from. Finally, a friend connected her to a Canadian cryptocurrency fan, she sent him money via PayPal, and he deposited a Bitcoin into her digital wallet.
“This is amazing,” she says she remembers thinking. “This is the future of money. This is the future of banking, financial services. It changes how we pay online, it changes peer to peer payments, how Swift and Visa could behave. Even our concept of what a currency is.”
Ms Doudin joined Bitcoin meetup groups in Amman and Dubai, and met Daniel Robenek, a Czech software engineer. Together, they hatched a plan for a platform that would allow Middle Eastern users to safely buy and store Bitcoins online.
BitOasis was launched in Dubai in late 2014 and secured seed funding from Wamda Capital and others in 2015. Its wallet service is now available across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, and users in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia can also use the exchange service by wiring money to a BitOasis bank account, to be changed to Bitcoins for a 1 per cent fee.
But why bother to do this? There are a couple of good reasons, Ms Doudin says. A sizeable user base in Egypt and Morocco uses Bitcoin to pay tiny amounts of money on a frequent basis for things like gaming, virtual private networks and cloud services. These payments can be prohibitively expensive via bank transfer or credit card, or completely impossible, but via Bitcoin they can cost only 10 or 20 US cents in fees to miners.
The Gulf’s expatriate communities can similarly use Bitcoin to pay bills or top up phone credit for their family back home. Then there are wealthier users in the UAE and Saudi Arabia who want to buy and hold Bitcoin as a way of diversifying their investment portfolio. Bitcoin’s value tends to rise when there are sharp drops in the value of conventional currencies and commodities.
“Bitcoin opens up whole new markets and business models,” Ms Doudin says, comparing its creation to the invention of the worldwide web. “You’d never have had Facebook or WhatsApp if you didn’t have the internet,” she says. “The next Venmos and PayPals are going to be built on Bitcoin.”
A study published by Juniper Research in June 2016 predicted the total value of Bitcoin transactions in 2016 will be three times as big as the total value in 2015.
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
The five pillars of Islam
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, first leg
Liverpool v Roma
When: April 24, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Anfield, Liverpool
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
The Greatest Royal Rumble card as it stands
The Greatest Royal Rumble card as it stands
50-man Royal Rumble - names entered so far include Braun Strowman, Daniel Bryan, Kurt Angle, Big Show, Kane, Chris Jericho, The New Day and Elias
Universal Championship Brock Lesnar (champion) v Roman Reigns in a steel cage match
WWE World Heavyweight ChampionshipAJ Styles (champion) v Shinsuke Nakamura
Intercontinental Championship Seth Rollins (champion) v The Miz v Finn Balor v Samoa Joe
United States Championship Jeff Hardy (champion) v Jinder Mahal
SmackDown Tag Team Championship The Bludgeon Brothers (champions) v The Usos
Raw Tag Team Championship (currently vacant) Cesaro and Sheamus v Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt
Casket match The Undertaker v Chris Jericho
Singles match John Cena v Triple H
Cruiserweight Championship Cedric Alexander v tba
Barings Bank
Barings, one of Britain’s oldest investment banks, was
founded in 1762 and operated for 233 years before it went bust after a trading
scandal.
Barings Bank collapsed in February 1995 following colossal
losses caused by rogue trader Nick Lesson.
Leeson gambled more than $1 billion in speculative trades,
wiping out the venerable merchant bank’s cash reserves.
Company: Instabug
Founded: 2013
Based: Egypt, Cairo
Sector: IT
Employees: 100
Stage: Series A
Investors: Flat6Labs, Accel, Y Combinator and angel investors
Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Visit Abu Dhabi culinary team's top Emirati restaurants in Abu Dhabi
Yadoo’s House Restaurant & Cafe
For the karak and Yoodo's house platter with includes eggs, balaleet, khamir and chebab bread.
Golden Dallah
For the cappuccino, luqaimat and aseeda.
Al Mrzab Restaurant
For the shrimp murabian and Kuwaiti options including Kuwaiti machboos with kebab and spicy sauce.
Al Derwaza
For the fish hubul, regag bread, biryani and special seafood soup.
Company%C2%A0profile
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How Voiss turns words to speech
The device has a screen reader or software that monitors what happens on the screen
The screen reader sends the text to the speech synthesiser
This converts to audio whatever it receives from screen reader, so the person can hear what is happening on the screen
A VOISS computer costs between $200 and $250 depending on memory card capacity that ranges from 32GB to 128GB
The speech synthesisers VOISS develops are free
Subsequent computer versions will include improvements such as wireless keyboards
Arabic voice in affordable talking computer to be added next year to English, Portuguese, and Spanish synthesiser
Partnerships planned during Expo 2020 Dubai to add more languages
At least 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment or blindness
More than 90 per cent live in developing countries
The Long-term aim of VOISS to reach the technology to people in poor countries with workshops that teach them to build their own device
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Arrogate's winning run
1. Maiden Special Weight, Santa Anita Park, June 5, 2016
2. Allowance Optional Claiming, Santa Anita Park, June 24, 2016
3. Allowance Optional Claiming, Del Mar, August 4, 2016
4. Travers Stakes, Saratoga, August 27, 2016
5. Breeders' Cup Classic, Santa Anita Park, November 5, 2016
6. Pegasus World Cup, Gulfstream Park, January 28, 2017
7. Dubai World Cup, Meydan Racecourse, March 25, 2017
UAE squad to face Ireland
Ahmed Raza (captain), Chirag Suri (vice-captain), Rohan Mustafa, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zahoor Khan, Junaid Siddique, Waheed Ahmad, Zawar Farid, CP Rizwaan, Aryan Lakra, Karthik Meiyappan, Alishan Sharafu, Basil Hameed, Kashif Daud, Adithya Shetty, Vriitya Aravind