[Interview_Blockchaintoday]
◆Hello, I’m from Blockchaintoday. Glad to meet you. Please briefly introduce yourself.
Sulayem / My name is Ahmed Bin Sulayem. I am the executive chairman and CEO of Dubai Multi Commodities Center, chairman of the Dubai Diamond Exchange, chairman of the Dubai gold and the Commodities Exchange.
Jassoma / Hello, I’m Billard Sumah. I’m the head business development of DMCC.
◆Please briefly explain about Dubai Multi Commodities Center.
Sulayem / DMCC is an initiative to attract trade and commodity businesses through Dubai. We've been established by Royal decree in April 2002. With that mandated in mind, we started off attracting gold businesses. They ask me to come up with three gold refineries. Today, there are three operation refineries in the business community. But we've gone beyond gold and precious metals.
Dubai is the hub for gold trade, gold futures, or storage, gold refining, gold manufacturing, and jewellery trade. We also launched the UAE Gold Bullion Coins. On diamonds, Dubai and the DMCC leads the global market with diamond center, and it's growing from the first when it comes to polish diamond trade. We also have a focus on colour stones like emeralds and others.
And in recent years, we've added to our initiatives, the crypto centre, the gaming centre. We've also early on the DMCC, seed the project with the DMCC Tea Center, which is a white labelling business for the Tea industry providing storage facility, blending, packaging, and a business centre area within the Tea Center.
And in recent years, we’ve also, due to the success of our Tea Center, have rolled out the DMCC Coffee centre, which provide similar services- blending, packaging, but also roasting, barista training, barista championships, and roasting tournaments are roasting training.
◆Was there any specific reason why DMCC became interested in the crypto field and established the Crypto Center?
Sulayem / I will give a few points before I pass to my colleague, Billard. We were asked, I was asked to join the Global Blockchain Council, which is at that time called the Dubai Blockchain Council. I believe sometime and 2015, If not, early 2016, to be a founding member. We were informed by the Dubai Future Foundation on its value on the reality that blockchain will be a part of the coming generations, the same way that internet is now part of everyone's life.
And that message really resonated with me. Especially the part that says, we will learn on the way. And 2020 January, I was in Davos, and I signed the agreement with crypto value of Switzerland to create the DMCC crypto Centre.
Today the DMCC crypto centre represents around 550 members, and we have a wide variety of services to co-working space, I will leave a bit of the details where we enable the business and provide services to Billard to fill and what I missed out.
Jassoma / Sure. Thank you. So yeah. DMCC Crypto Centre is complete ecosystem for businesses that are developing projects on blockchain Web 3, and related value-added services. So basically we offer everything that the entrepreneur would require to and, set up and grow within Dubai.
◆What are the current occupancy requirements and occupancy status of DMCC?
Sulayem / Well, the tenants, I believe you mean DMCC members. When we start in 2003, we've only represented around 30+ companies. By the time we reached end of 2004, we were barely around 400 companies. But the demand and interest in an initiative that brings the future to the Middle East, and brings the future of diamonds and commerce in the Middle East was evident.
We raised 200 million dollars Gold Sukuk, (sharia-compliance), rated A stable by SMP, to finance the DMCC you see today, to fund the building of the diamond Tower gold and silver. By the end of 2004, we used an Orkan system, taylor made to our needs, so that our members do not deal with property owners that flip the property a few times.
They get we directly promoted to end-users. We saw the tallest diamond tower in the world, to end users within 7 or 8 hours. The next day, we saw the gold Tower. Another diamond tower was 63 floors, and it's fully rented out, fully sold out, fully occupied. And it is one of the most sought-after addresses in Dubai, especially for diamond and rough diamond trade.
That was in 2004. We moved in 2008. Today, we've just almost delivered the uptown tower, which will have a soft opening. It’s an 82-story building, mixed-use. We have a soft opening for the hotel by the end of April, the DMCC headquarter is moving from Almas Tower to the Uptown Tower. The crypto centre is expanding into 2000 square meter floor space in uptown Tower.
We have different reality today. But if had we not done that step and taking the risk, I don't think you would see DMCC half the size it is today if it would exist at all. Today we represent almost to around... and I think we've surpassed 23,000 businesses in total, 3049 companies just last year, and 2485 companies and 2021.
Jassoma / Yeah sure. I mean that, 10% of the new company joined us last year were from the crypto and blockchain space over 350 companies. We’ve seen astonishing growth and demand from the Crypto and gaming industries.
But also, the leading business community of the free-zone, when it comes to the oil and gas and renewable energy, we represent over 2,000 companies today. All of the big players in the oil and gas Industry are based on the DMCC. From Total Trafigura, Saudi Aramco has a base now in DMCC, and they are there not really just to support DMCC, but they want to connect them, plug and play with the regional and international markets.
◆You have signed an MOU with Busan City for the beneficial global blockchain industry. What are the expected effects in the future?
Sulayem / Personally this is my 3rd visit. My first visit to Seoul was 2016. I was the Kimberley process chair at the time. I am also the Kimberley process chair for 2024, and the vice chair of Zimbabwe, which is the Kimberley process chair today.
This is the second visit for me and my team to come to South Korea. Busan was an opportunity for me to find out where things are today in the crypto and the gaming industry. We’re looking to support the Busan initiative and its blockchain businesses. But also, more importantly, learn from the industry here and see how we can connect our business community with the South Korean business community.
So we see the future here. We see a lot of strong points when it comes to South Korea. You were, there's a lot of passion in what South Korea brings to the industry.
Even in the golf, when it comes to the sport of playing golf, the best golf players in the world will be coming out of South Korea because you started very young age. I’ve read about the coffee shops that have golf practice or VR golf practice. I haven't seen them yet. I'm looking for it. But I understand that's a big part of it.
But, from the fintech side, from the crypto side, we’re excited by what we see. There's a big reason why Binance has a big bases as well here. And that's really because you, South Korea provides the right environment. And we would like to replicate that success in Dubai and DMCC.
Jassoma / As the executive said, knowledge transfer and exchange of information, and connecting both ecosystems with another. Absolutely.
◆DMCC also established a game center. Are you interested in the P2E are combined with games?
Sulayem / I'm still learning about the gaming industry. Being a gaming addict myself, growing up playing games, doesn't mean it makes me automatically an expert. But I have, the gaming industry is very different from when I was growing up which used to be just Japan and USA. Atari, Nintendo, then Sony and Xbox has come. We know that the game is changing today. The industry is changing. It’s more, they're pushing a lot on it being a streaming type, like Netflix, HBO and all that.
And there's a bit of a nice rivalry and war happening between them. But, at the end of the day, what I'm personally interested in is attracting the next wave of Minecraft creators, Tetris creators, we want to capitalise on the synergies that the crypto center brings to this table. There are good examples, like Gala games. I know that Google Play is gonna be a big part of how we take this forward. But I'm more open to understand what comes out of this culture. And the international community as a whole.
Dubai and DMCC is very well positioned to attract in that business. And DMCC itself has proven itself, time and time again, and providing the perfect ecosystem whether would that be coffee, tea, gold, diamonds and colour stones, we will replicate the same type of successful recipe to bring a proper gaming industry within DMCC itself. Focusing on e-sports and an all of the important parts.
Now, playing to earn, there are tournaments, there are other ways, and we're watching very closely from VR, from the crypto side of the business. I understand that there are blockchain type of games that will be coming up soon.
One of the reasons of Ethereum, I think the main reason that Ethereum was created, was I think the founder was a big fan of World of Warcraft.
And he was very, he had this one character that no one could beat. He’d spent years on it, lots of money on it. And because it's the centralised game, they nerfed his character. And that hurt him personally. It's a funny story, but that's the real story. You got that they nerfed his character. He would, he created the Ethereum to move away from the horrors of decentralized industry.
So we know that I can relate to that myself as well. When you look at the banking industry in the world, you see what's happening today that I feel bankruptcies and it's usually caused by mismanagement, the wrong approach, the wrong priorities. So this is an important thing not just for the game industry, it’s a cultural things. I would like kids from a very young age to go to that direction of decentralized, DeFi. And a move away from the traditional way of doing businesses.
Another example I'd like to give is, the bank, the gold banking hasn't changed since the since 1977. And it is high time for it to apply the strong points about blockchain and crypto provide. It's beyond that time. And we, as DMCC and DGCX, we will look into list of your fraction or product. make it easy for the gold industry. So it is more than just the gaming. I've already targeting the next generations of markets coming in. So it is beyond that.
But we’ve talked to big players like Ubisoft. We talk to um... and I will be talking to gaming companies from Russia, from other parts of the world, from the US, and have a nice environment.
I give you an example. Within the diamond exchange, we also have something called the Dubai Diamond Academy that gives training from stone assessments by HRD, by other experts who provide the software called MatrixGold. That gives you the same tools and opportunity that you see in the biggest brands. Bulgary, Tiffany, all of them use MatrixGold.
Meaning that these students, that all of this, entrepreneurs will have added skins and better opening to run their business or be a metalsmith. or the physical. And I want to see something similar to that for the gaming industry. May be a computer graphic design Academy, may be something else, but we’re still exploring.
◆Please tell us if there is a future road-map for the Crypto Center and a plan for business exchange with Korea.
Jassoma / Sure. So, look the Crypto Centre has really grown. I mean, we’re gonna focus on more ecosystem building. So more access to funding, more access to acceleration, mentorship, more business connections within the community, and certainly more adoption. In the reason we got into Crypto in the first place is to see more of the mainstream sectors we have, adopt blockchain technology.
For example, tokenization of gold, and the supply chain, and different trade sectors, benefiting from the technology and how it could take, trade to a next step.
◆Lastly, please give some good words to our Korean Blockchain Today readers.
Sulayem / We’ve touched a few initiatives that within the discussion. But we haven’t touched on DMCC Kakao Center that we’re looking to establish in the near future. We looking also to launch DMCC Meat Center. The reason that to Dubai and DMCC is having success in these things is because technology has advanced so much that we can apply the skills. We can have it set up DMCC. There are robotic diamond cutting machines today in the diamond exchange.
There are Belgian diamond cutters, the best cutter in from Surat also cutting at the diamond tower. We jumped on the coffee center and the roasting facilities. We use Brambati machines that can apply anyone's roast profile. That didn't exist 15 years ago. We wouldn't be able to do, it wouldn’t be able to maintain it at the same quality.
The challenges in the coffee business is to provide your customers the same quality of coffee that they used to provide 4, 5, 6, 7 years. DMCC does not have a challenge with that. Today we're looking to expand beyond that. Keep an eye for the upcoming initiative which we've announced last year, DMCC Water Center, which is looking at almost finishing.
Okay. So keep an eye for DMCC Water Centre, which is focused on sustainability, attracting the top businesses from around the world. We signed with Freshwater Norway. We are looking to sign also more have more tie-ups with big players that are looking to this distribute water from the reserves around the world.
But DMCC Water Centre will look at other initiatives, that, businesses like Brita that changes that adjust the matrix of water from odor field and taste. We’re looking also to monetize water, water security‘s water, warehouse certificates water, the future’s water tokenization. And once water has a value like gold, soil being few, you will see security around the rivers, around the water reserves around, all of these. You will have storage and there will be adequate supply.
You will not see water shortage is happening in places like India and Pakistan, where they're suffering from monsoon and rain. So it will change the tip the scale from that. So DMCC wants to be in the forefront of that global change.
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