How Emirati Start-ups Are Embracing Bitcoin

By Plus Aziz 

While companies like DinarCoin are responding to the dramatic collapse of Iraq’s currency, others like BitOasis, which is based between Dubai and California, are responding to environments where a healthy financial infrastructure is in place but out of sync with digitally-enriched lifestyles. We interviewed Ola Doudin of BitOasis

Although it is quite unpredictable how digital currency (and Bitcoin in particular) will play out on the Middle East’s regional stage, there are clear cultural implications that we can start thinking about. BitOasis is a start-up founded by Ola Doudin working to bring Bitcoin technology to Middle East consumers. Her expertise draws on insightful knowledge and data points that underline the need for financial services to address the digital transformation re-shaping how consumers shop, work, and carry out monetary transactions:

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The Startup Meant to Reinvent What Bitcoin Can Do

By  Tom Simonite 

A company given $21 million by leading Silicon Valley investors aims to extend Bitcoin’s functionality so it can power much more than just payments.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman announced an unusual new investment late last month. He and other Silicon Valley luminaries, including Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla, sunk $21 million into a company that may never have to make a profit to be successful.

That company is called Blockstream. Hoffman and others backed it in an effort to give a technological shot in the arm to Bitcoin, a digital currency built upon software that uses cryptographic transactions to prevent counterfeiting without the need for any central authority (see “What Bitcoin Is and Why it Matters”).

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