DUBAI: If you thought that the worldwide media coverage of Dubai’s new crypto laws announced in March was a blip on the radar screen, wait until you see the frenzy with which traditional shops and institutions are embracing digital currencies.
Close on the heels of several global crypto exchanges bagging commercial licenses and moving headquarters to Dubai, a motley mix of neighborhood establishments have opened its doors to people willing to lighten their wallets with bitcoin and the like.
Situated in Al-Quoz, Bake N More is a coffee and pastry shop that will go down in local history as the first cafe in Dubai to accept cryptocurrency from its customers. While the cafe still accepts cash and credit cards, it welcomes a mixed bag of digital payments, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether.
“There’s been tremendous interest in cryptos because people see this as the future payment gateway system, especially those who have held on to them for a long time and are now looking to cash them,” Mohammad Al-Hammadi, owner of Bake N More, told Arab News.
The contemporary cafe’s open-source payment platform is handled by Mixin Network, a lightning-fast and decentralized platform that brings speed and scalability to blockchain and facilitates the transfer of digital assets.
Explaining the payment system to Arab News, Al-Hammadi said that it would charge customers by converting the cost of an item into its value in cryptocurrency. For instance, if a bottle of water costs 5 dirhams ($1.36), the price payable in TerraUSD, a Stablecoin built on the Terra blockchain, would be about 1.36UST as it is pegged 1:1 against the US dollar.
New school of thought
The emergence of cryptocurrency as a mainstream tender has also invited the attention of Citizens School, an educational institution situated in the plush Al-Satwa locality. Come September, the UK-curriculum non-selective school will let parents pay the tuition fees in…