Breakpoint 2025: Build in Abu Dhabi: ADGM Registration Authority (Dmitry Fedotov), R3 (David Rutter)
📅 Dec 11, 2025Solana13 MIN632 VIEWS20 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
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Questions asked in this interview
7
0:07But he's like, 'Oh, I'm just a boring regulator.' I'm like, 'Oh, really?
0:56You're an American living in London. How does it feel?
3:09Obviously it's one of our major sales points: you have access to capital, you have access to regulatory certainty, infrastructure. What's your take?
7:46What's on your roadmap for the next 12 months in the region?
9:25And these announcements, will this enable you to reach a trillion in tokenized assets and when?
12:14What can we do as a regulator to enable you to get to this trillion?
Yeah, I'll start with you if you don't mind. So we want to make this a little bit fun. I just met Dimitri as you can tell. He's a buttoned-up regulator. And by the way, this is the first time I've worn a t-shirt to an event like this. But he's like, 'Oh, I'm just a boring regulator.' I'm like, 'Oh, really? What do you do for fun?' He goes, 'Well, I fly helicopters. I fly planes. I'm a professional sky jumper. I was a Formula 3 racer and whatever the motorcycle thing is called.' And I thought to myself, what a great way to start a conversation about why should you be considering Abu Dhabi when a regulator is not only forward thinking, but takes on that kind of personal risk and has that much fun and is that cool. So, he's immediately became one of the coolest regulators I've ever met.
Oh, thank you so much. So there is a twist to this. It's all about risks both in regulatory space and in my fun activities. You don't jump out of the plane without a plan and mapping out all the risks. Same as you don't go into registering a company or supervising a company without getting all your risks and all your ducks in a row. But David, you are not a boring person either. You're an American living in London. How does it feel?
Well, this kind of leads into our discussion, which is why be in Abu Dhabi. So, R3 got off to a really hot start. We were very early into the blockchain space focusing on real world assets. A lot of activity before there was regulatory clarity in the US was in Asia and here. So we were early to move here about five or six years ago and we've had a great experience. We've hired some great people. I've had an opportunity to learn about the culture. Clearly it's a great place to live. We've transferred a lot of people here and they're all extremely happy. It's a little hot in July and August. But I think it's a great place to do business and I really think it was very prescient. I'd like to get your view on this: Abu Dhabi and ADGM with the support of the regulator, which I think you should talk about for the young entrepreneurs, were pretty forward thinking about what we need to succeed. We believe in the tokenized economy, the digital economy, and clearly regulatory underpinnings is super important and you were very early in that space. So maybe you can address that because I think having that regulatory certainty here is drawing a lot of businesses to the region.
Indeed. So we have quite a few principles in our approach. Number one is we are industry agnostic. So if you are in staking, lending, borrowing, we will assess the business the same as in TradFi. If there is an analogy in TradFi, we apply the same principles. Obviously there will be some unique points like custody and management of keys, but general principles apply in the same way. Number two, it's worth mentioning the history. So, for those of you who have been in the industry for a while, you may remember the great migration. A lot of exchanges started off in China, migrated to Hong Kong, then to Singapore, then Malta, then Europe or wherever. And we in ADGM were the first jurisdiction to come up with comprehensive virtual asset regulations back in 2018. For those of you who remember 2018, it was a bloodbath. The lady from OneCoin disappeared, BitConnect collapsed in January, all ICOs were dying left and right. But we took a proactive approach and we created regulatory certainty and we have stuck to this ideology up until now without diverging. We have not changed our position and that helps a lot because one of the benefits of UAE is political certainty and political stability. We have no four or eight year cycle where you have different leaders having different opinions on crypto. But my question to you would be, what is your experience? You have been here for a while, you had experience with us as regulators, you had experience with sovereign wealth funds. Obviously it's one of our major sales points: you have access to capital, you have access to regulatory certainty, infrastructure. What's your take?
Well, having that foundation is really key. While I've seen so much growth here the last five years, I'm really excited about the future for the following reasons. We talk about how we have 17 billion on our platform.
That's a pittance, guys. It's really about the 17 trillion, the 35 trillion, how we tokenize the real world economy. If you look at this region, geographically the location is ideal. There's a ton of capital here. They talk about how they are the capital of capital, but it's smart money. That money is deployed in industries across the globe. So if we look at the international investments that originate from this place and you believe in a tokenized economy, we're working on some really cool stuff with ship builders. A lot of ships are 100 to $300 million to build. They're funded by sovereign wealth funds. We look at real estate, gold tokenization, and other hard assets that are being tokenized. I assure you that the sovereign wealth funds and investments are coming from this region. Then if you think about the growth here and ADGM continues to expand. We were talking about that earlier. I look at the tokenized economy as, let's say I believe in Abu Dhabi real estate. I can invest in an equity of a company that builds here. That's fine, but it's rather imperfect. If I'm wealthy enough and I'm part of a private equity and have a family office, I can take part in a loan syndication specific to a building, but they're already tokenizing land titles. So in the future, I can create a source of new capital for those that are building these amazing buildings, but I can also benefit in the returns, which I think is amazing. That's going to happen here. One of the reasons it's going to happen here is these capital markets are developed but not as developed as they are elsewhere and there's an open-mindedness that I think is going to drive the token economy and a lot of it's going to be done right here.
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