Full transcript: Dr Marwan Alzarouni on London Real
2:34 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dr Marwan Alzarouni, the keynote speaker, strategic advisor and passionate advocate of blockchain technology.
2:54 You are one of the Middle East’s most well-known crypto pioneers and have been at the forefront of supporting and promoting blockchain technology within the region. You are the strategic advisor to Digital Dubai, CEO of the Dubai Blockchain Center and an advisor to Everdrome, the world’s first hyper-realistic metaverse coin. Telegraph named you in the top 100 most influential people in crypto, and your goal is to make the UAE a global leader in blockchain innovation while ensuring Dubai is the happiest place to live on the planet.
3:24 Dr Marwan, welcome to London Real. Wow, what an amazing introduction. I love it. Well, it’s been great. We are actually at GITEX right now, which is the world’s largest technology conference.
3:36 I’ve been speaking over at the Future Blockchain Summit area, as have you. Tell me what have been your thoughts and highlights of this massive conference happening here in Dubai, over 50,000 people, maybe more. Just thoughts and highlights for you overall for the week. I think our leadership in Dubai set forth a path for us to be the leaders in this kind of technology. I think digital life is the way of life right now, post-COVID, and I think Dubai set the example for everybody else to follow when it comes to digital adoption, using technology for the happiness of people, using technology for creating a safe environment to live, work and actually collaborate.
4:20 You were out there showing me a lot of your innovations in cyber security and all of the digital initiatives here in Dubai, and you said something interesting to me. You said, Brian, it’s not about the technology. It’s ultimately about the people, and you’re always thinking about the human experience, that you don’t get so caught up in the technology that you realize it’s ultimately to make this the greatest city on the earth. Tell me about your thought process.
4:45 So everything we do in the bible is centered around the experience of the person. The journey is for getting anything, anything that actually can touch you as a person, whether it’s your experience with a policeman in the street, your experience with a shopkeeper in the mall, for example, seeing people interacting with people, meeting with people in restaurants, meeting with people to do business. Everything is actually every friction at each one of those points is actually improved and actually taken to the next level when it comes to Dubai, whether it’s total use of technology or making the regulation or the requirements easier and much more intuitive to follow.
5:25 So this is simply the Dubai ethos. So I was in the mall and I got stopped by a fan of London Real, and he said, Brian, this isn’t a country, this is a company. I’m really stuck in my brain, because in a company you’re always thinking about the customer, the user experience, and using that feedback to make it better, because if you don’t, you will be made obsolete. But I’ve rarely seen a government treat a citizen as a customer, but it feels like that is the, that is the mentality here, the mindset of Dubai.
5:57 Am I right? 100%. Look, even our leadership question come to our stand here, additional Dubai, and he actually went through an app step by step, filled it out, make sure that everything is seamless, everything is like extremely friendly, that anybody can do it, and this is what we focus on: is the user journeys that are really intuitive, and you don’t need instruction to do to finish your job and to do it faster and in a more streamlined way. One-stop shop.
6:25 Like, if you wanted to finish the same kind of transaction anywhere else in the world, you will go to three physical locations, or four or more, in Dubai through an app in your home. It’s done, and I really feel it. I feel this user experience. You know, I’ve been in Dubai now for five or six days. I’ve been trying to test everything here.
6:44 I’ve been riding the Metro, obviously, coming to GITEX, speaking, the taxi drivers, going around, and you know, everything feels like it’s being optimized for my experience. It feels like the government is kind of looking out for me as a citizen. I don’t necessarily feel that in some of my cities in the West. I live in London, I come from America. I lived in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles.
7:09 Where does this mindset come from here, to just be better and to really concentrate on being the best city? Because it doesn’t happen in a lot of cities. We owe it a lot to our leadership, actually. Muhammad has a book where he mentions that everybody in Dubai should act like a lion or a gazelle and the Sahara, right? You wake up ready to run.
7:33 You’re wake up running. You always come up with that mentality that you don’t wake up any day of the week not ready to run. You are, you wake up ready to work, ready to get the things done. Don’t worry about everything else. Your survival depends on it, and this is the Dubai energy.
7:50 Dubai energy is about not only survival but actually living every single day with that mentality, that mindset, that you always are ready. You are always ready to hit the ground running. You are always ready to do things that will improve your life one step at a time, every day. You are comparing yourself to yourself yesterday, not to somebody else or other country or other region. We do not compete with other countries or regions.
8:14 We compare and compare always, to ourselves of yesterday, and we know ourselves yesterday. We started in the 1960s and 70s with nothing and this is where we are right now. Is this a mindset of the Emirates? Is this a mindset of the region? Is this the mindset of the ruler?
8:31 Where does this come from? I think this is a mindset of Arabia actually in general, and our Islam, our culture, our old culture of builders, cultures of thinkers, and our leadership realize that together we can do much, much more. Not only us as the Dubayans or Emirates or Arabs or Muslims or the whole world. Everybody can contribute to the Dubai story. Everybody contribute to the UAE story, the region, even the whole world.
9:00 We lead by example. We do what we say, and we say everything that we are able to do. Actually, we don’t claim things that we cannot do. We build it, we imagine it, and we create it as an example, as a pilot for everybody else to follow. So UAE and I were born in the same year, 1971.
9:21 So we’re both 51 years old, I believe. This place has changed quite a bit since then, obviously. The skyline has changed. Most people come here and they’re blown away by the change they’ve seen in the past 20 years, 30 years. I was at the top of the Burj Khalifa yesterday at the 146th floor, looking out, and it was impressive to be there, but also I saw the Creek is being built, and you’re not, you haven’t, you’re not slowing down.
9:47 You’re continuing to build. Why build this city in the middle of the desert? Why make it here? What and why is it happening in Dubai? Dubai is selling hope.
10:00 Literally, this is what we do. We are the merchants of hope. With everybody else around the world, they’re selling fear, they’re selling, you know, a propaganda around their needs as a country or region or something like this. We live in a tough neighborhood. I mean, it’s not, it’s not an easy neighborhood in this area of the world, but we believe in hope.
10:21 We believe that we can change people through looking, making them look forward to tomorrow. Making, we have the Museum of the Future. You’ve been to it. It’s an amazing idea. You can imagine how through working together, through mental health, through focusing on the right criteria, we can actually achieve bigger things than you know.
10:41 All these, like, pity fights that we have between us, all these politics that a lot of times is a waste of time, energy, and even, you know, at cost of your happiness. You know, you’re holding a grudge against another guy because of his political beliefs is not a good idea. We surpass all the stuff. We work together. I, every single person that we meet, I or you, may turn the bar.
11:03 You can sense their energy. They are here to do something amazing. They are here to build their dreams. You can sense that. You met taxi drivers, you met people who work in the mall, people who you work in GITEX.
11:14 Every one of them has a dream, and everybody is working towards their dream. This is the ideal atmosphere. This is ideal place to be in, including yourself, right? And you inviting me to Dubai, of course, 100%. Almost everybody I meet pretty much tries to get me to move to Dubai, and I’m thinking about maybe relocating the show here in January and February.
11:34 We’ll get to that for sure. Biggest misconception about Dubai? I know we recently, off camera, had a conversation about a very famous person in finance, Celsius Finance, who I think you told me kind of came through here through the years and had a superficial viewpoint of what Dubai is, which I think a lot of the world has as well. It’s a place, it has the building. It’s the Las Vegas of the Middle East.
11:56 What happened with uncz? And what is the real Dubai? I think it’s not always easy, but everybody who from the crypto space in general, when they come here, they have this perception of superficial, you know, Dubai. It’s just a glitz and glamour. There’s no substance to the people.
12:14 People are all like arrogant, ignorant, rich and the famous. They come here. This is just a playground for the rich and famous. When they actually came here, Celsius came here and met the head of the IFC, head of the Bioconia tourism. He met His Highness as well, and a lot of other, you know, influencers in Dubai.
12:32 He was given a tour to Expo, actual device, by his accents, he met a lot of actual crypto businesses that were based out of Dubai, and they all told them about their story, but he lived it. He stayed here for a month before even make a decision. He actually loved the Dubai, the, you know, atmosphere. He loved the ecosystem. He loved the leadership and their vision.
12:53 Actually, it is buying into the vision I think is what persuaded the likes of Celsius and others to move to Dubai. It’s seeing an end to what their goals are in life. A lot of jurisdictions, and crypto especially, you do not provide the end call, the end game for a lot of these projects, and if you cannot see the end, then you cannot see the finish line. How can you actually build something with no hope. You cannot.
13:17 Yeah, I made a video when I was walking to Dubai Mall the other day, and I said, Dubai is what America used to be. Now maybe this is a bold statement, but you know, my grandparents, I think her great-grandparents moved from England to America, and there was opportunity there was capital, there was land, and they could go and they could build, and the government didn’t get in their way. They would sometimes give them land, give them resources, they could hire whoever they want.
13:41 But nowadays it feels like sometimes some of our Western governments and cities aren’t helping the entrepreneur. Tax us, sometimes make it difficult for visas and immigration, and sometimes the politicians don’t seem to have a long-term vision that’s business friendly. And I ran to be Mayor of London in 2021, and one of the things I said was London was built on business. The Romans didn’t come there because of the view. They came there to do business, and I think sometimes politicians forget that business is the reason everyone is usually in a city.
14:13 Your thoughts on my comparisons and how Dubai compares to, say, Western cities? I think you said it before as well that Dubai is running as a business. We have an executive office that runs the city. We have Dubai Future Foundation, which is a non-profit to actually encourage things like the White blockchain Center. We have Digital Dubai which is always in the background.
14:35 It’s always there in every government experience and every touch point of the consumer. It is there transparently to buy digital is not a brand that we want to put out there. It is a transparent brand. If you don’t notice it, we have succeeded. Actually, if you notice it and there’s friction and you’re complaining, then you’re doing something wrong that we need to improve on.
14:55 As I said, we do not compare. If we are the US 20 or 30 years ago, we compare how was your experience yesterday and how your experience is today in Dubai. If we improve your experience whether it’s through digital or otherwise, we have succeeded. It sounds like a technology company, always getting better. Is it true you have a Ministry of the Possible here, or the Ministry of the Not Impossible?
15:17 I think, as you might say in Arab Arabic, which means nothing impossible, but the English translation is Ministry of Possibilities. And there is no minister. It’s always, you know, through collaboration, through coming together to solve problems. Imagine this situation, for example. We had this project.
15:38 We still have it. It’s called UAE Pass. UAE Pass is actually one of the first projects that brings in federal government, local governments, on all seven Emirates to the table to put in budget, with Abu Dhabi Digital Authority, still Dubai, and that the TDRA, which is after the communication and digital regulatory Authority. All of these guys came together with the budgets for the first, unprecedented, actually, anywhere in the world, that to work on a digital identity that is not only empowered by blockchain, but also empowered by the root certificate authorities, which means that they are recognized.
16:16 Every signature that actually is done through this app is recognized worldwide, and any Adobe, you know, PDF reader that, you know, supports digital signature. So you can verify a document, you can sign digitally without any cost, by the way, it’s totally free to anybody, not only who is a Dubai resident but anybody who has visited any Emirates at any point in time. You know, by visiting the UAE you have a free digital identity that you can use, and the signature for that is recognized worldwide.
16:48 Imagine this is the vision that we have. We put the foot, you know, the fundamental building block for digital lifestyle across the whole UAE, across the whole world, and you are completely paperless at this point as well. Completely paperless, not only within government departments but intergovernmental also. We’re dealing with the private sector. As government departments, completely paperless.
17:11 Right, and His Highness to shake had a whole blockchain strategy in 2021. He launched that. What was the thinking behind launching that? Why was that important for him, and why is that important for Dubai? It was actually to set the requirement of what do we need to build on blockchain?
17:28 A lot of times you see a lot of countries saying, okay, we have the blockchain strategy, or we want to build, uh, blockchain, but they don’t even have the infrastructure. One of the requirements for blockchain technology was actually digitization. So I mentioned that we improved with the, the end game is improving everybody’s lives, but how do you do that if you do not have digitization? Imagine, you are dealing with court papers that have to be in paper, and hand, you know, what, signature side.
17:56 How can you take that to the blockchain? You can’t. First of, first and foremost, you have to actually digitize that whole process from A to Z. The judge cannot sign a piece of paper anymore. That’s it, finished.
18:10 It has to be a digital signature, and how can you have a digital signature that’s only recognized in the UAE? What if you take your marriage certificate to the US? Is it going to be recognized? You can’t. You have to have this complete digital infrastructure that not only adapts to your requirements here in the UAE, but it’s universal and worldwide from day zero.
18:28 And this is what UAE Pass provided. Is it true your police force issued or auctioned off NFTs? Yes, I heard you on stage talking about that. Martha was talking about it. She showed me one of them, a 4D piece, and I just couldn’t comprehend of the, you know, Metropolitan Police in London issuing NFTs that anyone would want to buy?
18:49 What was that about? It’s for learning, actually. The main, the, we learn here by Dubai, by doing things. I mentioned we do what we say, what we do, and we do what we say, right? So we want to learn about NFTs, including the police force.
19:04 We don’t know what the use cases are. We’re exploring the use cases in Digital Dubai and Dubai Electronic Security Center, where I work. Actually, we have issued an NFT for our Academy as well. You’ve seen the Academy booth here, and this Digital Dubai stand, and literally we did a competition for anybody who thinks they are really good in cyber security to actually participate in that and prove through a number of tests that they are the best, and then there’s a draw, and the draw is an NFT that enables you to get free perks and courses within digital cyber security institution.
19:39 Perks, like I can get a parking ticket, a fine reduced. What are the perks for the Dubai Police? You have to ask them, but there are perks. Yes, 100%. There are, yeah.
19:50 Okay, so you’re trying to get the public educated, to get the police force educated, the government educated on what the possible use cases could be. Yeah, and we’re exploring. We’re exploring by actually building it, not theoretically. Right? Everything is done through practical means and with the right partner.
20:04 So Dubai please didn’t do it by themselves. Museum of the Future, for example, did it with minus. Okay, so every single project we have, we love to have partners with. I’ll give you another example: we did a cyber challenge a while ago with Dubai Electronic Security Center, and we mandated that the universities who are in the UAE work with external universities from outside our borders, to encourage this collaboration, and you get bonus points for doing that.
20:29 So imagine if you did not partner with an external university, the chances of you winning were slim. So everybody went for it, and they were huge, huge projects that came out of it. Some of them were even patented, because they were actually minds that came together, thought leaders that came together and created things that were not built there anywhere in the world, and those are patterns to the Digital Dubai and the Dubai Electronic Security Center that exist already.
20:56 And I heard the NFT was massively oversubscribed, as in there were a lot of people trying to get those. Millions? I’m not sure about the numbers. I don’t, I don’t talk numbers at all. We always.
21:07 I don’t focus on numbers. A lot of people actually get you know, uh, the, you know, focus on the wrong things. It is not the idea of how many people oversubscribe the idea is that people actually bought into it. People wanted to try it. Even if it maybe 10 percent of people tried it, even if one person tried it and changed his mindset about NFTs, we already won, because that person otherwise would have not experienced what NFTs are like.
21:33 He went through that practically to get the NFT. More than enough, it didn’t cost them anything. Probably. Yeah, yeah. The Dubai blockchain strategy’s goal, I believe, is to make Dubai the happiest city on earth, a phrase we don’t hear used very often with cities.
21:48 Three strategic pillars, government efficiency, industry creation, and international leadership. You know, when people hear happiest place on Earth, I mean, I know they would giggle in London by that concept, but that’s an interesting metric to optimize for. Why choose happiness? and how do you qualify for that metric? And then tell me more about these three strategic pillars.
22:12 Okay, I’ll talk about happiness. I don’t want to go into the pillars, because that stat is already done, by the way. Okay, all right, already done. So now we have the metaverse strategy, actually, and there are three pillars in that, as well. So the happiness is actually smooth satisfaction.
22:26 So imagine every service in Dubai, you get those three phases, like happy, neutral, and happy. We remove the neutral part. Either you’re happy or not, and that’s a strong metric, by the way. Imagine the slightest friction that you have, you could just, you know, get persuaded to put an unhappy, right? The neutral does not add any value.
22:50 So happy or not happy. So imagine that is your bottom line. If that consumer is not extremely, 100% happy, you might press that number, and we see that on the dashboard. His Highness is that on the dashboard live. So yes, every government department, every year we publish the most satisfactory services in Dubai and the least performing ones as well, the bottom tent.
23:14 Okay, so real-time accountability. Exactly, from leadership through the consumers directly. No middlemen, no nothing. Okay, all right, and that’s crucial, and that’s important, so you have to, like I said, it encourages people to every single day wake up with that mentality, hit the ground running fix the problems. That’s your bottom line.
23:33 I love it. All right. You mentioned metaverse. What is the metaverse strategy you have a lot of experience in metaverse. We briefly touched on NFTs.
23:42 But yeah, tell me more about that. So the metaverse strategy was put forth earlier this year by His Highness, and it’s actually on the Dubai level, and it’s three pillars as well. So one, one pillar is industry creation. The second pillar is creating and re-skilling the workforce here, and creating 4,000 jobs, actually, forty thousand jobs, wouldn’t limit diverse ecosystem, and the third pillar is government use cases, and that’s actually mostly with Digital Dubai and Industry.
24:13 I mean, entities like that. And Industry as well. Like I mentioned, everything we do in Dubai is through partnerships with industry, and I’ve shown you a couple of examples here. So the first one is attracting the right partners to come to Dubai and BBs out of Dubai and creating the economy that’s not only limited to Dubai, but from day one, what the mindset is global the reach has to be global, and to do that we have to have the right forums, the, like, the right, you know, people on board that can talk about standards.
24:42 We had a couple of days ago, and I think you visited, uh, the assembly, the Metaverse Assembly, and there was a huge energy from that. Actually, we were, we were overwhelmed with how many people we had in the assembly. We had workshops, practical ones. We had the seminars. We had thought leaders coming in from all over the world, virtual land platforms with diverse platforms that people were there to experience.
25:08 There were a lot of practical workshops on the development, the coding required, the Web3 requirements. We had the Meta, which explained their vision, actually, for the metaverse, and Microsoft as well, with Azure platform. So you had big tech in one hand, and you had Web3 as well, on one hand, and you had also gaming and gamify projects like Animal Brands and others we had 99 stars, for example, as a gaming guild. So the whole ecosystem coming together in a couple of days creating, you know, this friction and this, this collision space between them and rubbing shoulders again with the giants, with the startups, which was an amazing space, all in this setting of the Museum of the Future.
25:54 It was a huge success. I haven’t seen anything like this anywhere else in the world. What will be the next practical application of a metaverse, do you believe, for the government or from Dubai? Because it’s, it’s beautiful to believe what it could be, but what do you think will be the next practical use of metaverse? You’re jumping ahead, actually.
26:14 What I wanted to say, actually, the best value take right now is actually from gaming and I think either free-to-play games or play-to-earn games are the next. I think immediate value take from the metaverse. This is where the money is actually. This is where the most innovation is right now, and with the addition of the idea of guilds and ecosystems where the players are incentivized not only to play, but you are removing the barriers of entry as well. So playing play-to-earn games is a huge learning curve.
26:51 A lot of people want to be in, but do not do not want to actually. There’s either, do not have the time or do not have the skills to actually play, so something like a scholarship program where you can sponsor a player. This is extremely popular right now, because you can be invested in that kind of, and emotionally, actually, tied to this kind of experience without actually spending any time or or learning any new skill, by investing in these players, and they play, and then you share the earnings.
27:20 This is one of the things that we see that could be potentially the gateway to this kind of metaverse, and it is where most of the investment will come through in the next year or so. Okay, you were on stage over at the Future Blockchain Summit, which is a section of GITEX. Where do we go when it comes to blockchain? cryptocurrency, decentralized finance, startups, should they come to Dubai? Can they come to Dubai?
27:51 What is Dubai doing to empower those companies setting up shop here, either by creation or bringing branches in? Like Binance recently announced a huge thing with their name on the Burj Khalifa. It was impressive that they were finally regulated here. What are some of the most important steps, or what would you like to say to blockchain founders out there, whether they need to come to Dubai? I think, first of all, you need to, you owe it to yourself to come here and experience Dubai first time.
28:15 So pick an event or pick a date where you think it is worth worrying while to make that journey, and then once you come here, make sure you meet the right people as well. Make sure you have an agenda of, of meeting with the regulators, meeting with, you know, people that you think that are going to add value to your ecosystem, whether it’s VCs or, plan your visit accordingly. Make sure you also open the time and have the time for creating opportunities that will be, you know, coincidentally right, put yourself out there in Dubai.
28:49 See who you’re going to meet, walk around, talk around don’t just stay on your own, you know, bubble, and that’s it. Unless you come here, you will meet people, and everybody is connected in Dubai. Everybody will introduce you to somebody else. That’s how we met, actually. So, so you have to create that, that collision space, and create that collision opportunity, and put time and actually have a couple of days off as well to experience the real Dubai as well, and that’s it, and then everything else will work itself out.
29:15 Okay, all right, and is this becoming a blockchain-friendly place to set up business? Is that important for you, and is it now, or is there still some more development to do? I think we’re already, I think we’re at that tipping point right now. We have a dedicated entity called VARA, Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority. I don’t, my hours are not that perfect, so VARA is the perfect vehicle for any kind of crypto business to come.
29:44 Today we have also an Abu Dhabi ADGM, Abu Dhabi Global Markets also the same thing. Depends on your preference. They are of course, differences between the, the regulatory frameworks. Some people might be more suited to move on one or the other, but you, you have the choice. This is the beauty of it.
30:02 You have a choice whether to base it here or there. There are other jurisdictions as well that are crypto friendly. Here in Dubai you have multiple choices. They are spoiled literally for choice when it comes to the jurisdiction, but also you are spoiled for choice when it comes to how much money you want to spend any in any of those, uh, jurisdictions, but also what you want to do, actually, is your case use case, more about tokenization? Is it more about metaverse?
30:27 Is it more about gaming? And for each one of those, there’s a perfect kind of, you know, atmosphere here and ecosystem that can cater to your needs, and you just avoid yourself to come and compare. And I’ve done this for a lot of people, actually. I just literally walk them through different ones, and what I thought would be their perfect choice was not, most of the time, by the way, which is, for me, even as a good learning experience. And, and I asked them why did you check first?
30:55 Why did you pick this versus the other? I said, no, I just like the guy, he’s gonna be, you know, my regulator. I just like the guy, and that’s it, right? Dr Marwan, tell me how all of this innovation here in Dubai affects the rest of the world? Obviously we’re right here in Africa.
31:12 Three billion citizens there, many of them not connected. How does all the work you’re doing here affect them, or how does that vision go out to the world? Well, first, I like, I mentioned before, Dubai is an area of hope. A lot of jobs actually created in Dubai employ a lot of people in other regions, especially in the Arab world and the Muslim world, that are neighborhood literally. So a lot of jobs also, that the firms are actually based in Dubai, that coders actually based in India, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi, even the whole region actually benefits from whatever Dubai is doing here when it comes to things like connectivity and banking the unbanked or underbanked.
31:54 People in Africa, in Dubai, there’s a number of projects that are actually catering for that. Dubai is the springboard or the launch pad for a lot of projects that are actually in Africa. A lot of the after African countries’ leadership actually comes to Dubai to look for technology and partners to improve their ecosystems, whether it is for hardware software, coding, you know, even for strategy and leadership. It is always to buy the focal point for them, and also the meeting place.
32:23 A lot of times you see, even here in GITEX today, you see a lot of African subcontinent technology, you know, companies, as well as politicians and government. Government has come to Dubai to seek this kind of learning, as well as actual solutions from Dubai. And how is that, do you think, going to translate into technology innovation, blockchain, into Africa? What do you see the future? What are some of the most pressing issues right now for that massive population?
32:55 I think one of, one of the, this was a shock to me. Before I met a very prominent African figure in one of the environmental events here in Dubai, and she told me. Actually, I told her, what’s stopping you from blockchain adoption? And she’s like, power. We don’t even have power.
33:13 I was like, what? It’s not connectivity, it’s not digitization. He said, no, no, no, we don’t even have power. How can you have digital lifestyle if we don’t have power? So power’s first and foremost.
33:23 Second is actually connectivity, and then skills and empowerment, and all the stuff. Mobile is easy. It’s intuitive, right, but to have the actual power generation, and then after that connectivity, and then you will have all the stuff coming as, as not first priority, by the way. People’s lives will improve way before they get to the perks of technology like the internet and others. Even contacting somebody over the phone will be better, a fridge to keep your fish well, versus, you know, throwing it off over every day because it rotted.
34:01 It’s important, all the light at night in your house, so you can read for a couple of hours more. It’s important all these things are very small improvements, but all of them contribute to your lifestyle and improve how you learn about the world, and this is what is life-changing, and literally we need to build the fundamentals first before we look at things like blockchain. Okay. Now, Dr Marwan, you’re a man of the world. You spent five years in America, five years in Australia, you know, you like to do things in fives.
34:33 When you look at, you know, the Western world or other countries around the world, what do you see that they’re doing right in blockchain or even digital development? Whatever things you think they maybe can improve on, what can they learn from Dubai, what could Dubai learn from them? I think one of the things that a lot of people misunderstand about the emerging tech is adoption. They need to really jump in and take a chance. A lot of people were doubting Bitcoin when it first came out.
35:00 Even here, we were doubting blockchain when it came out. We did not see the value of it, right? You need to be fast. You need to act fast. You need to bring in the right people to help you move faster.
35:12 If you don’t speed of the essence. Don’t take 10, 20, 30 years to understand the technology. Understand the value, take from the beginning, understand it well enough. The superficial kind of scratching the surface of every other technology and say, oh no, I understand what blockchain is. No, it’s not.
35:29 It’s not how it works. Dig deep, go deep. I spent a month and a half just to understand blockchain in Bitcoin, one use case. Imagine you owe it to yourself to do that. Okay.
35:40 And, uh, what do you miss about America? What did you learn from America? What are some of the things you remember as far as experiences there? I know you were in Florida for a lot of your education. You got your degree in computer science.
35:50 Yeah, and I think the best value take for me being in the US, gaining a new perspective. I was in Dubai in the early 19 1993. I went to the US in 1993. I was a fresh graduate, 17 years old, didn’t know anything about the world. my world was a bubble of just me and my friends.
36:13 Never went out. Never did anything fun. Literally, I was just school, football, and school, and that’s said nothing else. This was my world. I was dropped in, literally, by myself in Daytona Beach, Florida in March at spring break, and they’re gonna, so it was crazy, and it was like mind-blowing for me.
36:35 I met so many people. People crashed out of my house that I’ve never met in my whole life, and I’ve made so many friendships there, but I understood one thing that really improved my life: social skills, knowing how to talk to a person, and to talk to them in their language, not English, of course, but how they perceive the world. Right? If you talk to a person who are too high up or too low, or don’t open up yourself to them, you will lose them. And in Daytona Beach, Florida, and spring break, you meet millions of people.
37:10 You have to establish the connection. Connection is important. I’ll give you another example. You mentioned Australia as well. In America you can talk to anybody, no issues whatsoever.
37:19 In Australia, people come and talk to you, and this was a cultural shock as well. I was sitting in a bus, actually, on my first day, uh in Perth, Australia. This girl came and sat right next to me. The bus was empty, and so the social dynamics in Australia was completely different than the US. Everybody’s friendly.
37:40 Yes, you can talk to anybody, but in Australia they were even more friendly, and this really blew my mind. Blew my mind fond memories. And these things, yeah, you encourage everyone to get outside of their local area and experience new cultures and have an open mind. It’s important to have an open-minded list. Extremely important.
38:00 In Dubai we have all these kinds of nationalities and everybody at every level. You know, you have super rich and super poor people. You have the laborers you talk to them nicely. You don’t treat them like forcefully, or don’t dictate things on them. It’s extremely important to be humble, to be nice to everyone, to understand who you’re talking to, understand the language and the situation and the context you’re in.
38:25 It’s extremely extremely important. Social skill. We were talking earlier, even about the police here in Dubai and how you’ve made conscious efforts to make sure that the police is a force that, I mean, a police force actually is intended to police as a member of that community, and you took steps, as in, to remove the guns, remove the posture, change the tone of voice. I mean, again, it’s all down to the customer experience, but that’s all to do with empathy and emotional awareness.
38:55 Can you speak on that? Yeah, even customer service, by the way, when you go to a government or desk or a service desk in Dubai, you’ll notice something completely different than everywhere else in the world. They are not the bosses. You don’t, you’re not at their mercy. Everywhere else in the world, you, or you put your papers.
39:11 Literally, we have no papers. You go and say, I want this service, they try to help you. They’re good, and extra, you know, mile to help you out, and they try to make sure you have all your papers in order from the very beginning. They understand that they make sure that there are both misconceptions, misunderstanding of what is needed, when it comes to, and only when you’re ready, they will actually take you in and make sure you experience as seamless as possible.
39:37 Policemen, as I mentioned to you, they’re not intimidating. They are very soft-spoken. They don’t actually come and confront you on anything. They ask you how you’re doing, how your day was, and all this stuff. No matter what, what you did, even an accident, they calm you down straight away.
39:52 Like, are you okay? Is everything okay? You need to get somewhere? You ask the right questions. They show empathy.
39:59 I, I remember a number of times where I’ve been on the highway and I saw people who had accidents, and the calm that people get as soon as there’s a policeman there on the scene is unimaginable. You are in the worst situation you can be in, the policeman being there and giving you these kinds of words. Are you calm? Are you okay? Let’s move here out, very calm.
40:21 Even the ambulance people, everybody’s extremely calm to calm you down, to make sure that your mental state is there as well as your physical state, and you’re safe in a safe environment. We’re all trying to be the happiest city in the world. I love it. Uh, the future of Dubai. What is it?
40:37 And what is the 2071? I think it’s an initiative or the plan that’s, that hundred-year anniversary of Dubai. What’s that about? What’s coming for the future? So the, the aim of, of the Centennial goal for, for the UAE, and actually, as Dubai Blockchain Center, we are actually part of Area 2071, which is creating that Dubai becomes the top of the world, with things like the best place to work, in the best place, uh, you know, the happiest place, the best place to raise a family, in the best place to improve your business and your life.
41:09 It is the ideal place to be. It, uh, the ideal place to create your dreams. The ideal place, and how you create that is through technological means that actually, uh, proceed everything that we know right now is through creating, uh, Collision spaces with the right people. Actually, Area 2071, if you see, uh, the people that are there, they’re from all walks of life. You have the scientists, rubbing shoulders, the philosophers, with the futurists, with a mental health guy, with a micro, uh, you know, strategist to the, you know, nanotechnology guy, to the real techie, to the, the big tech kind of companies, to the monorail, and and all these like future space projects all sitting and rubbing against each other’s shoulders and meeting for coffee every single day in one small setting, which is Area 2071, which is in the same building where the decision makers are, where His Highness’s office, the executive offices, there.
42:13 The Prime Minister’s office is there and the Prime Minister keeps, you know, using that space, going back and forth. So if you wanted to grab, you know, a coffee or wanted to meet a guy who’s from the youth center, you can actually get a perspective just by walking 10 meters to go to the youth center from Area to 171. If you wanted to accelerate your project, the government acceleration on the federal level is actually on the same floor, is 20 meters away from you.
42:40 If you wanted to visit a minister of economy, you can, he’s in the same building. Minister of Possibilities, 20 minutes away from you. But you know, the robotics lab is like 30 meters away from you. Everything is in that physical space. That’s physical space, which is immersive towers, Area 2071, and all these initiatives like the UAE government accelerator, Dubai Future Foundation, the Museum are all two to five, to maximum seven minutes’ walk.
43:09 Imagine the convenience and how much you can build based on that. Possible. Yeah, and that is what will happen by 2071. And before, no, that’s, that’s there right now. There are towers, and the goal is to create the city of the future in 2071, to be the top city in the world.
43:29 And how are you doing? You’re already ranked pretty high in a lot of metrics. Yes, we’re celebrating that in Digital Dubai as well as one of the top cities, but that’s not the, that’s not the actual final, you know, game, or the end point, or the goal. The goal is to improve every metric, and we have a lot of metrics that we’re targeting right now as we speak. Okay, what about you?
43:51 The next 10 years, what are you working on personally? When you go and celebrate 2032, what are some of your personal goals? What are you, I don’t plan that far ahead. I plan one year ahead, maybe, I plan 100 days at a time, to be honest. Okay.
44:04 So I have, I have certain things that I think are worthy of action, and I just had the ground running. I go after people. I don’t go after plans. I go after people. I try to find the best person to do something for me.
44:22 If I, for example, want to do something like improve the ecosystem when it comes to banking, I’ll go after the bankers. If I want to go and prove something about blockchain, I’ll go to the top blockchain guys. And you owe it also to yourself to not work with people who are not at the top. You have to align yourself with people at the top of their game and they are getting things done. Don’t work with the fears.
44:44 Go ask the theorists who you should work with. If somebody wrote a book on blockchain, go ask him who do you think are the top people in the game right now, and go online with them. Yeah, life is too short not to work with the best. 100%. What’s your single biggest challenge right now?
45:01 You, what’s the biggest challenge? Time, of course, always starting with time. 100,100, there’s not enough time in the day. I have, of course, family. I have my own priorities.
45:11 I have my own health as well I have to take care of. But time, time is the biggest, you know, commodity. It’s not about the money. You can ask for funding for anything you want, right? It’s always time.
45:24 Right, all right. I always like to finish my conversations with a few questions about you, a few personal questions. Best day of your life, worst day of your life, today? As always, today, because I’m here, you’re here, we’re talking to each other, right? Being alive is the last day.
45:42 Is your day you’re in right now is the best day of your life, and you should aim to make tomorrow even better, and the day after, you compare yourself to yourself today, not yourself yesterday. I don’t care too much about myself yesterday, to be honest. I don’t look at what I did in the past. I look at what I can do today, and every day, live every day to the fullest. I know it sounds very cliché, but that’s how I love my life.
46:06 Mistakes, I will make 100. I made a million mistakes in the past, and learn from them, use them to have a better day tomorrow. What is your day looking like tomorrow? You’re looking forward to that, right? The desert or the desert?
46:19 Yeah, of course, yeah. That’s going to be the best day ever, right? For these days. And worst day of your life? Worst day.
46:26 There’s so many of them, really. Yeah, of course, of course. Everybody has their bad days and that kind of stuff, but it’s huge for you for moving forward. I’ve had a lot of bad days, but it doesn’t stop, you know. There are horrible days you cannot get away from loved ones passing away.
46:46 Some of my worst experiences, losing loved ones to cancer, for example, that’s huge, but again, that’s fuel for you to do better. For example, now there are solutions for cancer. There are blood tests that you can do that can actually detect mutations very early on, and in Dubai we have companies that do that service for you here in Dubai. So every single thing that you can use to help you do a better thing in the future you should capitalize on. I helped that company here in Dubai as well, and I always direct people who have cancer history to actually go and check themselves with this simple blood test.
47:22 You know, so what keeps you awake at night? Nothing. I sleep very nicely actually every night because I’m tired. I’m tired every day, actually. I don’t worry about things.
47:31 I’m that kind of guy. I don’t worry about anything. I don’t worry about money, time, position. I never care about anything other than, of course, my own mental was being the happiness of my family, my kids, of course, but I provide to them, and they understand that my wife is 100% understanding of what I do and fully supportive. My bosses as well, 100%.
47:55 I never keep a nine-to-five job, by the way. I, I come in, had the ground running, go to sleep at 2 am, 1 am, whatever. I feel like I’m tired. I wake up the next day, same thing. I’m not surprised.
48:09 If you could pick up a phone and call the 20-year-old Dr Marwan, I guess he was just Marwan back then down in Daytona Beach and give him some advice based on everything you know now, 20-some years later. What would you tell that 20-year-old? What advice would you give him? Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re all right.
48:28 That’s it. No, no advice. Look, in retrospect, you cannot just do anything in this respect, right? Do every day, live your life every single day to the fullest. That’s it, finished.
48:39 There’s no, there’s no like I wish I could go back and change this. No, no. This is, if you did the right thing you are okay. If you did the wrong thing, it is for your own good, right? That’s it, finished.
48:51 Yeah. Best advice you’ve ever been given? Could have come from a father, or a grandfather, or a teacher here in the Emirates, or in the States, or in Australia, or someone you spend time with, or a book you’ve read. Is there something that comes to mind? Of a piece of advice, or something that you think about a lot?
49:09 Advice, like I mentioned, Chris Voss with negotiation. He’s an amazing guy, and I met him a couple of days ago. Every single time I meet that guy he, like literally, inspires me. I love negotiations, and I love, like, empathy, and I love all the stuff with meeting people. But one of the best advice that actually changed my life in my early 20s was, I was sitting in the computer lab, and I was helping somebody with their homework or something like this, and then I started building websites.
49:38 I was one of the first people in the UAE to build with websites. This was 1993, 1994, something like this, and my supervisor came to me and asked me, are you doing this for money or for pleasure? And I was like, why do you ask? It’s like, if it’s for pleasure, it’s a hobby. If it’s for money, it’s a profession.
49:55 And I was like, I never thought of that. Then I started doing a domain name business, and then never looked back. I still have that business until today. Last question, best advice that you have to someone listening to us right now. There’s a 20-year-old out there somewhere around the world that’s listening to this, watching this.
50:15 They could be in Africa and China and America, somewhere. What advice do you give to them? They’ve grown up now in this digital world. They’ve grown up now facing maybe digital problems, different issues than you and I grew up with. Advice to them, and my advice will always be, be yourself.
50:34 Don’t worry about what other people say, and I don’t, of course, you are a human. You always worry about what people say. It hurts sometimes what they tell you, but live your life according to you and your standards, your ethics, your everything, everything else. Take it, do whatever you want with it, if you want, if you wanted to settle and let it settle in, but end of the day, you are your own judge. You are living your life.
50:58 They are not living your life. You are living your life. You do your things according to you and only you. Of course, listen to what they say, but end of the day you determine your future, your life, your path, because once you’re new, you’re in your deathbed or you’re in the 90s, if you regret anything, even with a small thing, you haven’t left your life to the fullest. Live your life every single day.
51:21 That’s it. That’s amazing advice. Dr Marwan, thank you so much for the time. I’ve massively enjoyed my time here in Dubai over the last five or six days. Completely blown my mind about the possibility, the thing that’s different about this city than anything else.
51:37 It is, it’s a vision, and it’s a mindset, and it permeates through everybody I touch, through everything you see on the ground. It’s, it reminds me of a group of people that are living a vision, holding themselves accountable, exporting hope and it’s very London Real, as if I do say so. It’s the kind of thing we’ve been doing for 10 years trying to put out ideas, encourage transformation, encourage accountability, and encourage inclusion and cooperation, so I think I’m gonna be back here in a few months’ time and spend more time with you, but I want to say just congratulations on your success, and thank you for the time today.
52:13 I’m very, very impressed and looking forward to all the great things that Dubai and the Emirates are going to bring to the world. So, my pleasure to have you here in Digital Dubai, and Zyrtecs and looking forward to having you here in Dubai. And anything you need, we are here for your support. We love to support people like you who put the message forward and really show people what things are in real life. You know, we have them at the metaverse, but we have IRL, which is in real life, and in real life is extremely important as well.
52:43 I agree, it’s called London Real for a reason. All right, thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. My pleasure, thank you.
