Bitcoin may not have reached the moon once again, but it will surely remain in the sky as the world’s largest airline Emirates plans to add “bitcoin as a payment service.” As per local news publications, the company’s chief operating officer [COO] Adel Ahmed Al-Redha recently noted hiring new staff for metaverse and non-fungible token [NFTs] to develop applications to monitor customer needs.
Speaking at the Arabian Travel Market, the COO noted the different applications and approaches for NFTs and Metaverse and added that Emirates will seek to use blockchain in tracing records of aircraft.
He stated,
“With the metaverse, you will be able to transform your whole processes — whether it is in operation, training, sales on the website, or complete experience — into a metaverse type application, but more importantly making it interactive.”
Additionally, the executive also revealed the airline’s plans to add Bitcoin as a payment service while adding NFT collectibles on the company’s websites for trading. This plan followed Emirates NFT and Metaverse’s announcement and is in line with United Arab Emirates [UAE] vision to make it a digital economy.
The UAE transacts approximately $25 billion worth of cryptocurrency each year, per reports. It also ranked third by volume in the region and was behind Lebanon [$26 billion] and Turkey [$132.4 billion], per Chainalysis data collected between July 2020 and June 2021. We have also witnessed a great migration of multiple crypto businesses to several cities in the country like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
As per Ronit Ghose, global head of fintech and digital at Citi,
“One of the reasons we see an influx of entrepreneurs, builders, operators and developers coming into Abu Dhabi and Dubai … is because there is a sense of greater regulatory clarity at ADGM, in Dubai, and at a federal level.”
This was also clear among businesses although Al-Redha flagged the availability of resources across the network as the biggest challenge, he added that they “are in a better position than other countries because of the accessibility.”
Meanwhile, the largest digital currency Bitcoin was exhibiting a spike of 7% in the past 24-hours and was trading at $30,281, at press time.