Nebil Ben Aissa, CEO and Founder, QPAY International Corporation, speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the 5th Annual Information Conference for the Financial Sector at the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel yesterday. Pic: Salim Mat
Doha: With ICOs and STOs increasingly fuelling the startups across the matured economies, Qatar needs to step in and come out with regulatory frame work to unlock the potential of this “new fund raising process”, said a fintech expert.
Speaking to The Peninsula, Nebil Ben Aissa, CEO, QPAY International said Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and Security Token Offering (STO) are very much needed for Qatar, specifically for small and medium businesses that can raise money.
“Now to raise money, entrepreneurs have to go to the stock market, IPOs, a process that is very tedious for small businesses. We can do it using blockchain. What Qatar needed is a clear regulatory direction and guidelines,” Nebil said.
QPAY International is Qatar’s largest financial technology company and a member of NEXXO Network. With IPOs declining and early funding for startups becoming a major hurdles for innovation, startups around the world are starting to realise ICOs could be the path to get early-round funding. STOs are a logical conclusion of how this could work as a fundamentally new business model.
Nebil said raising fund via ICO has a very positive impact on the SME sector. It can help remove the middlemen from the process of raising funds. But we need a clear direction to be in place. “ICOs are good for SME sector. Yes, there are big scams reported in this sector, but not all ICOs are a scam. Consumer protection against scammers” must be in place. We need clear regulatory directions and guidelines”, he added.
“I think it is going to be really good for the economy of Qatar to have a frame work for ICOs where somebody raise money from the local public, ensuring protection to the investors and leverage to the business owners.”
Blockchain doesn’t need any specific regulations. But ICOs and STOs have to be regulated. There are several central banks and matured economies which are currently tapping this potential. Qatar, which is committed to promote SMEs, can easily think of unlocking this potential. This will help open floodgates of small companies and projects, backed by tangible assets.
The world is going to see a huge rise in ICOs and STOs going forward. With a leading investment bank filing for patents in blockchain, its clear mainstream adoption of crypto is becoming more viable as big banks and enterprise platforms get more involved.
“The QCB needs to step in and come out with clear regulations. Because this technology is happening.”
Since 2017, there has been a flood of ICOs, raising hundreds of billions of dollars for various blockchain projects; thus, generating more than 1,700 alternative Coins. Some succeeded, some failed, and some turned out to be pure scams. So one must one must tread the path cautiously before investing and gain a comprehensive knowledge to take a deep dive into the world of ICO.
“Blockchain is here to stay. Blockchain technologies and offspring businesses and financial models will continue to disrupt various industries. What we need is to embrace it instead of fighting it,” Nebil said.
During a presentation at the just-concluded 5th Information Security Conference for the financial Sector, Nebil shared with the audience the nuances of ICOs, the difference between a utility token, a security token and the certain legislations regarding ICOs; as well as will be offering insights into various tokenomic models.
