Central Bank of Nigeria orders banks to close cryptocurrency accounts

“All industries are the same – you have to stay away from the people who have a propensity toward jargon and toward trying to create their little islands of expertise. Instead, just think about what a company actually does – there’s no need to complicate it.”

If ever a quote summed up 2020 and the world’s hyper-fast transformation into a more practical approach to employees working from home and the realisation that the building blocks of technology are now the building blocks of society, it’s this wisdom from Derick Smith, founder and CEO of AmmbrTech Limited.

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The company, founded in Luxembourg in 2016, has now moved its headquarters to Abu Dhabi, which has been in the news a lot lately for attracting globally enduring technology companies many of which have been snapped up by the likes of Uber and Amazon.

Smith, who opened his first company at the age of 19, says one of the reasons for the move was the UAE’s forward thinking: “I was monitoring the evolution of crypto and blockchain for some years, and as things started to evolve, Abu Dhabi Global Market caught my eye. They have some really elegant, well-thought-out crypto regulations being developed in their jurisdiction,” he explains.

Blockchain in Abu Dhabi

The UAE is the seventh country that Smith, originally from South Africa, has opened up a company in and he says it’s been the best in terms of both infrastructure and regulations.

“The UAE has been by far the easiest to do business in so many ways,” says Smith. “Working with Hub71 was absolutely sterling – the support, the speed at which things happen. It was so smooth. The visas, the willingness of people to talk to you, have meetings, assist you – all of that was brilliant.

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“The office was ready the day we landed. And to be honest, they’re getting better all the time so someone joining Abu Dhabi’s tech or AI and blockchain scene now would find it even easier.”

AmmbrTech’s offering was intriguing pre-Covid-19, but now with digital transformation and decentralisation at the forefront of most companies’ minds, the move to a country that has a push to create new technology as part of its government’s goals from now until 2030 seems a smart one.