MENA Blockchain Week 2026, May 20, Day 3 Recap: Stablecoins, Payments & Banking Day
- MENA Blockchain Week
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Dubai, UAE. One City. One Week. One Nation
The future of money moved through Dubai on May 20, and the room at Hadron Founders Club was ready for it.
Day 3 of MENA Blockchain Week 2026 brought together founders, operators, payment infrastructure builders, and financial professionals for an afternoon dedicated entirely to one question: what does it actually take to move money globally in 2026?
The answer, across every panel and every keynote, was the same. The rails are already live. The question now is who is building on them.
MENA Blockchain Week Opening Conversation: BK Kanjhan, Polygon
The day opened with a keynote from BK Kanjhan, Chief of Staff at Polygon, setting the stage for what would become a recurring theme across every session: the gap between where stablecoin infrastructure is today and where most businesses still think it is.
That gap is closing faster than most people realize.
Special thanks to Rudy Shoushany for keeping the energy high and the conversations grounded throughout the day.
Panel 1: Next-Generation Financial Rails, Stablecoins and Institutional Capital Flows
The first panel brought together voices from across the stablecoin and institutional capital space to examine how the underlying infrastructure of global finance is being rewritten.
The conversation moved through tokenization, cross-border capital flows, and the compliance frameworks that institutional players now require before committing to on-chain settlement. What emerged was a picture of an industry that has moved well past proof of concept and into deployment at scale.
Thought leaders shaping the conversation:
Alenka Shmalko, Head of Tokenization, Atom Real Tokens, Advisor in Digital Assets & RWAs
Pranav Agarwal, Director of Investment, Ajna Capital
Yana Minaylova, Head of Institutional Sales, Binance
Anna A. MacMillan, Co-Founder & COO, Mintlayer
The panel made clear that institutional adoption of stablecoins is no longer a future scenario. It is a present reality being navigated in real time, with real capital, inside real regulatory frameworks.
Keynote: Ramez Rafeek, AE Coin
The midday keynote from Ramez Rafeek of AE Coin grounded the day's larger themes in the regional context. AE Coin represents what it looks like when stablecoin infrastructure is built with a specific market in mind, designed not as a generic global product but as a tool for the economy it serves.
Panel 2: Settlement Without Borders, Cross-Border Payments in the Age of DLT
The second panel went deeper into the mechanics: wallets, ramps, interoperability, and the settlement layer that sits beneath every cross-border transaction.
This was not a theoretical discussion. The panelists brought operational experience from protocols and networks that are actively processing real-world payment volume, and the conversation reflected that.
Thought leaders shaping the conversation:
BK Kanjhan, Chief of Staff, Polygon Labs
Jad Eden, CEO, AION
Jia-Tern Ng, Director of Partnerships and DeFi, Polygon
Faraj Abutalibov, Senior Advisor Middle East, Stellar Development Foundation
What stood out was the consensus on interoperability. No single protocol wins. The future of global payments is a network of networks, and the builders who understand that are the ones gaining ground.
Workshop: New Money Rails, Stablecoins & Agents by Jad Eden, AION
The day closed with a workshop that may have been the most forward-looking session of the entire week.
Jad Eden walked the room through where stablecoin infrastructure stands today, and where it is heading. The numbers framed the conversation: $33 trillion in volume, Mastercard acquiring BVNK, Visa settling across 130+ card programmes, JPMorgan clearing $5 billion or more per day. The infrastructure is not emerging. It is already operating at institutional scale.
The workshop then turned to what comes next: agentic payments. Visa, AWS, and Google have all shipped infrastructure for autonomous AI transactions in the last 60 days, all running on stablecoin rails. For founders and operators in the room, the message was direct. The setup for the next wave starts now.
What Day 3 Made Clear
Every session on May 20 pointed toward the same conclusion. The most important decisions in global payments and financial infrastructure are not being made in legacy banking headquarters. They are being made by builders, founders, and operators who understand the technology well enough to deploy it, and who are doing exactly that, right now, in markets like Dubai.
The day continued into the evening with the Unfeathered Community meetup, an official side event hosted at Hadron Founders Club, bringing the community together beyond the formal programming.
Stay tuned for the Day 4 Recap.
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