Deputy Governor of SAMA during the Effectiveness of ‘New financial Techniques and Digital Currencies at the Institute of Finance

Mr. Hashim bin Othman Al-Hoqail, Deputy Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) for banking operations, said that SAMA position is evident from the beginning in warning against dealing with virtual currency including the Bitcoin because these transactions have different negative consequences on the dealers for it being outside of the regulatory umbrella in the Kingdom.

This came during the patronage of Al-Hoqail on Monday, March 9, 2018, the effectiveness of ‘new financial techniques and digital currencies’ organized by the institute of finance in cooperation with Euromoney Learning Solutions. Alhoqail continued saying, “what attracted attention in the phenomenon of virtual currencies is the techniques and methodologies used to produce and trade these currencies. These technologies known as Block-chain and Distributed ledger; these technologies will have a significant impact on business execution in the way we know today. He added that some remember the beginning of the application of the Internet at the end of the last century, where it was limited to some E-mail applications, file sharing and so on. After that a number of applications started to emerge which relied on the internet completely and have changed the world. Similarly, many experts anticipate that the new technologies will have the same effect as internet had. Al-Hoqail pointed out that there are some great challenge for the current services providers and regulator parties. Therefore, SAMA is exerting great efforts to keep pace with new technologies. He noted to some experimental projects aim at discovering all dimensions of these technologies and its uses, stressing that SAMA is exerting great effort to raise awareness among financial institutions and its employees of these technologies.