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Saudi Arabia, UAE Agree To Launch New Joint Cryptocurrency

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Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have joined together to launch a new cryptocurrency, according to UAE's national press agency WAM.

The Saudi-Emirati Coordination council, during its first meeting in Abu Dhabi, launched its Strategy of Resolve with seven initiatives in vital sectors for collaboration between both countries, including the Saudi-Emirati Pilot cryptocurrency.

The cross-border digital currency will be targeted for banks at an experimental phase. The countries aim to better understand the implications of Blockchain technology and facilitate cross-border payments. As per the press agency, the virtual currency will use a distributed database between the central banks and the participating banks from both sides.

The Saudi-Emirati Coordination council's new initiatives focus on the bilateral integration in the fields of services and financial markets, tourism, aviation, entrepreneurship, customs and security.

Apart from the new cryptocurrency, the other initiatives include "Facilitated flow of traffic at the entry ports,", "Joint platform to support SMEs," "A joint exercise to test the supply security system," and "Common Market for Civil Aviation," among others.

The Executive Committee is tasked with ensuring the implementation of the joint initiatives.

In December, National Bank of Kuwait had launched a new cross-border transactions platform called "NBK Direct Remit" using Ripple's enterprise blockchain network RippleNet to enable faster and secure real-time cross-border transactions for its clients.

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A busy week for economics saw the release of first quarter growth figures for the U.S. economy and the interest rate decision in Japan. Read our stories to find out why the GDP data damped market sentiment in the U.S. and what were the signals given out by the Bank of Japan. Other news this week included new home sales data and jobless claims figures from the U.S., and the latest purchasing managers' survey results for the Eurozone.

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