Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond says Middle East is primed for tokenized finance

There are multiple opportunities for tokenization, digitization, blockchain adoption in the Middle East, particularly in the banking sector, said Bob Diamond, CEO at Atlas Merchant Capital and former top boss at Barclays. "There's nowhere better than this center to have a second center of trading of tokenized assets to have the financial services industry here, and particularly the banks in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Doha, really using blockchain as the underlying technology of their financial institutions," Diamond told CNBC's " Access Middle East ." Middle Eastern banks are at an advantage as they are more agile with less worries about legacy systems, according to Diamond. Diamond said digital platforms offering 24/7 trading, instant settlement, auditable records and lower costs compared to traditional exchanges could add depth to capital markets, especially as major private companies such as SpaceX move toward IPOs. "One of the real advantages in Abu Dhabi, where they're attracting a lot of the tokenization efforts here, is the ability to attract talent, the ability to attract capital, but also a very, very strong regulatory environment and a very, very strong infrastructure, so we're going to see continued developments," he said. Tokenized finance refers to using blockchain-style technology to represent financial assets as digital tokens. …