How Alex Reinhardt is rewriting the rules of blockchain in Dubai

We sat down with renowned serial entrepreneur Alex Reinhardt to unpack the vision behind his ‘digital economic highway’: a blockchain ecosystem built to be fast, simple and invisible to everyday users.

Read more-Not just for traders: How Ultima Chain is bringing blockchain to the people

From anxiety-free UX to real-world payments and rewards, Reinhardt explains why the UAE is the ideal launchpad for mass adoption. What follows is an in-depth Q and A on trust, regulation, real utility, and the future of decentralised tech.

For readers who use a smartphone every day but don’t follow blockchain at all: how do you personally explain what your current blockchain initiative is about, and what an ordinary person can actually do with it in daily life?

If I strip away all the jargon, I would say we are building a kind of digital economic highway that quietly runs in the background of everyday life. In my view, a good blockchain shouldn’t feel like “technology” at all. For an ordinary person it’s just a way to send assets across borders as easily as sending a message, to pay in a shop with a regular card while everything on the back end is settled automatically, to earn rewards for supporting the network or using certain apps, and to move value between different tools without friction.

From my own experience, when people first interact with what we build, they don’t say, “What a clever consensus algorithm.” They usually say, “It’s fast, it’s simple, and I feel in control.” For me, that is the real definition of a next-generation blockchain.

You’ve chosen the UAE, and Dubai in particular, as your home base. From your own experience building tech companies here, what does this region give you and your team that Europe or the US couldn’t?

I’ve lived and worked in different cities, from Germany to different European hubs, and I’ve learned that where you build can be just as important as what you build. Dubai, and the UAE more broadly, give us a combination that is very hard to find elsewhere. There is a real willingness from regulators to sit down, listen, and say, “Explain what you’re building and let’s find a responsible framework.” For a young and often misunderstood industry, that attitude is priceless.

At the same time, the UAE is a natural bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Our users, partners, and community members come from all of those regions, and this is one of the few places where their paths cross constantly. On top of that, the culture here is extremely entrepreneurial. As someone who spends a lot of time with founders and investors, and has been recognised in regional business rankings, I feel that energy every day, and it pushes our team to move faster and think bigger.

When you and your team design products, who do you really have in mind beyond traders and early blockchain enthusiasts? Can you share a couple of concrete stories from your own projects of how people or businesses already use your solutions in everyday life?

I never wanted to build technology only for traders and early blockchain enthusiasts. In every project we start, we ask a simple question: how can this make life easier for as many people as possible? For me it’s about simplifying everyday payments, removing borders from the way value moves, and giving people additional ways to grow their capital in a disciplined and transparent way. If someone can send transactions, pay, save and get extra profit inside one clear system, then the technology is doing its job.

Today your ecosystem includes a non-custodial wallet, payment cards linked to digital assets, automated trading bots, and reward tools where users freeze tokens and receive rewards. From your point of view, which of these turned out to be the real “game changer” for mass adoption, and why?

When I explain what we are building, I usually describe it in layers. At the foundation there is the network itself, the chain that is responsible for security, consensus, transaction speed, and the economic rules of the system. On top of that sits what I call the blockchain utility layer: the non-custodial wallet in your pocket, payment cards that connect digital assets to the traditional payment world, and automated trading tools that let people participate in markets without staring at charts all day.

Above that there is the experience layer. This is where you find games, loyalty programmes, marketplaces and other applications that make the technology tangible. From my perspective, a well-designed tap-to-earn game or a very simple subscription product can teach more people about blockchain than a stack of whitepapers. Inside the team we constantly test how these layers interact. Can a reward earned in a game end up on a card? Can profit from a bot be used directly for everyday purchases? For me, this fluid movement of value between layers is where the real magic happens.

On the technical side, you work with delegated proof-of-stake, short block times and the ability to process thousands of transactions per second. In your own projects, how do you personally balance speed, security and decentralisation so that the system stays robust, but doesn’t become a black box for users?

My background is in economics rather than pure computer science, so I always look at technology through incentives and trade-offs. On the consensus side, we use a delegated model that allows the network to confirm blocks in a few seconds and process a very large number of transactions while consuming only a fraction of the energy that traditional mining would require.

Many people still think blockchain means high fees and a painful onboarding. Based on your team’s experience, what are the two or three concrete design decisions that actually made things simpler and cheaper for first-time users, for example, here in the UAE?

If I’m completely honest, the main user-experience problem in blockchain is not speed but anxiety. People are afraid of pressing the wrong button, losing funds, or suddenly paying a fee they didn’t expect. That’s why inside our projects we treat UX almost like aviation safety. We try to minimise the number of critical decisions a user has to make, we reduce the amount of risky actions, and we build guardrails around fees and transactions.

You often say that without clear rules there is no mass adoption. How do you and your companies work with regulators, banks and payment partners in the region today? And what were the toughest lessons for you personally on the regulatory side?

We operate at the intersection of digital technologies, data, and modern blockchain infrastructure, so regulation is simply part of the game.In our team we work with specialised legal partners in the region and internationally to make sure that what we do fits into existing frameworks.

In practice this means building proper KYC and AML flows where they are needed, clearly separating technology providers from regulated entities, and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with regulators as the rules evolve. I’ve learned that it is much easier to design products with compliance in mind from day one than it is to retrofit them later. It can slow you down in the short term, but in the long term it builds trust with users, institutions, and governments, and that trust becomes a real competitive advantage.

You’ve spoken about global fintech partnerships, merchant integrations, multi-token support, and an NFT marketplace.

Which of these is your immediate priority, and how do you plan to scale adoption across the Middle East?

I often say that a blockchain without an ecosystem is just an expensive database. Our strategy is to build what I call a virtuous cycle, where users, developers, merchants, and partners all reinforce each other. On the one hand, we focus on payments and everyday utility: cards, merchant tools, and integrations that let people actually spend and receive value instead of just holding it. On the other hand, we develop automated trading tools, so that users can put their assets to work through structured strategies rather than emotional manual trading.

Around this core we grow developer and partner programmes that offer grants, technical help, and go-to-market support to teams that decide to build with us. In the GCC, for example, I see particularly strong potential in remittances, travel, and solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. My view is that ecosystems grow fastest where they solve real, painful problems, not where they simply chase the latest narrative on social media.

You often talk about making blockchain understandable for ordinary people, not just developers. What are the biggest barriers to adoption from a community perspective, and how are you and your team addressing them through education and communication?

Education has never been a side activity for me. Long before this particular blockchain initiative, I spent years speaking and teaching in different countries, and that experience strongly shaped how I think about community today. Together with my team, we put a lot of effort into creating materials that make blockchain and its tools understandable for anyone, not only for people with a specialised professional background.

My philosophy is simple: if people don’t understand what they are using, they will not trust it. So we focus on very clear, human language, without unnecessary buzzwords. We produce guides, videos, live sessions and in-app explanations that show how things work step by step, and what the real benefits are in everyday life. We also rely heavily on local community leaders and ambassadors who know their culture, their language and their audience, and can adapt our message to their reality.

In my experience, the best promotion for this industry is not hype, but a well-informed community member who can explain, in their own words, how this technology made something in their life simpler or more convenient.

The splitting technology (rewards model you use can offer rewards to users who freeze their assets), very attractive in the short term. Many people, however, still associate blockchain rewards with energy-hungry mining farms and environmental concerns. How do you make sure your approach to rewards remains sustainable from an energy and environmental perspective in the long run?

As an economist, I am naturally sceptical of any model that promises high rewards forever without a clear source of value. Over the years I’ve seen several cycles where systems collapsed the moment the hype faded. That’s why, in our projects, we design rewards around a few principles that I always come back to.

First, over time the rewards have to be increasingly backed by real economic activity: transaction fees, services, spreads, and not just new tokens printed out of thin air. Second, the rules around supply need to be transparent and long-term, so people understand that today’s incentives are a trade-off with tomorrow’s. And third, we try to reward actions that genuinely strengthen the ecosystem, such as running infrastructure, providing liquidity, or using trading strategies responsibly. For me, a sustainable model is one that can survive a multi-year bear market without collapsing and where users feel they are helping to build something durable, not just chasing the flavour of the month.

What are your near-term goals for user growth, transaction volume, and
merchant adoption? Can you share any current milestones or numbers that
demonstrate momentum?

Price will always dominate headlines, but for me it is actually the least interesting metric. When I look at our internal dashboards, I’m much more focused on how many people are active every week across the different parts of the ecosystem, how quickly the number of accounts in the network is growing, how many smart contracts and tokens are being created and used, and how many independent teams choose this infrastructure for their own products. I also pay a lot of attention to the health of the ecosystem around us: how many independent teams are building products on top of this infrastructure, how many merchants decide to accept it in their daily operations, and how many developers choose to commit their time and creativity here. If, in five years, we can show that millions of people use this infrastructure every week without even thinking about it, they just pay, save, and run businesses, that will be a much bigger success in my eyes than any single price chart going vertical.

If we fast-forward five years, what would have to happen for you to say: “Yes, this was worth decades of work”? And what is, in your view, the single biggest obstacle between today’s blockchain industry and that future?

If I had to put my vision into one sentence, I would say that I want blockchain to become invisible. In five years, I don’t want people to walk around saying, “I used a blockchain today.” I want them to say, “I sent transfer home instantly,” or “I launched a product and got paid from three continents,” or “I joined a game and my in-game items really belong to me,” and only later discover that all of this was powered by decentralised infrastructure.

The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is rebuilding trust after the scandals and failures that the industry has gone through, while still moving quickly enough to stay relevant. That requires a very delicate balance between technological ambition, regulatory maturity, and a genuinely human-centred approach to product design. If my team and I can help show that this industry can be both bold and responsible at the same time, then I will feel that we’ve used this decade well.