IOTA Surges After Announcing Middle Eastern and RWA Pivot

IOTA is the best performing top 100 cryptocurrency of the past 24 hours, gaining 45% in a single day after the project announced the launch of a new foundation as part of a pivot to focus on real-world assets.

On Nov. 29, Iota announced its newly launched IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation had become the first distributed ledger technology (DLT) foundation registered by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) — the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Iota seeded the new foundation with $100M vested over four years, with the new entity tasked with bridging the gap between DLT and real-world assets (RWAs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

“This includes collaboration with institutional investors, governments, and academic institutions for the tokenization of real-world assets and bringing them on-chain, thus bringing billions of dollars into the UAE’s virtual assets space,” Iota said.

Iota’s focus on the MENA region offers the project a point of difference from rival networks specializing in RWAs. On the same day, Polkadot’s Web3 Foundation invested $1M into U.S. Treasury Bills brought on-chain by Anemoy, a Centrifuge Chain-based asset issuer.

Iota promotes Shimmer adoption

Iota’s RWA and MENA pivot follows the launch of Shimmer last September. Shimmer is a Layer 1 network offering compatibility with code written for the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Ethereum’s core smart contract engine.

Shimmer introduced new web3 functionality for the Iota ecosystem, with the original Iota network focussed on providing low-cost payments. Shimmer’s EVM functionality allows the tokenization of RWAs.

Shimmer’s native SMR token is up nearly 17% in response to the news. The bounce follows a steady downtrend for both SMR and IOTA since February.

ADGM embraces blockchain

Iota described ADGM as fostering among the most “progressive and responsive” regulatory environments worldwide.

“ADGM aims to move towards a future characterized by setting global benchmarks in the ever-evolving blockchain and Web3 landscape,” said Hamad Sayah Al Mazrouei, the CEO of the ADGM’s regulatory authority.

Al Mazrouei added that ADGM hopes to establish Abu Dhabi as a “leading jurisdiction for the blockchain industry.”