Saudi Arabia · CoinDesk
Saudi Arabia is tokenizing its multi-trillion dollar economy to protect its wealth from global shocks
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Faisal Monai, chair of Saudi Arabia’s largest tokenization platform, believed in digital payments years before bitcoin’s inception in 2009.
Key facts
- As of mid-2026, the stablecoin settlement market has grown to over $300 billion in total market capitalization, with transaction volumes for 2025 having surpassed $30 trillion, according
- Monai, who is known throughout the Gulf region as the Architect of Saudi Kingdom’s financial plumbing, created a system that in 2025 handled over 14.5 billion transactions worth roughly $250 billion
- Before SADAD came into existence in 2004, the Saudi Central Bank digital payments system he designed, about 70% of bill payments across the kingdom were paid in cash at physical branches
- For Faisal Monai, the journey from building SADAD’s first digital pipes in 2004 to tokenizing the Kingdom’s energy and land in 2026 is a single, uninterrupted line
Summary
Faisal Monai, the architect of Saudi Arabia’s digital payments system, is now leading a $12.5 billion push to tokenize real-world assets through droppRWA, starting with real estate. He predicts that by 2030 Saudi Arabia will operate a nationwide, sovereign-grade tokenized financial system that other G20 countries will emulate, with stablecoin-based real estate settlement going live by late 2026. Monai argues that tokenization will give Gulf economies greater resilience and certainty in times of global volatility, complementing rather than replacing the U.S. dollar while building always-on, regulated settlement infrastructure. Before SADAD came into existence in 2004, the Saudi Central Bank digital payments system he designed, about 70% of bill payments across the kingdom were paid in cash at physical branches.