Icecap CEO Jacques Voorhees has revealed how it was a “no-brainer” to relocate the company’s headquarters from the United States to Dubai.
Launched in Denver, Colorado in 2020, the company is the first to offer investment-grade diamonds via NFT ‘token’ technology.
On Thursday it was announced that Icecap had moved its HQ to the emirate within Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) where it has also launched a line of high-end diamond and hewelry collectibles.
Voorhees (pictured below) told Arabian Business that the US was “just not as good a garden to grow a business”, like Icecap.
He explained: “The regulators don’t quite understand blockchain and tokens, they’re suspicious about them. Diamonds of course have been, in many ways, problematic in sourcing issues and regulations – again a lot of people look at that industry and they’re suspicious of it. If we add in anything that involves investment or financial and the whole thing creates quite a heady stew.
“By contrast, you take that heady stew in Dubai and it’s like they – the people we’re interacting with, the people that we run the idea past, the people that are in a position to be knowledgeable about this – completely get-it and they love it. They say this is great. One guy got angry with me because he said why did we wait so long?”
US blockchain start-up Ripple opened a regional office in Dubai in November last year with the company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse telling media at the time that the regulatory regime in the US for cryptocurrency was forcing him to look at the UAE, as well as Switzerland, Singapore and Japan as potential headquarters.
Last month it was revealed that DMCC was looking to create the first precious metals refinery and storage facility in the Gulf enabled by blockchain technology.
Voorhees said: “In the last 12 months, Dubai has become the centre for diamond trading for the world. It’s something that it was trying to do and it happened in the last 12 months.
“It’s a perfect place. I tell people that if we were coming from Mars to arrive on earth and start a company, where would we go? Of course you would go to Dubai, it’s a no-brainer.”
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