The Desert Built a Brain, Coinbase Built a Casino, and Arizona Wants No Taxes on the Chips.
You understand nothing, right? Let me explain, the UAE has built a thinking planet, Coinbase is reinventing Wall Street as a prediction game show, and Arizona is waving a “No Taxes, Just Vibes” sign at blockchain founders like it’s Coachella for accountants.
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The UAE didn’t adopt AI, it industrialized it
While most countries are still arguing whether AI should write emails or steal jobs, the UAE quietly turned artificial intelligence into a state-backed industrial policy. By the end of 2025, 97% of government entities were actively using AI, which is not adoption, that’s assimilation.
Add to that 450,000 programmers and suddenly the national growth story isn’t oil, tourism, or real estate, its technology.
The UAE understands something others are still debating, whoever controls AI infrastructure controls productivity, governance, and leverage.
While others are obsessing over chatbots, the UAE is replacing bureaucracy with automation and scaling decision-making the way Silicon Valley scales startups.
The 5-gigawatt UAE–US AI campus in Abu Dhabi is designed to serve billions of users and is powered by nuclear, solar, and gas.
A $1 billion AI-for-Development commitment at the G20 and a $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation reframes AI as infrastructure for agriculture, food security, and emerging markets.
That’s smart for two reasons. First, it creates long-term dependency on UAE-built systems. Second, it gives AI moral cover, because it’s easier to export technology when it comes with development grants and not just invoices.
The UAE also launched what it calls the world’s first AI-driven legislative system, capable of analyzing laws and forecasting policy impact.
While the world debates the legitimacy of school essays written by ChatGPT, UAE has gone ahead and made AI the core of its policy making and governance.
Coinbase isn’t a crypto exchange anymore, it’s building a financial theme park
While the UAE was building the brain of the future, Coinbase was busy building the casino.
By acquiring The Clearing Company, Coinbase made its intentions clear, this isn’t about spot trading anymore. This is about becoming an “Everything Exchange.”
Stocks, Crypto, Prediction markets, Event-based contracts on politics, sports, culture, basically if it happens in the real world, Coinbase wants a market for it. But not in a shady way, it wants it regulated, CFTC-approved, and fully legit.
Prediction markets aren’t gambling. They’re derivatives with opinions. And Coinbase knows that when taxes on traditional gambling tighten, as they just did under Trump’s new bill, event-based contracts suddenly look efficient.
Arizona wants to be the Cayman Islands With cacti
And then there’s Arizona.
Senator Wendy Rogers’ SB 1044 bill aims to exempt crypto and blockchain activities from state taxes, turning Arizona into a domestic tax haven with better hiking.
This isn’t random. Arizona already passed laws allowing the state to claim abandoned crypto and invest up to 10% of public funds into digital assets.
That’s not flirting. That’s commitment.
Arizona has seen the opportunity in crypto. Jobs, capital, and innovation tend to follow whichever jurisdiction stops treating developers like suspects and welcomes decentralization and deep-tech.
If this passes, expect a quiet migration. Not loud. Not flashy. Just LLCs changing addresses and servers spinning up in the desert.