Yachts, Eric Trump and Habibi Doge: Dubai's crypto party is bigger than ever

Several crypto investors described due diligence work in the UAE as having become more sophisticated, but say regulation is at a level that still makes it friendlier to the industry than the U.S. or Europe.
"People really feel much safer building crypto companies in Dubai versus in the United States — the U.S. is very over-regulated," said William Athanas, Miami-based founder of xMarkets, a new prediction market launching on DogeOS. "And that's something they're working on – Trump and Elon [Musk] suggested that they would like to remove 10 regulations for every one they add. But we just haven't really seen that yet."
On the night of the yacht party, May 1, Bitcoin was trading at $94,808. At the time of publishing, it is trading at $110,538.
Danni Liu, a Chinese national currently based in Sweden who co-founded LIFE Protocol — a platform that uses the blockchain to enable community-driven scientific research — was in Dubai for the first time to attend the crypto conference and DogeOS boat party.
"Before I got here, it felt like the market sentiment was not that high, people were less willing to take risks," Liu said. "But I came to Dubai, and I see that people are still dancing. I was surprised. The show is going on."— CNBC's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.