Heir to 135-year Gulf dynasty is moving a $6 trillion trade market onto blockchain rails

For more than 135 years, the Kanoo family, one of Bahrain's wealthiest families, has helped build the Gulf’s entire commercial infrastructure.

The family, with a net worth of up to $6 billion, owns businesses spanning shipping, logistics, travel and finance.

Abdulla Kanoo, one of the heirs to this 135-year-old dynasty, is now involved in crypto. While he refuses to reveal his family’s or his personal bitcoin investments, he says he’s invested in digital assets since 2015 and remains "faithful" to bitcoin BTC$64,703.08.

Kanoo also believes the next generation of global commerce will not be built on ports or banks, but on digital rails or, more specifically, on the blockchain, where programmable money is king.

Kanoo is the co-founder of ARP Digital, a digital asset infrastructure project focused on allowing the movement of money between emerging economies faster, cheaper and with fewer intermediaries.

"The Gulf was where global capital was stored," he told CoinDesk. "The next chapter is about movement."

Kanoo is not launching another crypto exchange nor is he pitching a new token. He has his goals set on expanding the family legacy on a global scale.

Trade between emerging economies exceeded $6 trillion in 2024, according to Kanoo, representing roughly a quarter of global trade. "What matters more is the size of the problem we're pointed at, because that's what actually governs our growth," Kanoo said.

Structural gap

That problem is surprisingly simple. Global South institutions increasingly trade with one another, yet many still rely on legacy banking systems designed for a different era. Payments often pass through multiple correspondent banks. Settlement can take days. The capital sits offshore. Access to dollar liquidity remains uneven, affecting business and profits.

"That's not a niche," Kanoo said. "That's the structural gap we settle into." ARP Digital was founded to fill that gap, he said.

Headquartered in Bahrain, ARP holds a Category 3 Crypto-Asset Service Provider license from the Central Bank of Bahrain and has received in-principle approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).

Kanoo said his company has processed more than $3.5 billion in transaction volume across more than 450 institutional and corporate entities. Last year, volume grew fourfold, he added.

ARP’s most recent milestone is its integration with the Fireblocks Network for Payments, a platform connecting payment providers, fintech firms and financial institutions across more than 100 countries.