News

Coinfest Asia Returns For 2023 With A Web2.5 Theme

The immersive festival will be held in Bali on 24-25 August 2023 to the delight of crypto enthusiasts, developers, and creators.

Published

4 years ago

March 13, 2023

Nour Nasir

coinfest asia returns for 2023 with a web2.5 theme

Coinfest Asia, the immersive Web3 festival, will return on 24-25 August 2023 in Bali. The previous event hosted over 2,000 participants from 50+ countries, with attendees coming from institutional, retail, and regulatory backgrounds.

For this year’s event, Coinfest Asia will be held under a new theme known as Converge. As the name suggests, Converge will bring together Web2 and Web3 industries into the transitional Web2.5 implementation.

The internet has existed for over 50 years, with most experts agreeing that its development happened in two distinct cycles. Web1 was the basic internet that most users are familiar with, and existed primarily to share information. Web2, on the other hand, allowed users to create more interactive web pages. The next internet iteration, Web3, takes things to another level with blockchain, crypto, decentralized technologies, NFTs, AI, and the Metaverse.

To many people, however, Web3 is still quite an abstract concept. Coinfest Asia hopes to bridge the gap by focusing on the halfway house of Web 2.5.

“This year, Coinfest Asia will be back with insights and various interactive and interesting activities about the Web 2.5 industry, which is a period of industry transition from Web2 to Web3. This event is also our platform to contribute so that the industry on Web3 continues to grow, especially in Asia,” says Felita Setiawan, Director of ICN and organizer of Coinfest Asia.

Also Read: The Largest Data Breaches In The Middle East

Coinfest Asia will showcase Web2.5 case studies and real-life solutions, while companies can show off their products and network with one another. Outside corporate-based activities, the event will also see crypto enthusiasts, developers, creators, and fund managers coming together to explore the latest technologies.

Through Coinfest Asia, attendees will be invited to experience the shift from Web2 to Web3 themselves, and with tickets available today at special prices, there’s never been a better time to experience what the future holds for your favorite technologies!

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.