Category: News

The Ministry of Interior announced yesterday that starting September 1st, traffic fines will be issued digitally. This applies to fines given by the cops, for example if you park illegally. Instead of writing the ticket on a piece of paper and then having someone manually enter it into the system, the cops will now be able to issue the ticket digitally and you should get the fine instantaneously.

Problem is, to pay the fines you have to use the Sahel app which as of now is only in Arabic. I can read Arabic (slowly) and it took me some time yesterday to find the section for checking and paying fines so no idea how non-Arabic speakers are going to manage. I guess through a friend.

Late last week the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) issued a circular banning crypto payments, investment and mining.

Kuwait is currently one of the cheapest countries in the world to mine bitcoin. It is estimated that last year the cost of mining in Kuwait was just $1,400 per BTC when bitcoin was worth more than $40,000 at the time. But, the high power consumption of mining doesn’t seem to be the reason for the ban. According to an article on Yahoo Finance, the reason behind the ban is money laundering. Countries are required to put up guardrails to prevent money laundering but I guess it’s easier to just ban it completely.

What does this mean if you already own cryptocurrency? My best guess is that it would make transferring large sums of money from abroad into your account in Kuwait more difficult. If you transfer large amounts of money you need to explain where it’s coming from and I don’t think you can tell the banks anymore that they’re from your crypto investments. Maybe a banker can clear this up for us.

Update: according to a reader the circular doesn’t apply to individuals.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was meant to be released in the region on June 22, but last week it got banned in Kuwait and across the region. The reason behind the ban is due to the presence of transgender symbolism in the film, a “Protect Trans Kids” poster which appeared briefly during one scene (pictured below).

Whats interesting is that we’ve recently started seeing more movie bans and less censorship and that is supposedly due to the studios no longer allowing cinemas to edit their films. Disney and Sony have both recently not allowed Asian countries to edit out LGBT content so the only option cinemas have is to ban the films outright. It’s interesting because they previously would allow cinemas to edit out nudity or kisses, so it’s odd that they aren’t allowing LGBT content to be cut.

This is really good news for anyone looking to open a business in Kuwait or currently pays rent on an office that they never use. Yesterday the Ministry of Commerce and Industry announced that it is no longer required for businesses to have an office if they don’t have employees.

Previously if you wanted to get a business license you had to have an office even if you didn’t need one. So what people would do is rent out cheap 250-300KD offices in basements of dodgy complexes in Hawalli and other cheap neighborhoods which they would never use or even visit. People had to pay thousands on rent just so they could have a business license. With the new rule, the home address can be used to obtain a license.

This is going to help out a lot of people and encourage a lot of new businesses to open in Kuwait.

Over the weekend Forbes Middle East revealed their annual list of 100 Middle East’s Most Powerful Businesswomen and 8 from Kuwait made it this year. The U.A.E. and Egypt scored the most entries at 15 and 12, followed by 11 from Saudi Arabia and then Kuwait.

Check out Kuwait’s top 8 below:

A Space X rocket, carrying the first Kuwaiti Satellite (Kuwait Sat-1) will launch into space from Florida later today.

The satellite is a CubeSat which is a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. CubeSats are generic, modular satellites that come in different sizes and can be customized with various payloads. Kuwait’s satellite will have a camera payload which was put together by students at Kuwait University and will be operated by them after disengaging from the rocket.

With this satellite, Kuwait will be able to take its own photos of its own country from space which could then be used for many purposes ranging from environmental studies to mapping cities.

If you’re interested in watching the launch, 360 Mall will be broadcasting it live on their Oval Screen in the Main Atrium at 5:45 PM. For more information check @kw.university and @kfasinfo