By Abdul El-Sayed

Every year, Arab Americans send billions of dollars to support family members abroad — to Teta in Beirut, Amu in Cairo or Khalo in Baghdad. These remittances can be lifelines. They cover rent, provide for school fees and underwrite medical bills. They are acts of love via Western Union.

But sending that money is slow, expensive and unreliable. Traditional wire services can take days and extract fees of 5, 8, even 10 percent off of each transaction, critical money that was meant to support a loved one, not a bank. For a family scraping together $500 to send overseas, that’s $50 off the top before a single bill dollar arrives. The big banks and wire services have built a toll booth on our generosity — and they’ve been collecting for decades. For those who want to opt out, traditional hawala systems mean passing money through potentially shady, untraceable hands. They open families just trying to support a family member back home to real risk they otherwise would never have signed up for.

That’s where the promise of blockchain technology comes in. Blockchain has the potential to change that. Unlike traditional banking infrastructure, or questionable hawala operators, blockchain-based transfers can move money across borders in minutes, not days, at a fraction of the cost, without the risk of it falling into the wrong hands. For Arab American families, that means more money reaching the people who need it, faster. That’s a promise worth taking seriously.

Sending money home should feel like an act of love — not a gamble.

But promise and protection must go hand in hand. Unchecked, blockchain can become a highway for corruption, money laundering and sanctions evasion just as easily as it becomes a tool for family financial support. The Trump family are case in point. They have exploited loopholes in the governance of blockchain technology to corrupt the president’s office for their own personal enrichment. 

The federal government must build the right framework that empowers innovation to make sure it works for ordinary people and not against them. That means closing gaps for bad actors to exploit or moving money into the wrong hands, and clarifying the rules of the road for innovators. It means establishing clear stablecoin standards so that the currency families send doesn’t lose value on the way. And it means robust anti-money-laundering and anti-corruption protections so that funds sent abroad don’t end up in the wrong hands — whether that’s a sanctioned regime, a terrorist network or a corrupt official.

Transparency is key. The unique opportunity of blockchain, properly regulated, is that every transaction leaves a trail. That’s actually a feature, not a bug — it means that when money moves, we can verify it moved safely and arrived where it was supposed to go. That’s exactly the kind of accountability traditional wire services or hawala have never been able to offer.

Arab Americans are bridge builders. We’ve built bridges between cultures, between continents, between generations and between communities. The technology exists to make those bridges faster, fairer and more transparent. But we have to build them right. I’m committed to crafting the kind of smart, protective regulatory framework that lets blockchain fulfill its promise for families across the Arab American community and beyond — while making sure it never becomes a tool for those who would exploit it.

Because sending money home should feel like an act of love. Not a gamble.

– Abdul El-Sayed is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.