Yehia Badawy

Co-Founder, Rain

Yehia is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Rain. Rain is the first licensed cryptocurrency platform in the Middle East, licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain. Yehia focuses on business development and growth at Rain. Yehia attained a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Cairo University, before traveling to the United States and studying for a master’s degree in international business from HULT International Business School in San Francisco. It was in the US that he got to know more about digital currency and recognized the opportunities it presented. He started getting involved in FinTech through a number of startups and on his return to Egypt in 2014 he brought his experience in the US back to the region, where it was still very new. He organised the Cairo Bitcoin Meetup, one of the first digital currency meetups in the region, and in 2015 he set up Digital Cotton, the first blockchain consulting company in Egypt. A play on Egyptian Cotton which is renowned for its quality, Digital Cotton offered research and consulting services to blue chip companies, start-ups, and educational institutions. They actively help start-ups branch out of the region into other markets, such as Europe and North America. In 2016 his core passion, education, drove him to start Camp Altitude, a computer programming camp for kids and teens. Yehia believes that digital currencies are ‘here to stay’ and is driven by a vision of them becoming ubiquitous, a normal part of everyday life.