Coinbase has announced that it has received a license that allows them to arrange investment deals and offer custody for their tokenized securities, noting that the UAE, and Abu Dhabi in particular, will now be its international tokenization hub. Coinbase was interested in setting up a regulated entity in ADGM since 2023.
According to Coinbase, 4 billion people worldwide cannot access capital markets because the system was never built for them. Investable opportunities are out of reach, and the cost of participation is too high. This license is our first step toward changing that.
The tokenized securities regulated by FSRA in ADGM will be fully backed by shares, and token holders will receive full shareholder rights, including dividends and voting. All investors will need is a wallet, and all transfers will be subject to ongoing sanctions screening, allowing Coinbase to freeze or seize assets at the wallet level.
“ADGM issued one of the world’s first regulatory frameworks for virtual assets in 2018. That reflected a genuine institutional commitment to innovation-forward regulation, executed with the rigor that global financial markets require. No major financial center has yet built a framework that treats tokenized equities simultaneously as securities, blockchain-native tokens, and DeFi-composable assets,” said Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional.
Arvind Ramamurthy, Chief Market Development Officer, ADGM, noted that this is a strong endorsement of Abu Dhabi’s growing role in shaping the future of global finance.
He adds, “As tokenisation becomes an increasingly important part of capital markets infrastructure, ADGM remains committed to supporting innovation that enhances market access, transparency and investor confidence, while upholding the highest standards of regulatory oversight.”
Soham Jethani, Partner at UAE-based Septten Advisors speaking to Lara on the Block on this news, noted, ” The moves we are seeing today are inevitable, especially after ADGM refined its tokenization framework back in 2025. It developed a comprehensive tokenization framework which is now being noticed by the entire industry as a reliable ecosystem for tested, respected and pioneering tokenization projects.”
Through Coinbase’s investments in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, it is establishing two of their most ambitious global businesses outside the United States: a hub for tokenized securities and onchain capital markets, and a global hub for derivatives.
The FSRA’s FSP gives Coinbase the regulatory foundation, the infrastructure, and the right partnership to bring capital markets to the people who need them most.
Noteworthy in the announcement is that digital securities are subject to certain vesting conditions, as defined in the Prospectus for such Digital Securities. Only Vested Holders, as defined in the Prospectus, may exercise certain rights, including voting with respect to the Underlying, as defined in the Prospectus. Dividends are automatically reinvested and all holders (both Vested and Unvested), as defined in the Prospectus, may benefit economically from such feature of the Digital Securities, although only Vested Holders may be eligible for Redemption Rights, as defined in the Prospectus.
In order to exercise certain rights with respect to the Digital Securities, namely Redemption Rights, as defined in the Prospectus, a Vested Holder must have an applicable brokerage or bank account capable of receiving the proceeds of any such Redemption subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth in the Prospectus. However, transactions limited to the Digital Securities do not require the establishment of such brokerage and/or bank account.
In short, the Coinbase tokenized securities offering out of ADGM will offer much more than what was on offer for tokenized SpaceX stocks. Those tokenized stocks did not offer shareholder rights, including voting, dividends, or rights offerings, because they were third-party synthetic instruments rather than direct equity ownership. Tokens like SPCXx (issued via xStocks on platforms like Kraken and Bybit) only provided economic and price exposure to the stock.
Just last month, KAIO, the UAE-regulated DLT open infrastructure layer for tokenized real-world assets based out of ADGM, and Mubadala Capital, a global alternative asset management platform and subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company, linked to sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Holding, launched tokenized access to one of Mubadala Capital’s evergreen private market strategies for qualified institutional and accredited investors in certain jurisdictions.
This tokenized product, available across Base, Solana and Sui, received approximately $75 million in onchain TVL (Total Value Locked) from traditional and digital asset investors, with CoinBase adding exposure to the tokenized offering.
In 2025, Coinbase bought derivatives exchange Deribit for $2.9 billion deal to as it expands into the crypto options market, but the deal gave it a foothold in the UAE. Deribit is one of the exchanges that received a full license in the UAE back in December 2024, allowing it to offer spot and derivatives trading in the UAE under Deribit’s Dubai-based entity, Deribit FZE.
