Coinbase’s UAE Strategy: Tokenized Securities in Abu Dhabi, Derivatives in Dubai

Coinbase’s UAE expansion is best understood as two different businesses operating under two different regulatory frameworks. In Abu Dhabi, the company is building an on-chain securities and tokenization operation. In Dubai, Deribit is licensed for virtual-asset exchange and broker-dealer services, including exchange-traded derivatives.

The distinction matters: one approval concerns how traditional securities can be issued, held, and transferred digitally; the other concerns crypto-market execution and derivatives trading. Together, they give Coinbase a regulated base in the UAE for both tokenized capital markets and crypto-market infrastructure, but they do not yet amount to one unified product.

What Coinbase’s Abu Dhabi approval enables

Coinbase received a Financial Services Permission from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). The permission covers arranging investment deals and providing custody, creating the regulatory foundation for an international tokenization hub in Abu Dhabi.

The planned products are tokenized securities—potentially including equities—whose value is intended to be tied to underlying real-world securities rather than to a synthetic price-tracking instrument. The available reporting describes the securities as fully backed by underlying shares, although the precise legal and custody structure for each future issuance has not been published.

Coinbase has described the model as bringing global securities to people with a wallet. That phrase captures the product’s intended change in access: ownership and transfers could be represented on-chain, allowing an eligible investor to hold a security token digitally instead of relying entirely on a conventional securities account.

What “fully backed” means—and what it does not guarantee

A fully backed tokenized security is intended to correspond to an underlying security held within the regulated structure. That is materially different from a token that merely mirrors the price of a stock without giving the holder an interest in the underlying asset.

Reporting on Coinbase’s plan says token holders would receive economic and governance rights associated with the underlying security, including dividends and voting rights. Those rights remain subject to the legal terms of each issuance, applicable securities law, and the mechanisms Coinbase and its partners establish for corporate actions.

“Fully backed” should therefore be read as a description of the proposed asset structure—not as a guarantee that every practical feature of conventional share ownership will work identically from day one. Investors still need clear answers about custody, insolvency protection, redemption, transfer restrictions, and how voting or dividend payments will be administered.

Why investors may need a wallet rather than a brokerage account

Tokenization can compress several steps in the traditional access and settlement chain. A digital wallet can receive and hold the token, while ownership and transfers are recorded on a blockchain. In principle, that can reduce dependence on a conventional brokerage account and some cross-border payment or correspondent-banking arrangements.

It does not eliminate compliance. Access would still depend on investor eligibility, know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering checks, sanctions screening, securities-law restrictions, and the jurisdictions in which the product is permitted. A wallet is a delivery and custody interface—not a way around financial regulation.

The practical experience could also vary depending on the asset. Converting a tokenized interest into conventional registered shares, exercising certain corporate rights, or transferring tokens to another platform may require a broker, custodian, or other intermediary.

What Deribit’s Dubai licence enables

Deribit FZE appears on VARA’s public register as a licensed virtual-asset service provider in Dubai. Its listed activities include Exchange Services—including exchange-traded derivative services—and Broker-Dealer Services. The register states that the firm may serve institutional, qualified, and retail investors, subject to the licence’s conditions and authorised underlyings.

This is a virtual-assets trading licence, not an approval to issue tokenized stocks. It supports Deribit’s established market in crypto options and other derivatives while providing a regulated Dubai operating base. VARA requires virtual-asset businesses conducting covered activities in Dubai to obtain the relevant licence before operating.

The Dubai operation therefore complements, rather than duplicates, Coinbase’s Abu Dhabi hub:

• ADGM and FSRA: arranging investment deals and custody for tokenized securities.
• Dubai and VARA: virtual-asset exchange and broker-dealer activity, including derivatives.

How Deribit fits into Coinbase’s trading infrastructure

Coinbase’s developer documentation says international derivatives are scheduled to move to a combined platform powered by Deribit and its Starbase matching engine on September 9, 2026. The documentation describes a new Deribit-powered gateway for international perpetuals and future derivatives products, while spot and U.S. futures remain on separate infrastructure.

That gives the integration a concrete technical dimension: Deribit’s derivatives technology and liquidity are being connected more closely to Coinbase’s international distribution. The available sources do not establish a final public design for routing spot orders between the two businesses, so claims about a specific Coinbase Exchange spot-order flow should be treated as a planned or unresolved feature rather than a confirmed capability.

The broader UAE digital-assets strategy

The two Coinbase-related developments fit a wider UAE effort to attract regulated digital-asset businesses and capital. ADGM and FSRA are being used as a base for international financial-market infrastructure and tokenized securities, while Dubai’s VARA framework is built around the provision, use, and exchange of virtual assets in the emirate.

The scale of local financial interest was highlighted in March 2025, when Abu Dhabi-backed investment group MGX announced a $2 billion minority investment in Binance. The deal was described as Binance’s first institutional investment and was made using stablecoins, according to Reuters.

That context helps explain why Coinbase’s UAE approvals matter beyond the individual licences. The UAE is competing to become a venue where digital-asset exchanges, institutional capital, tokenized securities, and blockchain-based market infrastructure can operate within formal regulatory regimes.

What Coinbase has not disclosed yet

The approvals are important regulatory foundations, but they do not answer several questions investors and market participants will need resolved before the tokenization hub becomes a usable public product:

• Which equities, issuers, or other securities will launch first.
• Whether each token represents direct legal ownership, a beneficial interest, or another claim on the underlying security.
• Which blockchain, token standard, wallet providers, and custodians will support the product.
• Whether transfers will be permissioned and how interoperability will work.
• The launch date, pricing, minimum investment, settlement currency, and liquidity arrangements.
• Which retail, institutional, UAE, U.S., or other international investors will be eligible.
• How dividends, votes, corporate actions, redemption, and conversion into conventional securities will work.

Until those details are published, the most defensible conclusion is measured: Coinbase has secured permission to build the regulated infrastructure for tokenized securities in Abu Dhabi, while Deribit has a Dubai licence for virtual-asset exchange and derivatives activity. The UAE footprint is strategically significant, but the investor experience will depend on the product terms that come next.