Coinbase wins ADGM licence to build tokenised securities hub in Abu Dhabi

Coinbase has received a Financial Services Permission from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), granting it the right to arrange investment deals and provide custody for tokenised securities from the emirate. Under the approval, the exchange intends to issue and register digital securities backed by underlying shares, structuring them simultaneously as regulated securities, blockchain-native tokens, and assets composable with decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols.

Brett Tejpaul, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, argued that no major financial centre has yet assembled a framework treating tokenised equities across all three of those categories at once, suggesting the ADGM approval is designed to fill that gap. ADGM has been building regulatory infrastructure for virtual assets since 2018, and this licence deepens Coinbase’s already-meaningful presence in the UAE, which also includes a derivatives operation in Dubai and Project Diamond, a 2023 initiative allowing institutional investors to issue and trade digital debt instruments over Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum-based network.

The timing follows Mubadala Capital, the asset management arm of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, tokenising one of its private-market strategies through UAE-based infrastructure provider KAIO on infrastructure that includes Base, with Coinbase taking direct exposure to that fund. Taken together, the Abu Dhabi hub, the Dubai derivatives business, and the sovereign-fund adjacency sketch a deliberate strategy to make the UAE a regulated offshore base for Coinbase’s institutional tokenisation ambitions.