Coinbase has received regulatory approval from Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) to establish its international tokenisation hub in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). The Financial Services Permission covers arranging deals in investments and providing custody — the two activities required to issue and hold tokenised securities backed by real shares.
The securities will be registered and issued inside ADGM, fully backed by the underlying shares under FSRA supervision. Verified holders receive shareholder rights, including dividends — automatically reinvested — and voting, subject to the vesting conditions in each security’s prospectus.
The access model is the pitch. Buying, selling and transferring the tokens requires a crypto wallet and nothing else: no brokerage account, no correspondent banking relationship. Every transfer is screened against sanctions lists, and Coinbase can freeze or seize assets at the wallet level where regulators require it.
The footnote is on the way out. Converting tokens back into the underlying shares or their cash equivalent requires a qualifying brokerage or bank account, per the prospectus terms. Coinbase’s framing is that 4 billion people cannot access capital markets today; on this model, they still need a bank to leave them.
The first instrument is the Apple CB Certificate, a tokenised certificate over AAPL shares whose prospectus the FSRA approved on 4 August. Coinbase has not announced a launch date, and the product is aimed at eligible non-US investors.
What the Abu Dhabi hub means for the UAE
The licence applies within the ADGM free zone. It does not passport into Dubai, where virtual assets sit under the separate VARA regime, or the mainland. Coinbase is running two global builds in the UAE at once: the Abu Dhabi tokenisation hub and a derivatives hub in Dubai, where its international exchange has operated under a VARA licence since October 2025.
ADGM’s virtual-asset framework dates to 2018, and a March 2026 guidance update explicitly covers tokenised securities and DeFi, including a licence category for DeFi protocol operators. That combination is what Brett Tejpaul, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, says no other major financial centre offers:
“No major financial center has yet built a framework that treats tokenized equities simultaneously as securities, blockchain-native tokens, and DeFi-composable assets.”
The gap is measurable. Only about $2.47bn of the $30bn-plus tokenised real-world-asset market sits inside DeFi protocols, because compliance and composability have mostly been treated as mutually exclusive. ADGM’s framework — and this licence — is the attempt to end the trade-off.
“Coinbase’s establishment of its international tokenisation hub in ADGM is a strong endorsement of Abu Dhabi’s growing role in shaping the future of global finance,” said Arvind Ramamurthy, ADGM’s chief market development officer.
The hub joins a growing stack of tokenisation and crypto infrastructure in the UAE, from Dubai’s $150m film-IP tokenisation fund to crypto access inside Botim’s app. Binance took a full suite of ADGM licences in December, and Mubadala Capital tokenised a private-markets fund across blockchains including Base in July. Coinbase is the first major US exchange to build inside ADGM’s framework — the first live jurisdiction where tokenised equities count as securities, blockchain tokens and DeFi collateral at the same time.
What does Coinbase’s new Abu Dhabi licence allow?
The FSRA’s Financial Services Permission covers arranging deals in investments and providing custody. That is the regulatory base for issuing and holding tokenised securities — backed by real shares — inside the Abu Dhabi Global Market.
Do I need a brokerage account to buy tokenised stocks through the Abu Dhabi hub?
For buying, selling and transferring the digital securities, no — a crypto wallet is the only requirement. Converting tokens back into the underlying shares or their cash equivalent still requires a qualifying brokerage or bank account.
What is the first tokenised product, and who can buy it?
The Apple CB Certificate, a tokenised certificate over AAPL shares whose prospectus the FSRA approved on 4 August 2026. Coinbase has not set a launch date, and the hub is aimed at eligible non-US investors in approved jurisdictions.
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