Coinbase has received a Financial Services Permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, clearing the way for the company to establish an international hub for tokenized securities and on-chain capital markets in the UAE capital.
The authorization permits Coinbase to arrange investment deals and provide custody services connected to tokenized securities issued and registered in ADGM. It gives the company a regulated base in one of the Middle East’s most established virtual-asset jurisdictions, where the FSRA has developed rules for digital assets since 2018.
Coinbase said the planned structure would link each ADGM-issued and ADGM-registered token to underlying shares supervised by the FSRA. Holders would be able to verify ownership and receive the shareholder rights attached to those shares, including dividends and voting rights.
That design places the proposed products closer to conventional securities than many earlier tokenization experiments, which have often focused on giving users blockchain-based exposure to an asset without necessarily carrying the full legal and economic rights of ownership. Under the framework described by Coinbase, the token would function as the digital representation of a regulated shareholding rather than simply a tradeable proxy.
Permission covers tokenized securities custody and deal arranging
The FSRA permission covers two core activities: arranging investment deals and providing custody. Arranging deals would allow Coinbase to facilitate transactions involving the tokenized securities, while custody would cover the safeguarding of assets associated with the service.
Custody is especially consequential for tokenized securities because the underlying product combines blockchain settlement with securities-law obligations. A platform handling such assets must be able to record ownership, administer transfers, and respond to legal orders while preserving the rights associated with the underlying shares.
Coinbase said transfers would remain subject to ongoing sanctions screening. The platform would also have the ability to freeze or seize assets at the digital-wallet level when required. Those controls indicate that access to the proposed market would operate within a permissioned regulatory framework, rather than through unrestricted transfers between any blockchain addresses.
The company described a digital wallet as the primary operational requirement for users. Its release said participation would not require a conventional brokerage account or a correspondent banking relationship, the banking arrangement commonly used to connect institutions across borders.
That approach could reduce some of the administrative layers that have traditionally limited cross-border securities participation. It would not remove the compliance conditions tied to regulated financial products: wallet activity, transfers and custody would remain within the controls required by the ADGM framework.
Shareholder rights move on-chain
Coinbase’s proposal focuses on tokenizing shares while retaining familiar shareholder rights. The company said token holders would be able to receive dividends and vote, suggesting the platform intends to connect blockchain records with the corporate actions that normally flow through brokers, custodians and central securities infrastructure.
The practical challenge will be ensuring that the legal shareholder register, token ownership record and corporate-action process remain aligned. In conventional markets, those functions are often split across issuers, transfer agents, brokers, custodians and clearing systems. A tokenized model can combine parts of that process through digital infrastructure, but it also concentrates the need for reliable identity checks, asset controls and recordkeeping.
Coinbase Institutional co-CEO Tejpaul said ADGM was among the first jurisdictions to introduce a virtual-asset regulatory framework in 2018. He said the regime addresses tokenized equity simultaneously as a security, a blockchain-native token and an asset that may be used in decentralized-finance applications.
That combination is central to the appeal of tokenized securities, but it also creates a more demanding regulatory task than tokenizing a simple payment instrument. The asset must retain the protections and obligations of a security while remaining capable of moving through blockchain-based systems.
Abu Dhabi expands its capital-markets role
ADGM Head of Market Development Ramamurthy said the hub reflected Abu Dhabi’s growing position in global finance and described tokenization as an increasingly common component of capital-markets infrastructure. The comment places Coinbase’s approval within the emirate’s effort to attract financial firms building regulated digital-asset services.
Coinbase said four billion people worldwide lack access to capital markets, citing participation costs and limited access routes as barriers. The figure frames its case for a wallet-based model, although opening access will depend on which users and jurisdictions are permitted to use the eventual service, as well as the securities available through it.
The authorization also forms part of Coinbase’s broader UAE strategy. The company described two international businesses outside the United States: an Abu Dhabi hub for tokenized securities and on-chain capital markets, and a global derivatives hub in Dubai.
Those operations would give Coinbase separate regional platforms for cash-market securities activity and derivatives, two areas that face distinct licensing, risk-management and market-surveillance requirements. The Abu Dhabi permission provides the regulatory foundation for the tokenization side of that plan, while its custody and transaction-arranging scope suggests Coinbase is positioning to participate in the full operating chain around regulated digital securities.
For ADGM, the approval adds a large international cryptocurrency company to a market that has sought to distinguish itself through detailed rules for virtual assets and financial services. For Coinbase, it offers a jurisdiction where its tokenized-securities ambitions can be built around an existing regulator rather than around an untested legal structure.
Explore how tokenized stocks work in practice—dive into our guide on tokenized equities and how they work.
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