Overview
- Coinbase announced the move on Wednesday after receiving a Financial Services Permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s FSRA to build an international tokenization hub in the emirate.
- The permission allows Coinbase to arrange investment transactions and provide custody for tokenized securities, meaning it can hold and manage on‑chain records that represent underlying shares.
- The hub will let verified investors hold share‑backed digital securities in wallets without requiring a traditional brokerage account, with transfers subject to sanctions screening and wallet‑level freezing when required.
- Coinbase’s Abu Dhabi hub is part of its broader UAE expansion that includes Project Diamond in Abu Dhabi and plans for a derivatives presence in Dubai, positioning the company as an institutional tokenization provider.
- The move plugs into a wider UAE and GCC push to build regulated tokenization infrastructure that some analysts say could represent roughly $500 billion by 2030, but no specific token products or technical protocols have been disclosed yet.