Coinbase establishes international tokenization hub in Abu Dhabi

Coinbase just planted its tokenization flag in the Middle East. The crypto exchange received a Financial Services Permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s regulatory authority, giving it the green light to build what it’s calling an international “tokenization hub” in the emirate. The license, granted by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM, allows Coinbase to arrange investment deals and provide custody services for tokenized securities. These aren’t speculative tokens with vague utility promises. They’re digital representations of actual shares, fully backed by underlying equities, with verified shareholder rights like dividends and, in some cases, voting rights. Why Abu Dhabi, and why now ADGM built its digital asset framework back in 2018, making it one of the earliest financial centers to formally regulate tokenized assets. That framework treats tokenized equities as securities, not some novel category that regulators have to squint at sideways. It also treats them as blockchain-native instruments, which means they exist comfortably in both the traditional finance and crypto worlds simultaneously. The UAE has been aggressively courting crypto firms. Coinbase is...