On 11 August 2026 Coinbase — the largest US crypto exchange (Nasdaq: COIN) — received a Financial Services Permission (FSP) from FSRA and opened its international tokenisation hub inside the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) financial centre. The licence covers arranging deals in investments and providing custody services for tokenised securities. The first FSRA-approved product is Apple CB Certificates, issued via an SPV, fully backed by underlying Apple shares and passing the full shareholder rights package to the token holder.
What Coinbase actually launched
Coinbase received a Financial Services Permission (FSP) from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) — the regulator of ADGM — with two regulated activities in scope: arranging deals in investments and custody services, both applied to tokenised securities registered and issued inside ADGM.
That is the legal backbone for a new business line — an international tokenisation hub. Through the hub, Coinbase structures, issues and services tokenised equivalents of securities for institutional clients; custody and circulation sit under FSRA supervision inside ADGM.
Coinbase frames Abu Dhabi as a global venue for «tokenised securities and onchain capital markets». In parallel, the group is building a separate international operation in Dubai — a crypto derivatives hub under a different licence and a different regulatory contour. Through the UAE, Coinbase is building two of its most ambitious international business lines outside the US — institutional tokenisation in Abu Dhabi and derivatives in Dubai.
How it works: Apple CB Certificates and the SPV
The first FSRA-approved product is Apple CB Certificates. Technically these are tokenised certificates issued by a dedicated legal entity — Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd — which Coinbase incorporated in ADGM in June 2026 as a special purpose vehicle specifically for this launch.
Each certificate represents beneficial interests in Apple common stock. The underlying shares fully back the issuance and are registered and held in ADGM under FSRA supervision. The key difference from earlier tokenised instruments on the market: the token holder receives the full shareholder rights package — dividends are paid out and voting is preserved. All token transfers pass through ongoing sanctions screening on the issuer's side.
The construct is portable to other global equities — Apple is only the first assembly point under the ADGM regime. Economically it lets an institutional client obtain an onchain instrument that behaves like a share, not like a price derivative of one.
What Coinbase and ADGM said
Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, on the jurisdiction choice: «ADGM issued one of the world's first regulatory frameworks for virtual assets in 2018. That reflected a genuine institutional commitment to innovation-forward regulation». The choice of Abu Dhabi rests on an established, globally recognised virtual-assets regime that has been running since 2018.
Arvind Ramamurthy, Chief Market Development Officer at ADGM: «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».
Position inside ADGM and the licence's role
ADGM is an independent financial centre in Abu Dhabi with its own common-law jurisdiction and FSRA as regulator. In 2018 it published one of the world's first dedicated regulatory frameworks for virtual assets, and international crypto venues have been licensed through ADGM/FSRA since. Coinbase's entry into that contour is a qualitatively new step: not spot trading but institutional tokenisation of securities under FSRA supervision, with a direct legal link between the token and the underlying asset.
For Abu Dhabi's positioning as a regional and international financial hub the deal matters: the jurisdiction adds the largest US crypto player by market cap as an FSRA-domiciled operation serving institutional clients.
What it means for UAE businesses and investors
Three practical consequences.
1. A regulated local channel to tokenised global equities. UAE residents and institutional investors get a legal venue to work with tokenised equivalents of global securities — starting with Apple, with a broader issuer roster expected. The instrument is issued under FSRA, custody sits inside ADGM.
2. A full economic equivalent of the underlying share. Unlike earlier equity-linked crypto instruments — which were typically synthetic or price derivatives — Apple CB Certificates pass through the full shareholder package: dividends and voting. That removes the main trade-off of securities tokenisation and opens the instrument to conservative and institutional portfolios.
3. A deeper ADGM stack for crypto- and tokenisation-oriented businesses. Having a Coinbase-scale operator inside ADGM reinforces the jurisdiction as a venue for cryptocurrency and tokenised operations. For anyone building a fintech or crypto business in the UAE, that is another argument for the ADGM/FSRA contour; the parallel regulatory landscape in the other emirate is covered separately in our VARA crypto & fintech licence in Dubai guide. The wider macro backdrop of the UAE economy for 2026 is set out in our UAE economy 2026 outlook.
What comes next
The next few quarters will show: (1) how fast Coinbase expands the roster of tokenised issuers beyond Apple; (2) whether UAE and wider MENA institutional investors become early users of the platform; (3) how the Dubai derivatives operation develops and whether the two contours (ADGM tokenisation / Dubai derivatives) converge on a single client logic; (4) how neighbouring jurisdictions — VARA in Dubai, DIFC/DFSA, regulators in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain — respond.
This material is informational and does not constitute an investment recommendation or an offer to acquire Apple CB Certificates. Exact issuance terms, holder rights and access geography are set by the issuer's official documents and FSRA/ADGM regulatory acts.
