Coinbase has received regulatory approval in Abu Dhabi to offer tokenized securities, a step that lets the crypto exchange bring traditional stocks onto the blockchain outside the United States.
Tokenization is the process of turning ownership of a real-world asset, such as a share of company stock, into a digital token that can be held in a crypto wallet and moved across a blockchain network. In simple terms, instead of owning a stock certificate through a traditional brokerage, an investor holds a digital token that represents the same underlying share.
The approval came from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, a financial free zone with its own rules for digital assets.
“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, executed with the rigor that global financial markets require. No major financial center has yet built a framework that treats tokenized equities simultaneously as securities, blockchain-native tokens, and DeFi-composable assets.”
Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional.
It allows Coinbase to arrange investment deals and provide custody, meaning it can hold and safeguard these tokenized assets on behalf of clients. Coinbase is establishing Abu Dhabi as its international hub for this kind of business, describing the licence in a statement as a way to “bring global securities to anyone with a wallet.”
Under the structure, securities will be issued in Abu Dhabi and backed by real shares held in trust. Token holders who go through identity verification could receive the same economic benefits as traditional shareholders, including dividend payments, with voting rights possible depending on the terms of each offering. Coinbase has already filed paperwork for its first product: digital certificates linked to Apple stock, issued through a specially created entity called Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd.
This is not Coinbase’s only recent move into traditional securities. Five days before the Abu Dhabi announcement, the company launched UK stock trading through a separate approval from Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority. That UK product works differently: it uses a conventional brokerage structure, with a US-based custodian holding the actual shares and standard investor protections in place, rather than any blockchain element. Abu Dhabi’s tokenized model is a more experimental approach, offering blockchain-based ownership without a traditional brokerage account standing in the middle.
The approval places Coinbase alongside other firms already testing tokenized stock trading in Abu Dhabi’s regulatory zone, including Ondo Finance, which won permission earlier in 2026 to trade tokenized versions of major US stocks such as Amazon and Nvidia through a different platform. Coinbase has also asked US regulators for permission to offer tokenized shares domestically, though that process remains separate and unresolved.
Access is one of the biggest practical differences of tokenized securities from ordinary stock trading. Rather than opening an account with a traditional brokerage, eligible users would be able to participate through a digital wallet, the same kind of app crypto holders already use to store cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
That does not mean the system is open to anyone, however. Verification requirements still apply, and the approval does not automatically let Coinbase offer these Abu Dhabi-issued securities to customers in the United States, where separate securities laws and Securities and Exchange Commission oversight would apply to any similar domestic product.
