Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) has licensed Bybit Fintech FZE for exchange services, according to the regulator’s public register. The licence was issued on 20 Oct, is listed as active, and permits the firm to serve retail as well as qualified and institutional investors. VARA oversees virtual assets across Dubai’s mainland and free zones, except the DIFC financial centre.
Bybit announced the licence on Thursday and said it covers spot trading, where coins change hands outright rather than through leveraged contracts.
“Dubai has made significant progress in building a regulatory environment for virtual assets, and we are pleased to take this next step in our journey here.”
Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO, Bybit
The licence does not mean Dubai customers can trade today. A Bybit spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company must still complete VARA’s launch process and meet operational requirements, and gave no launch date. The firm’s earlier in-principle approval from VARA was non-operational and did not allow it to serve customers in Dubai, the spokesperson said.
Compared with what?
Bybit already holds a licence from the UAE’s federal Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), granted in October 2025, Cointelegraph reported. But the SCA-licensed entity’s service terms exclude Dubai, which has its own regulator. The spokesperson declined to say how the two licences differ.
Dubai’s two rulebooks have been busy this month. On Thursday, Robinhood’s DFSA licence in the DIFC put a US broker inside the financial centre’s separate regime, with a launch planned for 2027. Last week, Standard Chartered’s VARA-approved crypto trading for UAE clients showed a bank taking the VARA route.
Derivatives are the gap. Bybit’s chief legal and compliance officer, Peter Loo, said in the release that the firm hopes “in time” to add derivatives, “subject to the necessary regulatory approvals,” calling them “a major part of Bybit’s global trading business.”
Risks: a licence governs how an exchange is supervised, not what happens to the price of what customers buy. Users of any exchange also leave their coins in its custody, a trade-off explained in what a crypto custodian does.
What to watch: VARA’s launch sign-off, Bybit’s fees and onboarding terms for Dubai residents, and any application to add derivatives.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.