Coinbase gets ADGM license to issue tokenized equities
Coinbase has received a Financial Services Permission (FSP) from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), clearing the exchange to arrange investment deals and provide custody ahead of launching tokenized securities, The Defiant reports. The Defiant reports the permission establishes Coinbase’s international tokenization hub inside ADGM, the international financial centre of Abu Dhabi The Defiant.
For retail and institutional holders, the structure removes the brokerage account and correspondent banking relationship that normally gate equity access. Tokenized securities issued in ADGM will be backed 1:1 by the underlying shares under FSRA supervision, and verified holders receive shareholder rights including dividends and voting, The Defiant reports. All an investor needs is a wallet.
Those rights come with hard controls. Every transfer is subject to ongoing sanctions screening, and Coinbase said it can freeze or seize assets at the wallet level where required, so DeFi composability and regulatory enforcement are not treated as opposites The Defiant. The company frames the license as a step toward broader access, estimating that 4 billion people worldwide cannot reach capital markets — a figure Coinbase stated without citing an external source The Defiant.
The fine print narrows who actually benefits. Only “Vested Holders” may exercise voting rights over the underlying shares or qualify for redemption, and dividends are automatically reinvested rather than paid out. Coinbase’s tokenization product page still lists the service as “coming soon,” with no launch date, no named equities, and no identified Coinbase entity holding the permission Coinbase Tokenize.
Coinbase has been building in the Gulf since December 2023, when its Project Diamond smart-contract platform on Base entered the FSRA’s RegLab sandbox. It is also standing up a global derivatives hub in Dubai, where it closed the Deribit acquisition in August 2025; at the time, that options venue carried roughly $60 billion in open interest The Defiant.
Tokenized public equities are already a $2.49 billion market, up 11.77% over 30 days with 1.13 million holders and $21.5 billion in monthly transfer volume, per rwa.xyz data cited by The Defiant. Coinbase is not the only issuer under ADGM rules, and the crowded field will test whether a regulated, wallet-based equity really widens access or simply relayers existing demand.
The move extends a broader Coinbase push into tokenized finance, following its ACATS, tokenized stocks, and AI advisor rollout on the platform. For readers, the practical takeaway is patience: the license is real, but the investable product is not yet live, and the weakest protections — redemption and voting — still depend on a brokerage or bank account behind the wallet.
