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The Dubai government approved a new virtual assets law and established the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).  VARA will operate as an affiliated agency of the Dubai World Trade Center and will focus on compliance and disclosures of virtual asset service providers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The new agency will also handle the UAE's crypto licensing regime. These crypto licenses will only be given to firms that establish a business presence in the UAE.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has launched a tokenization sandbox. The DFSA is the regulator for the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC). Applicants could be involved in the issuance, trading, holding, or settlement of tokenized assets. Cryptocurrencies are excluded along with stablecoins. The financial instruments that are tokenized should be similar to conventional securities including equities, bonds, sukuk and collective investment fund units. Tokenization rules were introduced in the DIFC in 2021. They support trading by consumers without intermediaries but access must be permissioned, although this doesn't necessarily rule out the use of a public blockchain.

The Dubai Land Department, the real estate arm of the Executive Council of Dubai, has partnered with UAE-based Mashreq Bank to release a blockchain-based mortgage platform.

Dubai Economy launched its Unified Payments Network, an inclusive platform that will bring together all payment service providers, and unbanked as well as underbanked merchants, to facilitate cashless transactions. The platform is a subsidiary of the flagship 'EngageDXB' initiative of Dubai Economy to promote engagement between the private and public sectors, and aims to empower the existing players in the payment ecosystem to accelerate the transition towards a cashless society.

Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) has issued new guidelines for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) operating within the emirate. VARA's "Full Market Product Regulations" include four compulsory rulebooks and activity-specific rulebooks that lay down the rules for operating VASPs. The rules excluding those operating under the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a free zone with its own regulator. https://www.vara.ae/en/#0

A new partnership between the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Mashreq Bank and fintech firm Norbloc aims to launch a blockchain-based Know Your Customer (KYC) data-sharing consortium in 2020.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority and the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier Luxembourg, entered into an agreement to cooperate in the development of FinTech.

In the UAE, Dubai SME has allocated AED20 million "for the capital guarantee scheme launched by its financial arm, The Mohammed Bin Rashid Fund (The Fund), in partnership with Beehive, the first regulated peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region."

Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) and Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) published updates to their crypto regulations. VARA updated its virtual asset rulebook and added new fiat-referenced virtual asset (FRVA) (or fiat-referenced stablecoin) regulations. VARAs exclude stablecoins pegged to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dirham, which will remain under Central bank of the UAE regulation, and crypto-assets that reference central bank equity claims, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), or tokenized bank deposits for interbank settlement purposes. [Read more at VARA] DIFC proposed a new securities digital asset law in a new consultation paper.

Dubai-based fintech company Wethaq has entered into a strategic partnership with enterprise software firm R3, in order to create a platform for issuing and trading sukuk securities based on R3's Corda offering.

The Dubai International Financial Center and Mashreq Bank launched a blockchain-based data-sharing platform that will facilitate faster and easier know-your-customer processes that will allow licensed businesses and corporates opening digital bank accounts instantly.

Dubai International Financial Centre signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tribe Accelerator, the first Singapore government supported Blockchain accelerator, to collaborate on knowledge sharing and to partner during joint events.

Bankable, the global provider of "Banking as a Service" solutions, and Visa today announced a strategic collaboration within the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Bankable aims to work with Visa to accelerate the digital capabilities of financial institutions', build and launch digital banks, reduce cash usage and increase Fintech sponsorship in CEMEA.

The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) has granted Binance's registration to provide crypto-related services in the country. Binance said it would "significantly scale" its operations in France following the registration approval, and planned to expand its team "to pursue further infrastructure development." Binance's had already obtained in-principle approval to operate in Abu Dhabi in April. In March, regulators in the Middle East also gave the green light for the exchange to provide services in Bahrain and Dubai.

Multi-signature wallet provider Safe said that February 2025's $1.4 billion Ethereum heist from Dubai-based centralized exchange Bybit stemmed from a compromised developer laptop. The investigation's key findings highlighted a high-level Safe developer's workstation being compromised on February 4 when it interacted with a malicious docker project, or lightweight application. From there, the hackers were able to bypass multi-factor authentication on Safe's Amazon Web Services account, "hijacking" active AWS session tokens to do so. A Wayback Machine snapshot shows that two weeks after the initial compromise, malicious JavaScript was inserted on the Safe website, leading to the Bybit exploit on February 21.