Coinbase Sets Up Tokenization Hub in Abu Dhabi
Coinbase has established a tokenization hub in Abu Dhabi after receiving permission from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority to operate within the Abu Dhabi Global Market. The move puts Coinbase at the center of the growing race to bring traditional financial assets onto blockchain infrastructure. Abu Dhabi is increasingly positioning itself as a global hub for digital assets, making the region a strategic base for Coinbase’s institutional ambitions. The tokenization push also signals a broader shift in crypto, with major platforms moving beyond trading and toward infrastructure for tokenized securities and other real-world assets. By combining regulatory approval with a dedicated tokenization operation, Coinbase is strengthening its position at the intersection of crypto and traditional finance. The development could help accelerate institutional adoption of blockchain-based markets while giving Abu Dhabi another major digital-asset player in its financial ecosystem.
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Tokenised Assets
Key findings of the report include:
Classification of assets and tokenisation approaches
• Tokenised assets exist along a spectrum of design choices. These choices relate to ledger architecture, issuance pathway, custody arrangements, as well as the extent to which lifecycle functions move on-chain, the openness of the underlying network and the distribution channels through which instruments are accessed.
• Classification of tokenised assets requires a multi-dimensional assessment, including an assessment of the underlying asset, the rights attached to the token, the issuance pathway, the custody model, the ledger design and the settlement mechanism.
• While there are different ways in which tokenised arrangements can be structured, four main tokenisation approaches currently dominate markets: native issuance, custodial, collateralised and synthetic structures.
Opportunities and value proposition
• The value proposition of tokenisation derives less from fractionalisation, a key enabler in Advanced Economies (AEs), than from its potential to reduce the administrative costs of small denomination offerings, automate compliance and servicing, improve post-trade processes, support more continuous secondarymarket activity and enable composability across platforms.
• A pronounced perception gap exists between industry and regulators: market participants report high levels of strategic priority (4.5/5) and organisational readiness (4.4/5) for tokenisation. However, regulators assess market activity as significantly lower (2.1/5), despite assigning it a relatively high strategic importance (3.9/5).
• Broadening of access to capital is a primary adoption driver for EMDE market participants. Regulators view tokenisation through a financial sovereignty lens, seeking to retain domestic capital from offshore platforms and foreign-denominated instruments. Bringing these together provides an important opportunity.
• A minimum viable ecosystem for scaled adoption comprises appropriate regulatory frameworks, credible settlement infrastructure, mature DPI enablers, the availability of industry functions across the tokenisation lifecycle, and secondary-market and redemption arrangements.
• The asset classes deemed most likely to scale first are those characterised by illiquidity, high intermediation costs and fragmented infrastructure, particularly real estate, public securities, fixed income instruments and commodities
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