Bybit has received a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), allowing its local entity, Bybit Fintech FZE, to offer spot trading in the emirate where it has kept its international headquarters since 2022, the company announced Thursday.
VARA's public register lists the licence as active and covering Exchange Services only. Its conditions permit Bybit to serve institutional, qualified and retail investors.
The full licence follows two earlier, non-operational approvals. Bybit received a preliminary minimum viable product licence from VARA in June 2023, which did not allow it to offer trading, and a provisional licence in September 2024 that was likewise non-operational. That left the exchange based in Dubai but unable to serve Dubai customers on a fully licensed basis for more than three years.
The scope of the licence matters as much as the approval itself. Bybit built its business on perpetual futures and other derivatives, and spot trading alone covers only part of what it offers elsewhere. Peter Loo, Bybit's chief legal and compliance officer, said the company hopes "in time" to add derivatives, subject to regulatory approval, describing them as "a major part of Bybit's global trading business." Bybit gave no timeline for that application.
Bybit also arrives after several of its largest competitors. The VARA register shows Binance FZE licensed since April 2024 with exchange services that include virtual asset derivatives, alongside active licences for OKX, Crypto.com, Deribit, Gate and HashKey, among others.
"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," said Ben Zhou, Bybit's co-founder and CEO.
The company said the Dubai licence adds to five licences and regulatory approvals it has obtained in 2026 across the European Union, the Cayman Islands, Indonesia, South Africa and El Salvador. The Dubai approval comes 20 months after hackers stole about $1.5 billion in virtual assets from Bybit in a theft the FBI attributed to North Korea.
The next milestone to watch is whether VARA extends the licence to derivatives, which would put Bybit's Dubai offering on a par with Binance's.