Bybit Announces a Dubai Spot Licence, VARA's Register Shows an IPA

Bybit said on Thursday that its Dubai entity holds a licence from the emirate's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to run an exchange, with a scope covering spot trading. The announcement went out as a company release at 07:17 UTC and was carried through the morning by GCC Business News, FX News Group and Bloomingbit. VARA's own public register says something narrower. Checked at the time of writing, the entry for Bybit Fintech FZE shows an in-principle approval, reference IPA/24/08/001, issued on 21 August 2024, against exactly the activity the company now says it is licensed for. The two records do not reconcile.

What an in-principle approval is not

VARA describes an in-principle approval as the stage it grants an applicant so the firm can finalise any remaining requirements of a VASP application. On the Bybit entry the licensed activity reads exchange services and the status field reads issued, with a CMA registration number, CMA-VASP-1000000-0006, alongside. FinanceFeeds checked the same page on Thursday and published at 09:43 UTC, noting VARA's position that holders of an in-principle approval cannot begin operations or serve clients until the full licence is granted. It stopped short of calling the announcement wrong. Nothing read here establishes whether the register lags a decision taken this week or whether the grant has yet to happen.

The company's version

Bybit's release names the entity, the regulator and the scope, and leaves out the two details that would settle the question: a licence number and an issue date. Neither of the news accounts carrying the grant supplies them either. The release puts the company above 80 million users worldwide, a figure no outside source read here confirms, and dates its international headquarters in Dubai to 2022.

"A healthy digital asset market needs strong oversight, sound risk management and a commitment to protecting users," Peter Loo, Bybit's chief legal and compliance officer, said.

Loo also wants derivatives added later, and every account agrees they sit outside the announced scope. His wording moves between outlets. FX News Group has him saying Bybit hopes "in time" to expand its licensed activities to include derivatives; GCC Business News reports him calling derivatives a major part of the company's global trading business. Co-founder and chief executive Ben Zhou said Dubai "has made significant progress in building a regulatory environment for virtual assets". No VARA official is named or quoted in any account read here, and the regulator has published nothing of its own on the matter.

Dubai has been handing out the full thing

The distinction carries weight because other firms cleared the last stage recently with paperwork attached. Kraken's Dubai arm reached full market approval this month, and Flowdesk took a full broker-dealer licence before that. Bybit's path in the emirate has run through provisional steps instead. Finance Magnates reported in June 2023 that the company held an in-principle approval from 2022 and had just taken a preparatory licence that did not permit crypto trading. That account is three years old. The 2024 approval is the one still sitting on the register, and FinanceFeeds notes it was also described as non-operational at the time.

What would close the gap

The fix is small and public. VARA moving the Bybit Fintech FZE entry from an in-principle approval to a VASP licence, with a number and a date, would settle it in a line. Until that happens the licence rests on the company's announcement and on four accounts that repeat it. Bybit has given no launch date for regulated spot trading in Dubai, no figure for its UAE client base, and no indication of when dirham pairs might follow. The five other approvals it cites for 2026, across the European Union, the Cayman Islands, Indonesia, South Africa and El Salvador, involve different entities under different frameworks, by FinanceFeeds's reading. That qualification comes from one outlet, and the others simply list the five.