Bybit Secures Active Dubai Spot Trading License From VARA, Register Shows June 20 Issue

Active License on VARA's Register

Bybit announced on Thursday, October 22, 2026, that Bybit Fintech FZE, the exchange's Dubai-registered entity, has secured a full Virtual Asset Service Provider license from the emirate's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, the regulator known as VARA. The authorization sits under the Exchange Services category and covers spot trading of virtual assets. It does not extend to derivatives. VARA's public register now shows the license with the status Active under reference VL/26/10/003, and we reviewed that entry on Friday morning: it permits the firm to serve retail, qualified and institutional investors. The register also carries an issue date of June 20, 2026, a detail the company's own release did not mention.

The active record closes out a two-stage licensing path. A September 2024 capture of the same register showed a license of the identical type and activity under a different reference number, issued August 21, 2024, with its status marked Pending. At that point Bybit described the stage as a provisional, non-operational approval, a status that let it prepare for the Dubai market without serving clients. VARA supervises virtual asset firms across Dubai's mainland and free zones, with the Dubai International Financial Centre excluded from its remit. Under the regulator's framework, activities such as brokering, custody and exchange operation are treated as separate licensed categories, so an Exchange Services grant does not automatically unlock other product lines. Bybit, which says it serves more than 80 million users worldwide, moved its international headquarters to Dubai in 2022 and has worked with local blockchain and Web3 ventures since. The register entry, in short, converts a placeholder into a tradable permission, for spot markets only.

Derivatives Remain Outside the Permit

Derivatives are the sharpest limit in the grant. Bybit's global trading business leans heavily on perpetual futures and other leveraged products, instruments whose depth depends on active market maker participation, and none of that activity is covered in Dubai yet. Chief legal and compliance officer Peter Loo said the company hopes “to expand our licensed activities to include derivatives, subject to the necessary regulatory approvals,” adding in the release that derivatives are a major part of the platform's worldwide trading volume. The company gave no timeline for that application, so Dubai users should not read this announcement as access to the exchange's full product shelf.

Co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou framed the license as “this next step in our journey here,” crediting the emirate's regulatory framework for virtual assets. The approval is also one piece of a broader 2026 push: the exchange says it has collected five other licenses or regulatory approvals this year across the European Union, Indonesia, South Africa, El Salvador and the Cayman Islands, a tally Zhou highlighted in an October keynote. These approvals carry different activity scopes and legal conditions, so the Dubai grant should be judged on its own terms. Last month the platform began accepting shares of a Franklin Templeton tokenized money market fund as off-exchange collateral, another step in building out an institutional offering. For readers opening an account on the venue for the first time, our How to Sign Up for Bybit guide walks through the process step by step.

The register itself tells the story a press release cannot: VARA licenses by activity, not by brand, so an exchange's Dubai shelf expands only as fast as its approvals do. That per-product structure explains why Bybit can describe the grant as full while its highest-volume products stay off-limits locally. Our reading is that the next meaningful checkpoint is a derivatives filing, and until one appears, licensed competition in the Gulf's busiest hub stays concentrated in spot, leaving leveraged traders to split between offshore platforms and the decentralized exchange model.