Deribit Secures Dubai Broker-Dealer License via Coinbase

Deribit, the derivatives exchange Coinbase acquired for $2.9 billion, secured a Broker-Dealer Licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) last week, routing its spot orders directly into Coinbase’s liquidity.

It also sets up an expansion well beyond Deribit’s historical focus (i.e. bitcoin and ether derivatives), with the new integration expected to eventually bring hundreds of additional assets onto the platform. Customer funds can stay parked in Deribit’s own ecosystem even as they serve as collateral for derivatives trading.

This is Deribit’s second regulatory approval from VARA in under two years. The exchange became the first crypto derivatives platform to win VARA’s blessing when it set up its global headquarters in Dubai at the start of 2025, and it had already been offering spot trading under a separate VARA Exchange Services licence since January of that year.

At the time the deal closed, Deribit had posted $185 billion in monthly trading volume and carried roughly $60 billion in open interest, numbers that made it the clear prize in a derivatives market Coinbase had been trying to break into for years.

That said, the integration doesn’t change how Deribit’s U.S.-facing business operates, since the VARA license is specific to Dubai-regulated activity. But it does signal where Coinbase sees its near-term growth, i.e. not in new U.S. approvals, which remain slow and politically contested, but in stacking regulatory wins in jurisdictions like the UAE that have already built out clear licensing frameworks for digital assets.

Every additional Deribit customer routed through Coinbase’s liquidity also strengthens Coinbase’s own trading volume numbers, a metric investors watch closely as the company reports quarterly derivatives growth alongside its more mature spot business.