Abu Dhabi's international financial free zone with its own common-law courts and regulator (FSRA), known for early virtual-asset and fintech frameworks.
Binance's Bstocks tokenized equities passed $1 billion in assets under management on Oct. 15, about four months after the June 11 launch. The retail case rests on Binance's own usage data, and the reports do not include a holder count.
Reality
Large issuers led by Ondo, Kraken's xStocks and Binance bStocks hold about 81% of $2.93 billion in tokenized stocks via offshore SPVs, RWA.xyz data shows. A holder's claim runs to the vehicle and not to the company behind the share, so issuer, custodian and governing law become part of what the buyer owns.
Reality
The Responsible Fintech Institute has put NIST-standardized signing in front of supervisors from Abu Dhabi, Bhutan and Malta. The code that would let anyone check the work comes later.
Reality
Thoro Capital Management is targeting $300 million for dollar loans that settle in stablecoins, underwritten on borrowers' financial statements and covenants, with Hashed as anchor investor and regional partner.
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Coinbase's Layer-2 put four US megacaps onchain in August with about $4.5 million minted on day one under Abu Dhabi custody rules. It now wants outside teams to bring hard-to-reach local listings the same way.
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Coinbase reports $228 million of cumulative volume across ten equity tokens on Base, with one early day close to half that total. Alpaca holds the underlying shares under Abu Dhabi oversight, and Regulation S keeps US persons out.
Reality
The exchange took an ADGM permission to arrange deals and custody tokenized securities. That is real plumbing, but the case for the UAE as the default institutional base still rests on licence counts.
Reality
An ADGM permission to arrange deals and hold digital assets turns tokenization talk into a supervised product line. What is still missing is an issuer list and a date.
Reality