How to Buy Cryptocurrencies in the UAE

How to Buy Cryptocurrencies in the UAE

The cryptocurrency market has had a wild year. Market capitalization jumped 750% between January 2020 and February 2021 to reach an all-time high of US$1.7 trillion. In this timeframe, the price of bitcoin surged more than 600% to surpass 57,000 USD/BTC on February 22, 2021.

The current market rally has led to renewed interest in cryptocurrencies, a trend that comes on the back of favorable regulatory endorsements and large institutional investments coming in from names like Testa, MicroStrategy and Square. Swiss tech firm SNGLR Group estimates that institutional investors have poured at least US$26 billion into bitcoin over the past eight months.

Against this backdrop, regulators and government agencies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are now multiplying initiatives to embrace tokenization and blockchain, unveiling a major move in January 2021 that could potentially see the introduction of a licensing regime for companies in the field.

In January 2021, the UAE Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR UAE) signed a partnership with Dubai International Financial Centre Authority (DIFC) and Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) to launch a testbed for fintech companies to develop and test the tokenization of digital assets through the use of blockchain technology.

The project will provide a controlled regulatory