Dubai has become the first jurisdiction in the world to issue formal guidance on the creation, disclosure, and distribution of digital assets in a licensed regulatory environment. This makes Dubai the leading authority worldwide in the realm of crypto regulation according to the emirate’s regulator.
On April 9, 2026, Dubai’s crypto regulator, the Vritual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) released its Guidance on the Virtual Asset Issuance Rulebook. The handbook has been created keeping with VARA’s VA Issuance Rulebook. Further, it gives clarity to market participants with practical examples of how the issuance regime applies to different asset classes and types of issuers.
What the Guidance actually covers
The framework divides virtual asset issuances into three clearly defined categories. Category 1 applies to Fiat-Referenced Virtual Assets (FRVAs), essentially stablecoins, and a newly formalized class called Asset-Referenced Virtual Assets (ARVAs), which covers any token that directly or indirectly represents ownership of a real-world asset such as gold, real estate, or a commodity. Both require a VARA licence and prior regulatory approval before any issuance or distribution can proceed.
Category 2 captures every token that is neither a Category 1 asset nor a formally exempt one, utility tokens, NFTs, DAO governance tokens, and similar instruments. These do not require prior VARA approval, but they cannot be distributed directly by the issuer.
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All Category 2 placements must go through a VARA-licensed distributor, who carries ongoing responsibility for ensuring the issuer is compliant with the Rulebook. That is a meaningful shift: it decouples issuance permission from distribution accountability, and it puts licensed professionals on the hook for due diligence rather than placing the burden entirely on the regulator.
Exempt Virtual Assets, non-transferable tokens and closed-loop redeemable tokens, fall outside the licensing scope entirely, on the basis that they cannot circulate in open markets or be speculated upon.
At the core of the framework is a disclosure-first philosophy. Every issuer, outside of the Exempt category, must publish both a Whitepaper and a Risk Disclosure Statement. VARA is explicit that these documents must be clear, accurate, and accessible to prospective users, not legal boilerplate designed to obscure. The intent is to enable informed decision-making before any token reaches the market.
The people behind the announcement
Matthew White, Chief Executive Officer of VARA, framed the publication in direct terms: “Clear issuance standards are fundamental to building resilient and transparent Virtual Asset markets. This Guidance provides practical clarity on how VARA’s framework applies across different issuance models, ensuring that innovation is supported by strong governance, robust disclosures, and accountable market practices.”
VARA General Counsel Ruben Bombardi added: “Trust is built through clarity, and clarity begins with disclosure.” Both statements signal that this is less a bureaucratic milestone and more a deliberate positioning play, Dubai is building regulatory infrastructure that it explicitly wants the rest of the world to follow.
VARA has also been clear that compliance with the Guidance does not constitute regulatory endorsement of any virtual asset, issuer, or distribution activity. The distinction matters: market participants carry full responsibility for assessing the risks of virtual assets regardless of whether they have followed the framework to the letter.
This is bigger than one rulebook update
The issuance Guidance sits inside a broader regulatory push that VARA has been executing with increasing pace through 2025 and into 2026. The authority first issued Version 2.0 of its complete Rulebook framework in May 2025, introducing stricter token issuance rules, margin trading regulations, and a new Sponsored VASPs operating model. That update took effect on June 19, 2025, following a 30-day transition period.
More recently, on March 31, 2026, VARA published Version 2.1 of its Exchange Services Rulebook, the first purpose-built regulatory framework for Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETDs) in virtual assets globally.
That update introduced a 5:1 leverage cap for retail investors in exchange-traded derivatives, binding requirements for margin controls, asset segregation, and Insurance Fund structures, and a full governance architecture for any VARA-licensed exchange seeking to operate a derivatives venue. Ruben Bombardi called that framework “a natural next step” for virtual asset markets, noting that derivatives “require a higher standard of governance.”
The April 9 issuance Guidance is the next piece of the same architecture, each addition closing gaps that have allowed ambiguity to persist, from how tokens launch to how they trade once they are live.
How the market and industry are responding
Industry lawyers operating in the Dubai market on X have noted that the governance and risk standards now embedded in VARA’s rulebook suite align closely with what traditional capital markets regulators expect from licensed operators. That alignment is deliberate: VARA wants the framework to be legible to institutional investors and conventional financial firms, not just crypto-native participants.
By March 2026, VARA had granted operating licenses to more than 85 companies in the digital asset sector across Dubai. The issuance Guidance adds another layer of certainty for the international firms in that growing cohort, and for any global issuer evaluating Dubai as a launch jurisdiction.
Dubai’s play for the global regulatory standard
The significance of being first is not ceremonial. Other jurisdictions are still trying to classify digital assets at the base level. The EU’s MiCA framework, the most comprehensive crypto regulatory effort outside Dubai to date, addresses markets in crypto assets but does not provide the same granular, operationally specific guidance on the issuance lifecycle that VARA has now established. Singapore’s Monetary Authority has a licensing regime but no equivalent issuance-specific rulebook with this level of category specificity.
Dubai’s approach has consistently been to build the regulation first and then invite the market in, a policy-first model that the UAE government has backed at the federal level through coordination between VARA, the Securities and Commodities Authority, and the UAE Central Bank.
Between July 2023 and June 2024 alone, the UAE recorded more than 0 billion in crypto inflows, with institutional transactions growing 55% year-over-year, according to publicly available data from the period. The regulatory architecture that VARA is building is the infrastructure underneath those numbers.
The Virtual Assets Issuance Rulebook Guidance is available directly at rulebooks.vara.ae. The publication forms part of VARA’s ongoing engagement with industry stakeholders as it works to cement Dubai’s position as the reference jurisdiction for virtual asset regulation worldwide.
