Early in the upcoming year, Abu Dhabi will see the launch of a digital equities brokerage service by cryptocurrency custody and trading startup Copper, the company announced on Wednesday.The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the emirate is collaborating with Copper Securities, the new company providing execution and custody services, to ensure that the required licenses are in place by the beginning of 2024.
The transfer has been made easier by Copper’s recent acquisition of Securrency Capital, an Abu Dhabi-based branch of the tokenization platform for cryptocurrencies that was not part of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s (DTCC) October acquisition of Securrency Inc.
Copper has joined the increasing number of cryptocurrency companies who are turning to the United Arab Emirates because it provides more legislative clarity for digital assets than many other countries.Referring to Abu Dhabi as “the capital of capital,” Copper CEO Dmitry Tokarev highlighted the region’s amassing of institutional wealth.
“Abu Dhabi is more institutional and more focused around asset management, and that’s exactly what Copper is; we only have institutional clients,” Tokarev said in an interview. “While there isn’t a huge retail market here, you will find all the big institutions, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds.”
The movement by banks and asset managers to tokenize traditional financial assets is causing a progressive convergence of blockchain technology and traditional financial (TradFi) plumbing.
Over the course of the upcoming year, Copper Securities expects to launch securities financing, lending, and payment apps in addition to providing automated processing of corporate activities, settlements, top-ups, and rebalancing.