IOTA becomes the first fully regulated crypto foundation in UAE

Press Release

IOTA, the open public goods infrastructure ushering in digital asset innovation, announces its registration as the first Foundation under the DLT Foundations Regulations of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). This landmark achievement positions IOTA at the forefront of digital and real-world convergence in the financial sector in the region and globally.

IOTA will work alongside ADGM’s authorities to push forward the regulatory landscape and bridge the gap between the real world and the digital one. ADGM has one of the most progressive and responsive regulatory frameworks, making IOTA’s collaboration with ADGM a major stride toward bringing institutional investors and assets into the digital ecosystem.

The IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation will be seeded with over $100 million in IOTA tokens, to be vested over the next four years. This funding is earmarked for nurturing the IOTA ecosystem and accelerating the growth of the IOTA protocol. With its community-driven ethos, the Foundation will foster key partnerships in the region to advance the adoption of IOTA and its staging network, Shimmer, across various sectors. The key initiative includes collaboration with institutional investors, governments, and academic institutions for the tokenization of real-world assets and bringing them on-chain, thus bringing billions of dollars into the virtual assets space in the UAE. 

IOTA's foray into the UAE is about cultivating a thriving crypto community within ADGM’s ecosystem. Moving forward, there will be regular events to foster a shared vision for a decentralized future and drive Abu Dhabi's crypto hub forward through its legal framework. 

Hamad Sayah Al Mazrouei, CEO of the Registration Authority (RA) of ADGM, said, “Welcoming IOTA, one of the most established and well-respected blockchain protocols into ADGM’s DLT regime exemplifies our ambition to position Abu Dhabi’s stature as a prime location and ADGM as the leading jurisdiction for the blockchain industry. It is a strong validation of ADGM’s progress with its new and revolutionary DLT Foundations Framework. Working with companies like IOTA, ADGM aims to move towards a future characterized by setting global benchmarks in the ever-evolving blockchain and Web3 landscape”.

“The IOTA Foundation’s support from ADGM and our partnership with UAE authorities is about more than global expansion. It’s about ushering in a new era of regulatory synergy in the crypto markets,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation. “We want to ensure that we take the right steps toward digital autonomy for everyone, and that means making sure a diversity of communities take an active role in shaping the Foundation’s technology and governance.”

Find out more about IOTA’s approval by ADGM on the IOTA Foundation’s blog.