OKX UAE, the Dubai-regulated arm of global digital-assets platform OKX, has launched more than 80 tokenised US stocks for eligible UAE users, giving them price exposure to major technology and AI companies around the clock, including weekends and outside conventional Wall Street trading hours. The product is live from 12 October 2026.
The offering is structured as a real-world asset product: users receive 1:1 price exposure to the underlying equity, can build fractional positions, and are entitled to the economic benefit of eligible dividends. Crucially, the stocks sit within the same OKX app as digital-assets holdings, funded directly by UAE bank accounts in dirhams. AED deposits and withdrawals are near-instant and carry no fees, a detail likely designed to reduce friction for retail and semi-institutional investors who hold cash locally but want exposure to US-listed equities.
OKX UAE operates under a licence from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and holds VASP reference VL/23/12/003. VARA’s framework, which covers exchange, management, investment, broker-dealer, and lending services, is one of the more detailed virtual-asset licensing regimes in the Gulf, and it is the regulatory foundation that makes the cross-asset product commercially feasible in this jurisdiction.
The RWA context
Rifad Mahasneh, chief executive of OKX MENA and CIS, said: “By bringing exposure to leading US companies and major indices onchain through tokenised stocks, we’re showing traditional investors how crypto-native infrastructure can enable 24/7 trading, and a more flexible way to access global markets.”
The launch sits within a broader wave of real-world asset tokenisation that has gained traction across institutional and retail fintech in 2025 and 2026. Several platforms, including Backed Finance and others operating out of European and Gulf jurisdictions, have pursued RWA tokenisation of equities and fixed-income instruments, each navigating a patchwork of national securities and virtual-asset regimes. What distinguishes the OKX UAE approach is scale: 80-plus stocks at launch, a large existing user base, and the full-spectrum VARA licence rather than a narrower approval.
The RWA segment is also drawing regulatory attention beyond the Gulf. The EU’s MiCA framework, which came into full effect in December 2024, does not directly govern tokenised equities, which remain under MiFID II. That distinction matters because platforms distributing these products cross-border must carefully delineate between virtual-asset regulation and securities regulation. OKX’s disclaimer explicitly excludes US residents, a standard precaution given SEC scrutiny of tokenised securities offered to American retail investors.
What comes next
OKX told investors in August that the platform traded $680 billion in a single month, and Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Standard Chartered and Circle participated in a funding round at a $25 billion valuation. That capital position, if confirmed at close, would give OKX substantial runway to build out regulated product lines across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.
For the UAE, the tokenised-stock launch is consistent with the country’s wider strategy of positioning Dubai and Abu Dhabi as competitive financial centres by combining a permissive but structured digital-asset regime with access to global markets. The measure of success here will be adoption data: whether UAE-based investors, many of whom already hold US equities through conventional brokers, shift activity onto an onchain platform in meaningful volumes, and whether OKX can eventually extend the model to Gulf Cooperation Council equities and other regional indices.
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