Future World Forum VARA adds rules for crypto derivatives
Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority issued version 2.1 of its Exchange Services Rulebook on 31 March 2026, introducing a regime for exchange-traded derivatives in virtual assets. It applies immediately to every exchange service provider licensed in Dubai outside the DIFC.
VARA has regulated virtual assets in the emirate under Law No. 4 of 2022 and has run a full market regulatory regime since February 2023, with a public register of licensed providers and a published list of firms operating without a licence.
A derivatives framework is a later-stage regulatory move than a licensing regime: it presumes there is already a supervised spot market to reference. For a conference track on digital finance, the question this raises is less about Dubai and more about everyone else — a rulebook is the exportable artefact here, and jurisdictions competing for the same firms now have a drafted one to argue with.
Source: Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority checked against the source
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