Today's Edition
ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)
A new UAE-licensed digital asset exchange has opened for trading in Abu Dhabi, adding a dirham-settled venue to the country’s regulated capital-markets stack at a moment when the Gulf is competing to become a primary centre for institutional virtual-asset activity.
Arab Global Crypto Exchange (AGCX) commenced operations on 10 September 2026. The platform holds a licence from the UAE Capital Markets Authority as a Multilateral Trading Facility dedicated to virtual assets.
Clients can fund accounts in UAE dirhams through local bank transfers, complete digital KYC, and trade major digital assets without routing capital through an offshore venue.
The opening is commercially significant for a simple reason: it closes a market gap. Gulf retail and professional investors have long had to wire funds to platforms in Singapore, Europe or the United States, absorbing foreign-exchange costs and operating under foreign compliance regimes with no local recourse.
AGCX is built to keep the fiat leg onshore — deposit AED, trade, and administer assets on a platform designed for this market.
The Founder AGCX is the project of Satish Gogia, Founder and Chief Executive Officer — a chartered accountant and one of the more seasoned capital-markets operators now building a licensed virtual-asset venue in the UAE. Gogia has spent more than four decades inside Indian and Emirati markets. He founded a financial-services firm listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, then established a commodities market-making business in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers.
Closing the Fiat Gap Users deposit AED through UAE bank transfers following digital KYC verification. AGCX does not charge fees on crypto deposits or withdrawals. The platform offers spot, futures and options across major digital-asset pairs, together with staking for supported assets and launchpad access for selected new token listings, and is available on web and mobile.
“Users should not have to move their money offshore just to access digital assets. With AGCX we want a straightforward path: deposit AED, trade, and manage assets on a platform built for this market — licensed here, advised here, and accountable here," Gogia said.
An external security firm audited the infrastructure before launch. The exchange has committed to publishing quarterly proof-of-reserves attestations — a market expectation that hardened after the 2022 collapse of FTX, where customer funds were found to have been commingled.
The board includes His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Khalifa Sultan Shakhbout Al Nahyan as a non-executive director, providing governance oversight as the platform establishes itself within the UAE’s regulated digital-asset sector. His commercial interests span strategic investments, technology, infrastructure and real estate.
Joining the board as a second non-executive director is Ibraheem Al Khoori, formerly Establishment Development Section Head at the UAE Ministry of Finance and Industry. His brief covered the IMF and other multilateral institutions, SME finance, double-taxation negotiations with Russia and Kazakhstan, and anti-money-laundering and VAT committees. He later spent nearly a decade in operational leadership at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), strengthening AGCX’s governance as it enters the licensed market.
AGCX works in cooperation with Khaled Mahdi Alateibi Advocates and Legal Consultants (KMA LAW), the Abu Dhabi law firm, on the exchange’s legal and regulatory work in the United Arab Emirates. Khaled Mahdi Alateibi appears before courts throughout the UAE. The cooperation covers corporate structuring and licensing engagement with the Capital Markets Authority, AML/CFT controls, client-asset safeguarding, board governance and ongoing supervisory correspondence.
Under that cooperation, KMA LAW advised on the legal characterisation of the multilateral trading facility, the drafting and alignment of onboarding, custody and market-conduct frameworks with federal standards, and a governance layer built to the standard applied to licensed capital-markets infrastructure.
