Digital assets and crypto licence in the UAE

This is the activity where bad advice is most common and most expensive. The decisive question is whether you touch client assets. Building software, developing a protocol or holding your own treasury is non-regulated activity and can sit in RAK DAO or DMCC cheaply. Custody, exchange, brokerage or anything involving other people's money is regulated and requires VARA in Dubai or FSRA in ADGM — a process measured in months and hundreds of thousands of dirhams.