On December 10, 2025, Galaxy Digital, the crypto financial-services group founded by Mike Novogratz, registered a new entity with the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM, Abu Dhabi’s international financial free zone with its own English-language legal framework). The office is set up to serve institutional clients, investment counterparties, and portfolio companies across the Middle East.
What Galaxy actually set up
The registration was granted through the ADGM Registration Authority, which handles corporate registration and licensing of ADGM-based companies. That is a different track from a full Financial Services Permission (FSP), the license that lets a firm carry out regulated activities like trading or custody. Galaxy has anchored a regional base first; regulated financial-services activity for the Middle East can be layered on later if the group applies for a separate FSP from ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA, ADGM’s regulator).
The office covers Galaxy’s core areas: digital asset trading, investment infrastructure, and data-centre infrastructure (in Galaxy’s case this includes running the compute infrastructure behind blockchain networks and AI workloads). Target clients are institutional investors, existing Galaxy counterparties, and portfolio companies in the region.
Bouchra Darwazah will lead the office as Managing Director. Mike Novogratz framed the move as “a milestone” that “unlocks new opportunities for Galaxy and strengthens ADGM’s reputation as a hub for digital asset innovation.” Arvind Ramamurthy, ADGM’s Chief Development Market Officer, said Galaxy’s decision “reflects the strength and appeal of ADGM’s progressive ecosystem.”
Why this matters
Galaxy Digital is one of the most visible institutional-crypto brands in the world. It runs asset management, prime brokerage, principal trading, mining and data-centre operations, and is dual-listed on the Nasdaq and Toronto Stock Exchange. When a firm at that scale opens a base of operations in a jurisdiction, it usually reflects two things: a customer pipeline already there, and confidence that the regulatory regime will hold.
For ADGM the message is that its crypto ecosystem is now attracting names from every corner of the industry:
- Retail-facing global exchanges: Binance’s global platform under ADGM supervision from January 2026, Kraken licensed earlier.
- Institutional custody and trading: Bitcoin Suisse holds a full FSP for custody, spot trading, and derivatives.
- Asset management and infrastructure: Galaxy Digital now anchored via Registration Authority, positioned for institutional flows and data-centre capacity.
That is a fuller crypto stack than any single Gulf jurisdiction had two years ago. It also means an ADGM-based institution can now source deep pools of counterparties on the same island, without routing through New York, London, or Singapore for each leg of a trade.
The other angle worth noting is the data-centre piece. Galaxy operates one of the larger institutional bitcoin-mining data-centre businesses in North America. Abu Dhabi has been positioning itself as an AI-and-compute hub through a mix of sovereign investment and cheap power. A Galaxy office on the ground can bridge those two agendas: crypto compute infrastructure and AI compute infrastructure share the same physical building blocks.
The wider UAE market picture
The UAE’s crypto scene now runs on two well-populated tracks:
- Dubai (VARA): retail-facing exchanges, stablecoin issuers, licensed VASPs (Virtual Asset Service Providers, meaning crypto firms allowed to serve the public) with more than 50 approvals. Recent additions include the retail-cleared dirham stablecoin DDSC.
- Abu Dhabi (ADGM): institutional custody, spot desks, derivatives, asset management. Galaxy, Bitcoin Suisse, Kraken and Binance all now sit on this side of the map.
For crypto-native firms choosing between the two, the calculus keeps sharpening. Retail volume from UAE and Gulf residents fits Dubai’s VARA rulebook. Institutional-grade flows, prime brokerage, and infrastructure investment fit ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) rulebook, which is closer in tone to European and North American institutional regimes.
What to watch
- Whether Galaxy applies for an FSRA licence. A registration under the ADGM Registration Authority alone does not authorise regulated trading or custody in the UAE. A follow-up FSP would be the signal that Galaxy plans to run Middle East client flow through the office itself, not just book it via other subsidiaries.
- Data-centre build-out. Any move by Galaxy into UAE-based bitcoin mining, AI compute, or hosted staking infrastructure. Abu Dhabi has cheap sovereign-backed power and land, which are the two inputs that decide crypto data-centre economics.
- Institutional deal flow. Whether Galaxy anchors partnerships with Mubadala, ADQ, or Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth vehicles for crypto or blockchain-linked exposures. A regional office usually maps to a regional deal pipeline.
- More institutional-crypto names. If Galaxy is followed by comparable US or European players (Anchorage Digital, Fireblocks, BlockFills, Cumberland), the ADGM institutional side is on a clear ramp.
Galaxy’s arrival is not a market-moving event on its own. But it is another confirmation that global institutional crypto brands now default to Abu Dhabi when they want a Middle East base. Combined with recent ADGM approvals for Bitcoin Suisse and Binance, and Dubai’s parallel build-out on the retail side, the UAE has quietly become one of the three or four most institution-ready crypto jurisdictions in the world.
Source: ADGM: Galaxy Expands into the Middle East with ADGM Office Opening
Independent editorial coverage of Bitcoin and crypto in the UAE, regulation, market moves, and policy analysis.
