To safeguard investors, Dubai’s new Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority needs greater clarity and openness from industry marketers and promoters.
In conjunction with Dubai’s implementation of a new licensing scheme for bitcoin service providers, local officials are establishing new marketing and promotional regulations for the sector.
On August 25, Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), the city’s specialized crypto regulator, purportedly issued new marketing, advertising, and promotional standards for virtual assets.
Gulf News claimed that the VARA referred to all types of outreach, communications, advertising, information distribution, raising awareness, consumer interaction, and investment solicitation in its policies.
The restrictions apply to all virtual asset-related communications and companies disseminating material on Dubai-based media websites, search engines, and online and offline publishing channels that target Dubai-based consumers.
According to the laws, all local virtual asset service providers (VASP), including advertising platforms, must assure factual accuracy and disclose any promotional aim to prevent deceiving prospective clients.
The VARA is believed to have stated that the new regulations apply to Dubai’s Minimal Viable Product (MVP) licensing, stating:
To ensure that any mass-market information distribution and consumer solicitation is done so in a way that does not harm the community, “these laws particularly regulate marketing and communications operations, prior to operationalizing the MVP licensees.”
As previously reported, Sam Bankman-FTX Fried’s crypto exchange was one of the first to gain VARA’s MVP license in July 2022 through its local company FZE. The license allowed FZE to fully run a VASP inside the territory.
Abu Dhabi’s new ambitions to create a strategy for blockchain and virtual assets that match with the country’s broader economic strategy coincided with the issuance of VARA’s guidelines. The inaugural meeting of the Abu Dhabi Blockchain and Virtual Assets Committee to debate the strategy was conducted on August 25.
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