DUBAI – October 05, 2026 -- Caladan's Dubai entity, CLDN Broker Dealer FZE, has secured In-Principle Approval (IPA) from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for Broker-Dealer Services, under reference IPA/26/09/004, dated September 15, 2026.

VARA grants preliminary clearance, not a full license

The approval allows Caladan to proceed toward a full VARA license but does not yet authorize the firm to provide broker-dealer services in or from Dubai. Once licensed, CLDN Broker Dealer FZE will serve institutional clients exclusively, with no retail client access permitted.

Approval targets institutional liquidity demand

Caladan operates as a digital asset market maker across Asia, running principal trading and aggregated liquidity operations across more than 40 exchanges and dozens of bilateral counterparties, covering hundreds of digital tokens. The firm reports $170 billion in annual trading volume, delivered through its API with sub-10ms latency and support for FIX 4.4 and 5.0SP2 protocols.

Julia Zhou, President and Co-Founder of Caladan, said the firm's engagement with VARA on governance, risk management, and compliance enabled the milestone. "Dubai has one of the clearest regulatory frameworks for virtual assets in the world,