Copper will facilitate the transition of financial market infrastructure to blockchain-based rails addressing key goals in Abu Dhabi’s Economic Vision. Seamless integration of blockchain-based services with financial infrastructure will provide a solid foundation for the expansion of the local capital markets and attract international investors to the jurisdiction. 

• Subject to FSRA approval, the entity will offer execution and custodial services, while eyeing securities financing and payments applications to follow in the next 12 months.  
• Seamless integration with custodial partners will provide institutional investors access to financial instruments in over 90 markets globally. 

At the start of 2024, upon securing all the appropriate approvals from the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), Copper will launch a brokerage service for digital securities leveraging blockchain technology. This addresses several requirements for building an efficient capital markets structure, as outlined in Abu Dhabi’s economic vision plan for 2030 (see notes below). 

Through tokenisation Copper will enable institutional investors to leverage blockchain technology and smart contracts to efficiently trade and manage liquid traditional instruments such as equities. Copper’s state-of-the art platform will offer a unified, transparent view of client holdings across multiple asset classes and real-time access to transaction records and best-in-class reporting of client activity. The platform functionality will also be fully API enabled. 

Copper will be addressing long-standing inefficiencies in traditional market infrastructure, stemming from high operating costs and extended settlement cycles. Clients using Copper’s ecosystem will benefit from automated processing of corporate actions, settlements, top-ups and rebalances. This, coupled with improved settlement finality for the digital securities, leads to a seamless client experience and far reduced error rates in transaction handling. With the introduction of blockchain-based market infrastructure and the tokenisation of (financial) assets, investors can leverage a superior financial system that is more transparent, efficient, and accessible. 

Copper will continue to work closely with the FSRA and the ADGM to implement the integration of blockchain-based financial services with traditional financial markets.  

About Copper  

Since being founded in 2018, Copper has been building the standard for institutional digital asset infrastructure with a focus on custody and collateral management. Underpinned by multi-award-winning technology, Copper has built a comprehensive and secure suite of products and services required to safely custody and trade digital assets. At the core of Copper’s infrastructure is ClearLoop, which enables its institutional clients to manage collateral and settle trades in near real-time across multiple exchanges, while mitigating counterparty risk and increasing capital efficiency. 

Copper has battle-tested custodial and settlement infrastructure that was developed for institutional digital asset investors. The platform services hundreds of institutional investors globally, safeguarding billions of dollars. Additionally, the infrastructure clears and settles billions of dollars in exchange and OTC trading flows across thousands of settlement events. 

* The “Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030” lays out the goals for transforming the Emirates economy, focusing on “enabling financial markets to become the key financiers of economic sectors and projects.” Major milestones towards achieving this goal are the development of a liquid Debt Capital Market and increasing international investors’ access to the local capital markets. Establishing a local exchange alone is not enough to promote capital flows, especially in emerging markets that face challenges related to the availability, diversity, and pricing of capital. To function effectively, capital markets need a deep and broad investor base, increased liquidity, integration into global markets, diverse issuer participation, and the development of credible benchmark assets such as a liquid government debt securities market.