Caladan, a digital asset market maker in Asia, announced that its Dubai entity, CLDN Broker Dealer FZE, received In-Principle Approval (IPA) from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for Broker-Dealer Services on September 15, 2026.

The Caladan group conducts principal trading and provides aggregated liquidity to hundreds of digital assets across 40+ exchanges and dozens of bilateral counterparties. Caladan aggregates these fragmented markets for digital assets into a single source of tailored liquidity, made available via the Caladan API with sub-10ms latency and FIX 4.4 and 5.0SP2 support.

"Dubai has one of the clearest regulatory frameworks for virtual assets in the world," said Julia Zhou, President and Co-Founder of Caladan. "Our team has worked closely with VARA on governance, risk management, and compliance to reach this stage."

The approval is part of Caladan's ongoing strategy to build regulated operations in the financial centers where its clients trade.

"We are seeing growing global demand from institutional clients for the aggregated liquidity we offer," Zhou continued. "These clients need to work with a regulated counterparty to commit capital, and this approval moves us closer to offering that in Dubai. We thank VARA for their engagement."

CLDN Broker Dealer FZE has received In-Principle Approval from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for Broker-Dealer Services (reference IPA/26/09/004). In-Principle Approval is not a license. CLDN Broker Dealer FZE will not provide Broker-Dealer Services in or from the Emirate of Dubai until VARA issues a full license. If licensed, CLDN Broker Dealer FZE will serve institutional clients only and will not serve retail clients. A VARA approval or license is not an endorsement of CLDN Broker Dealer FZE or of any virtual asset.