Missiles and drones disrupted skies over Dubai in late February, following U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Private aviation executive Jonny Dodge watched his phone light up nonstop. His firm, YourSky, flies much of the emirate’s crypto elite, giving him a front-row seat to the panic.
Missile strikes near Dubai triggered a wave of crypto executive evacuations in February.
The UAE’s on-chain crypto value hit $56 billion in 2024-2025, up 33% year over year.
Founders are splitting operations across Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore instead of leaving.
“It was not subtle,” Dodge said. Wealthy expatriates paid tens of thousands of dollars for evacuation flights to the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Europe. Organizers postponed TOKEN2049, one of crypto’s largest conferences, within days of the strikes.
That panic raised a question crypto investors have asked for years. Is Dubai’s rise as a global digital asset hub built on solid ground? Or does the same openness that draws founders also make the city easy to leave under pressure? According to a recent CoinShares report, the answer looks like both.
See more: Why Some Digital Assets Are More Centralized Than Bitcoin — & That’s Normal
Dubai’s calm returned almost as quickly as it broke. Industry executives told CoinShares that crypto business picked back up within weeks, even as the regional conflict dragged on.
Underlying numbers point to growth rather than retreat. The United Arab Emirates received more than $56 billion in on-chain value during its 2024-2025 reporting window. That was a 33% increase from a year earlier, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
Crypto use is also shifting from trading toward everyday spending, said Jordan Wain, global policy advisor at Chainalysis. Small retail merchant transactions climbed 88% during the same period. Large retail transactions rose 84%, and professional transactions gained 80%.
Rather than a mass exit, lawyers and executives describe a shift toward “multi-base” operations. Founders keep licenses and staff in Dubai, while splitting time across Hong Kong, Singapore and other hubs. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has issued 71 licenses to virtual asset firms. Across the UAE’s five regulators, 167 licenses are active, according to UAE-based crypto lawyer Irina Heaver.
Competition is building elsewhere, according to the CoinShares report. Hong Kong has approved spot bitcoin and ether ETFs and introduced licensing for custodians. Singapore has focused instead on tokenization pilots through programs such as Project Guardian.
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said colleagues are already counting down the days. They’re waiting for a deal between the U.S. and Iran that lets them return full time. “People want to go back home because that’s where they are calling home for some time now,” he said.
For more news, information, and strategy, visit the CoinShares Crypto ETF Hub.