Dubai's financial regulators have recently made an important adjustment—eliminating the token whitelist system. What does this mean? In the future, the authority to review tokens will no longer be centralized but will be transferred to licensed institutions within the DIFC Free Trade Zone.

The change is quite noticeable. These companies now need to determine whether a token is suitable based on principled rules. It sounds more flexible, but there are underlying currents. Privacy coins like Monero and Zcash, although not explicitly banned, will face stricter internal reviews from these institutions. In plain terms, the compliance pressure is covertly increasing.

VARA (Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority) maintains direct regulatory authority to ensure the bottom line is not compromised. This wave of adjustments reflects a subtle shift in regulatory thinking—from "I approve what" to "you evaluate according to the rules." It appears to decentralize authority but actually segments compliance responsibilities more finely.