On October 10, 2024 , at the theme event "Dubai's New Choice : OKX and the Future of Blockchain Innovation" held at the Dubai Museum of the Future , OKX officially announced that it has become the world's first cryptocurrency trading platform to obtain a full operating license in the UAE.
This milestone not only marks OKX 's leading position in the global compliance process, but also sets a new benchmark for the compliance development of the crypto industry, becoming a memorable page in the industry's history. This achievement has undoubtedly injected new vitality into the compliance operations of the global crypto market, and also provided valuable experience and inspiration for the compliance path of the future cryptocurrency industry.
OKX CEO Star delivered a keynote speech titled "Celebrating the OKX Dubai Launch" at the event, focusing on OKX 's commitment to global compliance, OKX 's brand story and global development, product business lines, Dubai's new choices, the development stage of the crypto industry, etc. He emphasized the key role of compliance in promoting the development of the crypto industry, as well as OKX's commitment to becoming a global compliance standard and its responsibilities. He also demonstrated that OKX will continue to provide safer and more convenient crypto services to Dubai and global users through technological innovation and powerful products.
Here is the full text of Star’s speech:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the OKX launch event in Dubai. Today we are very honored to invite our users, partners and regulators to come and witness this important moment together.
1. OKX is committed to global compliance
I want to talk about compliance first. As of now, OKX has established a strong compliance program covering both regulated and unregulated entities. We use the Financial Action Task Force ( FATF ) standards as a global compliance baseline, such as user due diligence, politically exposed person screening, user risk rating, and suspicious activity monitoring and reporting. When we enter different markets around the world, such as Dubai, we implement 100% of the local regulatory requirements. So, the Dubai regulator's granting of this full operating license to us shows great trust in the OKX team. I believe that this is not a publicity stunt, but an important responsibility for us to maintain high standards in the crypto industry, and we don't want to disappoint our users and regulators.
2. OKX’s three main business lines
We have three main business lines: OKX Simple , OKX Exchange, and OKX Web3 . First, I believe most users are familiar with OKX Exchange, which is a very powerful trading platform. We provide spot trading, leveraged trading, contract trading, and options trading in one account, but we will provide different functions in different markets around the world according to local regulations.
Second, OKX Web3 is the gateway to the decentralized world. So far, we have supported hundreds of different blockchains. We have built a technical infrastructure that can monitor data on different chains in real time and parse these data formats, thereby building our powerful heterogeneous multi-chain wallets, multi-chain decentralized transactions, multi-chain DeFi aggregators, and multi-chain NFT markets.
Third, OKX Simple is one of our new business strategies. We provide some basic products, such as buying and selling cryptocurrencies, but we will also launch some innovative features, such as Web3 payment, Web3 card, and I will introduce the details of these features later.
3. Hope to make important contributions to Dubai’s cryptocurrency community
Next, I want to talk about OKX 's firm commitment to Dubai: we have established a regional headquarters in Dubai, and will continue to invest and expand our talent team in Dubai. At the same time, we will continue to monitor and test the effectiveness of our compliance program, and we also hope to make important contributions to the cryptocurrency community in Dubai.
OKX provides a comprehensive product portfolio tailor-made for the Dubai market, including AED quick purchase options, AED order books, USDC and USDT order books. At the same time, we also provide derivatives services for institutions and qualified investors.
In the future, we will launch many new programs and innovative products for institutional and retail users.
For institutional users, for example, first, we are working with the world's top banks and asset management companies to adopt a three-party model so that institutional users can deposit US dollars into our bank accounts. Second, provide institutional users with services to deposit USD and receive USDC . Third, institutions earn basic APY through T-Bills . Fourth, physical and global level reserve proof.
As you know, we are one of the first global crypto exchanges to launch Proof of Reserve (POR). We are currently expanding POR to the local level. So in the next few months, we will launch entity-level proof of reserves. For example, our Dubai users and regulators can clearly and transparently see the amount of user assets in our OKX system and the amount of assets held by OKX. 
We also have some plans for retail users. We are launching a self-custodial wallet for retail users, equipped with compliance controls such as KYC transaction monitoring. This is a multi-signature wallet, and users can create a wallet in one click after passing our registration process. The user's private key will be generated based on the pass key, and the user experience is very simple and easy to use. The product we launched is called Smart Account . Based on the infrastructure of Smart Accounts, we will create many decentralized applications, such as Web3 payments and Web3 cards. We also hope to adopt a technology called ZK-KYC to share our KYC and wallet with other DApps , which means that all DApps integrated with our wallet can choose the type of users they want to serve, or even choose the type of users to exclude.
To this day, the user experience of OKX Web3 and MetaMask wallets is not good enough, but we believe that if crypto finance really wants to succeed, there needs to be major innovations and changes at the wallet level in the future.
4. The crypto-financial industry will enter a new stage
Finally, I would like to take a few minutes to share our understanding of this industry.
It has been almost 15 years since Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in 2009. Looking back over the past 15 years, the crypto industry has made many developments. For example, first, the industry has successfully created crypto assets. In particular, the US Securities and Exchange Commission also approved the Bitcoin ETF this year , making Bitcoin a very successful asset. Second, we can see that Ethereum technology, including Layer 1 and Layer 2 technology, is becoming the infrastructure for the development of decentralized applications. Third, we can see that some early-stage applications such as AAVE , Compound , and Uniswap are very successful.
But people always ask a question: Why is the adoption of cryptocurrency so slow? Our understanding is: First, there has been no popular on-chain entry currency in the past 15 years. Second, there are still many problems with the user experience and security of wallets. For example, the current MetaMask or OKX Web3 wallet requires users to keep their private keys for life. Finally, there is a lack of compliance infrastructure in the on-chain financial infrastructure. If you want to launch some compliant financial applications on the blockchain, regulators will ask two basic questions: Who are your users? How to monitor and manage illegal activities on the platform? You may answer: " My users are OKX Web3 wallet users or MetaMask users " , but this is not enough.
Over the past few years, we can see that these three problems are beginning to be solved. For example, there are many successful stablecoin companies such as USDT and USDC . At the wallet level, we can see some leading industry companies such as OKX and Coinbase . We have solutions to build a Web2 experience for self-hosted wallets, and users don't have to think about how to protect their private keys. In addition, the industry is also learning how to build a sound compliance program. I think to this day, many crypto companies have reached the same level of compliance standards as traditional finance, or even better than the banking industry.
So I think based on the development of this industry, I would like to call it the " crypto-finance stage " in the next few years . Thanks to licenses and compliance, companies in the industry can provide smooth fiat currency deposits and withdrawals. The experience of using Web3 wallets and stablecoins will become more and more popular. Therefore, the tokenization of real-world assets will enter a new stage. We will see that every user can participate in these decentralized finance ( DeFi ) using self-custodial wallets. I like this sentence: "Not your key, Not your money" , but this does not mean that there is no compliance. No matter how the crypto industry develops, it will eventually be based on financial regulatory rules. We believe that in the next few years, the crypto-finance industry will enter a new stage, and compliance and licensing will allow companies in the industry to provide seamless fiat currency in and out and services. By then, Web3 wallets and stablecoins will become more and more popular. 
Finally, I would like to end my speech with a tweet I sent before: " The 'X' in OKX represents infinite possibilities. We believe that cryptocurrency will sweep the world and self-custody is the future ." Thank you.
