Sandbox trial puts Egypt on the same tokenization track the UAE has been running since 2023

Egypt is about to run the tokenization experiment the UAE has been running for two years — and the first job in the line of fire is funds’ administrators. Cairo-based digital fund platform Granite and its technology partner Tarmiiz have been admitted to the Financial Regulatory Authority's regulatory sandbox to run a live money market fund on a distributed ledger in parallel with the centralized system it uses today. If the reconciliation holds and the FRA likes what it sees, the rulebook that requires a licensed administrator to keep the register will have to change.

“So if blockchain is going to come into play, it will have to somehow replace the administrator,” Granite founder and CEO Hisham Akram tells EnterpriseAM. “This is the first redundancy, the first casualty of using blockchain.”

The setup: Every fund transaction gets written simultaneously to Granite’s existing database and to a shared ledger, accessible at Granite, the FRA, the custodian, and the administrator. The FRA gets a live view — a regulator’s dream for KYC and anti-money-laundering, Akram says, “including the ability to block a barred or politically exposed person before a transaction, rather than after.” Akram expects two months of clean daily reconciliation to prove the technology.

Why the UAE comparison matters

The Emirates got to tokenization by way of crypto. ADGM, DIFC, VARA, and the CBUAE built digital-asset licensing regimes to court virtual-asset business first, and tokenized real-world assets rode in on the same rails. Egypt is trying the opposite: pick up the tokenization use case without necessarily opening the door to crypto at all. Under Article 206 of the Central Bank and Banking System Law, issuing, trading, or promoting cryptocurrency without CBE approval is a criminal offense — and the CBE has never granted a license. Granite’s sandbox is a bet that the FRA can regulate the plumbing without waiting for the CBE to move on the currency.

UAE tokenization at speed: Mubadala Capital tokenized one of its private market funds in July through blockchain provider Kaio. Coinbase secured an ADGM Financial Services Permission last month to arrange investment agreements and provide custody for tokenized securities. Abu Dhabi’s Maqam and Singapore's Alpha Ladder launched an ADGM-based JV in April targeting real-world asset tokenization and MENA-to-international liquidity connections. Dubai’s Prypco Mint closed MENA’s first fully tokenized property transaction in May 2025, an AED 2.4 mn Business Bay apartment split among 224 investors from 40+ nationalities.

What’s next

What Egypt gets if it works: Akram sees the money market pilot as the plumbing for a wider shift. “Tokenization and the blockchain could be a game-changer for the REIT industry, in particular,” he says, pointing to wide bid-offer spreads and slow settlement in property funds. “You get a card, or a wallet, linked to a money market fund — just imagine having the money market fund on Apple Pay.”

The fractionalization pipeline: Egyptian platforms are already running on classical legal structures — Nawy Shares for fractional real estate, Farida (a Coldwell Banker Egypt/Sakr Investment Management JV launched in November) with tickets from EGP 1k, and FRCTN in logistics plugging into a trucking market gap of some 8k truck missions a day.

What to watch: A fund unit that earns a return and settles a payment is, functionally, interest-bearing money — and money and payments belong to the CBE, not the FRA. The CBE sets hard limits on digital assets without its say-so, hasn’t publicly commented on the sandbox, and hasn’t created the tokenized EGP that would be needed to settle against. Whichever way Granite's reconciliation goes, the second regulator is the one to watch.