Economic development officials with links to the British government invited Bybit management to London this week in what appears to be an attempt to emulate the momentum in Dubai, where the cryptocurrency exchange is based, and the rest of the United Arab Emirates.
CEO Ben Zhou said the message from the UK is “they are very keen to invite big companies to set up bases and create jobs,” and discuss upcoming pro-crypto regulation.
Founded by Zhou in 2018, Bybit moved its headquarters to Dubai from its home country of Singapore four years later. It is ranked as the second largest crypto exchange by CoinGecko, only after Binance, which was established in the UAE in 2025.
The arrival of crypto giants such as Bybit and Binance acted as a magnet to attract smaller crypto companies to the region, something Britain would like to emulate, Zhou said.
“An interesting thing is that there has been no momentum built in the UK,” Zhou said in an interview at Paris Blockchain Week. “If you look at the UAE, where there are big exchanges like Bybit or Binance, when we announced we were going to be there, smaller players followed and that created this momentum.”
Zhou’s invitation includes meetings with the Financial Conduct Authority and representatives of the House of Lords and coincides with UK Fintech Week and a Chancellor of the Exchequer plan to revamp payment systems with stablecoins and the spread of tokenisation.
“I have meetings with the FCA. I have meetings with the House of Lords just to discuss what you want to do with crypto,” Zhou said, without naming the UK government department that extended the invitation.
“We were invited specifically by an economic development board that said ‘We can get a direct line to the prime minister.’ There is an agenda to push for innovation, especially in crypto,” Zhou said.
Neither the Treasury nor Lucy Rigby, the financial secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, responded to requests for comment. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology also did not respond to requests for comment. FCA had not responded by press time.
The timing of the invitation is interesting as the UAE has faced direct attacks from Iran during the US-Israeli war that began on February 28, forcing tens of thousands of residents and tourists to leave the country. One in eight British residents have left, the Financial Times reported earlier this month.
The British government has seen “the outflow of money and companies going to the United Arab Emirates. They want to win it back. Exactly, now is good timing,” Zhou said.
