Economic development officials with ties to the U.K. government invited Bybit leaders to London this week in what appears to be an attempt to emulate the push from 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 that “they are very eager to invite big companies to set up bases and create jobs” and discuss upcoming pro-crypto regulation.
Bybit was founded by Zhou in 2018 and four years later moved its headquarters to Dubai from his native Singapore. CoinGecko ranks it as the second largest crypto exchange, only behind Binance, which was established in the United Arab Emirates in 2025.
The arrival of crypto giants like Bybit and Binance acted as a magnet to attract smaller crypto companies to the region, something the UK would like to emulate, Zhou said.
“One interesting thing is that there hasn’t been any momentum building 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, once we announced that we were going to be there, the smaller players followed us, and that created this momentum.”
Zhou’s invitation includes meetings with the Financial Conduct Authority and House of Lords representatives, and coincides with UK Fintech Week and a Treasury plan to revamp stablecoin payment systems and spread tokenisation.
“I have meetings with the FCA. I have meetings with the House of Lords just to discuss what they want to do with cryptocurrencies,” Zhou said, without naming the UK government department that extended the invitation.
“We were specifically invited by an economic development board that said, ‘We can get a direct line to the prime minister.’ There is an agenda to drive innovation, especially in crypto,” Zhou said.
Neither the Treasury nor Lucy Rigby, the Treasury’s Economic Secretary, responded to requests for comment. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology also did not respond to requests for comment. The FCA had not responded at the time of going to press.
The timing of the invitation is interesting, as the United Arab Emirates suffered direct attacks from Iran during the US-Israel war that began on February 28, causing tens of thousands of residents and tourists to leave the country. One in eight British residents has left, the Financial Times reported earlier this month.
The UK government has seen “the outflow of money and companies going to the United Arab Emirates. They want to get it back. Now is exactly a good time,” Zhou said.
