Dubai lets investors buy a slice of the world’s largest silver bar

Eligible investors can buy fractional digital interests in a Guinness World Record asset

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Dubai: Eligible investors can now buy a fractional interest in the world’s largest silver bar after the 1,971kg Guinness World Record asset became the first tokenised commodity launched under the DMCC-VARA framework.

The silver bar, made in the UAE by SAM Precious Metals from 99.9% pure silver, was created to commemorate 1971, the UAE’s founding year.

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Tokinvest, a Dubai-based virtual asset platform regulated by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, will issue the fractional interests as an Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset, with the tokens deployed on BNB Chain.

Access opened on September 7 to eligible investors, including retail investors, while regulated secondary-market trading is expected to follow after the initial issuance, subject to regulatory and platform requirements.

A physical asset behind the token

The underlying silver bar remains a physical asset. It is registered and verified through DMCC Tradeflow and held securely by Brink’s, while Tokinvest handles the regulated digital issuance and distribution.

That structure gives investors exposure to a specific physical commodity while allowing ownership to be divided into smaller digital interests.

“For the first time, investors can own a fractional interest in this extraordinary, one-of-one physical asset. Until now, owning something like the world's largest silver bar was simply beyond the reach of almost every investor. Tokenisation changes that," said Scott Thiel, Co-Founder and CEO of Tokinvest.

First asset under DMCC-VARA framework

The project was first announced at the Dubai Precious Metals Conference in November 2025, when the bar was unveiled after receiving Guinness World Records recognition.

“When we unveiled this 1,971kg Guinness World Record silver bar at the Dubai Precious Metals Conference last November, we set out a clear ambition to take it from a physical record into a practical example of commodity tokenisation, with the DMCC-VARA tokenisation framework as the roadmap." said Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DMCC. "Today, we are delivering on that ambition.”

The launch brings together Dubai’s commodities, custody and virtual asset infrastructure, with SAM Precious Metals manufacturing the bar, Brink’s providing custody and logistics, DMCC Tradeflow verifying the physical asset and Tokinvest handling the digital issuance.

Paul Boots, Senior Director and Head of Sector Development at VARA, called the launch “the first tokenised commodity asset issued under the DMCC-VARA framework.”

Nivetha Dayanand is Assistant Business Editor at Gulf News, covering aviation, financial markets and commodities. A business and financial journalist with a strong interest in multimedia storytelling, she regularly takes complex financial and economic subjects beyond the written word, producing explainer videos that make them easier for a wider audience to understand. Nivetha has interviewed senior policymakers, business leaders and global financial figures both on and off camera. Her past guests include UAE Minister of Economy and Tourism Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud, a member of the House of Saud and the founder and CEO of KBW Ventures, Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund and Indian ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and N. Chandrababu Naidu. She has also hosted and moderated panels, conferences and awards shows, bringing her newsroom experience to live conversations on business, finance and the economy. An Erasmus Mundus journalism alum, Nivetha is drawn to stories that affect people directly and to reporting that gives a platform to voices that might otherwise go unheard. She was among the first journalists to speak to Petrofac employees in the UAE about unpaid salaries, broke the news of the planned demolition of Dubai’s well-known “Toyota Building”, and helped set the record straight on widely circulated claims that a giant replica of the Moon was coming to Dubai. More recently, her exclusive interview with EDGE Group CEO Hamad Al Marar revealed how the UAE-based defence group deployed its systems along the country’s shore border and established a geofence around the UAE within 48 hours of the February 28 escalation. Prior to joining Gulf News, Nivetha worked at ITP Media, where she helped launch Finance Middle East, a new publication covering the region’s financial sector. Her role spanned reporting and editing, video production, interviews and events. Across print, digital, and video, she focuses on finding the people behind business stories and explaining why those stories matter to the audience reading or watching them.

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