Bybit appointed Peter Loo as Chief Legal and Compliance Officer on Aug. 3, 2026, hiring the former General Counsel of Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to run compliance at the exchange.
Key Takeaways
- Bybit named Peter Loo Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, handing him global legal, regulatory, and compliance strategy.
- Peter Loo previously served as General Counsel and Head of Sector Development at Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, or VARA.
- VARA’s public register listed 49 active licensed entities as of May 2026, the regime Loo helped design.
- Ben Zhou, Bybit co-founder and chief executive, said Loo understands how rules are written and how they get applied.
- Bybit says it serves over 80 million users and wants one access point for trading, payments, custody, and asset management.
What Happened?
Bybit, which describes itself as the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said Loo will lead its global legal, regulatory, and compliance strategy. His mandate covers internal governance, licensing efforts in priority markets, and engagement with regulators worldwide.
Loo arrives with over 25 years of cross-jurisdictional experience across the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He held senior roles at Barclays Capital and MF Global, advising on derivatives and structured products, and served as EMEA Head of Legal and Compliance at Amber Group.
Ben Zhou, Bybit co-founder and chief executive, tied the hire directly to how regulation gets enforced. Zhou said Loo “understands not only how rules are written, but also how they are applied in practice across jurisdictions.“
From Writing Dubai’s Rules to Operating Under Them
Loo led the development of licensing frameworks, market conduct policies, and enforcement protocols at VARA, the emirate’s dedicated virtual asset regulator. He worked with exchanges, custodians, and institutional players while that regime was being built.
Bybit now operates inside it. VARA’s public register listed 49 active licensed entities as of May 2026, with 39 virtual asset service providers classified as fully operational at the end of 2025. Bybit itself holds a Virtual Asset Platform Operator license in the UAE.
The release does not say whether any cooling-off period or recusal arrangement governs Loo’s dealings with his former employer, and it names no predecessor in the role.
A Mandate Shaped by a Year of Exits and Relaunches
Loo inherits a jurisdictional map that moved in both directions over the past year. Bybit relaunched UK spot trading through Archax, an FCA-authorized partner, to stay inside the Financial Conduct Authority’s financial promotion rules. It also began winding down services for Japanese residents, citing regulatory requirements the exchange had not met.
The bill for that map is measurable. MiCA licensing costs ran between 50,000 euros and 150,000 euros in 2025, annual full compliance for large exchanges exceeded 500,000 euros that year, and non-compliance can trigger fines up to 5 million euros or 3% of annual revenue. Bybit wants payments, custody, and asset management under one roof, which multiplies that cost across every new license.
Existing users can check which licensed entity holds their account and confirm their verification tier, since platform access has tracked entity-level licensing market by market instead of one global policy.
What the Announcement Leaves Unanswered?
The release sets out a mandate without the operating detail that would let anyone measure it. Four gaps stand out:
- Which jurisdictions Bybit counts as priority markets for the licensing push?
- Whether Loo reports to the chief executive or directly to the board?
- Whether a predecessor held the role, and why it changed hands?
- What restrictions, if any, govern his engagement with VARA?
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
This appointment reads as a licensing play more than a legal one. Bybit is buying institutional knowledge of how a modern virtual asset regime gets designed and policed, at a point when its growth depends on approvals in markets that have already turned it down. Loo spent years on the approving side of that table, and that is the asset here.
The harder question is whether the hire changes outcomes or only the quality of the application. Regulators in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan each set conditions that Bybit met or walked away from over the past year, and those calls turned on capital, custody, and local entity structure as much as on legal drafting. Loo said the industry has entered a phase where “credibility, structure, and regulatory alignment are no longer optional.” His first year will show whether Bybit’s structure can catch up to that language.
