Rain

Rain is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange serving the Middle East and North Africa, headquartered in Bahrain and distinguished as the first licensed crypto-asset service provider in the region.

What Rain Is and the Problem It Solves

For much of the 2010s, retail investors across the Middle East and North Africa had no straightforward, legally sanctioned way to buy or sell digital assets. Established global exchanges were frequently inaccessible, unregulated, or unable to support local banking infrastructure and currencies. Rain was built to close that gap: a fully compliant, Arabic-region-native platform where residents of countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt could trade cryptocurrency through a regulated intermediary that works within local banking systems and satisfies know-your-customer requirements.

Founding and Background

Rain was founded in 2017 by four co-founders — Abdullah Almoaiqel, AJ Nelson, Joseph Dallago, and Yehia Badawy — with Dallago serving as CEO. The company is incorporated in Bahrain and was the first crypto-asset company accepted into the Central Bank of Bahrain's regulatory sandbox the same year it launched. That early regulatory engagement set the tone for the company's approach: build compliance first, scale second.

In 2019, Rain became the first crypto-asset service provider in the Middle East to receive a full license from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), granting it authority to operate as a crypto-asset brokerage and custodian. The platform has since expanded its regulatory footprint: Rain Trading Limited received approval from Abu Dhabi Global Market's Financial Services Regulatory Authority (ADGM FSRA) in 2023, and Rain MENA FZE received an in-principle approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).

How It Works

Rain operates as a centralized brokerage and exchange. Users register, complete mandatory identity verification (KYC typically clears within a day), and then access a web platform or mobile app to buy, sell, swap, and store digital assets. The platform supports both standard brokerage execution and a professional trading interface called Rain Pro.

Fee structures reflect these two tiers. The standard brokerage layer charges 0.5% per transaction, while Rain Pro uses a maker-taker model — 0% maker fees and 0.05% taker fees. Neither deposit fees nor local withdrawal fees apply. The company introduced zero-percent trading fees in April 2022 as part of a push to lower barriers for MENA investors, though the current structure has since introduced Rain Pro as the zero-fee gateway.

For high-volume traders, Rain offers over-the-counter (OTC) trading. Client assets are held predominantly in offline cold storage under Rain's licensed custody structure, separating custodial obligations from exchange operations.

Supported Assets and Markets

Rain lists more than 150 digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana (SOL), XRP, and USDT. Availability varies by country. Beyond spot crypto, Rain has expanded into tokenized equities through a partnership with Kraken, giving MENA users access to tokenized stocks alongside traditional digital assets.

The exchange operates in ten markets: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. The platform is designed to be Sharia-compliant, which is a meaningful differentiator in a region where Islamic finance principles govern a substantial portion of investor decisions.

The mobile application is available on both iOS and Android, earning ratings of 4.6/5 and 4.4/5 respectively. A complete rebuild of the mobile app was completed in mid-2026, improving both performance and user experience.

Solana on Rain

Solana is among the assets available for trading on Rain across its supported markets. Rain functions as a centralized on-ramp and off-ramp for SOL, enabling MENA residents to purchase Solana through local currency bank transfers and fiat payment rails rather than relying on peer-to-peer arrangements or unregulated platforms. Rain has no on-chain Solana programs and does not participate in Solana DeFi infrastructure — its Solana exposure is through centralized custody and brokerage.

Funding and Investors

Rain has raised capital across three rounds:

• 2017 seed: $2.5 million, co-led by BitMEX Ventures
• 2021 Series A: $6 million, led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), with participation from Coinbase Ventures
• 2022 Series B: $110 million, led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins, with additional participation from a broader investor syndicate

The $110 million Series B, closed in January 2022, ranked Rain sixth on Forbes' list of the 50 most-funded startups in 2022. The round was intended to fund geographic expansion across MENA and to build out regulatory and operational infrastructure in additional jurisdictions. Cumulatively, Rain has facilitated more than $11 billion in trading volume since its launch.

Security Incident

In April 2024, Rain experienced a significant security breach attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group. Attackers used a LinkedIn-based social engineering campaign, approaching a Rain employee with a fake job offer and tricking them into downloading malware that eventually compromised the company's systems. Approximately $14.8–16 million in cryptocurrency — including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and XRP — was drained from wallets the company controlled.

Rain did not publicly disclose the breach until after external security researchers identified it. The company stated that customer funds were made whole from corporate reserves. The U.S. Department of Justice subsequently identified the incident as part of the Lazarus Group's broader pattern of targeting crypto-sector employees.

The breach did not affect Rain's regulatory licenses, and the company continued operating across all markets in its footprint.

Regulatory Position and Regional Context

Rain's compliance-led model stands out in a region where regulatory clarity around digital assets has been evolving at different speeds across different countries. By securing full licenses in Bahrain, an approved framework in Abu Dhabi, and an in-principle approval in Dubai, Rain has positioned itself as the institutional-grade option for MENA investors who require a licensed counterparty. This also makes Rain one of the few exchanges in the world to hold simultaneous regulatory approvals from multiple Gulf Cooperation Council financial authorities.

The company's structure separates its exchange and custody functions, and client assets are held in cold storage — a safeguard that, while not absolute (as the 2024 breach demonstrated), reflects standard institutional custody practice.

Summary

Rain is the MENA region's leading regulated crypto exchange, built from the ground up for compliance in a jurisdiction where regulatory approval is difficult and commercially valuable. It serves retail and OTC clients across ten countries, supports more than 150 assets including Solana, and is backed by top-tier venture investors. Its primary value proposition is providing a legal, locally integrated on-ramp for digital asset trading in markets that have historically lacked licensed alternatives.