The global crypto exchange has continually pushed to offer more services beyond crypto trading. Does its latest announcements prove it can diversify?
Coinbase has announced plans to introduce prediction markets, traditional stock trading, and a new tokenised asset service in its bid to become the “everything exchange”.
The crypto exchange company announced plans on December 17 during its System Update 2025 event, where CEO Brian Armstrong stated “crypto is updating all financial services”. He said he believes the future of finance will be on-chain.
Traditional and tokenised stock trading
Coinbase announced plans to introduce hundreds of stocks based on trading volume and market capitalisation across its platform next year, as well as thousands of additional stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs).
While Max Branzburg, Coinbase’s Head of Consumer and Business Products, did not specify which traditional stocks and ETFs will become available, US Coinbase users will be able to buy, sell and manage these assets from within their crypto wallets.
“What we are really focused on is enabling RWA and tokenised assets,” said Branzburg in an emailed statement sent to CoinDesk.
“The mechanism for how we do that is in progress, and we’ll have more specific details to share soon. Our regulatory rigor puts us in a unique position to lead as the space matures, too.”
Coinbase stated in a blog post that stock trading comes with zero commission and is open 24 hours a day, although this is expected to be extended to seven days a week, 24/7 with the introduction of tokenised stock options the company later revealed.
Similar to Robinhood last summer, Coinbase intends to offer its customers tokenised stock assets with the launch of Coinbase Tokenize.
The end-to-end platform enables the tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA), such as traditional stocks and ETFs, from within the Coinbase app, seeking to help its customers diversify their portfolios.
Coinbase believes tokenised stock and its traditional stock trading offerings coming next year helps build its mission to become the ‘everything exchange’ and reinforces Armstrong’s belief that the future of finance is on-chain.
Prediction markets with Kalshi
After several days of reports linking Coinbase with Kalshi, the crypto exchange confirmed it will be rolling out prediction markets options on its US-facing platforms.
Coinbase will work with Kalshi to offer futures predictions on real-world events, such as sports, collectibles and elections.
All market flows will come from Kalshi and prices of the event contracts will be determined by the collective trading activity of market participants.
Tying into its crypto roots, Coinbase will allow its customers to make futures predictions on global events with stablecoins, such as USDC, with a view to also launch support contracts from additional prediction market platforms in “the coming months”.
“We have more than 30 futures and perps contracts live in the US across asset classes from crypto to commodities to equity indices, with plans to expand to hundreds more contracts over time,” Branzburg said.
“As of this week, we now offer 15 perpetual-style futures contracts for cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP.
Prediction markets have surged in interest from those in the crypto sector. On December 15, Gemini launched its Gemini Prediction Market Service after receiving an operating license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last week.
Robinhood also announced additional features to its prediction market service, involving the NFL. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated this week he believes there is an upcoming “prediction market supercycle” predicting the market to grow into the “trillions of contracts created each year”.
Coinbase payments
Capping off the event, Coinbase also announced new plans for its developer platform to include a suite of new use cases involving payments, trading, custody, and stablecoins.
The company revealed it will embed self-custodial stablecoin wallets into any platform to enable customers to make payments in their preferred stablecoins at the checkout. Fintech firms such as dLocal and Papaya have been announced as new partners of the latform.
Shopify has already launched an integrated stablecoin wallet for its checkout, Coinbase confirmed, while PPRO and Checkout.com have also been confirmed as partners for next year.
Coinbase also announced it will allow users to create their own custom-branded stablecoins, backed by flexible collateral which can be used for transactions and offer rewards on balances.
