Coinbase Expands Into Stocks, Futures, and Prediction Markets: The Crypto Giant’s Power Play

Coinbase just threw a grenade into traditional finance's clubhouse. The crypto exchange is expanding beyond its digital asset roots, launching stock trading, futures contracts, and even prediction markets—all under one roof.

One App to Rule Them All?

Forget juggling six different brokerage apps. Coinbase's move bundles stocks, crypto, and complex derivatives into a single interface. It's a direct shot across the bow of legacy platforms, betting that users crave simplicity over a fragmented financial life. The strategy? Become the everything-app for the modern, digitally-native investor.

Futures & Fortune-Telling

The futures offering lets traders bet on crypto price movements with leverage—high-risk, high-reward territory that has long been a Wall Street profit center. More intriguing are the prediction markets, where users can wager on real-world events. It's a controversial leap that blurs the line between investment and speculation, wrapped in a sleek tech package. Some might call it innovative; others, a cynical monetization of chaos.

The Bigger Picture: A Financial Super-App

This isn't just an expansion; it's a declaration of war on specialization. By aggregating disparate asset classes, Coinbase is positioning itself as a primary financial relationship. The goal is clear: lock in user attention, data, and capital flows. In an industry where traditional brokers nickel-and-dime you for every transfer, Coinbase is betting that convenience and consolidated power will win.

Coinbase's aggressive pivot signals a new phase for crypto-native firms: no longer content to be the alternative, they're building to replace the incumbent. Whether this creates a more efficient system or just a bigger, shinier casino remains to be seen. After all, in finance, every 'innovation' eventually finds its way to the fees section of the terms and conditions.

Coinbase revealed major expansions at its December 17 System Update event in San Francisco, launching stock trading for major U.S. stocks and ETFs with 24/5 access and zero fees, along with perpetual futures starting early next year for users outside the U.S. Prediction markets will launch through a Kalshi integration, offering thousands of regulated event contracts settled in USDC. The app will also embed Solana’s Jupiter DEX aggregator to enable efficient on-chain token swaps, positioning Coinbase as an all-in-one exchange.