Coinbase has announced its taken a significant stride toward realising its vision of becoming an “Everything Exchange,” unveiling major product expansions that embed traditional financial instruments and event-prediction markets directly into its core app. This marks a pivotal shift for the U.S.-listed crypto exchange, moving beyond solely digital assets to offer users a unified platform for trading stocks, predicting real-world event outcomes, futures, perpetuals, and more, all alongside crypto holdings.
The rollout, announced on December 17, begins in the United States with commission-free stock trading, opening up access to leading equities and ETFs inside the familiar Coinbase interface. Users can manage stock positions alongside crypto without switching apps, and trade outside traditional market hours, a feature designed to appeal to both retail and active traders. Coinbase is also laying the groundwork for tokenised stocks that could ultimately enable 24/7 global trading and use of equities onchain, edging closer to fully digitalised financial markets.
In parallel, Coinbase has launched prediction markets, enabling users to trade contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, from elections and economic data to sports and cultural moments. Powered at launch by Kalshi-linked market flow, this introduces a new way for users to express views and hedge around future developments within the same app environment.
This expansion positions Coinbase to challenge traditional brokers and growing retail platforms offering multi-asset services, while diversifying revenue beyond its core crypto business. The move comes amid broader industry competition, with peers like Robinhood also embracing prediction markets and tokenised securities. Despite regulatory headwinds around event contracts in the U.S., Coinbase’s integrated strategy aims to deepen user engagement, enhance cross-asset liquidity, and redefine retail trading experiences.
I’ll be curious to see how this widening of the appeal of trading in all sorts of markets plays out. Recent history has shown that neophyte traders don’t necessarily find they can easily make positive returns despite the glittering promises made by these ‘new and improved’ ‘exchanges’.
