Diversified Capital Markets

Coinbase Global CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup has partnered with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up proof the crypto giant "has come a long way" since 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong recalled that getting a bank to work with Coinbase at its founding was "nearly impossible," and thanked Citi for the arrangement. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing revenue component for Coinbase, which shares interest income on reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group and monetizes customer balances on its platform; USDC held in Coinbase products hit an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, more than 30% of all USDC in circulation. Coinbase shares finished Friday down 3.32% at $183.

Citi announced an expanded collaboration with Coinbase to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts and enable institutional stablecoin payment acceptance via Spring by Citi, initially in the United States. The collaboration links Coinbase's digital asset infrastructure with Citi's regulated banking network and creates an industry-first automatic fiat-to-stablecoin conversion feature. Coinbase Global also reported that Chief Accounting Officer Jennifer Jones plans to retire after a successor is appointed. The company's narrative projects $8.5 billion revenue and $2.1 billion earnings by 2028, requiring 8.3% yearly revenue growth and a $0.8 billion earnings decrease from $2.9 billion today, with a $383.46 fair value implying 110% upside to its current price. Some of the most optimistic analysts already expected Coinbase to reach about US$9.3 billion of revenue and US$2.2 billion of earnings.

Coinbase Global and Citi announced new fiat and stablecoin interoperability features linking Citi's banking rails with Coinbase infrastructure. Citi's Virtual Account Wallet for Coinbase will automatically convert client fiat balances into stablecoins and convert incoming stablecoins back into fiat. Merchants using Citi's Spring platform will be able to accept stablecoin payments while keeping settlement within Citi's regulated banking system. The Citi Virtual Account Wallet and Spring stablecoin rollout gives only a first glimpse of how far this Coinbase bank bridge could reach. The partnership plugs Coinbase's stablecoin and payments stack directly into a large commercial bank's cash management and merchant platforms, supporting Coinbase Global's effort to lean more on subscription style and service revenue rather than depending only on trading activity and market volumes.

U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on September 28 that its subsidiary Coinbase Clearing LLC has received registration approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a derivatives clearing organization (DCO). With this approval, Coinbase will have under its umbrella Coinbase Clearing as a DCO, in addition to futures commission merchant Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. and designated contract market Coinbase Derivatives, LLC, giving it a CFTC-regulated derivatives infrastructure covering trading, brokerage, and clearing for fully collateralized products. Coinbase Clearing is authorized to clear fully collateralized futures, futures options, and swaps. According to the company, it will now be able to directly structure and clear fully collateralized derivatives products, which will lead to faster product development, improved operational efficiency, and the offering of new regulated products. On the other hand, this approval is limited to fully collateralized products, and margin-based derivatives products cannot be cleared through Coinbase Clearing; the company will continue to use existing external partners for margin-based derivatives and the single-stock perpetual futures it plans to offer in the future. Coinbase positions Coinbase Clearing as a clearing infrastructure centered on USD Coin (USDC), and explains that it will enable 24-hour settlement using USDC as collateral.

Coinbase announced on September 28 that it has received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to register as a derivatives clearing organization. Its subsidiary, Coinbase Clearing, became the first clearinghouse authorized to use USDC as collateral. Coinbase already holds Coinbase Financial Markets as a futures commission merchant and Coinbase Derivatives as a designated contract market, and with this approval it now has a structure that allows it to handle all three registrations, including clearing, entirely in-house. Coinbase is the first cryptocurrency company to hold all three major CFTC registrations. Coinbase Clearing will support clearing of fully collateralized futures, futures options, and swaps, enabling 24-hour settlement with USDC collateral. Clearing of leveraged products will continue to be handled through external clearing partners. Molly Abraham, Coinbase's head of legal, said, "With this CFTC approval, Coinbase's derivatives foundation is now complete end to end, and we can bring even more regulated products to market with USDC collateral and 24-hour settlement."

Coinbase received CFTC approval for Coinbase Clearing LLC, a new derivatives clearing organization. The approval means Coinbase now controls three core pieces of derivatives trading: the exchange where derivatives are listed and traded, the broker connecting customers to those markets, and the clearinghouse that stands between buyers and sellers, manages collateral, and settles contracts. The clearinghouse will handle only fully collateralized derivatives, using USDC as collateral, which enables 24/7 settlement rather than the T plus 2 or T plus 1 timeline used by the DTTC for stock transactions. Coinbase says the approval should let it develop regulated products more quickly, operate more efficiently, and reduce its dependence on third-party clearing firms. The company will still use existing partners for certain products, including margin derivatives that are not fully backed and single stock perpetuals, so not everything is moving in-house immediately.

Citigroup Inc. is expanding its collaboration with Coinbase Global to deepen its role in stablecoin-based payments, building on their October 2025 partnership by linking Coinbase's digital-asset infrastructure with Citi's virtual-account, payment and fiat-settlement capabilities. Under the arrangement, Citi will support Coinbase Virtual Accounts through Citigroup Services' Virtual Account Wallet, part of its broader Banking-as-a-Service offering, allowing customers to accept, hold and pay funds while automatically converting incoming fiat into stablecoins. Citi will also enable institutional clients to accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi, with Coinbase Payments converting stablecoin payments into fiat while Citi receives and settles the funds as the bank of record, a structure that lets merchants accept stablecoin payments without directly holding or managing digital assets and could help them reach more than 150 million stablecoin holders globally. The expanded relationship adds to Citi's digital-payments infrastructure, which includes Citi Token Services, integrated with 24/7 USD Clearing in 2025, and earlier partnerships with Mastercard and Dandelion that broadened WorldLink's reach across debit cards and digital wallets, with management reporting nearly $6 trillion in daily payment volume as of May 2026. Citi already banks 90% of the top e-commerce companies and 15 of the world's 20 largest fintechs, giving it a sizable distribution base for the new services, though the financial impact will depend on adoption, payment volumes and Citi's ability to monetize the flows.

Citi and Coinbase are expanding their existing relationship into two connected products that bring bank-grade fiat and stablecoin payments to businesses. Under the first product, Citi will power Coinbase virtual accounts, giving businesses using Coinbase bank-like account details to accept, hold and send ordinary currency, with incoming fiat automatically convertible into stablecoins, namely USDC. Under the second product, Citi's corporate clients will be able to accept stablecoin payments through spring, with Coinbase processing the blockchain payment and converting the stablecoin into fiat while Citi settles the fiat to the merchant, so merchants need not hold stablecoins, manage wallets or handle blockchain infrastructure. Citi provides the regulated banking infrastructure and Coinbase handles the digital assets, and the initiative will launch in the United States first.

Coinbase Global has deepened its partnership with Citigroup to scale stablecoin payments for institutional clients. Under the arrangement, Citi's institutional clients can accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi, with Coinbase providing the underlying digital-asset rails and automatically converting stablecoins into fiat for settlement by Citi as the bank of record. The partnership also extends to Coinbase Virtual Accounts, which use Citi's Virtual Account Wallet infrastructure and give payment customers bank-account-like functionality, including the ability to receive, hold and transfer funds, while incoming fiat can be automatically converted into stablecoins. The agreement builds on the companies' October 2025 collaboration focused on fiat-to-crypto payment infrastructure. Coinbase brings digital-asset and stablecoin infrastructure serving a market of more than 150 million stablecoin holders, while Citi contributes global banking capabilities across more than 180 countries and jurisdictions.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved Coinbase Clearing LLC as a Derivatives Clearing Organization on September 28, 2026, completing Coinbase's vertical integration of its derivatives infrastructure. With the Designated Contract Market, the Futures Commission Merchant, and now the DCO under one corporate umbrella, Coinbase has closed the clearing gap that previously required reliance on external partners such as Nodal Clear, LLC. The new clearinghouse uses USDC as its native collateral, enabling 24/7 settlement that bypasses traditional fiat settlement cycles, though the authorization is strictly limited to fully collateralized futures, options, and swaps, with no approval for margined or leveraged products. Coinbase joins a growing cohort of registered clearing entities: Gemini Olympus, LLC received its registration on April 29, 2026, and Quanta Clear, Inc. on January 30, 2026, while Bullish Clearing & Settlement LLC and Forum Clearing LLC remain pending applicants. The approval arrives just ahead of the anticipated agency merger summit between the SEC and the CFTC, expected to address long-standing jurisdictional ambiguity over digital assets, a process often discussed in the context of the GENIUS Act.

Citi is expanding its collaboration with Coinbase to support stablecoin payments for corporate clients. The two companies first announced their partnership in October 2025, focused on payment infrastructure from fiat currency to cryptocurrency. Under the agreement, Coinbase will use Citi's virtual account wallet system to power its own virtual account system, enabling clients to receive, hold, and pay with fiat currency while automatically converting incoming funds into stablecoins. Meanwhile, Citi's institutional clients will be able to receive stablecoin payments through the Spring by Citi platform, with Coinbase handling payment channels and automatically converting digital assets into fiat currency for settlement. These agreements and innovations will launch first in the United States and are designed to provide business clients with functionality similar to a bank account, without merchants needing to directly hold or manage digital assets. Debopama Sen, Citi's head of payments, said in a statement on Monday that clients are operating in a global economy that is faster and more complex, and the company's goal is to build next-generation payment infrastructure that is seamless, interoperable, and works across both traditional and digital payment tools and networks. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, said crypto and stablecoins are no longer a debate, but a tool that will update the global financial system.

Coinbase, the major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, announced on X on September 28 that it will soon offer a service allowing users to open Pokémon card packs on their smartphones. Cards pulled on screen are backed by real physical copies, and users can choose either to store the cards in a vault or have the physical items shipped to their home or elsewhere. The company did not disclose the launch date, eligible regions, pricing, or how cards will be authenticated. Behind the move is the expansion of the market for buying and selling trading cards as collectibles and assets. According to the Japan Toy Association, the domestic card game and trading card market is expected to reach 338.4 billion yen in fiscal 2025, expanding for eight consecutive years since fiscal 2017. The announcement did not indicate whether card ownership will be recorded on a blockchain or whether NFTs will be issued, nor did it clarify the existence of a secondary market, any partnership with The Pokémon Company, or how the products will be procured.

Keefe Bruyette resumed coverage of Coinbase Global on September 28 with an Outperform rating and a $237 price target, while Mizuho kept a Neutral rating and a $155 target after the company cut trading fees for active traders. The $82 gap between the two targets reflects disagreement over whether Coinbase's newer businesses can scale fast enough to offset pressure on trading economics. At Citi's Global TMT Conference on September 10, Coinbase said prediction markets had crossed a $100 million annualized revenue run rate six months after launch, with second-quarter revenue up 106% quarter-over-quarter, while Coinbase One passed 1 million paying subscribers and expenses came in about $500 million below the fourth quarter run rate. Mizuho's caution centers on pricing: retail take rates near 150 basis points sit well above the 40 to 50 basis points charged by Robinhood, and the firm believes competitive pressure that began with active traders could eventually reach retail customers, following the September 17 fee cut that lowered spot rates and reduced the entry threshold for the first Advanced tier to $10,000 from $25,000. Citigroup's September 28 decision to use Coinbase for stablecoin payments adds another institutional distribution channel, with balances held at Coinbase earning a reward currently set at 3.75%, though the revenue contribution is not yet quantified.

Citigroup has partnered with Coinbase to connect Stablecoin into its payment system for businesses, starting with services in the US first. This partnership uses the FiatSpring by Citi platform alongside Virtual Account Wallet to allow business customers to make payments with Stablecoin seamlessly. The launch begins in the US first and will expand to other markets later.

U.S. financial giant Citi and U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on the 28th that they will expand their collaboration in the payments business. The expanded partnership has two main pillars. The first is that Coinbase will use Citi's Banking-as-a-Service offering to provide "virtual accounts," with a key feature being the ability to automatically convert deposited fiat currency into stablecoins. The second is an initiative to enable Citi's customers to accept stablecoin payments through its payment acceptance platform Spring by Citi, with Coinbase's payment services supporting this and making it possible to automatically convert digital currency into fiat currency under Citi's payments. Ashish Bajaj, head of Citi's North America services division, commented that the goal is to build next-generation payment infrastructure that can seamlessly interoperate across both traditional and digital-era payment methods and payment networks. The collaboration announced this time is planned to be implemented first in the United States, and the two companies said they intend to roll out new features over the coming months.

Coinbase Global said it has deepened its collaboration with Citigroup on two fronts, letting Citi's institutional clients accept stablecoin payments at checkout. Clients using Spring by Citi, the bank's payment acceptance platform, can now take stablecoin payments through Coinbase's payments infrastructure without holding stablecoins themselves, with Coinbase converting the tokens into fiat and Citi settling the funds as the bank of record. In the second piece, Coinbase chose Citi's Virtual Account Wallet, part of the bank's banking-as-a-service offering, to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts, which give payments customers bank-account-like functionality to accept, hold and send funds, with incoming fiat converted automatically into stablecoins. Coinbase said the services will launch first in the U.S., with more capabilities to follow in the coming months, and pitched the merchant side as reaching a market of more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide. Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, said Citi is the kind of regulated banking partner the industry needs to move digital assets from experimentation to everyday commerce. Coinbase shares were down 0.38% intraday, as of 10:30 a.m. ET.

Citigroup is now enabling its institutional clients to accept stablecoin payments from customers through an expanded partnership with Coinbase, a deal first sketched out at Money 20/20 in October 2025. Coinbase supplies the blockchain rails and automatically converts incoming digital currency into U.S. dollars, while Citi settles the funds as the bank of record through Spring by Citi, the bank's merchant payment platform, which already operates in 23 markets and processes multi-billion-dollar annual volumes. The arrangement's most revealing detail is the 3.75% annual interest-like reward that stablecoins held at Coinbase can earn, a yield that exists because the GENIUS Act's Section 4(a)(11) prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest directly to token holders, forcing the money to travel from Circle to Coinbase to the client and be labeled a reward rather than interest. Circle's 2025 annual report showed $2.75 billion in total revenue and reserve income, with $2.64 billion, or 96%, coming from reserve income, and $1.66 billion going to distribution and transaction costs, with Coinbase as the largest recipient. Citi is not choosing sides: it is simultaneously a founding member of a 21-bank consortium announced in September 2026, alongside Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and others, that plans to launch its own USD stablecoin on public blockchains by the first half of 2027, advised by BCG and Brunswick Group. Citi's stablecoin market forecast of $1.9 trillion in the base case and $4 trillion in the bull case by 2030 suggests the bank sees enough upside to run both plays at once.

Fermi Inc. announced an operations and maintenance agreement with NAES Corporation, the largest independent operator of power plants in the United States, to run and maintain Fermi's natural gas turbine fleet at its Project Matador private-power campus in Carson County, Texas. Under the agreement, Fermi retains ownership of the assets and control of the facility while NAES serves as operator, performing operating and maintenance procedures, setting up the work management system, and preparing the plants for service. As Fermi's natural gas turbines come online, NAES will staff and operate the units, oversee the maintenance program, and handle site safety and environmental compliance. The deal also brings in the NAES Enterprise Reliability Program, which supplies operator training, asset risk reviews, maintenance planning, control reviews, and a live reliability dashboard. The agreement follows several recent milestones at Project Matador, including the selection of CBRE to operate and maintain the first data center, the arrival of the first Siemens Energy SGT6-5000F natural gas turbines, a binding lease agreement with first customer TensorWave, a build-own-operate-transfer strategic alliance with Hillcore Energy Capital Corporation for roughly 2.6 gigawatts of added power, and EPC agreements with Primoris Services Corporation and TSK. Fermi America is developing Project Matador with more than $1.5 billion invested in buildout to date, and subject to entering into binding customer agreements, the project is expected to ramp to approximately 17 GW.

On September 17, the SEC approved a temporary framework for trading tokenized US equities, called the Innovation Exemption, potentially giving Coinbase Global a new avenue to expand its Everything Exchange beyond crypto. Baird reiterated a Neutral rating on Coinbase with a $130 price target, saying the change could let the company offer tokenized stocks and bring its asset mix closer to Robinhood Markets. Coinbase is not starting from scratch: in June it announced plans to introduce tokenized US stocks for eligible non-US customers, and the product went live on Base in August, initially covering mega-cap names including Apple, Nvidia, and Alphabet, with tokens issued by Coinbase and backed 1:1 by the underlying assets. The SEC's permission is temporary, lasting five years, and conditional on tokenized stocks providing the same rights and privileges as the underlying shares, so Coinbase must satisfy those conditions, adapt its international tokenization infrastructure to the US market, and demonstrate enough domestic demand to meaningfully boost results. In Q2, 88% of Coinbase's net revenue came from non-Bitcoin spot trading, while prediction market contracts and revenue increased 106% quarter over quarter; hedge funds holding the stock fell to 62 in Q2 from 65 in Q1, though Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management raised its stake 6% to about 2.5 million shares and Southpoint Capital Advisors lifted its position 50% to nearly 1 million shares, while short interest stood at 12.5% of the float as of August 31.

GOWell Technology Limited has completed its business combination with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. V, the special purpose acquisition company, and will operate as GOWell Energy Technology. The deal was approved by Inflection Point shareholders at a special meeting on September 3, 2026, and formally closed on September 25, 2026. GOWell Energy's ordinary shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GOW on September 28, 2026. Concurrently with the closing, GOWell completed its previously announced Closing PIPE investment, in which the investor purchased approximately $50 million of preferred shares and warrants of GOWell Energy; together with the approximately $20 million private placement funded at the signing of the Business Combination Agreement in October 2025, the PIPE investments provided $70 million of gross proceeds, before deducting transaction fees and expenses, to support growth initiatives and working capital. GOWell CEO Guillaume Borrel said the completion caps 19 years of building the company into a wireline solutions developer and provider, while Inflection Point Chairman and CEO Michael Blitzer said GOWell has built a resilient, cash-generative business with a track record of growth and margin expansion through industry cycles.

Coinbase's tokenized US equities have crossed $1 billion in decentralized exchange volume on its Base network in roughly one month, a milestone the Base team announced on X on September 19, 2026, though the figure is vendor-sourced data from Base itself and the volume is strictly for non-US persons. The activity validates the B20 standard, a native ERC-20-compatible format launched on August 24, 2026 and built on Rust precompiles to handle compliance policies and pausable functions; tokenized stock spot DEX volume on Base has surged approximately 830% month-over-month, with Aerodrome, the Base-native DEX, accounting for roughly 85% of that activity, or about $852.7 million. Coinbase's model relies on direct 1:1 share ownership through Alpaca Securities as a regulated broker-custodian under the Abu Dhabi Global Market framework, giving token holders actual shareholder rights including dividends and voting, subject to eligibility, and it launched with DeFi integrations from day one including Aave, Morpho, Euler, 0x, 1inch, CoW Swap, and Wasabi. The SEC issued an Innovation Exemption, Press Release 2026-90, on September 17, 2026, a five-year conditional relief for tokenized NMS stocks that unlocks the US market provided tokenized stocks offer the same rights as the underlying securities and trading venues operate under permissioned access with OFAC compliance, and Coinbase Institutional said the framework to bring the same regulated onchain market infrastructure onshore just got clearer. Coinbase is not first to tokenize equities: Kraken's xStocks boasts $25 billion in cumulative volume, largely centralized-exchange-matched rather than on-chain DEX volume, Ondo Global Markets holds a $638 million total value locked and roughly a 58% share of the issuer market, and Binance's bStocks has reached $610 million in assets under management in just two months, while the total tokenized public equities market now sits at approximately $2.48 billion. Chainlink Data Feeds provide the pricing backbone with 24/5 continuous feeds, a 0.5% deviation threshold and 24-hour heartbeats reporting Total Return Values that account for dividends, even as Nasdaq, NYSE, and Cboe push back against tokenized equities over liquidity fragmentation and degraded price discovery during the 16 hours of overnight trading that on-chain markets enable, and SIFMA pushes for formal SEC rulemaking rather than exemptions.

Fermi Inc. announced that its subsidiary, Fermi Services LLC, has signed a five-year management agreement with CBRE making the commercial real estate services firm the exclusive operations and maintenance provider for building one, Fermi's first data center in the Texas Panhandle. The term runs five years from the day building one is first ready for service, and Fermi can renew it in five-year terms. CBRE begins transition work on Fermi's notice to proceed, with site leaders on the ground up to 120 days before that to build maintenance programs, check equipment, and write operating procedures. CBRE will run and care for the maintenance, cooling, fire protection, and building systems behind the compute, and as new buildings come online Fermi can add them under the same framework to keep one operating standard across the campus. The agreement follows a run of milestones at Project Matador: this month the first Siemens Energy SGT6-5000F turbines arrived on site, in August Fermi signed a binding lease with TensorWave, its first customer, and formed an alliance with Hillcore Energy Capital Corporation for roughly 2.6 gigawatts of added power, and before that Fermi signed Primoris Services Corporation and TSK as its EPC partners. The project is secured or under long-term lease with more than $1.5 billion invested in buildout to date and, subject to entering into binding customer agreements, is expected to ramp to approximately 17 GW.

Coinbase is working to become the world's first "everything exchange," according to John D'Agostino, head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional. D'Agostino said the company is "all over tokenization" and has announced the launch of its tokenization model out of Abu Dhabi, with the aim of eventually giving US investors access to it. The tokenization model is one-to-one backed by the actual equity and will afford traditional rights to token holders, he said. Coinbase also announced that its US retail customers can participate in IPOs, part of the push to offer whatever people want in one centralized location while using blockchain and crypto rails where possible. D'Agostino pointed to the SEC's innovation exemption, noting that ETFs were granted hundreds of such exemptions in their early days and that it is very hard for industries to grow without them.

Coinbase Global has introduced enterprise-scale, fixed-rate Bitcoin-backed loans using the Morpho protocol for on-chain lending, alongside a post-quantum security architecture designed to harden its Bitcoin custody against future quantum computing threats. The fixed-rate loans target institutional borrowers seeking predictable on-chain financing terms rather than variable-rate crypto credit arrangements. The company said the two initiatives are only one part of its broader crypto infrastructure push, feeding directly into its role as an infrastructure provider for institutional clients that want more predictable and security-focused crypto services. The early tell for investors will be whether Coinbase starts disclosing specific metrics around Morpho-based loan balances, institutional borrower adoption and quantum-ready custody features in upcoming quarterly updates, instead of leaving these initiatives as purely technical announcements.

Crypto exchange Coinbase revealed by September 22 that it is developing a crypto custody system capable of supporting any post-quantum signature scheme blockchains may adopt in the future, in preparation for the risk of quantum computers cracking encryption. Yehuda Lindell, the company's head of cryptography, explained this in a video interview with the Mara Foundation. The company is upgrading its current custody infrastructure, which uses multi-party computation, so that it can withstand attacks by quantum computers, and is also considering an alternative approach using specialized devices called hardware security modules in case a signature scheme is adopted that multi-party computation cannot handle. According to the Mara Foundation, the company protects roughly 250 billion dollars' worth of digital assets centered on this system. On July 23, Coinbase explained on its official blog that its current key management system, CoreKMS, protects about 99.9 percent of its custodied assets, and that it is also developing a quantum-resistant version, PQ-CoreKMS, with plans to build an automated infrastructure within one year that can securely sign while distributing keys across multiple locations. Over the following two to three years, it aims to develop multi-party computation that does not require generating a complete private key even for quantum-resistant signatures.

Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange listed on Nasdaq, now allows users to borrow the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC using their Bitcoin holdings as collateral, at a fixed interest rate set at the time of borrowing. It is a new alternative to the existing floating-rate loans, which currently have more than 1.4 billion dollars in active loans backed by nearly 3 billion dollars in assets. The fixed-rate product runs on Morpho Midnight, a decentralized, non-custodial crypto lending protocol launched in July this year, with settlement transactions on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network. The existing loans run on the Morpho Blue protocol, where interest rates move with supply and demand and can spike when borrowing demand suddenly rises. Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho, said the joint product between Morpho and Coinbase has been a massive success and is now focused on expanding the scope of services into new types of loans and new use cases. The Bitcoin-backed credit market is currently worth about 16 billion dollars, according to the Bitcoin Digital Credit Report produced by Apyx and BitcoinTreasuries.net, and is expected to grow to 130 billion dollars by 2030.

Coinbase is giving U.S. retail investors access to initial public offerings through its platform, the crypto exchange said Monday. Eligible customers can now request IPO allocations directly through the Coinbase app, starting with smart ring maker Oura's IPO this week, and will be able to request shares at the offering price before the stock begins trading publicly. The feature is offered through Coinbase Capital Markets, the company's FINRA-registered broker-dealer, which participates in IPOs as a best-efforts selling-group member, collecting customer orders and sending them through clearing partner Apex Clearing Corporation. Coinbase cautioned that allocations are not guaranteed because final allocations depend on underwriter supply and total customer demand, so requests may be filled in full, in part, or not at all. The exchange also said its allocation system will favor investors who hold their IPO shares longer, with customers who sell within 30 days potentially barred from IPOs for the next 60 days and facing smaller future allocations for repeated quick selling. The move comes as Coinbase builds what it calls an Everything Exchange, and earlier this month it partnered with payments infrastructure provider Moov to bring stablecoin payment, settlement and funding services to more than 1,000 U.S. community banks and credit unions.

Coinbase Global will offer initial public offering allocations to U.S. retail traders, beginning with Oura's IPO this week, the company said Monday. Customers can request an IPO allocation on a new IPO page in the Coinbase app by selecting a stock on the active deal page, funding their account to cover the cost of the requested shares, and submitting a conditional offer to buy once the expected price range is disclosed. When the IPO's order book closes, available shares are allocated and booked directly into the customer's account at the IPO price, and depending on underwriter supply and total customer demand, requests may be filled in full, in part, or not at all. Coinbase said its allocation algorithm prioritizes investors who believe in what they are purchasing for the long haul, and a customer who sells IPO shares in the first 30 days may risk being barred from IPO participation for the following 60 days and may receive smaller and less frequent allocations if the behavior is repeated. Coinbase stock climbed 5.7% in early morning trading, likely reflecting bitcoin's 5.4% increase to $85.6K over the last 24 hours.

Coinbase Global reported that its agentic trading stack powered most crypto transaction flows over the past week. Management highlighted Grok as a leading AI agent on the platform, driving a large share of AI agent-driven trading volumes, while developer-built custom interfaces using Coinbase for Agents and the x402 payment protocol accounted for the majority of notional market activity. The company said the shift toward agentic trading moves it closer to a model leaning on higher margin services rather than pure retail volumes, with Grok and custom agents plugging into a payment stack built around USDC, Base and APIs. Coinbase added that heavier machine-driven flows do not remove existing risks around fee pressure, cybersecurity costs or competition from decentralized venues. The key proof point ahead is whether upcoming disclosures break out AI agent related metrics, such as the share of notional trading or fee revenue routed through Coinbase for Agents and x402, in the next couple of quarterly updates and product briefings.

The SEC announced a five-year conditional Innovation Exemption allowing eligible platforms to trade tokenized U.S. equities without standard exchange registration, sending shares of Robinhood up 7.6% and Coinbase up 10.5%. According to Reuters, the temporary framework lets digital asset brokerages and trading platforms support tokenized equity trading while the agency solicits public comments to shape permanent regulatory policies for on-chain securities. Tokenized equities represent traditional corporate shares as digital tokens on a blockchain, potentially enabling 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and more efficient settlement. The move reduces compliance hurdles and waives full exchange registration requirements for qualifying participants, opening the door for platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood to launch new asset offerings and capture additional trading volume. The rally was further supported by a rebound in the broader cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin trading up roughly 2% near $78,000. Coinbase remains down 17.7% since the start of the year and trades at $194.63 per share, 49.7% below its 52-week high of $387.27 from October 2025.

Coinbase Global has filed for regulatory approval to list perpetual futures tied to individual large-cap U.S. stocks, opening the door to 24/7 leveraged trading of shares such as Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia on a regulated U.S. platform. The exchange plans to offer contracts linked to roughly 50 to 60 major stocks, with trading potentially starting later this year if regulators approve the products, according to The Wall Street Journal. Coinbase submitted a Form 1-N to the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, a filing that allows Coinbase Derivatives to register with the SEC as a national securities exchange for security futures products. The move follows Coinbase's push to expand perpetual futures beyond crypto; the exchange launched stock perps for eligible customers outside the U.S. in March, and earlier this month launched regulated crypto derivatives for eligible Canadian traders, offering 23 crypto futures tied to assets including Bitcoin, Ether and Solana, alongside futures for gold, silver, oil and the COIN50 index. U.S. regulators have also taken steps this year to open the market to perpetual contracts, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approving a bitcoin perpetual futures contract submitted by Kalshi on May 29 and saying market participants could seek approval for other perpetual products. Coinbase is not alone in seeking to bring the products into the U.S. regulated market, as Kalshi has also moved toward offering single-stock perpetual futures.

Bitcoin traded at $80,888.81, up 5.5% over 24 hours, pushing crypto-linked equities sharply higher Friday morning. Strategy stock rose 12% to $148.55 and Coinbase Global shares climbed 11% to $192.43, both outpacing the coin itself, while the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF gained 6% and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust slipped 0.1%. Nic Puckrin, founder of Coin Bureau, said short positions were liquidated once Bitcoin broke past its resistance level, and crypto derivatives traders had been heavily positioned in call options heading into the move. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday it is granting a five-year exemption allowing U.S. trading venues to offer tokenized stocks, a direct tailwind for Coinbase, which earns fees on every listed venue it operates. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong said he now assumes the CLARITY Act is dead and that another path exists through the regulators, naming the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while a House of Representatives committee advanced the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill on Thursday, a measure that still requires approval from the full House and the Senate. Strategy remains a leveraged treasury vehicle for Bitcoin, funded largely with issued equity, and its stock is still down 3% year to date even after this month's rebound.