Coinbase

Overview

• Mission: Increase economic freedom by providing a trusted platform that makes it easy to engage with crypto assets.
• Strategic expansion: In December 2025, Coinbase moved toward becoming the Everything Exchange, expanding assets available to trade on the platform to include stocks, commodity futures, perpetual futures, and prediction markets.
• Differentiators:
  • Trust: Focused on security and regulatory compliance; customer assets are held one-to-one.
  • Ease of use: Emphasis on user-friendly products, quality, and design.

Who Coinbase Serves

• Consumers: Retail users who hold, invest in, or trade crypto assets and engage with on-chain activity.
• Institutions: Market makers, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, wealth platforms, RIAs, payment platforms, and public/private corporations using custody and trading services.
• Developers: Technology companies, financial institutions, banks, fintechs, and retail brokers building crypto-enabled products on the Base Chain and Coinbase Developer Platform.

Core platform and products

Transaction products

• Consumer trading
  • Simple Trade: Basic interface for buying and selling crypto assets, stocks, futures, and prediction markets, designed for a broad range of experience levels.
  • Advanced Trade: Full order books for spot and derivatives, real-time charts, trade history, and advanced trading tools for professional traders.
  • Revenue model: Fees from consumer trading, including volume-based transaction fees and spreads. Simple Trade fees are typically higher than Advanced Trade fees.
• Institutional Trading and Markets (Coinbase Prime)
  • Full-service prime brokerage for institutional customers with access to deep liquidity across a network of trading venues.
  • Pricing: Volume-based transaction fees for executed trades.
• Exchanges (as described in the excerpt)
  • Coinbase Exchange: Spot trading; 360+ crypto assets.
  • Coinbase International Exchange: Perpetual futures and spot; 200+ crypto assets.
  • Coinbase Derivatives Exchange: Dated futures and perpetual-style futures; 35+ futures.
  • Deribit Exchange: Options, perpetual futures, dated futures, and spot; 15+ crypto assets.
• Other transaction products
  • Base: A decentralized Layer 2 Ethereum blockchain offering fast, low-cost on-chain transactions; Coinbase earns sequencer fees for transactions on Base.
  • Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet): A self-custodial wallet with integrated trading, payments, social feed, and access to decentralized applications. Keys are controlled by users with an option to add a recovery signer. Coinbase cannot recover access by default.

Subscription products and other services

• Stablecoins: USDC (issued by Circle) and EURC (issued by Circle Europe) under a commercial agreement with Circle that governs revenue sharing and ecosystem growth.
• Circle Agreement (highlights):
  • Issuers: Circle (USDC) and Circle Europe (EURC).
  • Initial term: Three years with auto-renewal for additional three-year terms if specified thresholds are met.
  • Conditions: Product Threshold, Company Threshold, and Reseller Threshold affect renewal and other protections, including potential restructuring and assignment of trademarks under certain circumstances.
  • Economic arrangement: Circle pays Coinbase for its role in growing USDC; increased USDC circulation can increase Coinbase revenue under the agreement.
  • Supplement: A November 2024 supplement sets terms for third-party “approved participants” that may receive fees for growing stablecoin circulation.

Staking (Blockchain Rewards)

• Coinbase facilitates on-chain staking for various assets and earns a fixed percentage commission on staking rewards received by customers.
• Consumer staking: Supports eight assets — ADA, AVAX, ATOM, DOT, ETH, POL, SOL, XTZ — with approximately $7.5 billion (USD terms) staked on behalf of individual consumers as of December 31, 2025.
• Institutional staking: Offered through Coinbase Prime and third-party validators; over $15.2 billion (USD terms) staked by institutional customers as of December 31, 2025.
• cbETH: A wrapped staking token representing ownership of staked ETH; can be obtained via Coinbase or purchased on the platform.
• Staking rewards vary by asset and network conditions. Staked assets remain in customer custody and are not used by Coinbase.

Institutional financing

• Lending and borrowing products for institutional customers to support hedging, trading, and working capital.
• Services include real-time trading leverage, short selling, structured loans, and the ability to borrow fiat, crypto, and stablecoins from third parties (including institutional customers).
• Agency Lending: A managed lending product for institutional counterparties.

Global and platform expansion

• The Everything Exchange concept broadens asset classes beyond crypto to include stocks, futures, and other markets, with the goal of offering a single platform to trade assets globally.
• International expansion is supported by multiple exchanges and global services, including Deribit and other trading venues.

Key metrics and figures (from the excerpt)

• Consumer staking: Approximately $7.5 billion (USD terms) held on behalf of individual consumers staked through Coinbase as of December 31, 2025.
• Institutional staking: Over $15.2 billion staked by institutional customers through Coinbase Prime as of December 31, 2025.
• Staking assets: Eight consumer staking assets — ADA, AVAX, ATOM, DOT, ETH, POL, SOL, XTZ.
• Staking ecosystem scale: Base blockchain has processed billions of transactions since launch.
• Asset counts by venue (as of the filing date in the excerpt):
  • Coinbase Exchange: 360+ assets (spot trading)
  • Coinbase International Exchange: 200+ assets (spot and perpetual futures)
  • Coinbase Derivatives Exchange: 35+ futures
  • Deribit Exchange: 15+ crypto assets